Analysis by Keith Rankin.

This chart shows total deaths in a number of comparable countries with high or highish life expectancies. The countries with most deaths have older populations.

New Zealand should perhaps be compared most with Ireland, Scotland, Denmark and Finland; all countries with just over five million people. And with Australia.

Australian mortality has been similar to New Zealand’s in recent years, though, as more New Zealand citizens migrate to Australia, in the next few years New Zealand will age faster than Australia.

Ireland is exceptional because of its relationship with United States’ high technology companies and its full membership of the European Union. Thus Ireland has many elite ‘tech’ workers at present. Further, in past years of difficulty – especially 2008 to 2014 – Ireland was able to unload much of its underclass to other countries. While the health and financial circumstances of Ireland’s sixty- and seventy-somethings requires further investigation, Ireland will neither have had as big a baby bust as New Zealand in the 1930s nor as intense a baby boom from 1946 to 1965. So, it is likely that the numbers of deaths in New Zealand will rise faster in coming years than the number of deaths in Ireland.

The high death numbers in Scotland, Denmark and Finland do not reflect lower life expectancies in those countries. Rather, they reflect populations with comparatively fewer younger people compared to older people. These countries’ mortality numbers in 2018-2022 are the best guide we have to what death numbers will be like in New Zealand in coming years, as the baby bust generation passes on and the 1940s’ and 1950s’ baby boomers reach the days in which they dominate death data.

Most importantly, the experience of these three countries suggests that we will see the demand for health care in New Zealand surge from now on – peaking in the 2030s and 2040s – at a time when current projections show that New Zealand’s healthcare workforce will trough. There seems to have been minimal, if any, demographic analysis of the implication in New Zealand of a baby bust generation giving way to baby boom generations. This is despite record numbers of policy analysts and cost analysts contracted by government.

Some Particular Comments about other countries

I have included Qatar and its near-neighbour Oman to show how low death numbers are at present in small Arabian countries with relatively large numbers of working-age residents. I think that this observation also applies to Israel.

We note also the death incidence in the higher life expectancy countries of Latin America – Costa Rica, Colombia and Chile – on account of their relatively low numbers of people in their eighties.

We note that Portugal and Japan have relatively high numbers of elderly people in their populations. Portugal has been a retirement magnet within Europe, with strong links to the United Kingdom. I have generally been puzzled as to why Japan has so many older people, though we should note that the generation which fought in World War II has largely passed on. I guess that, as in England, many Japanese children in the war were transported into the countryside so that they were not in the cities which suffered very intense bombing from the United States. Overall, Japan is one of the most age imbalanced countries; the low birth rates in recent decades contribute most to this.

Germany is a country which suffered particularly from Covid19 and similar diseases in 2022. But its high 2018 death tally suggests demographic causes which still need unravelling. Despite Germany being a major labour inflow country in Europe, it still has a median age about ten years higher than New Zealand’s (47 compared to 37).

On the flipside of Germany’s role as a labour-inflow country within the European Union, we have Finland and the other Baltic states as outflow countries. Hence the high death tallies in Finland and the Baltics relative to their resident populations.

Neither Finland nor Denmark look particularly happy in this chart. I predict that New Zealand’s death tally will soon be like Finland’s, given both countries’ propensities to lose labour to bigger neighbours. The situation of Greece is similar to that of the Baltic counties; too great a loss of their younger people to the employment centres of the European Union.

Re a few countries not in the chart, I can affirm that both England and Netherlands have population-adjusted death tallies very similar to the United States. And Canada’s adjusted numbers are very similar to Norway’s.

Finally, we should note Sweden, which was neutral in World War II. So Sweden does not have the extreme demographics of older people which New Zealand and other war participant countries exhibit. And, Sweden was less impacted by Covid19.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

The Pandemic can be assessed a bit like games of football, with deaths being the score. (Or, given that there are many ‘teams’ competing together, a better analogy may be a Marathon race. Nevertheless, I will use the language of the football metaphor.)

The winning country would be that with the fewest number of deaths attributable to Covid19. While this football metaphor is indeed useful, our perceptions of ‘who did best’ are strongly coloured by the pandemic’s first year, when media attention was greatest, when public health measures were most ‘in our faces’, and when the pandemic response was at its most bureaucratic.

As a result, the half-time scores are the scores that most seeped into public consciousness. Then, deaths which were classed as ‘covid-deaths’ were implicitly seen as more tragic, more requiring of daily tallying, than other deaths.

The two Tables below look at this Pandemic ‘World Cup’ through the simple demographic criteria of increases in deaths, all deaths. We may note four ‘ordinary-time’ phases of the pandemic. Together, they add up to a period of four years.

First, the warm-up, from May 2019 to February 2020. The warm-up, going back to 2019, is important to include because countries with unusually low numbers of deaths due to respiratory illnesses in 2019 would typically have higher death tallies in the next respiratory epidemic, whatever virus that might be.

Second is the first half of the Pandemic proper, which I would date as March 2020 to March 2021. Third is the second half, from April 2021 to April 2022, which includes the waves associated with the Greek-alphabet variants (especially Alpha, Delta and Omicron).

Following ‘ordinary-time’, there was ‘extra-time’ which I define as May 2022 to April 2023. We may note that the WHO declared the Pandemic to be over at around the end of April this year. So, we may formally categorise the period from May 2023 as ‘post-pandemic’.

Table 1 below indicates the score at the end of ordinary-time. It shows the percentage increase in deaths for a number of countries for the three years from May 2019 to April 2022, compared to the three years from May 2015 to April 2018. In the right-hand column is a counterfactual which is a best estimate of what the increase in deaths would have been in the pandemic period had there been no pandemic. (The counterfactual is calculated by comparing deaths in the 24 months ending April 2019 with deaths in the 24 months ending April 2017. I have used April years because, in both hemispheres, the period in late April and early May is generally free from epidemic respiratory deaths. This method minimises the impact to this calculation of the severe influenza global epidemic which lasted from late 2016 to early 2018.)

Table 2 indicates the ‘extra-time score’, comparing the year-to-April 2023 with the year-to-April 2019. It uses the same ‘trend’ counterfactual as Table 1. Whereas Table 1 is sorted to place the ordinary-time ‘winners’ at the top, Table 2 is sorted to place the ‘extra-time losers’ at the top. (We note that, for Table 2, some countries are laggards in publishing their mortality data; and also that the most recently published numbers are subject to upwards revision. The countries which are problematic in this regard have their data marked with asterisks, the number of asterisks indicating the degree of estimation required.)

In the pandemic proper, the two countries with easily the least increases in deaths were Norway and Sweden. The others in the ‘Top Eight’ (the ‘quarterfinalists’, to use the football metaphor) were the other Nordic countries, Australia and New Zealand, and Taiwan.

Based on the media coverage in New Zealand and the world news channels that New Zealanders mainly follow, the only surprise in that Top Eight would be Sweden, which pursued a very different policy response, especially in the ‘first-half’ of the Pandemic. In the 2020 New Zealand election campaign, political parties generally agreed that Taiwan was the exemplar for other countries to follow.

We may note that only New Zealand and Taiwan had counterfactuals showing higher projected increases in deaths than what actually happened. Thus, these two may be declared the ‘ordinary-time’ winners. The problem is that the Pandemic World Cup had ‘extra-time’. (It must also be noted, however, when we take the ‘non-death costs’ of the pandemic and its associated health policies, Sweden’s non-death costs were easily the lowest. So, on this basis, it could be argued that Sweden was the true ordinary-time winner, despite having been way behind at ‘half-time’.)

Extra-Time

When we look at Table 2 we see clearly that the East Asian countries performed very poorly. Most of these were deemed to be success stories in ordinary time. Taiwan is very prominent here. So is South Korea which has a conservative estimate in this table for its ‘extra-time’ increase in deaths. Macao is very important here, because it is the best proxy we have for China. Taiwan has had a recent resurgence in deaths in May 2023, and Macao has had a resurgence of Covid19 cases in recent weeks. So, these countries’ pandemic problems are far from over. (There are also signs that New Zealand’s seasonal death tally is picking up early this year.) The Macao situation, combined with other reports that all is not well in China right now, suggest that China may be presently going through a significant third wave of Covid19. This will add to global supply-chain problems.

New Zealand and Australia are in the top (ie worst) half of Table 2. So are two of the Nordic countries, Iceland and Finland, the Nordic countries which imposed more restrictive health mandates than their neighbours. So is Ireland near the worst, more restrictive in its public health mandates than the United Kingdom countries. Norway, top of Table 1, is in the middle of the Table 2 pack. Of the Nordic countries, only Sweden – easily the least restrictive in Europe, especially in the first-half of the Pandemic – performed well.

Quirky Counterfactuals

Creating consistent counterfactuals for each country is difficult because there are quirky demographics at play. First, we note that there are three main reasons why death increases might trend high for a given country. The first is a general increase in the population of a country: more people, more deaths. Second is the aging of a country, represented by increases in the median age of living persons. Third is a deterioration of general health, especially of those middle-age cohorts whose deaths ‘come under the radar’, given that deaths are dominated in most countries by people aged over 75.

It is likely that the high counterfactual for New Zealand is due to a mix of these. We know that New Zealand has some of the same issues of underclass deprivation as the United States, which include obesity, diabetes, and substance abuse. And we know that the United States has a lower life expectancy than other ‘western’ countries; a life expectancy now known to be falling.

The other two main quirks to look out for are birth rates in the troubled second quarter of the twentieth century. The Great Depression and World War Two were the main events that impacted on birth rates. There was also warfare in the 1950s in Korea and Malaysia. Sweden is an interesting case, comparable with Switzerland, neutral in World War Two, so having a lesser demographic impact from the War. Also, Sweden came out of the Great Depression early, meaning it will have had comparatively high birth numbers in the 1930s; Sweden’s peak deaths since 2015 will have been higher than otherwise, on that account.

While New Zealand is possibly the western country with the fastest population growth this century, this is offset by the fact that low birth numbers in the 1930s are translating to lower deaths since 2015. (See my recent ‘Smithometer’ analysis, in Granny Smith.) Aging and population growth are not the whole story of New Zealand’s upper quartile trend of increasing deaths. (Unlike, say Portugal, which is known to attract retirees in Europe as Florida does in the United States.)

New Zealand also has the additional factor of having, in June and July 2022, too many vulnerable people who were denied, for unexplained political reasons, a timely second booster Covid19 vaccination. The July 2002 mortality peak, almost entirely experienced by older European-ethnic New Zealanders – the Granny Smiths – came to a prompt end once these people became eligible for second-boosters. This sharp July peak – and drop-off – appears to have been a New Zealand specific phenomenon.

High counterfactual notwithstanding, New Zealand performed very poorly in extra-time, though not as badly as the East Asian countries which imposed the most ‘sterile’ public health policies on their people.

East Europe

I would like to note two other groups of countries. First, it was Eastern Europe which had the highest reported per-capita Covid19 death tolls. These countries do not look as bad in this analysis, though they (except the Baltic states) still look bad in Table 1, especially in light of their often negative counterfactual death trends. The main demographic problem that these countries have been facing is emigration of working-age adults, especially those Eastern European countries in the European Union. Generally, these countries look much better in Table 2, in extra-time.

Most of these countries successfully imposed severe public health restrictions in the first half of 2020, but abandoned those restrictions – or were unable to easily reimpose them – in the later stages of ‘the game’. The result was that these countries’ populations had substantially compromised immunity going into the winter of 2020/21. Their death peaks were much higher than the death peaks in the west earlier in 2020. The second problem was that, on account of their departed youth, their populations were aging as well as falling. Hence the high Covid19 per capita death tolls that savage winter.

In ‘extra time’, East Europe has ‘performed’ best. This would appear to be in part because so many of their most vulnerable people had already died; respiratory viruses had lost much of their human ‘fuel’. Also, these countries had re-established (the hard way) high levels of natural immunity to respiratory illnesses.

Russia continues to supply mortality data, though it excludes deaths in the Ukraine conflict zone; so its not included in the tables. And Ukraine has certainly stopped supplying data, due to governmental priorities as well as a lack of will to publicise its present demographic plight. Kazakhstan is probably the best proxy for assessing the impact of the Pandemic in Russia.

South America

These countries (plus Mexico) are among the worst performers in both Tables. Typically, they exhibit many of the ‘underclass’ socio-economic problems apparent in the United States, United Kingdom, and New Zealand: inequality, poverty, homelessness, obesity, crime, violence. It is likely that they will see ongoing increases in annual mortality on account of these factors; factors exacerbated by both the Pandemic and its associated mandates.

While Latin American populations are much younger than Eastern European populations – due to both higher births and less emigration – there will also have been a significant growth of numbers of people of peak-dying-age (over 75) contributing to ‘trend’ counterfactuals in some cases as high as New Zealand’s.

Another factor in these American countries is the high proportions of people living in or near the tropics at high altitudes. Under normal circumstances, these are unusually healthy environments, in which seasonal respiratory illnesses do not circulate as much as in temperate climes. But, it makes people living in these zones more vulnerable to pandemic respiratory illnesses when they do happen. It’s an old story that goes back to the time of Spanish colonisation in the sixteenth century.

This last factor is only apparent here in Colombia and Ecuador. Other similarly affected countries – Peru and Bolivia – had very high early death tolls, but (presumably due to political crises) have not released ‘extra-time’ data. Venezuela was even less forthcoming with useful data.

Africa including Qatar

Mortality statistics from Africa are rare. Egypt is now the best, and it certainly suffered. South Africa, which in ‘ordinary-time’ had a similar experience to that of East Europe, used to supply good quality data; but no more as its present economic crisis deepens. Signs are that the African continent was less impacted directly by Covid19 than other regions, though its more fragile economic supply-chains have become victims of the Pandemic’s ‘extra-time’ environment.

Qatar is an interesting case, because of its unusual demographics. Qatar’s resident population is heavily weighted towards the younger working-age population. So, while its death rates per capita have been very low, its percentage increases in deaths have not been low. We do need a good comparative analysis of the health impact of Covid19 on working-age populations, though made difficult by demographic data today still focusing on sex and ethnicity rather than age or occupation or labour force status.

South Asia

After China, the biggest Pandemic uncertainties relate to South Asia, with Inda being the largest country. We may also add the very populous country that is Indonesia. This region is a demographic black hole, which experiences high levels of emigration as well as of death. (We may note here – see Hundreds of Pakistanis dead in Mediterranean migrant boat disaster, CNN 19 June 2023 – that the majority of victims of the overcrowded refugee boat which sank last week off the coast of Greece were from Pakistan.) This region has suffered a huge upheaval since 2020, with the Pandemic a significant contributing factor.

Conclusion

There remains a lack of competent demographic analysis of recent and former pandemics, partly due to poor (sometimes politically-motivated) record-keeping, and partly due to the low status of demography among the social sciences. Analyses like mine here – amateur in the sense of being unpaid, but not in the sense of quality – help to fill the gap.

The most striking conclusion is that the ‘extra-time’ of the Pandemic gives a very different picture of the Pandemic’s human cost. The imposition by governments of sterile environments for long periods is not a recipe for good health outcomes, although it may give good headlines in the early phases of a pandemic when the Press is at its most attentive.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Over Easter I relistened to Jim Mora’s RNZ interview (17 May 2020) of Johan Giesecke, “world leading epidemiologist” and Professor Emeritus at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. In the period April to June 2020, Sweden gained notoriety for its divergent public health policies with respect to the management of the Covid19 pandemic. People – including me – widely pointed to Swedish authorities then as being more concerned about retaining a pretence of their economic normality rather than caring about people’s lives.

Swedish exceptionalism became a thing, again; this time seemingly for all the wrong reasons. Hitherto ‘progressive’ New Zealanders had regarded Sweden as an exceptional policy exemplar; now it seemed to be an outlier of classical liberalism.

Here are two summary measures of pandemic and post-pandemic mortality; comparing Sweden with Finland, Germany, New Zealand and Japan:

We note that all these countries have rising populations of older people, so some increase in deaths was to be expected in all of them. Sweden had covid vaccination rates comparable with these other four representatives of ‘the rest of the civilised world’, so differences in vaccination uptake cannot explain its mortality difference.

It’s worth relistening to this Giesecke interview, now with the perspective of hindsight. The context is that, in the contest (as it was then framed) of Sweden versus the rest of the civilised world (with the World Health Organisation settling on the counter-Swedish majority view), Sweden has come out a clear winner. The scandal is the failure of ‘the rest of the civilised world’ to acknowledge the statistical reality.

(Note that I use ‘civilised world’ with mock irony. In New Zealand at least, few politicians or high-profile commentators believed that there could be anything New Zealand authorities could learn from the experiences of West Europe, South America, or Africa; instead, the policy elite contemptuously assumed such countries to be ‘basket cases’. See the use of this phrase in 1980s: Days of greed and glamour, NZ Herald, while noting that we are still waiting for a balanced history of the ‘Muldoon Years’ referred to.)

Highlights from the 2020 Interview, and the interview itself can be heard here, and read in synopsis form: Johan Giesecke: Why lockdowns are the wrong approach, Radio New Zealand, 17 May 2020.

Relating to points not covered in RNZ’s synopsis, Giesecke draws a direct comparison with Finland, which was pursuing a public health policy very close to New Zealand’s. His concern – shared by Finland’s state epidemiologist – was that the authorities’ actions were creating a significantly vulnerable population in Finland.

Giesecke, from that May 2020 perspective, mentions that if a good vaccine would come quite soon then New Zealand’s outcome might be better than Sweden’s. The irony is that, while a good vaccine did indeed come quickly, New Zealand’s authorities were slow to embrace the vaccine as the answer; having already decided that New Zealand had eliminated the virus as per the China policy. Then, after New Zealand’s people were vaccinated, the government doubled down on the lockdowns, not at all trusting the vaccine to work as a substitute for lockdowns. (Indeed, New Zealand only abandoned its border-quarantine policy in 2022 because that policy failed on its own terms. Had the border policy been implemented without error, New Zealand presumably would have followed a set of draconian restrictions through 2022, with a timeline similar to that of China. New Zealand’s border mishaps proved to be a blessing in disguise.)

In mid-2020, Johan Giesecke’s main expectation was that the mortality experience of all countries in the OECD (essentially the rich western plus the rich eastern countries) would all be about the same; and that Sweden’s major benefit would be in its substantially lesser disruption to normal life.

Where Giesecke was wrong was that the OECD ‘WHO countries’ (a label for the ‘civilised world other than Sweden’) ended up with substantially higher increases in deaths than did Sweden; he was wrong in a way that favoured Sweden rather more than he had expected.

The pandemic has nevertheless had an adverse impact on Sweden’s mortality. Sweden did experience the West European surge in deaths from respiratory illnesses late last year. Its people no more live in a bubble than do New Zealand’s. Overall though, Sweden got the win-win outcome: fewer deaths, and less social and economic dislocation. (David prevailed over Goliath.)

A very basic summary of the difference between the Swedish and the Goliath approaches is that Sweden focussed on its people whereas the prevalent strategy focused too much on the virus; the world by-and-large pursued a strategy of covid exceptionalism. (One consequence of covid exceptionalism was that a death clinically ascribed to Covid19 became a more noteworthy death than most other deaths.) Sweden focussed on having people with good levels of immunity, whereas in 2021 much of the rest of the world went down the unhelpful path of obsessing over the various mutant variants of the novel coronavirus.

Giesecke clearly had a better understanding the history of human coronaviruses than most other epidemiologists; these are viruses for which specific immunity is short-lived, from which we top-up immunity naturally through living our daily lives in a normal manner, and for which vaccine-conferred immunity would also be short-lived.

Sweden understood the science better; indeed, the interview tells us that there was a substantial scientific contest of interpretations of the evidence in Sweden, a good sign that actual science was taking place. Not only did a number of Sweden’s scientists prove to be among the better predictors of the future, people such as Johan Giesecke were also much more prepared to offer humility to their own people and to the world if they had got it wrong.

I am still waiting for our authorities – including the scientists – to do a proper retrospective comparison of New Zealand (and other countries, as in my table above) and Sweden. I am still waiting for a little gracious humility from our authorities in Aotearoa New Zealand. Humility is an important characteristic of civilised behaviour.

In the middle of the interview, Jim Mora noted: “Our readers are quite fascinated with Sweden; I think the world is”. When and why did that fascination stop? Or is it just that Goliath’s information mediators stopped being fascinated when the ‘contest’ moved in David’s favour?

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Analysis by Keith Rankin.

A pandemic can end in three ways. Either the death rates attributed to the pandemic disease cease, or at least drop back to pre-pandemic levels. Or normality is re-established, with the pandemic disease still present, but displacing other causes of death. Or a ‘new normal’ is established, with higher ongoing rates of death normalised.

So, to some extent, a pandemic’s duration is a state-of-mind; meaning that the post-pandemic period is when that ’emergency’ mindset has departed. To a large extent, that happens when the most burdensome public health restrictions become untenable; in New Zealand’s case, that was when the substantive closure of the international border finished. Deaths, covid or otherwise, may still be a problem, but they cease to be newsworthy!

For most of the world, the post-pandemic period started around February 2022. East Asia was the principal exception. Table 1 below shows mortality in the first year of the new normal.

Table 1: Back to Normal?
total deaths:	2018/19*	2022/23**	increase
Macau	2199	3596	63.53%
Hong Kong	47056	62056	31.88%
Singapore	21323	26829	25.82%
Taiwan	170483	212665	24.74%
Thailand	484272	603662	24.65%
Iceland	2180	2702	23.94%
South Korea	291529	357298	22.56%
Chile	107408	130970	21.94%
Colombia	236488	285944	20.91%
Ireland	30051	35650	18.63%
Brazil	1325677	1569617	18.40%
Japan	1360950	1607011	18.08%
Northern Ireland	14998	17504	16.71%
Australia	161466	188155	16.53%
Scotland	55633	64807	16.49%
Malaysia	171015	199069	16.40%
Finland	53458	62112	16.19%
New Zealand	33310	38682	16.13%
Netherlands	148356	171826	15.82%
Germany	925309	1069924	15.63%
England & Wales	515610	592677	14.95%
Norway	39819	45650	14.64%
Austria	80544	92325	14.63%
Canada	279510	319140	14.18%
Uruguay	34655	39512	14.02%
United States	2812658	3193088	13.53%
Greece	122940	139406	13.39%
Mexico	726738	819268	12.73%
Portugal	111815	124757	11.57%
Spain	415025	458846	10.56%
Switzerland	66396	73311	10.41%
Italy	641280	705564	10.02%
Israel	45488	49996	9.91%
Denmark	53578	58826	9.80%
Peru	157650	172825	9.63%
France	591364	647762	9.54%
Czechia	110671	120448	8.83%
Slovenia	20603	22307	8.27%
Belgium	107810	116284	7.86%
Slovakia	54017	58196	7.74%
Poland	405241	435401	7.44%
Sweden	88633	94436	6.55%
South Africa	527630	561992	6.51%
Egypt	570015	605500	6.23%
Croatia	52144	55093	5.66%
Albania	21717	22900	5.45%
Hungary	131229	135090	2.94%
Kazakhstan	131089	134709	2.76%
Bulgaria	109175	112080	2.66%
Serbia	101699	104390	2.65%
Romania	263338	270222	2.61%
Moldova	37314	36554	-2.04%
*	year ended April 2019
**	latest available 12-month period

Table 1 shows a number of countries’ most recent annual death tallies compared with the year ended April 2019, the best baseline period available. May 2018 to April 2019 was chosen because it represents the first full year after the silent influenza pandemic of November 2016 to April 2018. While not a media event, that largely invisible 2017 pandemic was a substantial mortality event, at least in the ‘global north’. A pandemic does not require an authentication from WHO to be an actual pandemic. A pandemic is simply a globally widespread experience of a disruptive contagious disease.

Broadly, Table 1 shows the countries which followed ‘elimination strategies’ near the top for post-pandemic mortality. Not only did countries in the east of the eastern hemisphere (including Aotearoa New Zealand) pursue the most stringent anti-covid policies (and practiced them for the longest time periods), some  prematurely claimed to have eliminated (though not eradicated) the disease. For some in East Asia, the 2003 experience of SARS was uppermost in health officials’ minds.

Table 1 also shows that some of the countries worst-hit by the pandemic (especially those in the Southeast European ‘Balkans’) have returned to death tallies comparable with base-year numbers. If South Africa and Egypt are a suitable guide, that return to health normality applies to Africa as well.

The only West European countries with post-pandemic deaths under nine percent more than pre-pandemic deaths are Sweden and Belgium, both countries with high covid death tallies in the first wave of the pandemic, but well below European mortality averages in the second year of the pandemic. Sweden’s 6.55% increase actually overstates its situation by about two percentage points, because, more than in most other countries, deaths there were particularly and unusually low from May 2018 until the start of the pandemic. Also, Australia’s 16.53% is an overstatement, probably by at least two percentage points; this is because tardy Australia’s most recent annual deaths’ data includes the months of December 2021 and January 2022, both high mortality months compared to the following December and January.

New Zealand’s most recent death data uses December 2022 and January 2023, not December 2021 and January 2022. In contrast to Australia, New Zealand’s Table 1 increased mortality experience is understated by a percentage point, because March and April 2019 (included in the pre-pandemic baseline year) had somewhat higher deaths than those same months in 2018. If we had used a baseline year from March 2018 to February 2019, then New Zealand would have had a mortality increase of 17.40%, not 16.13%.

Re East Asia, the numbers for Macau and Hong Kong give a hint of the recent reality in China. For that region we should note also that the South Korea increase in Table 1 (22.56%) is a substantial understatement of reality, because South Korea has not reported ‘total deaths’ after July 2022, and we know that Korea has had many covid cases since then.

We also note that post-pandemic death tallies are high for Japan, Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, and Finland. These are all countries which, for their regions, were known for their more restrictive public health policies. Finland was widely acclaimed for being the most restrictive of the Nordic countries during the pandemic years. (We also note that Finland had many more deaths than Norway both pre-pandemic and post-pandemic, despite having about the same population as Norway; it suggests that many more young Finns are working abroad than young Norwegians. Likewise, we see that New Zealand has more deaths than Ireland, despite both countries having essentially the same population.)

Germany, which has had a particularly worrying recent run of deaths, in Table 1 is not out of step with its western neighbours; although we should note that southern Western Europe has generally had a post-pandemic more normal than northern Western Europe (Sweden excepted).

The critical question, looking to 2023 and 2024, is whether, for the countries towards the top of Table 1, the pandemic has triggered a new normal with persistently higher mortality than in the 2010s’ decade. Or have these countries simply experienced a delayed pandemic mortality experience which will soon subside? If the latter, then we should expect a substantial mortality drop in East Asia and West Europe in the year to April 2024.

Demography and the challenges of predicting the pandemic’s influence on 2020s’ mortality

Demography is a complex subject. Pandemic death rates per capita were high in Eastern Europe because those countries have lost many of their young people to emigration. Increases in death tallies, however, were never so high in those countries. The demography of Europe is particularly complex because many of their older people were born either side of, or during, World War Two; a war with substantial demographic consequences which have not yet fully played out.

The Scandinavian countries in particular had diverse experiences in that war. Sweden was neutral, Norway and Denmark were occupied, while Finland was successively friend and foe to the allied powers. So the change in the number of older people may differ in Sweden compared to the others. Nevertheless, Sweden still compares well with the other neutral countries: Switzerland, Ireland, Spain and Portugal. (Though noting that Spain had its own especially large demographic trauma in 1936 to 1939.)

Another problem in unravelling the demographics of Europe is the substantial international migration between present and former European Union countries, and immigration from former (or present) empire countries. So many people these days die in different countries from which they were born. We know little about the different pandemic and post-pandemic death experiences of immigrants compared to people born in the country of their death.

In most countries deaths in 2022/23 would have been higher compared to 2018/19. The main determinant of death rates is the numbers of people in the oldest age cohorts. About half of all deaths in most countries are of people in their eighties. So the biggest increases, for reasons other than the pandemic, would be due to the rate of increase or decrease of a country’s population of octogenarians. Some countries will have significantly fewer octogenarians after the pandemic, because the pandemic itself took so many.

The second most important reason for changing death tallies is the underlying health of the people. Pandemics take more people in countries which already have substantial populations – especially populations in the 65 to 74 age group – with compromised pre-pandemic health or compromised general immunity. In pandemic years, the main reason for more death is worse underlying health. In other years changes in health status may either accentuate or offset changes in the numbers of people over eighty. While there are health-compromised people of all ages, compromised health – high morbidity or low general immunity – is more likely to have prematurely fatal consequences for people aged 65 to 74.

To summarise the two previous paragraphs, I would argue that the two main predictors of a country’s normal death tally are the numbers of octogenarians in the population, and the numbers of people in the population aged 65 to 74 with compromised health or general immunity. (In addition, some developing countries still have unacceptably high levels of infant mortality.)

The two key aspects of the health status of living populations are morbidity and immunity. The countries which fare best in a novel virus pandemic (or from wave pandemics of pathogens which induce only-short-lived specific immunity) are those with low morbidity and high general immunity. With respect to the present post-pandemic period, the covid coronavirus increased both the morbidity and the immunity of populations. Where these two increases balance out, then a new normal appears which looks substantially like the old normal.

Before the twentieth century, people living rurally were more likely to experience longevity. That changed in the twentieth century, when people living in metropolises gained super-high-immunity levels from living in close proximity to each other (improving immunity); and urbanised populations experienced reduced morbidity as a result of access to a wider range of foods, from more timely access to healthcare services, less exposure to conditions such as malaria, and safer supplies of drinking water.

Big cities still reduce life outcomes for people immigrating from rural areas; for people not yet adapted to city levels of exposure to pathogens, and often having to settle for inferior housing and employment experiences. When governments tamper with the finely-tuned immunity equilibria in our big cities, the potential for deadly unintended consequences has always been there. Such tampering may include the required overuse of facemasks, and the creation of fear around the use of public transport.

The post-pandemic experience of East Asia is not a particularly good advertisement for disruptive public health practices. Sweden was conspicuous by taking the opposite policy tack from that taken in East Asia, minimising disruptions from normal social interaction. Sweden’s different approach was not a result of its greater wisdom or greater laisse-faire liberality; rather it was a result of a mistaken assumption that, by mid-March 2020, many more people had already been infected by the new coronavirus (making it too late for restrictive policies) than actually had been infected.

The interregnum between the two recent respiratory pandemics

Finally, it is worthwhile to suggest reasons why deaths in much of the developed world were especially low from May 2018 to February 2020; a phenomenon particularly marked in Sweden. This was most likely because of the 2017 influenza pandemic – the invisible pandemic (invisible even to demographers, then more attentive to issues other than heightened seasonal mortality). This world disease event left populations more immune, and (because that pandemic took so many) it meant that the post-influenza 2018 population was more healthy and had more immunity than the pre-pandemic 2016 population.

It is normal for post-pandemic death rates to be low for a couple of years. Indeed, it was true around 1919 and 1920, after the great influenza pandemic of 1918. Will it prove to be so this time, from 2023 to say 2025? We should be watching aggregate mortality – in our own countries and other countries – with as great interest as we watch the inflation, unemployment and economic growth data.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Analysis by Keith Rankin.

The ‘Young Elderly’ are in essence the post-war baby-boomers. An average young elderly person in these charts was born around 1950 to 1952.

The charts look at ‘quarterly excess deaths’, so do not show week-by-week fluctuations in deaths. For example, data for the very end of 2022 covers the whole of the last three months of 2022.

As in my previous recent charts (see my Spiralling Deaths in Germany, Evening Report, 14 March 2023; and Examples of Germany and Denmark, Evening Report, 12 March 2023), I have emphasised Germany, because late-pandemic mortality has been so bad there. And because Germany’s differences with the rest of Europe create a very useful point for epidemiological analysis.

In the first chart (above), of the countries shown only Germany and New Zealand had excess deaths in this age group below ten percent in the first six months of Covid19. The United Kingdom was easily worst then.

The United States had a really bad pandemic, for two years from April 2020 to April 2022. But, subsequently, for nearly two years since April 2021 Germany has been for the most part easily the most deathly of these countries, for the young elderly, with only the USA contesting Germany for this dubious honour. For some of 2022, New Zealand was in second place out of these seven countries.

We note that Belgium, Netherlands and France all had high death rates early in the pandemic, but have subsequently had much lower death rates than Germany for this age group.

The two obvious avenues for investigation are diet (the French surely have a more healthy diet?) and differences in the policy responses to the Covid19 pandemic. My understanding is that, while all countries had similar public health restrictions during the peak weeks of Covid19, Germany was much the slowest of these countries to remove mandated public health measures. Germany’s abundance of caution may have backfired big-time. Yet the only reason given here (on Deutcshe Welle) is: “that diseases other than Covid19 are bouncing back because fewer people are wearing masks amid a general relaxation of pandemic rules in comparison with the past two years”. There is no hint of comparative analysis in this particular DW media report.

The second chart compares Germany with its four nearest Eastern European countries, and with the two Mediterranean countries which were the first to experience substantially elevated pandemic death rates.

For the young elderly ‘boomers’, Spain and Italy show quite the opposite pattern to Germany; they started with high death rates and then moved to generally lower rates. Both had summer mortality peaks in 2022, to some extent due to the summer heat waves but mainly due to the rebounding of tourism with Covid19 still present. Covid19 flourishes in bars and restaurants, and in airport terminals.

The eastern countries had more deaths overall in the middle seasons of the pandemic, despite (or maybe because of) the success of the measures taken in the early months of the pandemic. Also, for these countries, with lower life expectancies than their western neighbours, the young elderly are on average closer to their eventual deathdays. It is important to note that these eastern countries had the fewest pandemic-related deaths after March 2022. Presumably their people most at risk of dying had already died, and the remainder had higher natural immunity to respiratory illnesses than did the older citizenry of Germany. (I am not aware that Polish, Bohemian or Hungarian cuisine is particularly noted for its health benefits, in contrast to the much-touted Mediterranean diets; so a better diet is probably not the reason.)

There is one other country with a similar pandemic death-profile to Germany; its southern geographic and cultural neighbour, Austria. The final chart here shows the smaller countries of western and central Europe, plus New Zealand. (Australia and Sweden do not provide age-group data.)

First we note that Austria and its neighbours Slovenia and Switzerland start out closely synchronised. Switzerland drops off Austria’s high young-elderly mortality path from March 2021, and Slovenia drops off a year later (though has a high summer peak in line with its Italian neighbour). The Scandinavian countries had generally low death rates for the young-elderly age group. (They did however see rising deaths from mid-2021 for the older elderly.)

Any valid epidemiological analysis for Germany’s 2022 tragedy needs to take into account the similar experience of Austria, as well as the generally different experiences of the other European and neo-European countries.

The United States still has a worse overall pandemic record than Germany, for the young elderly. The worry for Germany, though, is that the reasons for its really bad 2022 have not necessarily been resolved; 2023 may be just as bad. Time will tell; so long as an asteroid strike or a nuclear war don’t displace infectious diseases as drivers of excess mortality in Europe.

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

https://www.dw.com/en/winter-illnesses-burden-germanys-intensive-care-units/a-64135331

https://www.dw.com/en/top-german-virologist-says-covid-19-pandemic-is-over/a-64214994

Germany’s Deadliest Weeks since World War Two? – Spiralling Deaths in Germany

The four weeks ending 8 January 2023 have seen easily the most deaths in Germany of any four‑week period since 2015. The worst week was the week ending Christmas Day, with 28,481 deaths. While it’s hard to compare with pre-1990 years, due to the East Germany question, it may well be that this week last December had a greater percentage of excess deaths than any other week since the last world war.

Baseline weekly deaths for 2022 would have been just over 17,000; a baseline of 68,700 for four weeks, as shown in Table 1.  Therefore, winter illnesses have raised peak deaths at the end of 2022 to 65 percent above what they would have been in a normal non-winter week.

While the December 2022 statistic is remarkable, it seems that most Germans themselves are not aware of this. Many people suffering individual tragedies will typically not be aware if their ‘micro’ tragedy is part of a much bigger ‘macro’ tragedy. This DW story (23 Jan 2023) The impossible task of calculating global pandemic deaths, only looks at 2020 and 2021, and gives no commentary on the Germany chart included. The best I can find on DW discussing the health situation in Germany last December is: Winter illnesses burden Germany’s intensive care units, 17 Dec 2022.

What is remarkable is that this latest winter toll comes very soon after three other periods of high peak mortality in 2022, listed in Table 1 as ‘autumn wave’, ‘summer wave’, and ‘omicron wave’. So, from the Grim Reaper’s point of view, the ‘low-hanging-fruit’ should already have passed.

These recent mortality waves compare unfavourably with the three ‘classic’ Covid19 death waves, each of which had weekly peaks in 2020. By ‘classic’ I mean the original ‘Wuhan’ coronavirus strain, before ‘variants’ and ‘vaccinations’ became a thing in 2021.

It is also noteworthy how high some of the pre-covid death peaks were. The influenza ‘pandemic’ of late 2016 to early 2018 was particularly pronounced. (I use single-quote-marks, because this actual pandemic was never granted pandemic-status by the World Health Organisation.) Germany’s two peaks for this influenza pandemic were in February 2017 and March 2018. We also note a particularly bad season of epidemic influenza in early 2015.

Refer to my Death Spikes and Covid Dissonance? Examples of Germany and Denmark for charts recently published, comparing Germany’s excess deaths with those of its neighbour, Denmark. The December 2022 mortality peak is reproduced to some extent in most (but not some eastern) European Union countries, and in the United Kingdom and United States. However, Germany’s year-of-death in 2022 is probably the most dramatic. (One other country which appears to have an equally problematic mortality, maybe worse, in 2022 is South Korea. I wait in hope for the eventual publication of South Korea’s complete dataset.)

Chart 1 below shows ‘excess deaths’ – as distinct from total deaths – for Germany, by age group.

Chart 1

Germany’s demographics are unusual (but maybe not unusually unusual) on account of World War Two. The oldest Germans – shown in red – were all born before that war. The German post-war baby-boomers are shown in green. Germany shows disturbingly high rates of pandemic death for its baby-boomers, from 2021. (It should be noted that Covid19 deaths tended to peak from November to January, whereas epidemic influenza death tended to peak in February or March. Thus the big reductions in excess deaths each February and March are mainly due to high death-norms set by pre-covid influenzas.

Countries regarded as having pursued the best anti-Covid19 public health policies in 2020 have not had a good 2022. Germany is one of those countries. South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and China are others. So are Australia and New Zealand. Once having acknowledged the 2022 death statistics for what they are, terrible, the question is whether the problems of 2022 in these countries will extend into 2023. While my hunch is that new vaccinations could make a difference, in 2023 at least, I am concerned that societies have already passed a demographic turning point and that life expectancies are already declining from their peaks, and may continue to decline for decades.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Chile is an important comparator country to New Zealand; in terms of physical geography, political economy, and demography (including conflict between indigenous peoples and ‘colonisers’). In terms of physical geography, it is mostly temperate; and, most importantly, it is in the southern hemisphere.

The above chart shows excess deaths in Chile since January 2020. (While I have a similar chart for New Zealand, it’s too ‘noisy’ to show here; this is due to New Zealand’s small population. Chile has four times as many people as New Zealand.)

This chart shows weekly peaks for excess death, by age group. (The data is slightly smoothed. To reduce random noise, it uses a kind of three-period centred moving average, in which the featured week has a 50% weight, and the weeks before and after each have a 25% weight.)

For Chile, we see two very sharp peaks of covid mortality, in May/June 2020 and February 2022. Neither of these should really be characterised as ‘winter outbreaks’ of Covid19. We also see a longer lasting outbreak in the first half of 2021, also not winter.

Chile did its best to suppress Covid19, but it was always harder to do this in a continental country than in an archipelago such as New Zealand. Chilean covid policy was more particular than most countries in trying to protect the elderly. This shows in the initial 2020 peak; and also in 2021 when Chile was one of the early vaccinators, and gave significant priority to its oldest citizens.

By 2022, much of the immunity – from vaccination, from the 2021 epidemic, and from other respiratory viruses – had clearly waned. So, when covid reappeared in the summer of 2021/22, there was a large cohort of particularly vulnerable older people, who died in huge numbers. We also see the second 2022 wave in Chile as in New Zealand, with winter deaths peaking in July; again mostly older people.

To understand what happens in winter, we need to take account of the other winter illnesses, of which influenza is epidemic and common colds are endemic.

The above charts show this more contextualised picture, for Chile and for New Zealand. (Again, these charts use the centred moving average technique, which flattens the peaks in the charts.) Chile typically has 2,000 deaths per week, whereas New Zealand typically has 600. We also note that the plots for 2016 to 2019 in Chile are closer together than for New Zealand; suggesting that Chile is not aging as fast as New Zealand, and also that Chile’s annual population growth is less than New Zealand’s (reflecting New Zealand’s higher net immigration in the late 2010s).

In both charts the black line shows ‘expected deaths’ for 2020. (I have calculated this myself, and have shownthat my calculation is credible.) One problem with the age-based ‘excess deaths’ data from ourworldindata.org is that it is hard to check the validity of their estimates for expected deaths. I have also calculated expected (ie predicted) deaths for 2021 and 2022, though not shown these in order to keep the charts ‘clean’. (The annual percentage increase in predicted deaths for New Zealand was more than double the equivalent calculation for Chile, on account of New Zealand’s faster aging and faster general population growth.)

Chile’s first mortality peak, in 2020, was delayed until early winter thanks to public health measures. In Chile, June has been the peak month for mortality linked to influenza and common colds. Excess deaths (eg for 2020) is the difference between actual deaths and predicted deaths. Thus, in June 2020 in Chile, ‘excess deaths’ attributable to Covid19 understates actual ‘Covid19 deaths’, because we know that covid to a large extent displaced influenzas and common colds. This was different this year, however, with the peak of excess deaths being July rather than June. The most pertinent measure is ‘excess deaths for all seasonal illnesses’. By this measure we can see that excess weekly deaths, normally about 500 in June, grew to about 2,000 in June 2020.

In New Zealand, excess deaths were substantially negative in 2020, in the absence of deaths from influenza and covid. And common cold related deaths were less than usual. 2021 seasonal mortality was about normal, with certain unspecified ‘cold’ conditions being the main culprit that winter. December in 2020 and 2021 saw more total deaths than would normally have been expected. The 2022 (belated) outbreak in New Zealand saw substantial though not dramatic excess covid deaths from March to July.

Mortality data for New Zealand released to international databases shows a sharp decline in excess covid deaths from August this year. Some of this data may be upwardly revised in coming releases.

We should note that the actual weekly death peak for New Zealand is 965 (week ended 26 July 2022); it looks less than this on the chart due to the moving average ‘anti-noise’ technique used. That is the highest number of deaths in any week in New Zealand’s history since November 1918. (Before 2022, that record was 863 deaths in the week to 2 August 2017, a week of record influenza-caused deaths.)

The final two charts show excess deaths in both countries as percentages above ‘normal’ for each of the three covid years; we note that ‘normal’ is adjusted for each year, and it represents the absence of both covid and seasonal increments to the death rate. For New Zealand the main feature to look out for is whether the rapid drop-off in reported deaths from late July is confirmed.

Chile’s excess deaths this winter have been significantly higher than New Zealand’s, with a July peak of 56% (covid and seasonal) and an August peak of 38%. New Zealand is not exceptional, however. My sense is that, this coming summer, excess deaths in New Zealand (in percentage terms) will exceed excess deaths in Chile.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

A few weeks ago this article from Stuff (24 Sep) was drawn to my attention: The shocking stats that prove Covid19 does not kill equally. While I have some problems with the article’s interpretation of the data, by and large the article itself was reasonable. Less so the headline, which is different in the online version of the story. (The print version omits the sensationalist word ‘shocking’. I wonder if there is a general pattern to present online versions of stories in a more sensationalist manner?)

In fact, there’s nothing surprising about the Covid19 statistics indicating more Māori and Pasifika deaths. The charts in the article, however, perpetrate the erroneous interpretation in the headline, that Covid19 is in some evil sense discriminatory. (In particular the chart that shows death rates of people aged over 90.) The facts are that, among population subgroups, Covid19 mortality reflects differences in general mortality.

With respect to recent data (ie since the beginning of August), just two Pasifika people have died of Covid19 (as the ‘underlying cause); one in their 70s, and one aged under 60 (though 20 others have died ‘with’ Covid19). Ten Māori have died of Covid19 in that recent time period (32 others ‘with’ covid), only one of whom was over 90. In that same time period, 176 people of ‘European or other’ ethnicity died of Covid19, 56 of whom were aged over 90.

While the article was about the whole pandemic, not just its recent phase, it remains no more useful to focus on deaths of Pasifika aged over 90 than it does to focus on Pakeha aged over 100. Regardless of Covid19, the probability that a New Zealander of Pacific Island descent will reach the age of 90 is similar to the probability that a Pakeha New Zealander will reach 100.

Life Expectancy by Ethnicity

Ethnicity statistics in Aotearoa New Zealand should always be treated with caution. For example, a person with just one Māori great-grandparent would typically be classified as Māori, regardless of the ethnicities of the other seven great-grandparents. (This suggests that the mortality and morbidity statistics are even worse for people whose predominant ethnicity is Māori, especially for people who are perceived as Māori [either due to their name or to their appearance].)

If we try to compare socio-economic ‘apples’ with socio-economic ‘apples’, we have almost no data which can give the true picture. My suspicion is that a dapper Māori man such as Scotty Morrison has a similar life expectancy as his Pakeha equivalents. And my suspicion is that a Pakeha solo-mum with three children in emergency housing has a similar life expectancy as a Māori solo-mum in the same situation. Generally, we are very light on evidence that Māori and Pasifika people have lower life expectancies than their Pakeha neighbours.

The problem is that, in proportion to their sub-population totals, relatively more Māori and Pasifika are in impoverished or facing other stressful life circumstances. The telling Covid19 statistics are shown in the table below. The median ages of death for the different ethnicities, estimated from Ministry of Health covid mortality data, are:

We may regard the final row of the above table as valid estimates for life expectancy for each sub-population. It’s not a pretty picture for Māori. What it says is that Māori have significantly more health comorbidities than other ethnic groups. In particular, this represents the socio-economic circumstances that many Māori face; this reflects significant inequality among Aotearoans in general, and also within the Māori sub-population. It reflects the substantial problem in New Zealand of rural poverty. It reflects historical circumstances faced by indigenous peoples throughout the ‘new world’. Some of that is due to biological circumstances which go back into deep history. These include being at the wrong end of the immunity gradients for most diseases during the globalisation phases of world history; and it reflects – for example – an evolutionary context which, among other things, makes Māori (and Pasifika) people comparatively intolerant to alcohol and sugar. (In Eurasia, tolerance to alcohol was a biological adaptation to the problem of water-born diseases. In England a culture developed, especially among men, of drinking ‘small beer’ instead of water. In other places, wine and other fermented drinks were partial substitutes for water.)

The above ‘life-expectancy’ table (especially the second row) also suggests that people with substantial comorbidities are more likely to get Covid19 as well as being more likely to die of Covid19.

Getting back to the interpretation of the Stuff article, because life expectancy for Māori and Pasifika is so much lower than for Pakeha, it means that we should be comparing covid mortality rates for Māori/Pasifika in their 60s with Pakeha in their 70s, comparing Māori/Pasifika in their 70s with Pakeha in their 80s, and Māori/Pasifika in their 80s with Pakeha in their 90s. A randomly chosen Māori person of a particular age, in essence, is as likely to die (from any cause) within twelve months as a similarly chosen Pakeha person ten years older.

While discrimination is certainly part of the ‘historical circumstance’ problem many Māori face, Covid19 doesn’t add to that problem; it simply reflects it. (And we should note that historical discrimination is more nuanced than intellectually-lazy words like ‘colonisation’ or ‘imperialism’ convey. Subsequent to the era of industrial capitalism which began at scale around 200 years ago, life expectancies have increased, with the life expectancies of ‘white’ people (and latterly East Asian people) increasing the most. While non-imperial historical counterfactuals might have had a smaller life-expectancy gap between Polynesian peoples and (say) Anglo-Celtic peoples, it is unlikely any such counterfactuals could have achieved a higher life expectancy for Māori than Māori have now.

Co-mortality and critical states

The final issue of importance to note is that ’cause of death’ is not a simple discrete matter. In an important sense, probably most deaths are due to ‘old age’, but few other than the Queen of England have the privilege of having ‘old age’ listed as their sole cause of death.

The reality is that most deaths have more than one ‘clinical’ cause, and environmental events such as pandemics can kill in non-clinical as well as clinical ways. (Poor quality, under-resourced, or inaccessible health services count here.) In the fable of ‘the straw breaking the camel’s back’, ‘straw’ would never be listed as the sole cause of that camel’s subsequent death. The camel was in a critical state before the straw added, fatally, to its burden.

It’s interesting that ‘comorbidity’ is listed as a word in the dictionary, but ‘comortality’ is not.

Co-mortality is the reason why an ‘excess deaths’ approach is the best indicator of the scale of epidemic deaths. The sadness is that demography is the poor cousin of social science. Much core demographic data – births by sex, deaths by age/sex and place of birth, arrival/departures by age/sex and place of birth – is hard to find in even the rich world. In many countries it remains largely absent. Population censuses are required to make up for poor record-keeping; but too often they are under-resourced, and the value of the core demographic information is under-understood. In New Zealand we remain substantially ignorant about intra-national population movements.

Almost all the Covid19 deaths tallied – whether ‘with covid’, of ‘covid’, or ‘as a consequence of covid’ – are in fact co-mortal deaths. Very few people have died of Covid19 without some other vulnerability being present.

What matters most is an understanding of critical states. Typically, when things go wrong there are multiple causes. Today we use the increasingly popular (and indeed overused) phrase ‘perfect storm’ to indicate the problem. A person is in a critical state when just one additional factor will kill them. (High blood-pressure is one oft-cited factor that can contribute to a person being in a critical state.)

Surprisingly, a person in a critical state may to all intents and purposes be healthy. One person may be much more vulnerable than another to a particular fatal illness, but not obviously so. One seemingly small trigger event may have a fatal impact on that person, but may have no impact on the other person. For a person in a critical state, a trigger event may be sufficient to cause death. (Or, as in ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’ which incorporates ‘long covid’, a trigger event can initiate a long period of chronic unwellness for some people but not others.) An otherwise healthy individual with, say, the Huntingdon’s gene may in fact be in a critical state; one small trigger may unleash the uncurable disease.

‘Old age’ is a critical state; a state which some people – and some peoples – reach earlier than others.

Systems may or may not be in a critical state. (The name ‘critical state’ comes from the nuclear sciences.) A highly stressed population is likely to be in a critical state; especially a population having to constantly negotiate with unsympathetic bureaucracies, permanently raising the levels of cortisol in the bloodstream. A homeless person will likely be in a critical state, meaning that a trigger such as a covid infection could have elevated consequences.

If Māori are more likely to be homeless, or have no socially-approved source of income, then Māori are more likely to die in a pandemic. And die at younger ages.

Is Covid19 a trigger that’s causing human existence to unravel? I suspect that a keyword search on the word ‘existential’ would show a big uptick this decade. Growth capitalism, the way we practice it, is a system that places most people in a near-critical state. (If a critical state is when one more aggravation is fatal, then a near-critical state is when two more aggravations are fatal.) There are signs that this comparatively mild infectious disease has triggered a turning point in global history, and that’s partly because the climate system was already in a critical state.

While Covid19 has been a disease of the rich, and spread mainly by the rich, it is a disease that has revealed the widespread comorbidities – critical states and near-critical states – which our economically vulnerable populations experience. So while the (often oblivious) privileged sub-populations spread covid more while suffering less – not unlike the environmental consequences of careless human behaviour – it is the sub-populations in critical and near-critical states who die the most.

Our systemic problems are our systems in critical states; superficially they may have looked healthy before 2020. Since then, for those willing to see, Covid19 has become the highlighter, not the central problem. If we are homo sapiens – wise ‘men’ – we will look to solutions which destress our systems. What we should not do is aggravate our systemic problems by converting near-critical systems into critical systems; into systems that can become ‘perfect storms’, destroyable by mere straws.

Is Covid19 returning?

My recent statistical analyses suggest ‘yes’. See my Tourist Europe again: Covid19 Waves compared (Evening Report, 17 October 2022). Spain has just had its worst round of Covid19 deaths since April 2020. Covid’s arriving now, in those full aircraft coming here. October is peak season for people flying from Europe to New Zealand. And of course, covid is circulating domestically, and is known to resurge as immunity wanes. It is far too soon to think that Covid19 has become just a winter problem.

If New Zealand’s ability to cope in 2020 and 2021 was weak, and required drastic emergency measures then, New Zealand’s ability to cope this summer may be even weaker. Aotearoa New Zealand is now facing a ‘cost-of-living crisis’, in an economy with severe labour shortages. The New Zealand economy is in a critical state; it is ‘supply inelastic’, meaning it has no surge capacity to respond to a new imported crisis.

Policy is now focussed on creating a recession, the only way today’s policymakers believe they can respond to recent increases in the price level. (Refer to these RNZ stories: Domestic inflation rise ‘a shocker’ – economists; Analysis: Inflation rate higher than expected; Unemployment next challenge for economy – experts.)

New Zealand as a whole was not in a critical state in February 2020. It’s closer to being in such a state today. Marginalised sub-populations will be affected most from any trigger events this decade. Many, but by no means all, vulnerable New Zealanders are of Māori or Pasifika ethnicity.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Here we see charts of the same ten western tourist countries of Europe (refer to my Travel Warning: Excess Summer Deaths in Europe, 5 Oct 2022). It is important to note from the outset that ‘reported death’ figures have become increasingly unreliable. And reported cases are now unreliable indicators of the size of a covid outbreak; they do indicate the timing of covid waves, however, albeit with increasing time lags relative to the date of infection. The most reliable data is ‘excess deaths’. (Indeed Michael Baker has recently taken to citing this measure; see NZ Herald 16 October Covid19 Omicron outbreak; Another Wave.)

The Mediterranean tourist countries most popular with English-speaking visitors are shown first. All charts are to the same scale. We start with Greece this time.

Greece is one country that, using reported covid data, did not seem to be impacted much until the very end of 2020. However excess deaths in 2020 do suggest that there was a summer wave of Covid19; in addition, Greece was suffering excess deaths from influenza in the beginning months of the covid pandemic. The chart for Greece is quite dramatic-looking in 2022, with a significant death-wave in July (almost certainly continuing into August). We note that, re cases, July is worse than August; this represents the peak of American tourism into Greece, with intra-European vacations peaking in August.

Moving west to Italy, we see again the substantial covid death wave in July 2022. And we see, more clearly than Greece, the most recent (autumn) wave. This may be the wave of greatest impact, worldwide. Moving on to Spain, we see that the July death wave there is Spain’s highest covid death-wave since March 2020. And, by looking at reported cases, this July wave of excess deaths is clearly attributable to Covid19. (Note that 1,000 daily deaths per 100 million people is the same as 10 daily deaths per million; equivalent to 50 daily deaths in New Zealand. Indeed some of these deaths may be New Zealand tourists in Spain.)

Finally for South Europe, in the far southwest we see that Portugal had a bigger autumn wave of Covid19 (May) than elsewhere, while also catching the July wave early. Its July 2022 peak is as big as (or bigger than) its three 2020 peaks.

Looking at West Europe’s ‘big three’, the UK has had smaller summer peaks than the Mediterranean countries, probably because the ratio of visitors to residents is much lower than in (say) Greece and Italy. But we do see a clear rise in cases in June, meaning that the actual rise in cases will have been in May, when the summer tourism season in Britain gets underway. And excess daily deaths have averaged three in a million since May, equivalent in New Zealand to 2,700 pandemic deaths over a six-month period. We also note that these deaths occur in a context where many of the most vulnerable people had died in earlier covid waves.

France represents the high point of the immunity gradient, where many cases translate to relatively few domestic deaths; but where visitors can expect to be especially vulnerable. We see clear covid death peaks in April (when the French tourist season is well under way) and again in July, the peak month for English-speaking tourists. And, like Italy, we see that the latest wave is well underway.

Germany has seen a bigger covid death wave in the later summer; and we note that reported cases in Germany precede deaths, which is what happens in a country with an efficient reporting system. The latest wave of cases is prominent in Germany; deaths will come this month and next, not unlike 2021.

Now the mountain tourist areas, attractive in summer to people who like to walk (and to travel about by train) rather than to swim and sunbathe. Austria shows a pattern very similar to Germany, with a very marked October wave of cases. Austria, like Germany, was a leader in the autumn wave of 2021. Switzerland shows the same patterns as Austria, though with less amplitude. Norway is the most muted of these destinations. Yet its excess deaths are higher relative to reported cases than most of the other countries shown here. Reliable once for its excellent record-keeping, Norway seems to have lost interest in Covid19. My sense is that their autumn deaths will be much as they were in 2021. For Norwegians, October and November 2021 represented their biggest death-wave of the pandemic.

It is important to note that October is a peak month for air travel from Europe and North America to Aotearoa New Zealand. As I have previously noted (see Covid Waves in Europe, Lesson for New Zealand 26 July, and Covid Demography: New Zealand in context of North and West Europe 19 August), New Zealand can expect a late spring or summer covid wave. New Zealand, which has no regular summer seasonal pattern of high deaths, may well in a few months see its highest peak of excess deaths for the whole of the pandemic. Indeed, as has been announced by New Zealand’s Ministry of Health today (RNZ), Covid19 is waxing once again.

As has been the case in 2022 so far (but not in 2020 and 2021) New Zealand’s covid deaths most likely will be nameless and faceless statistics. Out of sight – as reporters, politicians and public servants take their holidays – and out of mind.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

In many ways the world has moved on from the Covid19 pandemic. And excess mortality from Covid19 mingles with excess mortality from other causes, from heatwaves to other diseases. The summer is useful because it is generally the low season for infectious respiratory illnesses.

Covid19 is a disease that is spread through air travel, and through air; not so much in airplanes or even airports, but by travellers and the people who mingle with them and who provide services to them. West Europe is the world’s preeminent tourist destination, especially in summer.

People come to the Mediterranean coastal tourist destinations in particular, but also to the places with spectacular mountain scenery. In addition, the United Kingdom, France and Germany are strong all-round summer tourist destinations. Of the Mediterranean destinations, Spain in particular has a strong ‘shoulder season’, especially for people travelling from or via the United Kingdom. Travel from North America to Europe surges in late June and peaks in July.

Travel by northern Europeans to southern Europe tends to peak in August, long regarded as the ‘silly season’ in Europe. We should note that, as a result of this ‘silly season’, the releases of mortality and other data are delayed, and data released in September may be revised upwards by more than data released in other months. So deaths in August in particular may be higher than is shown here for those countries which have released August data.

Looking at the Mediterranean countries, we see Spain with significant and unusual mortality since April 2022, with a substantial peak in early July, just before this summer’s big wildfire peak. The excess deaths look, in the main, more like Covid19 deaths than weather-related deaths. Portugal shows a similar (if less dramatic) pattern to Spain.

Italy is as dramatic as Spain, but peaking at the end of July, and without the earlier plateau of deaths from April to June. It has the look of a wave starting in Spain and moving on to Italy. The chart for Greece reinforces this perception. (And note how different Greece is from Spain and Italy in 2020 and 2021; Greece has been very vulnerable in the later part of the ongoing pandemic.) We should also note that Malta and Cyprus show the same patterns as Italy and Greece.

This pattern of west to east travel mortality suggests, in particular the impact of tourism from North America, and also tourism from places like Australia and South America. Trips to Europe from Australia and New Zealand tend to start in the United Kingdom in April and May, and then move to Spain (before it gets too hot) and then to other destinations in Europe.

Looking at the mountain tourist countries, Switzerland certainly shows a July peak, and it looks (as in 2015) to be a bout of epidemic illnesses. Austria looks much like Switzerland this year. Finally, Norway also shows those same patterns (more like Switzerland than Sweden or Denmark). And we should note that Iceland, now a tourist darling, shows a similar pattern to Norway.

Looking at the big-three, the United Kingdom shows significant excess deaths from late April. United Kingdom data can be a bit hard to read, because it seems to show dates of registration of deaths rather than actual dates of death. The data shows lulls in the registration of deaths around public holidays, and especially the lead-up to Christmas. France shows the July mortality peak seen elsewhere (covering its peak tourism from United Kingdom and United States); otherwise, 2022 in France has been mainly a normal year. Germany also shows that peak, while showing signs that late summer deaths will also be higher in 2022 than in 2020 and 2021.

The charts overall suggest that travellers themselves may have been dying away from their home countries in significantly greater numbers than usual. And we should note that travellers include seasonal workers (including ‘backpackers’). Travellers face danger when populations in their countries of origin have reduced immunity from diseases endemic in destination countries.

This raises the issue of one big hole in demographic data, affecting the world as a whole, and especially countries (such as New Zealand) with large flows of people – as tourists and as migrants – relative to the normally resident population. For example, New Zealand’s ‘life expectancy at birth’ estimates (based on mortality data) cannot take into account many of the many New Zealand born people who die overseas. And they do include people – many people – not actually born in New Zealand.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Demographic information is starting to filter through again, after a slowdown in the Northern Hemisphere. And New Zealand now has reliable mortality data up to the end of July 2022. Australia continues to lag.

In the last week of July, New Zealand reached a record number of deaths in a single week; at least a record for the years since World War One. Those 957 deaths represent a 50% excess above the January to March low-mortality baseline. This puts our peak deaths in New Zealand’s ‘year of covid’ at above the huge influenza peak of 2017; and this peak follows a disastrous autumn.

Comparisons

The four charts below all follow the same scale, allowing for excess seasonal and epidemic deaths to range from -10% to +60% of ‘baseline’ deaths. We note that, in most countries, the (unseen) baseline moves due to both general increases in the population and due to aging populations. The chart above includes the projection for 2022, based on pre-pandemic data. It shows a summer baseline for 2022, of about 630 weekly deaths.

We also note that, in additional to seasonal and epidemic mortality, any chronic increases in mortality from 2020 – ie non-seasonal nor epidemic deaths – will also show up, given that baseline estimates are drawn from 2015 to 2019 data. A slight flaw in the analysis – ie something not corrected for – is diminishing population growth from 2020 resulting from reduced immigration, reduced birth rates, and from the covid toll. Indeed, in some countries Covid19 may be reversing pre-covid aging trends (especially in Eastern Europe and Latin America where many older people have died, and from where youth emigration has decreased).

In Australia, the 2017 influenza peak lasted longer, though was less ‘peaky’. This is typical of a larger country, where different regions naturally peak at different times. Australia is likely to sea a 2022 peak of excess deaths between 30% and 40%.

Finland is a good country to compare with New Zealand, because it has the same size population, and because its government tried very hard to keep Covid19 out for as long as possible. Finland has two influenza peaks, comparable with New Zealand and Australia in 2017. And Finland’s covid peak of 35% is likely to be the same height as Australia’s. Of particular significance is its long mortality tail in the spring of 2022; and also the significant and sustained excess covid mortality in the autumn of 2021. My expectation is that Finland, as a good lead indicator so far for New Zealand and Australia, will continue to be a good predictor for us ‘down-under’.

Germany is also interesting, with none of its covid epidemic outbreaks as ‘high’ as its influenza peak; though its covid peaks have been wider than its influenza peaks, as well as being earlier in the season (ie late autumn rather than winter). (The winter downturns will have ben due to public health mandates.) Germany, however, has a history of summer mortality outbreaks. This year, summer excess mortality is starting to look more chronic. One way or another, baseline mortality in Germany is itself rising in the wake of the pandemic.

I finish with United Kingdom and United States, which require a different scale mainly due to the United Kingdom’s initial covid outbreak in early 2020.

In the United Kingdom we see particularly high influenza peaks in the Januarys of 2015, 2017 and 2018. The winter covid peak of 2021 had that same timing, and reached 95% of excess deaths (ie excess compared to summer). From March 2021, however, we see nothing in excess of 40%. Though we do sense an emergent pattern of chronic autumn mortality, comparable with Germany.

The United States has updated its recent mortality statistics, now showing a summer excess of around 6%. This may prove to continue into the autumn, in line with what appears to be happening in Germany and United Kingdom. The peaks in the United States are not nearly as high as those of the United Kingdom, reflecting its larger size and more dispersed population. Instead of being high, the American peaks of seasonal and epidemic mortality are wide, resulting in more overall excess mortality there than in the United Kingdom.

2020 does appear to represent a demographic turning point in these countries, and probably in the world as a whole. New Zealand should not be too self-congratulatory; the mortality patterns we are now seeing are not exceptional, only delayed by two years. (Even 2021 in New Zealand is concerning; normal seasonal mortality took place despite some particularly strong public health restrictions. 2021 was a year with few covid or influenza deaths. So what were people dying of?)

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Covid Excess Deaths: East Asia in context – These charts show excess pandemic mortality so far for a wide range of countries, geographically themed. The charts are structured to emphasise deaths in 2022 and 2021, and to facilitate comparative analysis between regions. (General mortality data is lacking for Africa and South Asia.)

The first chart shows Australasia and East Asia, with Scandinavia providing context. (While Malaysia and Indonesia are missing because of a lack of supplied data, indications are that Malaysia’s excess death profile might be an average of those of Philippines and Thailand. Indonesia is more speculative, though estimates from The Economist and WHO suggest that Indonesia has suffered worse than the United States, maybe worse than Brazil, and certainly – unlike USA and Brazil – with the vast majority of its deaths in the 12 months to June 2022.)

From New Zealand’s point of view, the 2022 ‘performance’ is comparable with Australia and most of Scandinavia; New Zealand was much better in 2021 though. The worst performers in these regions over the last 12 months have been much of East Asia, Finland and Norway. Japan is most like New Zealand, with its worst half-year to date being the most recent one, suggesting that much of Japan’s and New Zealand’s eventual covid stories are yet to be told.

Philippines needs a special mention. It’s a country with a substantial demographic and labour force connection to New Zealand; it’s also comparable in terms of the severity of its top-down anti-covid public health mandates. On Al Jazeera News today, one item indicated that Philippines has been in shutdown for two years, featuring a succession of lockdowns which are just now ending. (See links to Al Jazeera stories at the end of this commentary.) Of most significance was that children there are only now returning to school after a two-year closure; and that the costs of this lost education may prove to be huge.

We should also note that the 2,300 excess deaths per million in the last 18 months in Philippines is in a country with a young population, making Philippines’ experience somewhat different to that of East Europe. (For East Europe, see final chart below; one similarity though is that both Philippines and East Europe are exporters of young labour.)

This next chart, to the same scale as the first one, allows for comparisons to be made with West Europe and North America. Greece is the country here which is most like Philippines in the earlier chart, having a substantial majority of its deaths in 2021 and 2022 following an apparently successful 2020. Greece is also a country that New Zealanders connect with, yet is almost never mentioned by New Zealand’s epidemiologists.

Germany, Austria, and Netherlands are not too flash either, having more than half of their excess deaths in 2021 and 2022. Spain, France and the United Kingdom have done significantly better than these from 2021, having done worse in 2020.

The next chart, on an extended scale, shows the Americas (with South Africa). Canada shows a ‘performance’ comparable with Ireland and Scandinavia. United States looks much like Latin America. Three countries which did pretty well in 2020 did poorly in 2021 and 2022: Uruguay, Paraguay, and Cuba. (Cuba’s actual numbers for 2022 are highly speculative.) In many ways these ‘Latin’ countries are like Philippines, in culture, demography, socioeconomic circumstance, and in economic proximity to the United States. Though only Cuba has been like Philippines epidemiologically, with the majority of its deaths being in late 2021. Both countries actively fought-off the virus for a long time, only ‘surrendering’ to it after a year-and-a-half (or so).

The final chart, on an extra-extended scale, shows the underacknowledged epicentre of the covid pandemic, East Europe. In all countries in East Europe, we see that the first wave of the pandemic (February to July 2020) was fended-off successfully, I understand through government mandates. The crisis came late in 2020 as the perpetuation of these mandates became untenable. East European populations were substantially less able to cope, owing to both economic and immunological weakness, than were West European populations.

On both sides of Europe, covid’s initial hit was during a shoulder season, neither winter nor summer. East Europe has the look of a region with a substantial general-immunity deficit in the autumn of 2020. Most countries in the region now appear to have restored general-immunity, but at great cost. For the most recent period (shown in black), February to July 2022, New Zealand falls between Hungary and Romania. Some countries in this region have lower recent excess mortality rates than New Zealand; this was especially true in July.

East Europe has an unusual demography, dominated by older people, as the region bleeds its younger population to West Europe. East Europe was already in dire straits before Covid19 hit. Indeed, it has been becoming the Dixieland of the European Union. We ignore East Europe’s stresses at our peril; those stresses are the crucible of world wars.

(A note about Russia and Ukraine. Russia’s reported deaths have dropped dramatically since it invaded Ukraine; before this year, Russia’s aggregate mortality data could be trusted. And Ukraine’s last reported aggregate of monthly deaths was in January.)

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Al Jazeera news links:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/22/philippine-schools-reopen-after-one-of-worlds-longest-shutdowns

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/21/philippines-eases-lockdown-amid-record-covid-19-infections

The chart above shows New Zealand’s aggregate weekly deaths from 2015. The normal winter experience is obvious, with 2015 to 2019 influenza peaks mainly in July and August, though in late June in 2019.

New Zealand is different from most European countries in that it has significantly faster population growth. (Although Scandinavian population growth is above average for Europe.) Thus, I have plotted a ‘black line’ to show normality; what mortality would have been like in New Zealand in 2022 had there been no covid pandemic, and no other unusual events impacting on mortality. (Note the dark blue segment that shows the 2019 Christchurch Mosque murders.)

(Note that New Zealand has a rising mortality trend, regardless of covid, due to: a rising population, an aging population; and also possibly due to increases in other ‘lifestyle’ chronic health problems such as diabetes. In Eastern Europe, where Covid19 has had its biggest demographic impact, the first of these three factors did not apply; so its projected mortality, had Covid19 not happened, was essentially the same as its actual 2015-19 mortality. That probably means that covid’s impact there was overstated, given East Europe’s increasing paucity of young people due to emigration and low birth rates, and its increasing recent exposure to chronic ‘lifestyle’ conditions. Demographics were dynamic long before Covid19 struck.)

While its not clear yet whether 2022 peak mortality will be as much above normal as it was in the 2017 influenza season, the important information shown is the extent to which mortality in New Zealand has been above normal since February. There was no simple mortality wave during and immediately after the March Omicron-covid wave. Rather, what we are seeing is a process in which many people who might otherwise have died in 2020 or 2021 have instead died in 2022, nudged in many cases by a covid or similar infection.

This next chart compares New Zealand with Finland, in the period from March 2021. This is excess deaths, not aggregate deaths; that is, this chart only shows deaths above the relevant ‘black lines’.

The first thing to note is that, for these countries each with about five million people, there is a degree of random ‘noise’ in the variation of weekly deaths. Having noted that, the most prominent feature of the chart is Finland’s long period of excess deaths in 2021 and early 2022. (Finland’s apparent mortality lull in the peak winter months is misleading; these are seasonal peak mortality months, so the extent that the deaths last winter were above normal was ameliorated by the high normal for that time. To some extent, covid deaths replaced influenza deaths.)

Finland is a country that took substantial public health measures to combat Covid19, so the deaths in 2021 can be to a large extent understood as postponed covid deaths. Except that very few of these excess deaths, especially in the third quarter of 2021, were actually diagnosed as covid deaths. The lack of diagnosis of covid may have been due to a lack of testing, on the supposition that the pandemic was over. Or it could be due to high rates of death from covid but not of covid; ie deaths arising from the massive disruption to normal life due to the public health measures, or from lower levels of general immunity to respiratory infections on account of distancing, masking and reduced contact with travellers.

I think it would be fair to hypothesise that the persistently high rate of excess deaths in New Zealand in 2022 suggests that New Zealand is now experiencing something akin to what Finland was experiencing in its last autumn and winter.

The above chart shows Sweden and France. These are the two countries in North/West Europe which least show the Finland mortality pattern, and are almost certainly the countries which retained and then attained the highest levels of general immunity. In Sweden’s case it was due to a public health approach that emphasised private responsibility over public mandates. In France’s case, the stronger public mandates did not linger on beyond the emergency periods.

Both countries had significant Covid19 mortality in 2020; they were hit full-on by the first and second waves. But both seem to have suffered only minimal amounts of waning general immunity as the pandemic progressed; and both suffered much less covid mortality in late 2020 than many other countries (with the USA coming mostly to mind).

The final chart shows Germany and Denmark. Both of these had low levels of pandemic mortality in 2020, due to substantial mandated public health measures; much lower excess mortality than Sweden and France in 2020. But both also show the Finland pattern in late 2021, and in 2022 to date.

Another point of interest is to see how swiftly the arrival of the Omicron strain in Denmark curtailed winter deaths there. Omicron arrived just as the Delta-covid wave was peaking; whereas in Germany the delta-wave had peaked a month earlier. We may note that all five European countries shown here suffered substantial Delta-covid mortality around November-December, although Sweden much less than the others. This was almost certainly due to waning immunity from vaccinations, and the public health authorities being initially slow to understand the issue, and slow to make booster vaccinations available.

In Germany in particular, we see a substantial summer-wave of pandemic mortality in 2022. There is a clear pattern. Countries which tied down their populations the most in 2020 are experiencing these significant late bouts of pandemic mortality.

All this suggests that New Zealand still has a long way to go to return to some kind of demographic normality. This coming summer, excess pandemic (or post-pandemic) deaths, if they happen, will be exposed for all to see, because they will not be mixed in with deaths from ‘winter viruses’.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

This morning, RNZ played the following story: Health stats show 87 people have died in their homes from Covid-19 since March, which references New Zealand’s most media-visible expert, Dr Michael Baker. (And this on today’s Morning Report.)

Before commenting on today’s story, it is pertinent to check out a story published on 1 August 2022. Habitual mask-wearing is likely helping Japan, Singapore and South Korea bring daily Omicron deaths down, epidemiologists say. The ‘clickbait’ headline was: ‘The countries keeping Omicron deaths down have something in common and it’s very simple’.

The Covid Virtues of East Asia?

The earlier story is about the need for trusted experts to report the facts accurately, and how easily available evidence suggests that much of what these experts say appears to fall short of acceptable standards of accuracy. And it certainly points to the need by journalists to fact-check statements by accepted experts as well as statements by conspiracists.

(My account here is not about facemasks, except to note that, like just about any consumption activity, mask-wearing has diminishing benefits and increasing costs.)

The 1 August story was not written by Dr Michael Baker, New Zealand’s very own Dr Covid. But he is prominently cited, for example: ‘”I’m looking at the countries that appear, on paper, to be keeping their mortality very low – despite having lots of circulating virus, and it’s basically the Asian countries, particularly Japan, South Korea, Singapore,” he said.’

Before that, Dr Baker, in an interview with Newshub said: “Societies who are using masks are doing very well, like South Korea, Japan.” (See my Covid 2022: Sweden versus South Korea, Europe, Asia. To see just how not-well they are actually doingthis year.)

The internationally published data is very easy to access online, especially in Our World in Data and Worldometer. For the countries Michael Baker mentions, these Worldometer country pages (especially charts for ‘active cases’ and ‘daily deaths’) show the empirical truth (for the Omicron waves, look at the period from February 2022):

• South Korea
• Japan
• Singapore

It’s true that the second omicron-waves were only just beginning when the article was published, but there was ample evidence that, not only had these countries suffered substantially during their first omicron-waves, but their second omicron-waves were clearly underway. (And these countries are not even in winter, when the worst waves typically occur!)

This chart put the South Korean covid deaths in context (and this, on the same scale, for the European norm); so the death impact was twice as great as the (then world-topping) published figures showed. (Excess deaths are easily available from Our World in Data; and see this in the New Zealand Herald.)

The data from Worldometer and Our World in Data directly contradict the assertions by Michael Baker about the abovementioned East Asian countries. (Another country to mention is Malaysia, which stopped reporting total deaths after September 2021, in the middle of its ‘Delta outbreak’. While Malaysia has continued to report Covid19 deaths, it is almost certain that the undercount in Malaysia is substantial and larger than it was in Singapore and Taiwan. My understanding is that Malaysia, like Singapore, is a substantial wearer of facemasks.)

When will a journalist in the traditional media confront Dr Baker on his claims on how well East Asian countries are doing? (And noting that, implicitly, he has been comparing East Asia with West Europe.)

Mediawatch Watch

RNZ’s syndicated programme Mediawatch, on 17 July 2022 made the very pertinent comment that much of the New Zealand’s traditional media has decided to play-down the whole Covid19 story, essentially because their readers (and their journalists?) are ‘over the pandemic’. And the programme also noted the somewhat inhuman way that the deaths are being downplayed.

The first irony (with respect to the topic of the story) is that, in the following week, New Zealand became the country with the highest weekly death rate in the world. The second irony is that Mediawatch itself pushes the Michael Baker narrative; a narrative which substantially downplays the state of Covid19 in East Asia in 2022.

As well as promoting Baker’s narrative, Mediawatch presents the Covid19 virus as our ‘enemy’ which “hasn’t finished with us” and may never do so.

When the dust settles, SARS-Cov2 (the present covid virus) may well turn out to have been principally the enemy of the other human coronaviruses; in other words, the Covid19 pandemic may have finally put an end to the ‘Russian Flu’, which was at its pandemic peak in the early 1890s, and which brought New Zealand’s indigenous tangata whenua to their demographic nadir. And, while Omicron-covid was in the process of becoming part of our global micro-ecosystem, along with other micropredators, it proved a devastating enemy to Delta-covid!

New Zealand’s Covid19 Deaths

On latest data, from February 2022, about 2,400 people in New Zealand have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid19, and about 1,650 have died because of Covid19.

The Ministry of Health give no details of the places these people have died, and they give no details of the percentage of hospitalised people with Covid19 who die in hospital. From the article cited at the very beginning of this essay, it would appear that fewer than 100 died at home (surprisingly few), and that the vast majority of Covid deaths – by both definitions – have occurred in hospital. (Some will have been in rest homes and in palliative care facilities.)

We should note that under the first (now unfavoured) definition, it is easy to compile timely data about where people died. Yet the Ministry of Health opted not to do so. Their preferred definition gives data that is substantially out of date, incomplete, and harder to itemise.

Reading between the lines, today’s RNZ story appears to have been the result of attempts to get information weeks ago, but frustrated by Ministry of Health stonewalling. It’s clear that the Ministry has, for its own political reasons, opted not to answer all the questions put to them. And it’s also apparent that Michael Baker, while answering questions put to him by RNZ, has been less than proactive in his critique of the Ministry of Health’s apparently political approach to the management of the covid mortality data.

Finally

The qualitative and quantitative underreporting of covid deaths in Aotearoa New Zealand remains an ongoing scandal; that includes our choosing to ‘not want to know’ the fact that New Zealand has had the world’s highest covid death rates over the last month.

The attempts (with or without intent) by both the Ministry of Health and much of New Zealand’s traditional media to suppress that knowledge, and the lack of human-interest-compassion (noted by Mediawatch) when reporting the daily press releases, is setting a future New Zealand government up to have to apologise, in much the way that the Canadian government is now apologising for the ‘brushed-under-the-carpet’ deaths of indigenous school children in what passed last century for ‘educational establishments’.

In particular, the unpublished metric of concern is the number of people who died of Covid19 contracted between four and six months after their most recent ‘booster’ vaccination. Given that a substantial majority of people who died opted to have their ‘first booster’, we can be confident that most of them would have had their second booster ahead of the widely predicted (indeed predicted by the Prime Minister) ‘winter wave’ had they been allowed to do so.

The vast majority of ‘first boosters’ took place from January to March 2022, which meant that only a very few vulnerable New Zealanders were allowed to receive their ‘second boosters’ before the school holidays which began on 9 July. My best guess is that about at least fifty percent of Covid19 deaths since May 2022 in New Zealand were of people who would have chosen to have a second booster four months after their first booster, had they been allowed.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

New Zealand has had the worst reported mortality rate for Covid19 in the world for the last two weeks, according to the international data. And by a significant margin. But you wouldn’t know it from the media. ‘Underwhelming’ is an overstatement. The best I could find was this from Reuters nearly two weeks ago. New Zealand COVID death rate at record levels, 22 July 2022.

From worldometer weekly trends, the comparable number to the 151 given by Reutersis 271, that’s 54 deaths per million people in the week to 1 August 2022. The top five countries (all attending the Commonwealth Games) are:

• New Zealand, 54 deaths per million
• Barbados, 33 deaths per million
• Isle of Man, 35 deaths per million
• (New Zealand revised, 33 deaths per million)
• Bermuda, 32 deaths per million
• Australia, 27 deaths per million

These are the data published on Monday 1 August. This screenshot shows the same table on Friday 22 July.

We should note that all these countries other than New Zealand and Australia have populations less than 300,000 people. (Barbados’s population is 5.75% of New Zealand’s.) For very small countries, just one death has a big impact on the death rate. Unlike these little countries, New Zealand has been in the ‘top ten’ in the world for published covid deaths continuously, for several months.)

For a few days, the people at Worldometer struggled to work out New Zealand’s new reporting system. But they eventually decided that the original measure – deaths within 28 days of a positive test for Covid19 – was both the most comparable with other countries, and the most indicative as a measure of when the deaths occurred.

(The statistic above for ‘New Zealand revised’ is the new number favoured by the Ministry of Health. It’s not shown on Worldometer, and shown here only for comparison. This number – people who would not have died had they not had Covid19 – includes a few people who tested positive more than 28 days before their deaths.)

For the last few months, New Zealand has consistently had double Australia’s weekly Covid19 death rate. Both countries saw substantial increases in Covid19 deaths last month.

Why is this news not being reported by the traditional mainstream media? It’s more than the combined total of deaths in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake and the 2019 Christchurch Mosque tragedy. They were news.

A quick snapshot of other information, not easily accessible, about those who died with Covid19 in the last week:

• 86% of the deaths with covid in the last week were neither Māori, nor Pacific, nor Asian. Thus, mostly Pakeha.
• 83% of the deaths were people aged over 70 (ie all eligible – in principle though maybe not in practice – for four vaccination shots).
• 79% had had vaccination ‘boosters’ (though, for the vast majority of these, their immunity will have waned to minimal levels)

Good news for me on the personal front. I got my second vaccine booster yesterday, and without the intervention of petty bureaucracy to prevent me from doing so. (Refer: Answers Please? Tribulations af Getting a Covid19 Vaccine ‘2nd Booster’.) I’ll never know whether the first pharmacy simply had a wrong interpretation of the rules, or whether the Ministry of Health computer system was tweaked on Friday to fix the petty anomaly that I mentioned.)

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.