The ONS mortality report this morning showed that in the week ending February 26th (week 8) deaths registered in England and Wales were 9.2% above the five-year average (1,066 deaths higher).
However, drilling down into the data it becomes clear that perhaps all of those excess deaths this week are deaths caused by the lockdown not by the virus, primarily denial of healthcare.
Deaths in care homes were down to 12.6% below the five-year average (334 deaths) (down from 1.1% above the previous week). Deaths in hospitals were slightly above the five-year average at 5% (275 deaths).
Deaths in private homes on the other hand were still a huge 44.2% above the five-year average (1,147 excess deaths). There were 238 deaths involving COVID-19, leaving 909 non-Covid excess deaths (if we make the generous assumptions that all Covid deaths are excess). That’s nearly 80%.
As can be seen in the above graph, excess deaths at home have remained well above average all year and at a relatively constant rate – a sign they are not just misattributed Covid deaths. There have been 50,810 excess deaths at home since the pandemic began a year ago. 7,056 home deaths have been registered with COVID-19, leaving 43,754 non-Covid (assuming all Covid deaths are excess) and still rising at over 1,000 each week with little sign of falling off.
The UK has had, and still has, one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, and an NHS waiting list of millions to show for it as people have stayed away from hospital to “protect the NHS” and out of fear of catching Covid. The most immediate cost of this can be seen in non-Covid excess deaths from denial of healthcare, especially at home – over 43,000 and counting by this estimate (though some of these will be transfer deaths that would ordinarily have occurred in hospital). Lockdowners claim that this is a fraction of the death toll that would result from not imposing restrictions. But when places like Sweden and Florida don’t impose lockdowns and see fewer, not more, Covid deaths per million, it is very hard to credit that, whatever the models might say.
And if lockdowns don’t save lives, then what are we left with? Just tens of thousands of deaths caused by reckless Government interventions. That’s the real horror story of the past year.
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