On February 20th 2023, Stats NZ reported a 10% increase in deaths for 2022 compared with the previous year.
Here are the opening paragraphs of their press release:
“The number of deaths in New Zealand rose to 38,574 in 2022, Stats NZ said today.
This was a 10 percent increase in the number of registered deaths compared with 2021, when there were 34,932 deaths registered.”
The press release says the increased number of deaths - 3,642 New Zealanders - was “impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic”.
It also says the spike in deaths “partly reflects our ageing population”. But this doesn’t stand up to scrutiny - more about this later.
Let’s look at this data critically and ask the question: How unusual is a ten per cent increase in deaths?
Here’s a graph from 1955 to 2022 showing the excess rate of deaths above the average of the previous five years. To account for changes in population size, we’ve used the Stats NZ figures for death rates (deaths per thousand population) rather than the simple number of deaths1.
Using this approach, the death rate in 2022 is 10.6% higher than the average death rate over the five years immediately preceding the pandemic (2015-2019).
The graph and the data behind it can be downloaded from www.excessdeathstats.com/nz
Before the highly anomalous year of 2022, the largest annual increase above the average rate of deaths was 4.9%, which occurred in 1980. On average, over the 67-year period, there was an annual 1.4% decrease in the death rate.
So, how many excess deaths were there in NZ in 2022? Using death rate figures from Stats NZ, we calculate that 3,711 more New Zealanders died than normal in that year2.
This means that 3,711 people died prematurely. We owe it to their families and friends to ask why.
There’s more to it than covid
In its press release, Stats NZ noted that “just under 2400” deaths had been categorised by the Ministry of Health NZ as attributable to covid. But the Ministry defines ‘attributable’ in a way that includes deaths where covid was merely a contributory factor.3
At www.excessdeathstats.com we believe that the correct approach in measuring the impact of covid on excess deaths is to count only those deaths where covid was the underlying cause. The NZ Ministry of Health only began reporting these numbers on the 16th March 2022.
Furthermore, the Ministry counts covid deaths cumulatively from the start of the pandemic, so it’s difficult to know the number of underlying covid deaths that occurred in 2022.
We have asked the Ministry for this number for 2022, but, since we have not heard from them, we have made our own estimate, which is that there were 1,742 deaths where covid was the underlying cause in 20224.
Now, would all these covid deaths have been ‘excess deaths’ - in other words deaths that would not have occurred in 2022 anyway? Well, this is highly unlikely, because covid predominantly kills people whose immune systems are not working well, such as frail elderly people, or those who have multiple comorbidities.
But let’s be conservative and assume all these 1,742 deaths were indeed ‘excess' deaths. This means the underlying cause of more than half of the excess deaths was something other than covid.
It’s also important that we don’t write off these deaths from covid as being inevitable. Remember the promise that the covid injections would protect us from severe illness and death? How many of these 1,742 New Zealanders were vaccinated and, if there were any, why did the vaccinations fail to protect them?
The government owes Kiwis complete transparency about the vaccination status of every single death from covid in NZ. We call on them to provide this data.
Does an ‘ageing population’ explain the extra deaths?
As well as the extra deaths from covid, the Stats NZ data makes clear that at least an extra 1,969 New Zealanders died from something other than covid in 2022.
Can these deaths be “partly due to an ageing population” as suggested by Stats NZ? Well 1,969 extra deaths represents a 5.6% increase on the number of deaths in 2021.
A population doesn’t age dramatically, by 5.6%, in a single year unless there has been a sudden (and large) influx of older people. After all, even in the extreme case of zero new births, a population can only age by up to one year in a single year.
Imagine if these extra deaths had been caused by plane crashes!
That’s about the equivalent of an Airbus 320 - used for domestic flights in NZ - crashing every month of the year with the loss of everyone on board (171 passengers plus staff)!
And the total excess deaths of 3,711 equates to a crash every two and a half weeks.
Why did these people die? This question needs to be answered urgently.
If the cause had been plane crashes, none of us would be catching a flight.
But the cause(s) have not yet been examined. Could Stats NZ’s
Few people are even aware that there are so many more deaths than usual. This means we are living (and sadly, some Kiwis are dying) as if blindfolded, simply accepting that it’s OK not to know.
It’s not OK!
In 2020 and 2021, 41 people (at most) died with covid recorded as the underlying cause, and each covid death was headline news.
But now our latest statistical information suggests that on average more than that number of New Zealanders died every week in 2022 without proper explanation.
Where is the headline news on that?
How you can make a difference
We ask you please to take action so that there will be a proper investigation. To spread the word about the excess deaths occurring in NZ and around the world please go to www.excessdeathstats.com to see how you can help. You could deliver our flyers, write to your MP, share the tile below on social media (you can download from www.excessdeathstats.com/nz), or simply talk to your friends and family about it
Clarity on Health is working on www.excessdeathstats.com with Monica Smit, Reignite Democracy Australia and an international team of volunteers. Thank you to Anita T, Terry Anderson and Kathy Brinkman for their work on the New Zealand page.
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Notes
1 More detail about the graph:
In general, the blue line shows the percentage excess death rate for a year calculated by comparing that year’s death rate with a five-year average.
If the blue line is above zero it means the death rate was higher in that year than the average of the previous five years. Conversely, when the blue line goes below zero it means the death rate that year was lower than the average over the preceding five years.
The death rates used to calculate the blue line are ‘crude death rates’ obtained using Stats NZ’s Infoshare tool (DMM, for the total population for calendar years ending December, for 1950 to 2022 on 2nd July 2023) and are measured in deaths per thousand of the population.
For 1955-2019, to calculate excess deaths in any year the death rate in that year is compared with the average of the death rates for the five preceding years (the ‘baseline comparator’). Because we expect death rates to have been abnormal during the covid pandemic, we have not included pandemic years (2020-2022) in our baseline comparators. Hence, we have compared death rates in a pandemic year (2020, 2021 and 2022) with the average of death rates in the five years from 2015-2019 – a period that can be regarded as ‘normal’.
2 How we calculated 3,711 excess deaths
The calculation is given in the downloadable spreadsheet at www.excessdeathstats.com/nz
3 ‘Contributory’ vs ‘underlying’ covid deaths
We are assuming that when the Ministry of Health categorises covid as being ‘contributory’ to a death or as being the ‘underlying’ cause of death the Ministry is using data from, respectively, Part 2 and Part 1 of Health New Zealand’s Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (Form HP4720).
Here are what we believe are the definitions implied in the instructions for completing the HP4720.
Direct cause of death (Part 1 of the certificate): “[T]he disease or condition that occurred as the last part of the sequence of events or conditions leading directly to death”.
Underlying cause of death (Part 1 of the certificate): “[T]hat antecedent condition, which was the starting point in the chain of related events leading to the direct cause of death”.
Contributory cause of death (Part 2 of the certificate): “[O]ther conditions not directly related to the cause of death, but which have contributed to or have had an adverse effect on the conditions entered in Part 1 of the certificate.
We have asked the Ministry if our assumptions are correct.
By focussing on ‘deaths attributable to covid’ - in other words, the sum of underlying covid deaths and deaths where covid was considered ‘contributory’ - we believe that covid deaths are over-emphasised and the true underlying cause of those deaths in which covid was merely a contributor, is being under-emphasised.
4Calculation of covid underlying deaths
We know that 1469 people were classified as having died with covid as the underlying cause by 2nd January 2023 from the COVID-19: Case Demographics Report of 4th January 2023. We also know that by 16th March 2022 (the first time underlying deaths were reported) only 41 people had died with covid as the underlying cause. It’s unclear how many of these 41 people died in earlier years and how many died in 2022 (we have asked the Ministry for clarification). So, let’s be conservative and assume all 1469 people died from covid in 2022.
Furthermore, let’s add on a further 273 underlying covid deaths because some of the 618 covid-positive deaths that had not yet been categorised in the 4th January 2023 report will have had covid as the underlying cause of death. We calculated the number 273 by looking at the most recent Ministry of Health COVID-19: Current Cases report available (3rd July 2023) and noting that 1971 people were classified as dying with covid as the underlying cause out of a total of 4462 (4626-164 ‘unavailable’) categorised deaths with covid - hence 44.2% of the uncategorised deaths have been assumed to be underlying deaths. That gives a total estimate of 1469+273=1742 people dying with covid as the underlying cause in 2022.
This calculation is also in the downloadable spreadsheet available at www.excessdeathstats.com/nz
Data Sources and Analysis:
The data behind the graph and calculations were obtained from the following sources:
https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/deaths-increase-by-ten-percent-in-2022/ Accessed 2nd July 2023
https://web.archive.org/web/20220316045831/https:/www.health.govt.nz/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-case-demographics Accessed 2nd July 2023
https://infoshare.stats.govt.nz/
To obtain death rates from Infoshare: Select in order: Population, Death Rates DMM, Crude death rates (Maori and total population) (Annual - Dec), Total population, Years 1950-2022 Accessed 2nd July 2023.
To obtain 2022 population from Infoshare: Select in order: Population, Population estimates - DPE, Estimated Resident Population by Age and Sex (1991+)(Annual-Dec), Mean year ended, Total, Total All Ages, 2022
https://www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/for-the-health-sector/health-sector-guidance/burial-and-cremation-act-1964/completing-death-documents/medical-certificate-of-cause-of-death Accessed 7th July 2023
https://web.archive.org/web/20230106043035/https:/www.health.govt.nz/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-current-cases Accessed 2nd July 2023
https://web.archive.org/web/20230703083741/https://www.health.govt.nz/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-current-cases Accessed 5th July 2023
Brilliant work, Clare. It's unfathomable that such shocking information seems to barely register for so many.