P/T Indie wrote:Phil you beat me to it I know a few people who have died as an indirect cause as they didnt get the care they normally would.
Also take someone like Eddie Large 4 weeks in hospital with heart failure but then got covid so did he die of covid or heart failure?
Also a lot of people in care homes were put straight on DNR and told they shouldnt have been taken to hospital in order to save the NHS.
The Eddie Large example wouldn’t have been an ‘above average’ death then. If he was going to die of heart failure anyway then he wouldn’t add to the 65000 above average deaths. If a large number of people who have died with Covid rather than of Covid then the excess deaths is massive.
It is a number we could see going down for the year though (the deaths above average that is, obviously total deaths can’t go down) if people who were going to die this year anyway have been taken early by Covid it means they won’t be adding to the figures later in the year.
It’s a tough balancing act, both practically and ethically on how to proceed. I’d always trust epidemiologists and analysts over the likes of Richard Littlejohn and Nick Ferrari when it comes to how to proceed however.