How many residents of Shirebrook died on Covid? ONS data
Covid deaths are a sensitive subject. So in this article, I will try to refrain from my views and opinions about the Covid pandemic. My first instinct was to present data and broader comments on it, but after writing the first paragraphs, I decided to deliver just the dry data.
However, when I analysed the information for myself, I found a strange error in the ONS data (Office for National Statistics), so I must warn those who decide to do their own analysis about it. Please read my warning if you decide to check out data by yourself at the link below:
WARNING
Shirebrook is divided into two areas in this data dump: South and North. When you use the “postcode tool” to look for data about North Shirebrook, the website presents data for North Shirebrook as intended. When you look for data for South- the website still offer data for North and North only. I have not found a way to get a graph with data for the Shirebrook South area. The only way to determine how many people died on Covid in my ward was to crunch spreadsheet numbers. I did it below. For North- I have a nice screenshot with data provided by the ONS website.
In addition, I noticed that ONS divided our town into two very unequal parts. Shirebrook North stands alone, but when you analyse data for South, you will quickly see that South data is mixed with data for Langwith and Pleasley. From my point of view, South should be mixed with Pleasley and North with Langwith. Attaching those two villages to the South made division very unequal.
COVID DEATHS IN SHIREBROOK
It’s a shame that the chart tool doesn’t work correctly because it shows data in a nice, tidy, easy to understand way. This is a screenshot of the North chart:
According to this chart, there were 21 deaths due to Covid in North Shirebrook between March 2020 and March 2021. There were three additional deaths in April 2021. Since this month was outside the “national period of increased deaths”, the overall number in chart and spreadsheet data presented below is different. Since there is no way to force this tool to show data for Shirebrook South, I dwelled into spreadsheets presented in the ONS release to find out how many deaths were registered in my ward.
I took data from a spreadsheet named: Deaths registered by MSOA, March 2020 to April 2021, compared with the average for 2015 to 2019 (XLSX, 3.8MB). If you want to check it for yourself, the link to this spreadsheet is in the ONS data release (under the postcode tool). “Shirebrook North” is at row 3960, and “Langwith, Shirebrook South and Pleasley” is 3961. I cut the data for our town from this spreadsheet and pasted it into a separate sheet. To make the data clearer for S247 readers, I reoriented the data from landscape to portrait view.
The bottom line is this: between March 2020 and April 2021, there were 53 deaths due to Covid in Shirebrook, Langwith and Pleasley. On top of that, there were 202 deaths due to reasons other than Covid. So if we compare a combined number of deaths (due to covid and other reasons) with average from last five years, we will have a total number of excess deaths.
The average number of deaths for Shirebrook North is 109. The combined number is 126. Excess is 17.
The average number of deaths for Shirebrook South is 122. The combined number is 129. Excess is 7.
The combined population of Langwith (2900), Shirebrook (9760) and Pleasley (2305) is about 14 965 (census 2011 data). We had 24 excess deaths in 15 000 population.
SHIREBROOK VS BOLSOVER DISTRICT
Perspective is everything- same with Covid death stats. To understand the whole picture, we need to know how other areas of our District went through these dark times.
Compiling data similarly to Shirebrook would take me hours, so I decided to “cut corners” and compile a spreadsheet with just Covid deaths. Once again- when it comes to “bad data”, Shirebrook is a leader: no other region in District noted more deaths than Shirebrook.
BOLSOVER DISTRICT VS LOCAL NEIGHBOURHOOD
Again- perspective is everything when analysing data. Now when we know how Shirebrook did compare to other towns of our District, we need to understand how our District compares to other Districts in our part of England. At the bottom of the ONS page, I found an animation showing number of deaths in each District. If you look at it, you will notice that Bolsover District was always at the front of the rising wave of fatalities. The screenshot below is just a grim reminder that Bolsover District is one of the most unhealthy rural regions of the country, and we pay for it dearly.
Sylwester Zwierzynski info@shirebrook247.com
Photo by Maksim Goncharenok from Pexels
