Some Calculations about Total Mortality in Europe in 2020 compared with 2016 and 2018

 

By Michael Pröbsting, International Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 23 December 2020, www.thecommunists.net

 

 

 

Sometimes one feels like a Statistic Sherlock Holmes. I think I am not exaggerating in saying that I have some experience in dealing with statistics. I have written a number of books and academic essay with a focus on economic issues and in this context I often use official statistics which are available by the relevant institutions. However, I can say that it never was so challenging to find the relevant statistics for mortality for various European countries resp. for Europe as a whole for the year 2020 resp. the years before.

 

Usually these statistics are hidden or obscured. For example it is nearly impossible to find simple facts like how many people died in total in a given period and how many died in the same period in the past years and decades. One can find figures for extra mortality but not the total mortality. One can find figures comparing mortality this year with the years before … but these are not concrete figures but obscure “Z points”, “P points”, etc. reflecting which development the respective institutions “expected” and which development actually happened. One can find data for this and that week but not for a longer period. It is as if the official authorities would view such data as state secrets. In German we have a sarcastic saying for this: “Ein Schelm, wer Böses dabei denkt.“ (Shamed be he who thinks evil of it.)

 

Seriously, it is no accident that one can never hear such data in the public discussion about the COVID-19 pandemic. The governments and the media want to create the impression that Armageddon is close, that so many people are dying, etc. – so that we accept being put under curfew with massive restrictions for our freedom of movement, at least until we get the redeeming vaccination (provided by big drug monopolies having good connections with governments) and until we accept total surveillance (apps on our mobile for tracking our movements around the clock).

 

Why is it so important to find figures about the development of total mortality? It is important because it reflects the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. If the pandemic would be very severe and devastating, this would result in qualitatively higher figures of total mortality than this has been the case in the past years and decades. On the other hand, if total mortality is not much higher it reflects that the pandemic is not as dangerous as bourgeois governments and media claim in order to justify their anti-democratic Lockdown policy.

 

As readers of our publications will be aware the RCIT has argued from the very beginning of this crisis in February 2020 that while this is a serious pandemic, it is it is neither devastating nor unprecedented. [1] Using a number of official figures we demonstrated that the claim of bourgeois governments and their supporters among the Lockdown Left about the supposedly “unprecedented and highly dangerous COVID-19 pandemic” is simply a propaganda lie. It shall provide ideological legitimation for what we call the COVID-19 Counterrevolution, i.e. a vast expansion of the police and surveillance state and massive profits for capitalist monopolies and, at the same time, impoverishment and draconic anti-democratic restrictions for the popular masses.

 

 

 

On the figures available and some words of caution

 

 

 

As the year is coming to its end, we are now more and more in a position to compare the development of mortality of the year 2020, i.e. the COVID-19 year, with past years. In the last weeks we have published two articles on this issue based on official figures of the Swedish authorities. We did show that Sweden had a mortality rate in the first ten months of this year which is barely higher than it was in the last years. (Mortality per capita from January to October 2020 was +1% higher than in 2018.) [2]

 

Ths is particularly remarkable because Sweden is one of the few countries in the world which has neither imposed any lockdown nor mandatory mask-wearing – for which it has been unison denounced by the capitalist governments as well as by the bourgeoisified Lockdown Left.

 

Anyway, we are now in a position to provide the figures for the development of total mortality in Europe for the first 40 weeks in 2020 as well as the figures for the four years before. This is the period for which the latest publicly available data from Eurostat, the official statistical institution of the European Union, exist. These figures comprise 26 EU countries (except Ireland), the EFTA countries plus United Kingdom.

 

Before doing this we need to add a few words of caution.

 

1) First we can only present the development of mortality (and compare them) in absolute figures but not in per capita figures. For doing this we would need to have the exact figures for the population development of these 31 countries. What we know in general is that Europe’s population has slightly grown in the past years from 444.8 million (2016) to 447.7 million (2020), i.e. a plus of 0.65%. (See Table 1)

 

 

 

Table 1: Population of EU-27 (2016, 2018 and 2020) [3]

 

Year                                       Population

 

2016                                       444,802,830

 

2018                                       446,098,424

 

2020                                       447,706,209

 

 

 

2) As we said above, the latest figures available cover the first 40 weeks of the year, i.e. we don’t have the complete data for the last 12 months. As we are currently facing a “second wave” of the Corona Virus we can expect that the total figures for mortality for the whole year 2020 will go up to a certain degree.

 

 

 

Excess death caused by other causes than COVID-19

 

 

 

3) As we already pointed out somewhere else, calculating total mortality has its advantages as well as disadvantages. The big advantage is that it put the figures of COVID-19 death in relation to total mortality instead of presenting absolute figures which might look big but look much less impressive when viewed in relation to death caused by other factors. Furthermore, it is well known that most people who die because of COVID-19 are old people or people with a history of a disease. Hence we have seen this year that people have died because of COVID-19 who, most likely, would have died otherwise by another disease. This becomes evident if we take e.g. Sweden where a disproportional high number of people died in spring (because of COVID-19) but a disproportional low number of people died in summer. [4] So for such reasons it is useful to take the figures for total mortality.

 

However, there is also a disadvantage with such a method. A number of people die not because of COVID-19 but because of the dramatic consequences of the Lockdown policy. People with a disease die because they can not go to hospital (or are afraid of it), can not receive regular treatment, are neglected in care homes, etc. It is very difficult to get a full overview how many people are victims of the Lockdown policy. However, we have one figure which demonstrates that we are talking about a highly significant issue.

 

As is known the official figure for COVID-19 death in England and Wales is currently about 62,000. What is much less known is that, according to official figures of the ONS, a total of 30,785 extra deaths not linked to Covid-19 were registered between March 7 and November 13 in care homes in England and Wales. This means more than 30,000 – half the number of the total COVID-19 deaths! – died more than usually die within this period in care homes for other reasons than the virus. The causes of these deaths are mostly heart disease and prostate cancer (for men) resp. dementia and Alzheimer’s disease as well as breast cancer (for women). [5] It is pretty clear that these excess deaths have been caused by the Lockdown policy and the neglect (or lack of resources because of the capitalist austerity policy in the health and care sector) to treat other diseases than COVID.

 

So while we still consider the figures for total mortality as the best approximation to understand the severity of the pandemic we should be aware that the numbers of death are very likely to be lower without a Lockdown policy and with an expansion of the health and care sector (more personal, better wages, more ICU’s, etc.). This is, we note in passing, another confirmation of the Marxist position against the capitalist Lockdown policy which the RCIT – in contrast to the shamefully Lockdown Left – has been advocating since the beginning of the crisis.

 

 

 

A rise of mortality in 2020 but neither dramatically nor unprecedented

 

 

 

Having said all this let us move now towards the actual figures for mortality in Europe. Below we reproduce the official figures of Eurostat which report the weekly death in 31 European countries in the first 40 weeks of 2020. (See Table 2) The results are highly interesting! [6]

 

According to these figures a total of 4,320,306 people have died in 31 European countries in the first 40 weeks of 2020. In 2018, 4,152,493 people died in the same period and in 2016 it was 3,932,522 people.

 

This means that in the first 40 weeks of 2020 – the COVID-19 year – +4.04% more people died than two years before.

 

Let us note – as we made similar calculations for Sweden some weeks ago – that total mortality in this country increased in January-October 2020, compared to the same period in 2018, by +3.3%.

 

It also means that in 2018 +5.59% more people died than two years before.

 

As we noted above we can expect, on one hand, that the growth of death in 2020 will be higher to a certain degree since the actual Eurostat figures do not cover the developments in the last weeks which saw an increase of COVID-19 caused mortality. On the other hand, mortality per capita might be slightly lower because of the growth of the population.

 

Nevertheless we can draw several important conclusions.

 

1) There has been an increase of total mortality in 2020. However this growth is not dramatic. All the public hysteria which governments have created lacks any factual base.

 

2) This is even more true when we take into account that such increase of death figures is nothing exceptional or unprecedented. As we have demonstrated, the increase of mortality from 2016 to 2018 (a year where COVID-19 or any other pandemic did not exist in Europe) has been even higher than the growth in the COVID year compared with two years before! In other words, the myth of “the unprecedented year of death” crumbles before our very eyes!

 

3) The increase of death figures in Europe in 2020 (compared to 2018) is higher than the same figures for Sweden – the country which had neither lockdown nor any other enforcement measures! Readers will remember that Sweden’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is denounced by all governments and media in Europe and usually called a failure.

 

In conclusion, the latest data from the statistical office of the European Union strongly confirm the Marxist analysis of COVID-19 as a serious pandemic but neither very dangerous not unprecedented. Naturally, we don’t expect the governments to correct their course because of such facts. Their policy has never been driven by facts nor concern for public health but solely by thirst for more power and profits.

 

However, we hope that progressive activists who lend trust to the official propaganda of bourgeois governments and media will reconsider their position and break with any social-bonapartist support for the COVID-19 Counterrevolution. In any case, there are already substantial sectors of the working class and the oppressed who mistrust the official propaganda and who increasingly despise the draconic Lockdown policy. This is the camp of which Marxists are part of and it is our tasks to combine such justified hatred against the ruling class with a scientific socialist analysis and program!

 

 

 

Table 2. Weekly Deaths in 31 European Countries, 2016, 2018 and 2020 [7]

 

Week\Years        2016                       2018                       2020

 

1                              112327                  120875                  111499

 

2                              108593                  121078                  117144

 

3                              109761                  120711                  114839

 

4                              109521                  118083                  112400

 

5                              107619                  118106                  114751

 

6                              108139                  118207                  111122

 

7                              105627                  120409                  111708

 

8                              106356                  122865                  108144

 

9                              107650                  127745                  109262

 

10                           106609                  131179                  110698

 

11                           107027                  122675                  115902

 

12                           104200                  116098                  125238

 

13                           105692                  111039                  137187

 

14                           104256                  108998                  147557

 

15                           101109                  107621                  143048

 

16                           97668                    102392                  135143

 

17                           96915                    98135                    123856

 

18                           96393                    95780                    112509

 

19                           97949                    93681                    104586

 

20                           94683                    94010                    103505

 

21                           95053                    94931                    100029

 

22                           91563                    94287                    94640

 

23                           91662                    93869                    97112

 

24                           90999                    90924                    95059

 

25                           97173                    91895                    93781

 

26                           92186                    92716                    96923

 

27                           91698                    94404                    96874

 

28                           92814                    92850                    93715

 

29                           93826                    94345                    93647

 

30                           92833                    97160                    95764

 

31                           90502                    102639                  100828

 

32                           89439                    99218                    99131

 

33                           91735                    92408                    104075

 

34                           93971                    92608                    98735

 

35                           89920                    89425                    95930

 

36                           91401                    92637                    94078

 

37                           90750                    92187                    98636

 

38                           89111                    94176                    100445

 

39                           93325                    92689                    98500

 

40                           94467                    97438                    102306

 

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Total                       3,932,522              4,152,493              4,320,306

 

Growth from 2016 to 2018: +5.59%

 

Growth from 2018 to 2020: +4.04%