Jessica Hockett, PhD
On 25 August 2026 (today), I submitted the following request to CORRELATION Research in the Public Interest via the contact form on the organization’s website:
Good day.
I am writing with an inquiry for Dr. Hickey regarding the data used in the report “Constraints from Geotemporal Evolution of All-Cause Mortality on the Hypothesis of Disease Spread During Covid.”
I previously attempted to contact him at joseph.hickey@alumni.ucalgary.ca [the email address listed in the report] but have not received a response.
The report identifies the source of the UK and London mortality data as:
Eurostat (2024a), “Deaths by week, sex and NUTS 3 region” (demo_r_mwk3_ts), accessed 10 February 2024:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/DEMO_R_MWK3_TS/default/table?lang=en&category=demo.demomwk
Eurostat’s metadata state that the UK data available through the end of 2020 are classified by date of registration, rather than by date of occurrence:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/en/demomwk_esms.htm
I cannot find this distinction noted in the report.
Can Dr. Hickey confirm whether the UK and London analyses use registration-week figures? If not, can he identify the precise occurrence-date source used or explain how the Eurostat figures were converted?
I would appreciate it if you would forward this inquiry to him.
Kind regards,
Jessica Hockett, PhD
I am happy to be corrected by Dr. Hickey or by any readers if I am mistaken about the dataset used or have overlooked where the report notes the distinction between date of registration and date of occurrence.
The distinction matters because date of occurrence records when a person died, whereas date of registration records when the death was administratively processed, often days or weeks later — or even months later in some cases involving non-natural causes.
Using registration-week data can therefore shift the apparent UK mortality curve and alter the report’s claims about onset; the relative timing of the mortality rises in Italy, Spain, and the UK; and the relationship between the UK rise and the 23 March “lockdown” — especially because most other European countries supplied occurrence-date data.
While the difference may not significantly alter the integrated March-to-May P-score for London, the nature of the data used in the analysis should be stated in the report, if it is not already.
When it comes to “numerals” (versus actual records), I consider the most sensitive, appropriate, and ideal measure for analyzing local mass-casualty events or event periods in particular to be the daily number of deaths by date of occurrence, assigned to the smallest available administrative unit in which each death was initially recorded as having occurred (e.g., city, county, or province).
I am posting this notice for documentation and in case Dr. Hickey did not receive my first email or my CORRELATION submission does not go through. Perhaps a reader can relay the message.
Another attempt to communicate with Dr. Hickey last year about the same report is documented here:
UPDATE – Submission to CORRELATION web site appended.
UPDATE, 2 September 2026: I also forwarded my message to another published email address for Dr. Hickey provided by a reader. Neither Dr. Hickey nor anyone else from CORRELATION responded. ONS staff confirmed to me by email that the UK and London data published by Eurostat (the dataset cited in the paper) are based on date of registration. Hickey et al. should therefore revise their prose to reflect that fact, identify the actual data source if they used a different one, or, preferably, obtain and use date-of-occurrence data for their UK and London analyses.
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