There will certainly be more deaths as the population becomes older at a faster rate. Annikka Mutanen, HS scientific editor, claims that many foreign comparisons fail to account for this.

In the Christmas piece that featured professor emeritus Matti Jantunen and described his calculations of the mortality during the previous year and a half compared to the period prior to the epidemic, Lääkärielehti stated, “Finland the excess fatality rate is astonishing.”

The story also featured interviews with the director of diagnostics for the Helsinki and Uusimaa hospital district and coalition parliamentary candidate Lasse from Lehto, who claimed that Finland’s excess mortality figures rank second worst among 20 western nations.

Anna Rotkirch, the Population Association’s research director, sought an unbiased inquiry into the factors contributing to excess mortality.

All three are members of the Get Rid of the Corona network, which has worked to raise awareness of the coronavirus epidemic’s impacts throughout the pandemic and has called for the virus’ suppression at first, then its eradication and even tougher prevention measures in the future.

After Christmas Evening newspaper’s editorial agreed with the call to identify the reasons of excess death and cited Lääkärilehti’s comments regarding Finland’s extraordinary excess mortality as facts. Recently, a lot of users on Twitter have followed suit.

The allegations of a shocking excess mortality, however, are untrue.

Population mortality statistics are a focus of chief actuary Markus Rapo of Statistics Finland. According to Rapo, age-adjusted data must always be used when analyzing mortality.

The phenomena is no longer affected by population and age structure changes thanks to age stability.

The population of Finland is aging, and as a result, more people are dying each year.

The computation made by Emeritus Professor Jantunen is incorrect, at least in terms of age standardization.

Jantunen informs HS that he used Statistics Finland’s compilation of Deaths for the years 2005 to 2019 as a point of reference. He claims that he considered aging by figuring out how much the death rate increased on average per year throughout the comparative period, which was an average of 420 deaths each year.

Anything that exceeds this rate of growth from the pandemic period has been accounted for as excess mortality by Jantunen. He claimed that from June 2021 through the end of this year, 10,000 deaths were simply too frequent. Clearly, there are more deaths than were corona recorded.

Chief Actuary Rapo notes that the population of seniors is not truly growing at a constant rate. In comparison to the four years before the pandemic, the population over 75 has increased by almost twice as much.

The same issue prevents maiden from comparing their mortality rates. Matti Jantunen asserts that his figures are in line with the excess mortality statistics provided by Eurostat. In that situation, early in the fall, Finland’s excess mortality approached 20%.

According to Eurostat, the age distribution of the nations is not at all taken into account while compiling its figures. Simply put, it contrasts the current death toll with that of the reference era.

The inability to select a time in the past that would have been similarly typical in all nations makes it difficult to compare countries. The annual mortality varies, for instance, as a result of flu outbreaks, hot summers, and cold winters, which have varying effects on various nations.

Therefore, it is not surprising that various comparisons of excess mortality have yielded extremely disparate results.

According to Rapo, there isn’t really an accepted international standard for excess mortality. It is not at all documented by Statistics Finland.

Because the data of corona fatalities have varied in coverage and methodologies across nations, excess mortality has been measured and compared during the epidemic. There aren’t any trustworthy and comparable excess mortality statistics, though.

In Finland, age-adjusted mortality has risen for the second consecutive year. If the pandemic hadn’t damaged it, it would be strange.

According to Statistics Finland, increase from the previous year was 1.4% in 2021. A greater increase is anticipated this year because the virus has only recently spread among Finland’s population. Up until the year’s end, it was successfully kept under control. The highest corona fatality rates were already accumulated in many nations at the start of the epidemic, and their mortality peaks were far greater.

According to Rapo, life expectancy is the ideal metric for evaluating the rate of mortality across years. Preliminary estimates indicate that it was cut this year for the second year in a straight, by 0.6-0.7 years for girls and 0.3 years for boys. According to Ravo, the decline has tripled in the United States.

In Finland, life expectancy has decreased from the year before a total of 11 times between 1971 and 2021, although never twice in a succession. The greatest decline in life expectancy happened in 1985 during the coldest winter of the century, when it fell by 0.27 years for females and 0.37 years for boys.

The fate of children is not determined by life expectancy. It is a measurement that captures mortality at the moment of calculation. It indicates the average lifespan of children born today, assuming that age-group mortality from this year persisted throughout their whole lives.