CANADIAN MORTALITY STATS – 2020

An Analysis of Covid-19 Mortality in Canada

Mathematics is a joy to me. It does not care about your feelings or beliefs. 2 + 2 = 4 and does not change because of your gender, sexual orientation, or skin colour. If it ever does change because of political virtue signaling, then your car will not start and planes will fall out of the sky.

Canada is chest deep into the Covid-19 crisis and we should have some numbers to more confidently project what has happened and what may be in store. Unlike the Imperial College models that were projecting 1% of the country’s population was going to outright die, so far Canada is well short of that at 12,301 deaths (Dec 02) vice the apocalyptic number of 370,000.

If you are a fan of the Road Runner cartoons, there inevitably comes a point where Wile E. Coyote heads right off a cliff. He is okay until he looks down, then the cruel hand of gravity reaches up and down he goes despite all his arm flapping. So in spite of all the arm flapping on the part of politicians, their attendant medical professionals, and cheerleading Karens, what are the observable mortality numbers saying to us?

The caveat in this presentation is did I introduce any personal bias? I am well aware of the phrase, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics“, so I attempted to refrain from not letting the numbers speak for themselves. I did have the bias that I have seen presentations from Ivor Cummins and Genevieve Briand, Johns Hopkins University on the numbers from the States and Europe. I wanted to see what Canadian numbers were doing.

So with the preamble out of the way, let’s dive in.

This graph shows:

• For the last two decades, Canadian mortality has been increasing at a relatively steady rate of +3475 deaths/yr. Some years are worse than others, some better. Our population has been growing and the Boomers are getting older, so this makes sense.
• The big killers of Canadians are Cancer and Heart Attack & Stroke. Cancer has been increasing at about 920 deaths/yr while Heart Attack & Stroke have decreased 260 deaths/yr. Cancer became the #1 killer after 2007.

Diving deeper into mortalities:

• Accidents, Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease, and Influenza & Pneumonia are next up but orders of magnitude behind the big killers.
• Strangely, Accidents have been making serious increases over the last 20 years.
• Flu & Pneumonia kick along at the 6000-8000 range each year.
• As a side note, suicide rates saw a slight uptick over the decades from 3600 to about 4000/yr. It’ll be interesting to see the numbers after this year with all the clinical depression due to the crisis and government actions.

Now, let’s add in what 2020 has been doing so far this year:

• The total mortalities reported across Canada comes to 207,155. Our expected mortality given an average death rate of an extra 3475/yr should be 210,630. When reading the StatCan table, the numbers are not complete so the far yellow line is a guess that 75% of deaths have been tabulated. So by year end, that projection is about 276,000. That’s substantially short of what would be expected but who knows what lag time there is with respect to StatCan receiving correct numbers.
• The second to last set of bars are the actual reported 2020 numbers to date.
• Now here’s the weird part, which was also picked up by the Johns Hopkins researcher. Cancer and Heart & Stoke numbers are fairly linear with a slight dip from winter down to summer, then climbing. When looking at the provinces with numbers through to Sep, there are no large upticks that should skew these estimations badly.
• After taking the first half year numbers and doubling them, you should have a good projection of the year’s totals. My assumption was any numbers past June may have not been finalized. So with Cancer and a growth rate of 920/yr, we would expect 81,072 deaths. Heart Attack & Stroke with a decrease of 260/yr would be 70,850.
• But the projection of Cancer deaths after six months of stats is only 75,150 which is a shortfall of 5,922 deaths. Heart Attacks & Stroke is projected at 62,510 which is also a shortfall of 8,340 deaths, for a total of 14,262 missing deaths by the end of the year.
• Did we cure cancer this year and in all the hubbub of Covid-19, someone forgot to report on it? Coincidentally, our Covid-19 deaths are just over 12,000. Weird, eh?

So, how do Canadians die on a month to month basis?

• Jan, Dec, Mar, and Feb are the worst months for mortality. Some years there are spikes and some years are calm. Every 3 to 4 years there is a bad spike in Jan. On the opposite years, it looks like Dec gives the spike.
• In general, Canadians die the most with the biggest swings starting in Jan then it calms down into the summer and gradually picks up through the fall into winter.
• Feb & Mar 1998 was a bad year that coincided with a bad flu season that year.
• 2013, 2015, & 2018 saw bad Jan spikes. 2018 started off badly with spikes in Jan, Feb, & Mar. This coincided with a bad 2018 flu season which was termed the worst in five years.

So, let’s add in the deaths for 2020 and see what we get:

• Obviously, there were the big jumps in Apr & May attributed to when Covid-19 got really bad, particularly in ON & QC in the Long Term Care (LTC) facilities. But there were already significant upticks in Jan, Feb, & Mar. Something was already going on and usually upticks at this time of year seem to signal something going on with the flu.
• Jun seemed to flatten and decrease. Jul and Sep really nosed down but again, those numbers might not be finalized yet. But it is a good indication that after a quick rush of deaths, things may have settled and even decreased.

Here’s a great, little interactive tool on the StatCan website:

• Obvious Covid-19 spike for 2020. But compare that spike to Jan’s 2018 flu influenced spike, 6745 to 6630. I don’t recall any crazy lockdowns or slaughtering of our economy because of 2018’s mortalities, maybe I just missed it. Then in mid-Jun, death rates are back within five year norms. When did all those mandatory mask rules come in again?
• 2020 numbers drop off out through Sep but because of incomplete numbers.

The cool thing about this interactive tool is you can check out each province. I’ll let you scroll through the rest but the most striking point is this was not a Canadian pandemic. This was a Quebec pandemic. Ontario only had a bit of a bump in comparison. This would coincide with the bloodbath in their LTC homes.

BC had a peak of deaths mid-Mar and AB has no pattern other than a slight overall increase of 30-40 deaths each month. You wouldn’t even know anything was going on in the rest of the country.

Logarithmic scale is used to show the rate of change. When you go to the interactive chart on the Worldometer site, the Covid-19 deaths were small but grew quickly until the curve ‘flattened’ at the end of May. But the rate of growth was not exponential as everyone feared when governments all hit the panic button. In fact, Mar 18, the curve was already curling over on its own. Considering Canadian Provinces had not instituted Emergency Orders even by that point, you have to ask if all those measures did anything.

Also, since we are in a so-called ‘2nd Wave’, ummmm, where’s the evidence for that? The rate of change in the death rate is almost dead flat but our lockdown measures are stricter than ever and Christmas is going to be cancelled. Sure the media is shouting about the case count each day but if Canadians aren’t falling over dead in the streets it sure seems like a nothing burger.

So, I ask again, what has all the arm flapping here in Canada been about? By the mortality stats, this does not appear to be a particularly bad year compared to even 2018. By the fall numbers and historical norms, we’re past the bad spike and into regular death rates.

Here’s my take away point: politicians, their health experts plus the media have access to this info. Everyone does because it is public and StatCan does an excellent job gathering numbers. But no one hears anything but doom and gloom. This tells me that our overlords are either incompetent or distorting the truth on purpose. One thing for sure, the precedent is set for the next time a little bump in the road shows up. Once governments see how easy it is to rip away your freedoms, they will repeat.

Unfortunately, many Canadians without cushy government jobs or with the ability to work from home are desperately trying to not look down. They know that no amount of arm flapping is going to save them from the big splat.

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