Use of "Mortality Trend" Warning

Post #699

Using mortality trends without explaining them is substandard. An example is this:

The 5-year trend predicted “negative crude mortality” (no one dying, ever again) by 1970. After 1970, it can be presumed that people would be “brought back from the dead.” Such preposterous outcomes are the result of passive acceptance of prior mortality trends — or of assuming that those prior trends were “natural and normal.”

The process of basing excess mortality off of a “previous trend” is not a good process if the prior trend is not explained. A crude average of preceding years is more often more “natural and normal” than the predicted outcome of a prior trend. When a crude average is applied to excess death in Canada, you see worsening, by the year:

Evidence suggests that Canadians have been dying faster as time goes on, from at least 1 Aug 2020 up to 1 Jan 2023 — i.e., for 29 months in a row, and possibly longer.

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A normative method for excess mortality might be best, and one version would define the baseline as being the second-lowest death rate of recent years.