Fact check: False claim excess deaths in New Zealand rose 3,203% between 2020 and 2022

Kate S. Petersen, USA TODAY
·4 min read
4

The claim: New Zealand excess deaths increased 3,203% from 2020 to 2022

A Feb. 2 article (direct link, archive link) asserts the number of excess deaths in New Zealand rose astronomically over the last few years.

"Jacinda Ardern’s COVID Dictatorship caused a 3203% increase in Excess Deaths following her Mandatory COVID Vaccination Laws," reads the article's headline.

The article was shared more than 400 times on Facebook, according to CrowdTangle, a social media analytics tool.

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Our rating: False

New Zealand did not have a 3,203% increase in excess deaths between 2020 and 2022. It is unclear how the article's author arrived at that number, but it appears to be based on a calculation error. While deaths did increase between 2020 and 2022, experts say it's a result of a growing and aging population, as well as COVID-19 itself.

Excess deaths claim based on 'nonsensical' math

The article is from The Expose, a website that has previously published misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines.

The term "excess deaths" refers to the difference between the number of expected deaths and the actual number of deaths in the dataset cited in the article from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an economic group to which 38 countries belong.

The number of expected deaths is based on the average number of deaths between 2015 and 2019, Louise Fietz, a spokesperson for the organization, told USA TODAY in an email.

In 2020, New Zealand had -160 excess deaths, the dataset shows. The number is negative because there were fewer deaths than expected. In 2022, there were 5,676 excess deaths.

This is a few hundred more than claimed in the article, but Fietz said the disparity is possibly due to weekly updates to the data.

Whatever the case, there were certainly more excess deaths in 2022 than in 2020, but not 3,203% more as the article claims, Micheal Plank, a math professor at the University of Canterbury, told USA TODAY. In fact, this calculation can't be performed at all because the 2020 value is negative and the 2022 value is positive.

"It is mathematically nonsensical to calculate the percent increase from a negative number to a positive number," he said.

It appears that the author of the article may have arrived at the 3,203% figure by ignoring the negative value of excess deaths in 2020 and calculating the percent increase as though it were a positive number, Plank said.

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But that's a ridiculous way to examine the change mathematically, Plank said. He said comparing excess deaths rather than total deaths can be misleading and "easily lead to some bizarre statistics."

"For example, if expected deaths in any given year were 32,000 ... and if there were 32,010 in one year and 32,500 the next year, this would be a completely normal variation in yearly deaths," he said.

However, if you calculated just the percent increase in excess deaths – a change from 10 to 500 – it would equal a 4,900% increase, he said. However, if you compare the change in total deaths – 32,010 to 32,500 – it would only be a 1.53% increase.

Increased deaths related to growing and aging population

While the article claims increased deaths between 2020 and 2022 were caused by the COVID-19 vaccine, Plank said there is "zero evidence to support the claim."

"There are many factors that affect death rates, including the fact that in 2020 travel restrictions and social distancing drastically reduced the number of deaths from flu and other respiratory diseases," he said. "Whereas in 2022, COVID-19 caused a significant number of deaths, and the pandemic has also had knock-on effects such as delayed healthcare, which could have indirectly led to other deaths."

The vast majority of New Zealand's COVID-19 deaths occurred in 2022, according to the World Health Organization.

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The increase in deaths was also related to changes in the population of New Zealand, Feitz said.

"New Zealand also has a population that is growing relatively fast," she said. "So, you would expect an increase in deaths over the period simply because the population is becoming larger."

An aging population also contributes to increased mortality in the country, according to Callum Valentine, a spokesperson for Stats NZ, New Zealand's official data agency. New Zealand's population has grown by 9% since 2015, but the number of people age 65 and older grew by 18%, he said in an email.

USA TODAY reached out to the website that published the article for comment.

The claim was also debunked by Australian Associated Press.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: New Zealand excess deaths claim based on nonsensical math