9873210 wrote:scotia wrote:I have suggested that the reason for the apparent increased actual death rate is possibly seasonal - lots of other bugs going around, and more gatherings indoors.
Before I tried to explain an
apparent increase in the death rate (meaning your multiplier) I would want to make sure there was an
actual increase.
You discussed some changes in the data collection in July. It is plausible that formal and informal changes in the way the data was gathered is entirely responsible for the change in the multiplier. It should remain plausible until somebody does enough work to rule it out (which IMHO would be a major bit of work)
Yes - there were significant changes. These particularly affected the deaths at the date which notification arrived at the registrar - i.e. not the actual date of the death. I had to switch over to actual death dates - see
viewtopic.php?f=98&t=22737&start=1300#p517776All of my plotted graphs since then have used the same dataset. But is it consistently the same data? Has it changed at all? It is difficult to know. For example, back in March I noticed the previously published admissions data for Scotland had changed - and I discovered that re-admissions
were being counted, and the data was back-corrected. It was stated that this had already been carried out for the English data - but I never discovered when.
I think the publication of Covid-related data is now a very low priority, and it is doubtful whether or not we will get any clear indication of any changes to its collection. In Scotland, the deaths data ceased in June, and the admissions data ceased in September.
In England the Covid data is published weekly on Thursday evenings - with the latest Admissions and Deaths numbers from the preceding Monday.
Now looking at my recent graphs, if the deaths or admissions data had undergone a step change in the manner in which it was collected and published, I would have hoped to have noticed a step - but rather it looks more like a gradual change - which, in my view, is more supportive of a real effect.