Australian Excess Deaths: Moving the Goalposts

To calculate 2023 excess deaths, the ABS has ignored 2022 data for further changes, stating [4]:

“There were 190,775 deaths which occurred in 2022. This is significantly higher than usual and is not considered to be a typical year for mortality in Australia.

Therefore 2022 has not been included in the baseline average and is instead presented separately in graphs and tables.

The baseline average presented in this report remains as the average of the years 2017-19 and 2021.”

Understandably, the standard five-year moving average would be inappropriate during the pandemic, because it would be normalizing the pandemic as though the death rate will be permanently elevated.

For example, using the five-year average of 2018-2022, would result in low 2023 excess deaths giving a misleading impression that the pandemic deaths are no longer relevant.

However, outside its regular data publications [2-4], the ABS has recently moved the goalposts again in a research article titled: ‘Measuring Australia’s excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic until the first quarter 2023‘ [1].

This time, the ABS calculation for the baseline is based on a computer model [1]:

“The ABS has adopted aspects of a methodology used by New South Wales (NSW) Health, applying a cyclical linear regression with a robust estimation procedure to produce both an expected number of deaths and a range of expected deaths to the first quarter 2023.”

The original ABS method [a] is the most reasonable and straightforward, because it is the baseline from before the pandemic. The current ABS model [b], excluding 2020 data, has no reasonable scientific explanation. The research ABS model [c] represents guesswork and not data or facts which can be verified.

The original method [a], without data selection bias shows about 30,000 Australian excess deaths in 2022. By excluding 2020 data, method [b] shows fewer excess deaths at 26,000, while the modelling method [c] shows much lower excess deaths at 18,000.

Therefore, computer modelling has made 12,000 excess deaths vanish.

The consequence of computer modelling is to make 2022 excess deaths statistically marginally significant (about one sigma), rather than clearly significant (two sigma). There were 10,000 COVID-19 deaths in 2022 [5] and therefore there were about 8,000 non-COVID deaths or about 4.7 percent (about half a sigma) of non-COVID excess deaths.

This result was used by a Moderna executive, during a Parliamentary inquiry to dismiss the significance of excess deaths in 2022 [6, 7]:

“The ABS did an additional analysis where they subtracted the number of COVID deaths from the total number of deaths and when they did that, the mortality rate was actually within the expected range.

So it suggests very clearly that the excess mortality that we’ve been observing in 2022 was actually due to the virus.”

Therefore, results of computer models have been accepted as facts by the public, who are misled and deceived because they cannot distinguish between exploratory research and raw data. It is the onus of the ABS to draw the distinction clearly and unambiguously.

What is the truth about non-COVID excess mortality in 2022, without moving the goalposts? Method [a] applied to Australian weekly all-cause mortality data during the COVID-19 pandemic to 2023 Week 17, is shown in the chart below.

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