Social media users have shared raw death rates from the past 51 years in the UK to draw a misleading conclusion that undermines the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The posts, which are shared on Facebook, all contain a table with data retrieved from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) (here, here, here). Two of the reports link to the ONS data source (here). In the accompanying text, one report reads: “STOP BEING AFRAID! Look at the number of deaths in all causes in England and Wales over the past 50 years to see that the year 2020 was the 35th place on the list of the total number of deaths. The word ‘pandemic’ has been used since the beginning and with the outbreak of Covid-19 to create FEAR, but on average we are losing NO MORE people than we have done in previous years ”(here).
Another adds: ‘In the last 50 years of registered deaths in the UK. The year of the deadly pandemic of 2020 came to 35. 35th … and we have destroyed thousands of small businesses, denied the education of millions of children, and seen the NHS waiting list for critical care explode. And created a national debt that will take decades to repay. Beautiful Boris! ”(Here).
However, this is a misleading interpretation of the data. Reuters spoke to the ONS, along with academics from the University of Oxford, Imperial College London and The Health Foundation Charity, who all said that a comparison of the baseless data on deaths over the past 50 years was not an accurate understanding. of the current mortality rate will not give. .
First, the ONS table says that figures for 2020 are still preliminary. It also says that the column “number of deaths” over time is not directly comparable, as it does not constitute the growth in the population. The same is said for ‘crude mortality rates (per 100,000 inhabitants)’, which is apparently the dataset used to determine the rankings in the Facebook table (here). This rate does not take into account the changes in the age structure of the population over time.
Secondly, all the figures in the Facebook table for total deaths per year correspond to the ONS data – except for the year 2020. The ONS mentions this figure as 608 002, while it is 605 000 in the table. The data sets also do not correspond to the population size, crude mortality rate (deaths per 100,000) or age standardized mortality rates. Meanwhile, the table on Facebook has an additional column that shows the “% of the doll” that died in each year, but this is not reflected in a column in the US table.
Despite these differences, Christl Donnelly, a professor of statistical epidemiology at Imperial College London (here) and professor of applied statistics at Oxford University (here), told Reuters that the 2020 ranking in the 35th place for most deaths in the Facebook table is almost correct.
She said: ‘If you look at the 50-year US statistics from 1971-2020, I found that 2020 is the 39th highest, based on the age-standardized mortality rate (per person) or the 34th highest based on the crude mortality rate. (per person). ”
However, it is still a ranking based on raw data – and experts believe it is not enough to calculate the mortality rate.
Ridhi Kashyap, associate professor of social demography at the University of Oxford (here), said it would be misleading to compare the past 50 years as it forgets the tremendous progress made in reducing mortality and improving survival, especially among older ages. groups. ”
He told Reuters: “The age-standardized mortality rate has been steadily declining over the past 50 years due to improvement in survival at all ages, and especially among the older (60+) population in recent decades. It therefore does not make sense to compare the current mortality rates with those in 1970 or 1980, because it is now much lower – but if we only compare 2020 with recent years (for example those after 2010), we see that 2020 is much worse . ”
Looking at data from recent years is ‘the most meaningful’ because it would give a better idea of ’the number we would expect under normal circumstances’, said David Finch, a senior fellow at The Health Foundation (here). He told Reuters that by doing so, the data shows a 14% increase in deaths expected in England and Wales in 2020, based on the previous five years (here).
To break it down further, Donnelly found a similar “14.5% increase in deaths with a 0.65% increase in population size” between 2019-2020. She added: ‘We were expecting 534,315 [deaths in 2020] but observed 608,002. That is 73,000 more deaths than expected. ”
Meanwhile, OUR calculations from the past five years come close to Donnelly’s figure. It told Reuters: ‘In 2020, the total number of deaths recorded in 2020 was 75,925 higher than we would expect if we looked at the five-year average between 2015-2019.
‘If we look recently, we have experienced erratic but historically low mortality rates. But the preliminary age-standardized death rate in 2020 was 1,043.5 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants about 8% higher than the five-year average and is the highest it has been in more than a decade. ‘
VERDICT
Partly false. OUR data from 1971-2020 show that the year 2020 was 39th for the age-standardized mortality rate, or 34th for the crude mortality rate. However, a comparison of mortality rates between 2020 and the last 50 years is misleading as it does not take into account changes in the age structure of the population, nor does it decrease mortality rates gradually due to social advancement.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.