Richard Price

And before the usual "but they didn’t personally count 2700 bodies with little thermometers" replies arrive: Yes. It is an estimate. Well spotted. The Met Office/Imperial/LSHTM release says that openly. It estimates about 550 heat-related deaths during the May heatwave and about 2,200 during the June heatwave, using historical mortality records and established peer-reviewed methods. That's how public-health surveillance works when final registered mortality data are not yet available. The Spectator's version is essentially: "this is a guess, not a body count." The Daily Sceptic version is the same argument after being left in the sun: "the deaths were made up." Both rely on the same little trick: pretending that "estimated" means "imaginary". By that standard, inflation is imaginary, unemployment is imaginary, GDP is imaginary, flu deaths are imaginary, excess winter deaths are imaginary, and every insurance company in Britain is just doing horoscopes with spreadsheets. The more serious objection is: models are not observations. Correct. Magnificent. A triumph of epistemology, there. A model isn't an observation, a thermometer isn't a heatwave, and a death certificate isn't a corpse. A map isn't Slough, but it's still a handy tool for finding the cinema and getting home afterwards. The question is whether the model is appropriate, transparent, based on relevant data, and later testable against observed mortality. Here the method uses temperature records, historical mortality data, population vulnerability and known heat-mortality relationships. That's exactly the sort of thing epidemiologists use when estimating deaths from heat, cold, flu, air pollution and other population-level risks. Another objection is: "Where are the bodies?" Usually in the same place all heat deaths are: dispersed through hospitals, care homes and private homes, recorded as heart attacks, strokes, respiratory failure and other conditions made more likely by dangerous heat. Heat doesn't need to write "CLIMATE CHANGE WUZ HERE" on the death certificate in crayon. This is the same move we saw during Covid. Early daily Covid death counts used broad surveillance criteria, including deaths within 28 days of a positive test. Critics shouted "with Covid, not from Covid" as if they'd discovered causality in a comments section. Then the slower, more robust ONS death-certificate data arrived. And what happened then? ONS explained that death certificates are completed by doctors using clinical judgement, tests, symptoms and other evidence; that "involving Covid" meant Covid was mentioned anywhere on the certificate; and that "due to Covid" meant that it was the underlying cause. ONS also said Covid was the underlying cause in around 92% of deaths where it was mentioned on the death certificate. PHE/UKHSA found that in 2020 and 2021, 80–90% of deaths reported within 28 days of a positive Covid test also had Covid mentioned on the death registration. So the "it’s only a broad surveillance measure" crowd were not exposing a fake pandemic. They were mostly demonstrating that rapid public-health measures and final death registration statistics have different purposes. One is faster, while the other is slower and more robust. This isn't difficult, unless your entire media brand depends on it being difficult. The heat-death estimate may be revised when observed mortality data are fully available. That's normal. "Can be revised" really really really doesn't mean "made up". It means the adults are doing statistics in public, which is always distressing for people whose preferred methodology is "I went outside and enjoyed it." The Spectator at least manages the adult caveat: actual mortality figures may show excess deaths, perhaps even more than the modellers predict. The Daily Sceptic simply calls them fake deaths, because apparently if an old person dies of a heat-triggered cardiac event rather than bursting into flames on Brighton beach, it doesn't count. So, no, researchers didn't individually identify 2700 named corpses and stamp each one "climate". The figure is an estimate, estimates are normal in public health, later data can refine them, but, no, that doesn't make the deaths imaginary. And if your argument against heat mortality is that Britain has always had warm days, congratulations. You've produced the epidemiological equivalent of pointing at a burning house and saying fireplaces exist, and probably think you deserve a prize of some kind of special prize. Special prizes for special people.