Revisiting data reported by Wilson Sy
Jessica Hockett, PhD
Two years ago, I asked whether the city of London really did see a 200% increase in death in April 2020.
The “200%” was a rounded figure from Wilson Sy’s Excess Deaths in the United Kingdom: Midazolam and Euthanasia in the COVID-19 Pandemic, which reported a 194% increase in Table 2 (shown below).
But according to ONS occurrence-based mortality data available for the London region, there were 11,029 deaths that month: an increase of approximately 174%, not 194%.1
The apparent reason for the difference is that Sy used deaths by month of registration.
Although the ONS source is cited in the references, Sy makes no distinction in the prose and, on page 5, overstates the argument by saying, “The data on excess deaths show the spikes in excess deaths occurred simultaneously across a wide area in all major regions of the UK, as Table 2 shows.”
Sy’s Table 2 groups deaths by month of registration, the table does not establish when those deaths occurred or whether the regional occurrence curves had synchronous onsets and peaks. Because his point is temporal, and he uses the word occurred, a clarification is warranted.
I reached out to Dr. Sy using the only email address I could find but didn’t receive a response.
My inquiry, reproduced below, explains why the discrepancy matters and raises several other questions about the paper. I also sent a follow-up email with the direct link to the ONS occurrence data, having neglected to include it in the first email.
Subject: Questions regarding your 2024 UK excess-mortality paper | Date: 21 August 2026
Dear Dr. Sy,
Good day. My name is Jessica Hockett. I am an independent researcher in the United States and have been actively investigating the COVID event for the past six years, especially the mass-casualty events reported in New York City and Bergamo, Italy, in spring 2020.
As part of my work, I have compared mortality patterns in several cities, including London, and recently [re-]read your paper, “Excess Deaths in the United Kingdom: Midazolam and Euthanasia in the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
My inquiries concern Table 2, “UK Regions Excess Mortality April 2020,” and how those figures are used later in the paper.
Reference 11 indicates that you used [ONS] deaths by date of registration. However, the prose accompanying Table 2 uses temporal language that suggests the table shows when the deaths occurred: “The data on excess deaths show the spikes in excess deaths occurred simultaneously across a wide area in all major regions of the UK, as Table 2 shows.”
A few months ago, I obtained from ONS daily all-cause deaths by date of occurrence for London. Summing the daily figures gives 11,029 deaths occurring in April 2020, compared with an April 2015-2019 baseline of 4,024. This produces approximately 7,005 excess deaths: a 174% rise over baseline.2
By comparison, Table 2 reports 12,200 deaths, a baseline of 4,140, and 8,030 excess deaths. The April death totals differ by approximately 1,171, while the calculated excess differs by approximately 1,025, i.e., nearly 15% of the occurrence-based excess. (As an aside, I realize the paper states that figures are presented to no more than three significant figures. The displayed London figures do not reconcile exactly: 12,200 minus 4,140 is 8,060, not 8,030. I would be grateful if you could provide the unrounded figures used.)3
I have attached a table showing the differences between the registration-based figures in your paper and the occurrence-based figures supplied to me by ONS. I did not obtain occurrence data for the other regions.
London all-cause deaths, April 2020: comparison of ONS figures
| Measure | Sy: Registration (ONS) | Hockett: Occurrence (ONS) | Difference |
| April 2015-2019 Baseline | 4,140 | 4,024 | 116 |
| April 2020 | 12,200 | 11,029 | 1,171 |
| Excess deaths | 8,030 | 7,005 | 1,025 |
| Rise over baseline | 194% | 174.1% | 19.9 percentage points |
Related and other questions follow:
1. Can you confirm that Table 2 is based entirely on deaths registered during April, rather than deaths occurring during April? Did you make any adjustments to the ONS figures that are not described in the paper?
2. If the table is registration-based, do you agree that the accompanying prose should be revised to make this clear?
3. The paper does not appear to define what is meant by “simultaneously.” Do you mean that elevated death registrations were recorded in every region during the same calendar month, or that the regional occurrence curves had the same or closely aligned onset and peak dates? Table 2 only establishes the former.
4. On page 10, you acknowledge that “registration of deaths may lag” and then apply a one-month shift between the Midazolam and excess-death series. If the mortality series is based on registration month, the resulting lag may be partly an artifact of registration delays and calendar-month aggregation. Did you repeat the correlations using deaths by date of occurrence? If not, on what basis can the one-month lag be treated as evidence that Midazolam use preceded the deaths?
5. Table 4 carries forward London’s 8,030 excess deaths and reports 0.33 Midazolam doses per excess death. Using the occurrence-based excess of approximately 7,005 changes that figure to approximately 0.38. Would you agree that the regional comparisons and correlations should also be recalculated using occurrence-based excess deaths?
6. Figure 7 and Reference 20 identify the OpenPrescribing figures as prescription “items,” but the paper subsequently refers to the same figures as “doses” and “injections.” I could not find an explanation of how prescription items were converted into doses. Did you assume that one item represented one dose? If not, what conversion did you apply? Do the source data establish that the Midazolam was administered to patients, or only that prescription items were recorded?4
I recognize that the occurrence-based figures do not alter the fact that London experienced a substantial mortality spike – one that, to my knowledge, has not been adequately investigated or honestly explained by governing officials. Nevertheless, they produce a lower April excess and change what can be inferred about the spike’s timing. Using registration-based rather than occurrence-based mortality data also affects the assessment of regional simultaneity, the March/April Midazolam comparison, and the reported one-month lag.
Thank you for any clarification you can provide, which may include explaining or correcting things I have misinterpreted or overlooked.
I look forward to your response.
Kind regards,
Jessica Hockett, PhD
Any reader who is in contact with Dr. Sy or has a current email address for him is invited to forward this article. I also welcome feedback or corrections regarding my interpretation of the study.
The figure and the accompanying table below show London resident deaths by month of occurrence versus month of registration. More deaths occurred in March (specifically, in the latter half of March) than registration figures show.
Differences between occurrence and registration numbers are expected because real-time death reporting is not possible. We can’t know tomorrow how many people died in a city, county, or country today. In general, non-natural and unexpected deaths take longer to process and register, as do deaths outside of healthcare settings and any other deaths referred to a coroner.
Nothing changes the fact that, according to official data,** London’s spring 2020 mass-casualty event was extremely compressed and not the work of materials labeled SARS-CoV-2.
After mass testing in hospitals commenced,5 the daily count climbed from 163 on 15 March to 542 on 8 April — a 232.5% rise in just 24 days — then fell sharply through late April, remaining elevated into May. Across weeks 12-22, total mortality was 98.8% above the 2015-2019 average for the same period.
The spike was accompanied by a sudden, dramatic rise in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA), described further and alongside a similarly-timed trajectory in New York City in “The Sound of Sirens”.
London’s first confirmed COVID “case” (the UK’s ninth case) was announced on 12 February 2020. The patient had reportedly arrived from China several days earlier and presented at University Hospital Lewisham on 9 February. At the time, officials said there was no evidence that her case had either resulted from or produced local human-to-human transmission.
**Qualification added on 16 September 2026 to reiterate my view that official data should not and cannot necessarily be trusted or considered to reflect a real-time, on-the-ground event.
Article sent to MP Toby Young on 15 September 2026 as an FYI. No response or acknowledgement was requested and none was received.
Footnotes
Notes corresponding to the email inquiry were not in the email and are added for reader clarification
- “Persons usually resident in London” (region code E12000007) | I requested these data (Number of daily deaths by five-year age bands and London region; deaths occurring between 2015 and 2024) via FOI and paid the requisite fees out of personal funds. ONS released and published the data on 12 May 2026. ↩︎
- I said “approximately” because how to calculate and represent a baseline is a choice. ↩︎
- Presumably those in the source file. ↩︎
- I answered my own question after sending the email. OpenPrescribing reports monthly prescription items, not individual doses or injections administered to patients. It therefore cannot support a daily midazolam curve or show exactly when the drug was administered. ↩︎
- At a 12 March 2020 press conference, CMO Chris Whitty stated: “We will pivot all of the testing capacity to identifying people in hospitals who have got symptoms, so that we can pick them up early.” ↩︎
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