Excess deaths are up across all age groups. Again.

2021 is becoming a record year for excess deaths. If we calculate the expected deaths (based on the number of deaths in 2015 to 2019) and graph this alongside deaths this year, the picture doesn’t look great.

The smoothed lines in this graph are fitted to show a best match to the expected weekly deaths (dashed line) and the recorded all causes deaths for 2021 (solid line). You can see the recorded data in the different shapes in the graph (all causes weekly deaths for 2021 with the circles, and expected weekly deaths with the triangles).

Excess deaths are up for every age group older than 50. There’s a particularly huge rise in the 80 to 84 years age group (around 175 expected deaths per week but 250 recorded last week – that’s 75 extra deaths) and 85 to 89 years (50 extra deaths).

What is causing these extra deaths? The contribution from COVID deaths is a very small part of these large increases in excess mortality. Was this an expected outcome from lockdowns, vaccination and the COVID pamdemic?