I came across an interesting piece of data from the ONS, yesterday, which illustrates the point I have made previously about the difference in the number of COVID deaths reported in the media, which is actually only deaths of people WITH Covid, as against the actual number of deaths of people FROM Covid.
The figure reported in the media is meaningless. It includes anyone who dies, from whatever actual cause, including being hit by a bus, within 28 days of having had a positive COVID test. In other words, the person may have been perfectly healthy, despite having been infected with COVID. They may even have acquired immunity naturally as a result of being infected, and no longer have been suffering from Covid, but went out to do some training for a marathon and got run over by a bus. Not many such cases, its true, but it illustrates how meaningless the data is. Far more likely are thousands of people who die from heart attacks or other causes, conditions they had before contracting the virus.
Even more likely, given that more than 90% of people in those figures are people over 60, and the majority of them over 80, is that they died from a range of illnesses that afflict the elderly from heart disease to dementia, and that COVID was just a contributing factor, in the same way that in the past, many elderly people who were dying, came down with a chest infection, pneumonia.
Well, the data I came across, yesterday, enables us to quantify this distinction between those dying WITH Covid, and those dying FROM Covid. It isn't data you would come across in the general media, and was the result of a Freedom of Information request made to the ONS back in November. The request asked for a breakdown of deaths by age, the details of which I have given several times in previous posts, but it also asked how many of the deaths were due to COVID as against merely people who had died who were recorded as having COVID.
The ONS response is provided here.
In it the ONS, provides the data for England and Wales, including the links to the source data. At the time of the reply on 30th November 2020, the ONS reports a total of 46,000 Covid related deaths. However, the figure for deaths due to COVID, i.e. where COVID is the only thing on the death certificate, with no previous illnesses listed as the underlying cause of death, is just 4476! That is less than 10% of the actual number of deaths reported as COVID related.
Now, it would be wrong to take this figure purely at face value too - though less wrong than the continual presentation of the inflated figure for COVID deaths put put out by the media incessantly - because, undoubtedly for some of these deaths, although the deceased may have had some terminal condition, which meant they were dying, they may have lived for some months longer had they also not been infected with COVID, so that it could at the least be seen as a contributory cause of death, and even the immediate cause of death. That is why the failure of the NHS to protect the elderly, and those with serious conditions, which led to them becoming infected, whilst in its care, has been such a scandal.
But, what is apparent from this figure is that the actual number of deaths due to COVID is only a fraction of the headline figure, which has been used to convey the idea that COVID represents an existential threat to society, when, in fact, it is no such thing, though it does represent a serious threat to those over 60, and those with serious medical conditions. The question then is why the NHS and the state has not protected that actual section of the population that was at serious risk, and instead has focussed on closing down large sections of society who were never at any serious risk, and has acted to criminalise them. Why has it inflicted such unnecessary economic damage on society by these lockouts, which have disproportionately impacted the young, the section of society at the very least risk from COVID?
If we take the data provided above, then looking at the current headline figure of deaths of around 125,000, we would expect the actual number of deaths from COVID, as against WITH Covid, to be around 12,500, which is about the same as the average number of deaths each year from flu, and less than the 18,000 flu deaths in the UK in 2017. It is significantly less than the population adjusted figure for flu deaths from the Honk Kong Flu in 1968. So why is COVID being presented as some kind of existential threat to society, when in fact, the fata show it to be nothing of the kind?
The fact that the data is being used to present a picture that the actual facts do not support is fuelling the conspiracy nuts of the far-right, as seen by recent demonstrations, and so on. But, the lunacy of the left is playing into their hands, by itself going along with the presentation of COVID as being an existential threat, and itself demanding that society be closed down, that workers be laid off, that protests and other social gatherings be banned and so on.
The worst affected sections of society rom the lockouts are the youth, and they are the ones most unaffected by the virus. After a year of being banged up, and seeing their jobs go, seeing their ability to protest racist attacks by cops, and so on undermined, its inevitable that eruptions like that in Bristol yesterday are going to happen on a more frequent and larger basis. Of course, the social-democrats, like Labour's Mayor in Bristol will not want to upset polite society, and will treat such eruptions differently to their response to the breaking up of the Sarah Everard vigil, as though the virus itself is supposed to be able to distinguish between one social gathering and another. But, the Left itself, in large part, has lined up with the forces of reaction in relation to COVID, by peddling the myth of an existential threat, and demanding the harshest of measures. Its no wonder that that large sections of the youth are then being driven into the hands of the conspiracists and the fascists.
The actual causes of death given in the ONS data is listed as follows:-
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