British Columbia's 2nd year of excess mortality

And yet the authorities don't seem to be discussing this publicly...

This post is short but I wanted to get it out there for discussion ASAP. I recently checked the British Columbia (BC) All-cause Mortality Rates published by the BC Centre for Disease Control and discovered that 2022 marked a second consecutive year of all-cause mortality rates above the mean rate. Below is a screen shot of a graph from their website showing all-cause mortality rates per million by calendar year (Jan-Dec) standardized for both age and sex. By measuring rates rather than counts and standardizing by age and sex both the underlying population size and age/sex demographics are removed as possible confounding factors giving us a more accurate view.

As you can see, whereas 2020 was below the mean rate, both 2021 and 2022 were above. You’ll also notice that some of the annual bars are coloured dark blue with arrows and labels. These annotations appear to denote corresponding mortality influencing events such as “heat domes.” Now, if we look at the year 2009 labeled “H1N1 Pandemic” we see that the following year’s all-cause mortality declined to slightly above the mean and then further declined to just below the mean the year after that. In comparison, if we look at the year 2020 labeled “COVID-19 Pandemic” we see that the subsequent two years were both higher. Conveniently the increase in 2021 is excused by way of a “heat dome.” But what about 2022? Strangely, although it is both well above the mean and the second year off trend compared to the prior H1N1 Pandemic trend, it is neither dark blue nor labeled with any mortality influencing event. So, the question I have is why is this and why aren’t any of the authorities discussing possible explanations or the lack thereof (or are they and I just missed it)?

As always, I’m interested in any thoughts or insights you may have.

John