The BFD | Death is a Seasonal Thing

Fred Too

Life is like roosting on a perch – we can stay sitting there for years, some of us quite contentedly, until something comes along and knocks us off. That might be an unexpected accident or an illness. We might just get too old and weak and gently slip away.

You might expect that deaths would occur relatively evenly throughout the year, with just a little random variation. However, that is not the case.

Nearly every year, a winter flu sweeps through the population and knocks a bunch of the old and very sick off their perches. This pushes up deaths in winter and is balanced out by a dip in summer. Those nearing the end of their time on their perch who manage to survive winter are more likely to make it through summer.

Normally, this means that deaths peak in July or August each year at up to 3,400 or more for the month, and bottom out in January or February, usually at a little over 2,400. You can see this pattern as regular as clockwork in the graph below for the years 2016 to 2019. I have started the vertical axis at 2,200 to make the pattern easier to see.

A strange thing happened in 2020. With the borders closed, no new strain of winter flu arrived and deaths didn’t spike in the middle of winter like usual.

There was no return of the winter flu in 2021 either. However, it looks like something else pushed deaths up.

And what is happening this year? We have deaths through until March, and March 2022 is much higher than any previous March. I guess we can blame Covid for some of this, but it looks like we are heading for the deadliest winter on record!