ArticleScandinavian journal of public health2026
Excess mortality is not self-interpreting: Baseline choice as a governance issue in public health analytics.
Article in Scandinavian journal of public health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Abstract
Interpretation of excess mortality depends critically on baseline choice. This commentary examines the recent debate on all-cause mortality in Norway in 2024 and argues that it reflects a conflation of two distinct purposes: real-time surveillance using updated baselines and assessment of whether mortality has returned to the pre-pandemic improvement trajectory. These correspond to different estimands and are not interchangeable. Baseline redefinition has predictable inferential and communicative consequences, particularly in public-facing outputs. I argue that the main risk lies not in modeling choices themselves, but in insufficiently explicit communication. Transparent reporting with clearly labeled baselines is essential to avoid interpretive drift.
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