Excess mortality of 12,700 satisfies CBS and media

More than 6,000 fewer coronavirus deaths were registered in 2023 than in 2022. This has not led to a corresponding decrease in mortality rates. In the most recent attempt at good-news article Mortality down in 2023 Statistics Netherlands (CBS) writes: "In 2023, 169 thousand people died. That's about 750 fewer deaths than in 2022". That leaves about 5,250 (approx. 6,000 minus about 750) 'excess mortality deaths' to be explained.

750 fewer deaths out of 169,750, which is 0.4% less. Looking at the excess mortality rates, which have been at 7% and higher for several years, nothing really changes at all. The headline "Mortality decreased in 2023" is downright unheard of when we are struggling with an excess mortality of 12.7 thousand. It's not just the headline that's misleading. It is only in the very last paragraph that the horrifying excess mortality figures are listed as a service announcement, above the references. The total excess mortality of 12,700 is not given any explanation.

"Excess mortality is no longer an incident."

Ruben van Gaalen in the Leidsch Dagblad, after years of futile search for unexplained excess mortality.

Total mortality fell by 750. A number, too small to mean anything, but the CBS brass band has to honk something. Excess mortality has fallen by 2,000. The mortality expectation was therefore 1,250 higher, which means that the excess mortality is lower. Check out sterftemonitor.nl for more information on mortality expectancy.

Corona share

“COVID-19 as a cause of death accounts for an increasingly smaller share of mortality. In the first three quarters of 2023, COVID-19 was the cause of death in less than 2 percent of deaths. In 2022, this was 5 percent of all deaths" states CBS.

Why "the first three quarters of 2023"? The figures are not yet final, but it is not too convenient for them either. At the end of 2023, excess mortality will start to rise sharply again, while there was hardly any corona mortality, in any case too little to report on.

The majority of the excess mortality of 2023 is precisely in that fourth, corona-poor quarter. And that is just when CBS thought it could continue to attribute excess mortality to Covid.

According to our estimates, the percentage of corona deaths over the entire year, including the fourth quarter, comes to just over 1%.

There was a sewage peak in mid-December 2023, so corona may have played a role then. Analogous to England, where the peak came earlier, we have taken this into account in our estimates for the last three months. Since then, excess mortality has continued to rise, while the sewage figures have been falling for six weeks. The synchronization is completely lost, so that little can be deduced from sewer figures.

Conclusion

So we are roughly left with the following situation:

• The reduction in corona mortality is approximately 6,000 (although in our opinion the corona mortality has been overestimated by CBS in recent years).
• If corona mortality were really the main cause of excess mortality, as CBS has always emphasized, then you would also expect an excess mortality decline of the same order of magnitude. But we don't see them.
• Excess mortality has fallen by only 2,000.
• There remain 4,000 deaths, as yet unexplained. Flu? This has already been partly incorporated into the CBS forecast. If that is exceeded by another 4,000, I wonder why we didn't have a curfew.
• Under-mortality has not occurred, excess mortality continues and has been rising again since the summer.
• After a year with excess mortality of 14.7 thousand, total mortality fell by only 750.
• Even after previous years of excess mortality, flu (possibly) strikes relatively hard. Are people more comprehensible?
• If it's not all flu after all, it's 'unexplained excess mortality'.

All things considered, I don't think it's worthy of good news.

(Note: We looked purely at the news coverage. According to Statistics Netherlands, the actual mortality figures are 170,112 and 169,363. This makes no difference to the scope of the article.)

Extras

Media meekly take over the good news show

Compliments for the Leidsch Dagblad

We no longer give Keulemans special attention, bearing in mind our good intentions. He will undoubtedly come up with uninteresting specials and threads again.

An honorable mention, though: from Annemarie de Jong's message in the Leidsch Dagblad speaks a different tone. She has actually understood the CBS report and provides some clarification.