Deaths from heart failure in the 15 weeks from week ending March 24th 2023 to the end of June 2023 were 27% higher than the level expected for the same period in 2020. Why?
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities has produced the data for England. They show that from week 12 to week 26 of 2020 there were expected to be 16,752 heart failure deaths. Whereas in 2023 from week 12 to week 26 17,825 deaths were expected. For some reason we expect 6% more people to die of heart failure now than we did three years ago, even more of a surprise when you consider that the ‘pandemic’ was supposed to have cut a swathe through the ‘dry tinder’! In the event 21,222 people died from heart failure in England during this period in 2023.
Figure 1 shows weekly deaths from heart failure since week 12 of 2020. You can see, with or without Covid linked deaths, there has been a significant and sustained increase.
An article published in the Telegraph by consultant cardiac surgeon Julian Gaer focuses on the failings of the NHS to provide timely and effective treatment for cardiac patients. It’s an interesting read but, to my mind somewhat partial, though he’s very clear about where the blame lies:
I do blame a system that has allowed us to reach the point of having dangerous shortages of permanent skilled staff and dilapidated facilities habitually operating at 100% of theoretical capacity (something the NHS hierarchy persists in believing demonstrates value-for-money). I blame the fact that the U.K. has fewer hospital beds per capita than all but five of 38 OECD countries (Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Chile, Sweden). France has three times more hospital beds per capita than the U.K. and Germany four times. Germany has 29 intensive care beds per 100,000 population, whereas the U.K. has seven. Little wonder therefore that Germany recorded just over 2,000 Covid deaths per million of the population, for our 3,000-plus.
So, according to Mr. Gaer it’s all about money and resources. But, let’s just see where Mr. Gaer gets his numbers from in relation to Covid deaths in Germany and the U.K.
Figure 2 is taken from Our World in Data and shows cumulative Covid deaths from the beginning of January 2020 to July 12th 2023, the day before Mr. Gaer’s article was published.
You can see that, as Mr. Gaer asserts, Covid deaths in Germany over the past three-and-a-half years are recorded as about 2,000 per million compared to the U.K.’s 3,376 per million. However, this variance is wholly due to the course of the pandemic from March 2020 to March 2021, by which point all the variance we see now had already occurred. Is he claiming that Germany’s relatively low number of deaths during the first year of the pandemic was wholly down to its treatment protocols, higher number of ICU beds and the organisation of its healthcare systems? If that’s the case, why did Germany’s Covid deaths match ours for the subsequent two-and-a-half years? Except for Sweden and Belarus, all European countries followed the same public health policies but with hugely variable outcomes, Finland saw one sixth of the Covid deaths that Germany did. Was this because Finland’s health service was superior to Germany’s? Of course not.
Rather than just looking at Covid deaths let’s look at all-cause excess deaths and compare the U.K. to Germany. Most experts agree that all-cause deaths is a far better measure of how a healthcare system works, rather than just the narrow focus on Covid deaths.
Again, a chart from Our World in Data illustrates perfectly that since the beginning of 2020 cumulative excess deaths in the U.K. stand at about 3,134 per million, whereas in Germany they’re 725 per million lower at 2,409 per million. However, all this difference and more was accounted for in the first Covid wave. By June 14th 2020 cumulative all-cause excess deaths in the U.K. were 1,001 per million higher than in Germany (868 – 133 = 1,001).
Since the U.K.’s March 7th 2021 pandemic peak, all-cause excess deaths in the U.K. have been lower than in Germany. While we’ve recorded 1,433 per million excess deaths the Germans have seen 35% more at 1,932 per million. To what does Mr. Gaer attribute the failure of Germany’s healthcare system over this period?
It doesn’t look like it’s British exceptionalism that accounts for the relative performance of the U.K. or German healthcare systems. In the same way that when you look a little more closely the apparent variance between Germany and the U.K. becomes obscured, so it is with excess heart deaths. Mr. Gaer would appear to attribute the rise in heart failure deaths to NHS failings in treatment and delivery. If this were the case, why don’t we see the same thing with cancer deaths?
Figure 4 reproduces charts from the Office for Health Improvements and Disparities showing excess deaths from heart failure and cancer from week ending March 26th 2021 to the end of June 2023. Cancer deaths are tracking the expected rate while heart failure deaths are dramatically elevated.
Figure 5 compares heart failure deaths with that other big killer, dementia and Alzheimer’s. Surely, if the NHS is letting down heart failure patients it must also be failing these patients?
It would seem not. Over the past two years or so dementia and Alzheimer’s deaths have been well below the expected rate.
Figure 6 illustrates another issue that’s been too much ignored. Since the beginning of the pandemic, with the exception of the two short spikes in April of 2020 and January of 2021, excess deaths in hospitals haven’t been exceptional. However, excess deaths ‘at home’ shot up and have consistently stayed high.
Whatever is causing the alarmingly elevated rate of heart failure deaths, it is not currently causing elevated deaths from cancer or dementia and thus it is hard to see how the primary driver can be the failings of the health service, however acute. For the same reason it is hard to see how the explanation can lie in an ageing population. Something else has seriously impacted on heart health in particular over the past three years.
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Here’s an idea. What if people feeling really ill just stayed at home until they felt better? Just like we do with the flu. No need for anyone to isolate, test or trace. This thing is endemic now.
After all if we are going to have to live with COVID then treat it as if was the flu.
Back to normal after a 2 minute announcement
You are sane, Paul M.
A rare thing these days.
And totally unheard-of in government.
LS reported on that study a few months ago which showed that about 50% of symptomatic people didn’t bother to isolate. This is the reason the virus is spreading, obviously. Not asymptomatic children…
Ah if only it were so simple. Many people out there don’t take sick leave even when they need it because they just can’t afford to lose out on 2+ weeks’ wages. These are the folks who have been manning the checkout desks and driving delivery vans in order to enable the govt’s agenda.
Yes…. You are so right ——- but they are already talking about the booster — I do feels hard to imagine things will ever be normal again – Big Pharma and Big tech funding have got the governments to do whatever they decide they want done and the Jab is worth Billions to them —
Like the teacher at our daughter’s school who came into work feeling unwell, gave a positive lateral flow test and the class have been told to self isolate. Don’t let anyone tell you teachers have common sense.
Or any consideration for the parents of pupils who maybe don’t have public sector jobs so need to work to pay the bills.
Ah, there we go. You don’t have to go home, you just have to submit to an invasive medical procedure every single day in order to prove your innocence.
Get used to it, kid, this is the New Normal.
Replacing one load of bollocks with another, almost as bad, as bad, worse, but bollocks nonetheless.
I know time is limited but would like to see more context and comment from the writers ATL, destroying the nonsense, for the benefit of casual readers or newbies or to hone arguments.
We’ve seen many “good news” articles that are not really good news at all. Just seems like the site is cheerleading for the govt’s weasel attempts to pretend we are coming out of coronamadness when we are doing no such thing
COVID WAS NOT AN EXCEPTIONAL EVENT REQUIRING OR JUSTIFYING EXCEPTIONAL MEASURES
Yes – I was disappointed to see Ioannides succumbing to the snake oil myths (see Round Up)
They will just replace this with a more pushy testing and tracing policy for kids.
These guys are merciless.
Another idea that was brainless in the first place. The idiot cabinet is the only entity needing a bubble – to shut them away from us.
FFS – We are being governed by people who don’t understand basic terminology like ‘infection’, ‘case’, ‘Covid’, and who still can’t grasp the basic uselessness of blanket testing or are able to read standard pandemic planning documents.
I expect the bubbles will be scrapped but replaced by something worse, like compulsory vaccination and/or testing.
*searches internet for books about home schooling*
Me and my wife are on standby to start homeschooling or boys if shit happens
Me too! Many other parents are planning the same – new community schools being planned across the country.
Parents needs to stand up to this madness, and simply refuse to send their kids to school. It will take everyone to do it, but that would solve it pretty quickly I would imagine
My daughters year have all been told to school from home for the next 2 weeks. Absolute joke.
Please a) stop advising we read ‘in full’ when the summary is enough to have us reaching for the sick bag and b) apply a bit of editorial judgement rather than simply relaying govt toss without scrutiny. We have the BBC for that, remember.
HEAR HEAR.
Toby used to take a robustly critical stance, which has now been replaced by wet lettuce.
To be fair, TY is extremely busy and commenting on every article is asking a lot.
Ideally he would have a much bigger team, with a budget to go with it
Scrap the school bubbles.
End of school year.
yeah.
As always, more excuses to prolong the agony from this Branch Covidian government.
They cannot give the experimental vaccine if they give up their emergency powers -that is what it is all about …..
Exactly! I don’t understand why more isn’t made of this point!
“Could be”
Pigs could fly if they had wings.
“Let’s just look at new models with dodgy rules to pile on the agony…because we can…and we know lots will not hesitate to comply. Isn’t this fun?” is what Williamson meant.
Gavin Williamson makes Matt Hancock look competent. Perhaps The Sun have some video of him.
This is really easy.
STOP TESTING CHILDREN UNDER 18.
Stop testing everyone
He wouldn’t even know where her arse was. Probably get it confused with her elbow.
200 lines for The Secretary of State for Education. Decline the following sentence.
I am a cretin.
You, Matt Hancock, are a cretin.
He, Boris Johnson, is a cretin.
We the Government are cretins.
You, SAGE, are cretins.
They, the Main Stream Media, are cretins.
This is one of the best comments I’ve read
love it 
They were all cretinous.
Love it
The depravity, the sheer, utter, merciless evil of these people is to me, beyond belief.
There are no excuses for what these SICK bastards are doing to children.
NONE.
NONE — it is EVIL
Prove first that all this testing isn’t harmful! Parents should refuse to allow these invasive repetitive tests until it can be proven not to harm the children’s mucous membranes, cilia etc. We know it harms their psyches.
They should, but they don’t. I’m a teacher and have to give the damn things out to my form every week. No one in my own household has ever been tested once; people don’t seem to understand that none of it is mandatory and are incapable of doing even the most basic research. I despair.
You say it’s not mandatory, yet you “have to” give the damned things out. So that part is ‘mandatory’.
They “could” be scrapped immediately if anyone in government had any integrity.
They do NOT know the meaning of the word.
Why cant Williamson pronounce Bubbles properly have you listened? its really odd
Is it because he’s a Fucking Cunt?
So, end the ridiculous bubbles 4 days before the summer holidays start? What a cunning plan from the Baldrick of British politics.
Some areas break up before the 19th. But this date has been pushed by the opposition i.e. the minority who are apparently on our side in the tory party.
The reason of course Boris/Stanley/Carrie/Klaus love the chaos in schools e.g. whole classes and year groups sent home for one (false) positive test is because they want to vaccinate kids. If they keep sending them home they think parents will more readily offer up their dim witted progeny for ‘vaccination’. Same with travel.
This morning, I should be caring for my youngest granddaughter while her sister, my other granddaughter, goes to school. I am not doing this however because someone in her class has “tested positive” so she has to stay at home until next Thursday.
Instead, I will come here to leave this comment from Christian Drosten (boo, hiss) who provided the first “PCR test” for the WHO to use last year and which was held up as the gold standard. The results of this test are used by governments to legitimise massive restrictions and take away our human rights.
As early as 2014, Drosten said about this PCR test method “The method is so sensitive that it can detect even a single molecule of the virus genome. If such a pathogen has, for example, spent one day on the nasal mucosa of a nurse, without her getting sick or noticing anything, she suddenly becomes a case of MERS. Where previously there were reports of people who were ‘sick to death’ (my inverted commas) the statistics now contain mildly ill people and people who are in fact perfectly healthy. This is how the explosion in the number of cases in Saudi Arabia could be explained. In addition, the media on the spot have inflated the matter incredibly. “
Exactly what has happened with the Corona virus.
This idiot Williamson seriously thinks that schoolchildren should be subjected to daily testing? What planet is he on? He should be sectioned for his and everyone else’s safety.
Especially after concerns have been raised over ethylene oxide – exposing children to it 5 days a week is simply a risk not worth taking, especially as children (who don’t have compromised immune systems) have a vanishingly small chance of dying from the virus (1-in-2.5 million or thereabouts, I believe) and are not vectors of the virus.
This is simply to make life so unpleasant that parents will agree to letting their children be jabbed – does anyone with critical thinking skills still believe this is about curtailing a virus?
When life becomes so unpleasant, why take it out on your children instead of those causing the misery?
Indeed – but the propaganda machine will urge parents on.
God, they’re so obsessed with their bloody virus – and selling tests and jabs.
Bubbles are utterly pointless – anyone with half a brain would know that – as many, many kids have siblings that span bubbles.
I asked my 11 year old grandson how many in his class of 32 have siblings in other bubbles. He estimated at least eight! Even he realises these ridiculous bubbles are pointless. Just “experts” pretending they are “doing something”.