Dr John Campbell, among others, has recently drawn attention to the large numbers of excess deaths (compared with the same time of year in pre-pandemic years), which have been happening in the UK, and in other European countries, since the beginning of 2021.
The data junkie in
me led me to give my “magic spreadsheets,” which I have used to analyze the
COVID pandemic over the last three years and more, one last run-out. And to try
to deliver a post-mortem report on the pandemic in Europe, with particular
reference to excess mortality, and to vaccinations, side-effects of which some
see as a possible reason for the excess deaths.
New omicron variants
and media scares about them notwithstanding, the three-word summary of where
COVID is today is: “It’s dead, Jim.” Of the 50 reporting European countries,
only Russia and Czechia are reporting any significant number of either daily
new cases or daily COVID deaths. (By significant, I mean at least 1 new case,
or 0.0025 deaths, per million population per day).
Excess Mortality
So, let’s look at some graphs of the
excess mortality figures (from all causes), which have triggered the recent
attention. The data came from Our World in Data’s COVID data feed, and ran up
to 21st September. I divided the 50 countries into four groups, and
plotted each group.
The UK has been
among the countries in the geographical core of Western Europe with the most
consistently high excess mortality figures since the middle of 2021. But it
isn’t the only one to be high; and even now, there are still more countries
generally above the zero line than generally below it.
That’s a similar
picture to further west. If anything, a bit worse, at least until very
recently.
These countries
got hit really hard by several waves of COVID in the first two years of the
epidemic, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that things have been quieter recently
on the excess mortality front.
These are mostly
small countries, which explains the variability of individual lines. But the
graph still gives a general impression of above-zero excess mortality,
persisting for a long period.
I assembled all
these into a “league table” of average excess mortality since the day I counted
as the start of the pandemic (24th January 2020). The averaging was
done simply by averaging all the individual excess mortality figures given by
each country, which should give a reasonably accurate picture given that most
countries report weekly; though some report monthly, and some less often still.
And I chose to exclude any countries which had not reported an excess mortality
figure in the last 90 days prior to the cut-off date (they appear at the top of
the histogram).
The Nordic
countries are, notably, concentrated towards the bottom of the list. Whether
due to cold temperatures, low population densities, a greater trust between the
people and governments, or some other cause, I cannot tell.
The UK is in 13th
place among 35 reporting excess mortality. Among Western European countries,
only Italy is worse.
Luxembourg,
Denmark, France and Germany have also done, relatively speaking, well. Compared
to all its neighbours, the UK has performed atrociously.
COVID cases and deaths
I created a “league table” of COVID cases
per million throughout the epidemic. Cases per million is not by any means a
perfect metric, because it does rather depend on the amount of testing, and on
how well the cases are counted. Nevertheless, here it is.
Notice that those near the top of the
list tend to be mainly smaller countries. The UK, despite having used more
tests per head than most other countries, comes 28th out of 50.
Suggesting that the counting wasn’t all that good.
Here’s a corresponding “league table” of
COVID deaths per million throughout the epidemic, for the same countries.
Deaths per million, I think, will tend to be a less accurate metric in many
countries than excess deaths, because there is a judgement involved on what
constitutes a COVID death, the basis for which may vary from country to
country.
The UK is 17th out of 50 –
again, a poor performance.
As you might expect, many of the same
countries that counted many COVID deaths have also had high excess mortalities.
But not all. Russia, for example, is second highest in excess mortality, but
only 22nd out of 50 in COVID deaths. And Hungary, third from the top
in deaths per million, is in the bottom half of those reporting excess
mortality.
One metric of the general quality of
health care systems, which I have found useful, is cumulative deaths per case.
A high score here shows either a failure to count cases accurately, or a
failure to treat those cases properly, or both.
Once again,
the UK is near the wrong end of the table, at 15th out of 50. Even
Italy is some way below. We all know the NHS is a failing, if not already
failed, system; and it shows on this metric.
Vaccinations
Here is the league table of percentage of
the population fully vaccinated. (The Swiss seem to have withdrawn their
previously published figures, perhaps because “fully vaccinated” is not as
precise a concept as they might like. Liechtenstein and the Vatican have never
published this figure).
The strange number for Gibraltar is,
perhaps, explained by their choosing to vaccinate many who live in Spain, but
cross the border to work in Gibraltar. Of the others, it looks as if the
Catholic countries like to vaccinate as many as they can, while the
majority-Protestant countries (except Denmark) tend to be a bit more relaxed.
Towards the bottom of the list, lack of resources may also be a factor in low
vaccination rates.
Scatterplots
OK, now it’s time to put together a
scatterplot or six, and see if we can discern any trends. One useful thing to
plot against is the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI). Wikipedia describes
this as “a statistical composite index of life expectancy, education (mean
years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the
education system), and per capita income indicators, which is used to rank
countries into four tiers of human development.” Almost all the countries
listed here are currently in the “very high” tier (above 80%).
The HDI data I captured refers to 2019,
but countries do move up or down. (The UK, for example, dropped three places
from 15th to 18th in the world in 2021).
First, here’s average excess mortality
against UN HDI:
As you might expect, the higher the level
of development, the lower the average excess mortality. Countries around the
80% mark tend to have about three times as many excess deaths as those around
the 95% mark.
And here’s the corresponding plot of
COVID deaths per million against HDI:
The trend here has the same sign as that
for the excess mortality, but is less steep. As the countries move from 95% HDI
down to 80%, the deaths per million go up by a factor of about 1.8.
Lastly, the percentages fully vaccinated
versus the HDI:
The higher the HDI, the higher the
vaccination level – as you might have expected.
Next, let’s have a look at the efficacy
of the vaccines, in terms of controlling cases per million:
Hmmm… The story we were originally fed,
that the vaccines would prevent transmission of the COVID virus, has to have
been a lie. There might, I suppose, be some effect of people being more willing
to take the vaccine if the statistics in their country are bad, than if they
are relatively good. But that vertically spread cluster of countries between 40%
and 80% fully vaccinated suggests to me that the amount of testing, and the
differences in case assignment rates to COVID, in different countries far
outweigh any effects the vaccines might have had in controlling cases.
Next, COVID deaths per million versus
percentage fully vaccinated:
There is a negative trend here, but it
isn’t as big as I would have expected if the vaccines were doing the job they
were claimed to. Moving the percentage fully vaccinated from 40% to 80% reduces
the number of deaths assigned to COVID by around a third.
And last, but not least, average excess
mortality against vaccination levels:
Moving the percentage fully vaccinated to
80% decreases the average excess mortality by more than half, to about 41.5% of
what it was at 40%. So, very strangely, the positive effects of vaccination on
all-cause mortality seem to be bigger than the positive effects of vaccination
on COVID deaths! Not at all what you would expect a vaccine specifically against COVID to
do. At least, though, this seems to go against the hypothesis that vaccines are
a significant cause of the increases in all-cause mortality.
But let’s compare this last scatterplot
with the first one, of average excess mortality against HDI. A lowering of the HDI
from 95% to 80% roughly triples the average excess mortality. A lowering of the
vaccination rate from 80% to 40% – in this selection of countries, the two changes
leave roughly the same number of outliers outside the ranges – increases it by
a factor of 2.4. This suggests, to me, that the vaccines haven’t achieved much,
if any, savings in all-cause mortality when compared to the benefits of having
a higher HDI in the first place.
A few more scatterplots
After first publishing this article, I
had the idea of also plotting COVID deaths per million and average excess
mortality against cumulative deaths per case. The rationale being that the latter
is as good a proxy as we have for the general awfulness of a country’s health care
system. The results were most interesting.
That looks like a pair of pretty good
positive correlations, and with the ratios between slope and Y-axis intercept not
so far from each other, either. Leading to the very common-sense conclusion: Bad
health care systems kill.
In conclusion
The UK’s and the NHS’s performance
against the COVID virus, compared with its neighbours, and even compared with
the other countries of Europe as a whole, has been atrocious.
There is no evidence that the vaccines
have had any significant effect in controlling transmission of the virus.
Differences in testing rates and counting of cases seem to make more difference
than vaccinations.
There are negative correlations between
both COVID deaths per million and average excess mortality, and vaccination
rates. Though the first is, unexpectedly, less strong than the second.
It doesn’t look as if the vaccines can be among the causes of the high recent excess mortalities in many countries. On the other hand, it also doesn’t look as if they have done as much to reduce mortality as people were led to expect. The general level of human development in a country, as measured by the UN’s Human Development Index, seems to correlate better with reduced mortality than vaccine uptake does.
Plotting COVID deaths per million and average excess mortality separately against cumulative deaths per case (a proxy for poor quality in health care systems) leads to a very simple and common-sense conclusion: Bad health care systems kill.