The Telegraph‘s front page led today with the story that nearly a quarter of deaths (23%) registered “with Covid” in the latest official data for England and Wales were not “due to Covid” but were due to another underlying cause, according to the information entered on the death certificate. This percentage is up on earlier figures. The same figure for the original wave up to August 31st in England and Wales was just 8% (4,159 out of 52,327).
However, there is good reason to think both figures are too low. A Freedom of Information enquiry (pictured below) found that for Northern Ireland, the proportion of deaths that mentioned Covid but identified an antecedent condition (or conditions) as the cause of death for the period March 1st to November 20th was 38% (494 out of 1,301).
Why would Covid be the underlying cause of 62% of Covid deaths in Northern Ireland but 92% in England and Wales for broadly the same period? It wouldn’t, of course. The difference is how the deaths are recorded.
One reason may be because doctors in England and Wales were given a stronger steer to record Covid as the underlying cause of death. The British Medical Association told doctors early in the pandemic:
In those cases where the doctor is confident on medical grounds that a particular cause of death is likely then that should be entered on the MCCD [death certificate]. COVID-19 is an acceptable direct or underlying cause of death for the purposes of completing the MCCD, even without the results of a positive test, and it is important that likely COVID-19 deaths are reported as such via the registrar.
No similar guidance appears to exist for Northern Ireland.
Even 38% may be too low, however. A review by a county in Sweden in August found that 85% of the 122 Covid deaths investigated were due to a different underlying cause.
The Östergötland region has examined all deaths that have died at home or in special housing with confirmed COVID-19. Records from 122 people have been reviewed, which is 51% of the 240 people who had died in the county when the review was done.
The cause of death in the cause of death certificate has been COVID-19, but the review shows that other diseases may have contributed or been the decisive cause of death – for example, heart disease, lung disease or dementia.
111 of the deceased outside the hospital had extensive comorbidity and 11 moderate comorbidity. Half were 88 years or older.
COVID-19 was estimated to be the direct cause of death in 15% of deaths. For a majority of the deceased – as many as 70% – COVID-19 was a contributing factor rather than a direct cause. In 15%, the cause of death was judged to be other diseases, then most often heart disease.
The definition of a “Covid death” has been a consistent issue throughout the crisis, with the Government even knocking thousands of deaths off the running total in August after changing the definition following criticism. It has been frequently observed that different standards have been applied to Covid deaths than to other similar diseases – a frail elderly person who died with an acute respiratory condition such as influenza would not, prior to the pandemic, usually have had influenza recorded as the underlying cause of death, whereas Covid will often be recorded as such in similar circumstances. This novel practice has inflated the pandemic death toll and fed the narrative of fear.
Overall death totals (from all causes) are generally a much better guide to the impact of the pandemic – though even there deaths due to interventions become mixed up with the Covid deaths. Trying to get to the bottom of the true Covid death toll will not be an easy task at all.
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There is a small handful of people whose existence has significantly impacted the world such that humanity would be much better off without them, Bill Gates is one of them.
One of my many weaknesses in life is McDonalds coffee. I sat in my local McDs drinking my coffee at 15:00 and not one alarm to be heard, it was pretty full as well.
Oh yeah. It was National Emergency Alert Day wasn’t it? How did it go I wonder…? I can’t be doing with two mask articles in one day so I’m paying homage to these Frenchies instead. If you want to oppose a motorway being built, just get off your ass and build a wall. Love it!
”Over 8,000 opponents of a new motorway in southern France demonstrated near the village of Saix on Saturday to prevent the project, building a wall of people and then one from actual cement blocks as they vowed to defend local farm land and biodiversity in the area.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/brick-wall-france-motorway-protest
They’re insane green window-llickers, grind them down for the foundations.
I’d be there laying bricks with them if there was gonna be a motorway built through my back yard! Good on them I say. You can care for the environment, nature/wildlife and oppose yet more disruption and pollution with more major roads and not be some ”Climate Change Looney Extremist”.
Well I applaud their methods but linking this to “climate crisis” which is utter BS definitely undermines their cause.
Same here, a busy/crowded high street, hundreds of people, and only a handful of alarms to be heard.
I think plenty of people still got it though, and wouldn’t you think a news programme, of all the places, would know to turn the phones off?
”The government’s new emergency alert test sparked confusion in parts of Britain today as a BBC newsreader faced live disruption, Three customers did not receive any alert, others received it early, and churchgoers were taken by surprise.
Tens of millions of phones across the UK emitted a 10-second siren, which sounded at shortly before 3pm, accompanied by a message which popped up on phones explaining that it was a test and people did not need to take any action.
The siren-like sound, which the Cabinet Office assured would be no more prominent than a mobile’s loudest ringtone setting, sounded on all 4G and 5G devices unless they had been turned off or were in airplane mode.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12004521/Tens-millions-phones-Britain-receive-loud-10-second-alarm-emergency-alert-test.html
You believe the Daily Mail?
Two of us here and many more on reddit and in comments and tweets at The Telegraph etc are reporting almost total absence ( or tiny minority ) of ring tones, alarm sounds, sirens, in crowded places all over the UK, and you believe the official establishment approved version, as expressed by the govt official pr/spokesperson which says that “very few people” and ” a very small number of people” did not receive it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I am under the impression that you don’t even live in the uk/live in the Netherlands? …and you read and post on the Daily Sceptic. ..
Where did I say I believe the DM? Silly me, I was awaiting a bit more feedback than just 2 people on this site thus far.
What has my reading and posting from outside of the UK got to do with anything? We have emergency alerts here too.
Do you have a problem with me or just a really shitty attitude??
Not got a problem with you. Sorry if my remarks came over so badly. I think I was flabbergasted that you seemed to believe the DM version, saying in your own words that a lot of people seemed to have received the alerts, when you weren’t actually here to see for yourself. I did research, read around, and had my own experience here to go on; a busy high street in a city in southern England where I heard just a handful of alarms go off among the 40-50 people within hearing distance.
I was feeling shocked by the govt pr spokesperson’s statement, reported unquestioningly by three different newspapers, which directly contradicted my own experience, and probably that of a great many others, and yet, like during covid, the govt/authorities seem to assume will be believed/accepted/not argued with …and then you posted your comment, so I lost it a bit. Normally usually hugely appreciate your comments.
Certainly not on mine.
In the pub, I think that I might have heard one… I didn;t ask.
Admitting that you were taken for a ride is very hard
Thanks Gary. I recall reading this article & thinking it was very odd even for the Telegraph’s Gates funded global health team.
How much does one have to donate to the Telegraph to be able to “commission” an article?
Just curious to know how cheaply or expensively the Telegraph sells its credibility as a reliable news source.
Back in the day, their rates for advertising used to be freely available, priced per column inch as I recall. Given that circulations have nose-dived and advertising revenues (and the numbers of actual journalists) have gone the same way, I have every confidence that all the major newspapers will be happy to entertain offers for publishing an article from anyone who has the cash available.
Certainly, many old-school journalists must surely be spinning in their graves at the sight of the sort of poorly researched and partisan articles that find their way into the DT at the moment.
Recently the NHS embarked on a Spring Covid Vaccine push, based on reports of increased cases of Covid. My local Hospital mandated masks.
[1] Flu type vaccines have only ever been administered BEFORE the flu season, which is in the Autumn.
[2] All flu and cold type viruses fade away during Spring
[3] By vaccinating in the Spring it will appear that the ‘vaccines’ work because of [2] above
[4] By mandating masks this will heighten the sense of danger thereby encouraging the most susceptible to get a ‘vaccine’.
Nice strategy if you want to shift ‘vaccines’
Below is an transcript of a BBC Radio 4 interview between Nick Robinson and a Ugandan Nurse. This took place during 2020 and Nick was interested to know why Uganda hadn’t seen many cases. Notice the question on PPE
Nick: It’s coming up to 19 minutes to nine. It’s not very long ago that we were told that the coronavirus pandemic could have a terrible impact on Africa, a continent that has suffered terribly from the effects of Ebola and AIDS, but so far at least, so far it has not turned out that way. This week we’re examining how the virus is affecting developing countries around the world. In a moment we will hear from the World Health Organisation. First though the picture on the ground in Uganda. A country that has so far recorded no deaths from COVID-19. I’ve been speaking to a nurse in a General Hospital in the Rakai district of Uganda; Maria Nekalanda:
Maria: We really haven’t seen many patients of the symptoms of Covid. Like we have the measures in place, we do have the tests for outpatients that are coming in, but actually we have not recorded anyone.
Nick: So, is it turning out to be nothing like as scary as maybe you thought it would be a while ago?
Maria: Well, in the start we actually panicked. We were thinking, Oh my god, we are going to be the next dead people and it turned out that over time we stopped panicking and understood that probably this whole Covid situation is just not going to be as bad.
Nick: Are you saying that you’re no longer scared of COVID-19?
Maria: Yeah, we are no longer scared. We are following guidelines, but we are continuing with work.
Nick: And do you have all the protective equipment that you would want to have?
Maria: No, that’s actually a part of what stopped scaring us because for a greater part of the season we did not have protective gear. The health workers on the ground that are also handling general patients are not protected.
Nick: What about for the people who have this? You’ve seen people who get Ebola and how serious that is. How does Covid compare for them?
Maria: Comparing Covid to Ebola will be a kind of joke to the many Ugandans that have lived to see the impacts of Ebola, because people can deal with Covid 19 and they eat normally, they interact in communities, until probably they are found out and they are literally interacting with each other. That doesn’t happen with Ebola. Whilst there is an Ebola outbreak in the region pretection is at the very high pitch. People don’t keep running in at out of those particular areas. But for Covid you realise having Health Ministers come to places where Covid 19 is unchecked and Ebola is like 100 times worse.
Nick: Tell me about the lockdown in your area of Uganda or in Uganda as a whole if you like? What sort of lockdown is it and are people happy to go along with it or are they very frustrated?
Maria: People are actually frustrated because they have been financially affected. They’ve lost a lot in business. They are struggling to put bread on the table. They are like “well, you’re talking about a pandemic which I haven’t been able to go to work, why don’t you let me work?” So the whole lockdown situation is like a punishment.
Nick: Have you any theories why Covid is much less serious in Uganda than it seems to be in the UK for example?
Maria: I would think about the lifestyle. Ugandan’s they have probably access to more organic food. Lower cases of chronic illnesses like obesity. But um…we just think we have a bit of unexplained immunity to that disease. We are not dying just as bad.
Nick: That was Maria Nekalanda a nurse in the Rakai district of Uganda and listening to her is Dr Mary Steve a public health expert at and WHO Africa based in Congo…
The ONS stated that the average age of death from Covid was over 82 Years
The Life Expectancy in Uganda is 63 years.
I tend to be more Team Toby than team James. However, having said that, it is becoming clearer and clearer to me there is, if not a controlling elite, a deeply influencing and agenda driving elite. They aren’t wholly in charge, but are much more akin to the Chairman of the board as distinct from national world leaders who are akin to the CEO.
Dr Clair Craig, recently Tweeted pointing out there are suddenly, globally, 15 minute city “projects” in 6 different countries and three in the UK. None anywhere have been voted for by the electorate. None anywhere have been in any manifesto. It seems now almost preposterous to say there is not a coordinated global agenda.
Similarly the Dutch farm takeover where a full 30,000 farms stood to be compulsory purchased. An agenda not voted on by the people. An agenda that while because moved by government would have been “technically” legal, morally amounted to out and out theft and violation of the ancient common law right for freedom and ownership of private property. The most productive and efficient farmland in the world would have been “taxed” into the hands of globalists who could afford the capital costs of building the wind farms and the production and refinement of eFuels. And this at the same time as there is a cost of living crisis being driven primarily by fuel costs and food costs (more on fuel below). To think there is not a globalist agenda behind this move against the rural people of the Netherlands is similarly preposterous.
There are three major markets where government policy over the past three years has resulted in the transfer of almost 200 billion dollars from the middle classes to globalist elites.
Covid – with $100 billion revenues earned from the vaccines. Bill Gates boasted last year about how Big Pharma investments have been his most lucrative and have provided the highest returns (right before he said “Sadly Omicron is a kind of vaccine”)
Energy, where the cost of wind generated electricity is pegged to gas. So when we are told by the BBC how once the capital investment is made the cost of wind power is marginal. That completely covers the outrageous reality that we, the consumers, have seen none of that benefit and all of it has been siphoned from the pockets of the poor to the pockets of Billionaires. Who again is active in this sector. Why Bill Gates, who has gone in his lifetime from owning virtually zero land to being the biggest landowner in the US.
Lastly ESG has seen massive, government policy backed, capital transfers from the middle class to the ultra rich. Our savings accounts and pension funds have been converted without even most people noticing. The biggest recipients of funds diverted away from end customer profit (interest payments) and into “good” ESG causes is the trillion dollar closed shop private equity business. Again owned by global elites. So the carbon credit and green subsidy playing field is again tipping profits into the pockets of the globalist billionaires who’s private equity funds own the heat pump manufacturers, the insect protein start-ups, the impossible meat businesses.
Shockingly and with brazen chutzpa, the EU has declared defence investment high on the ESG index and so ESG friendly. So yes, now arms producers and suppliers are blessed and in favoured receipt of the most competitive finance. The corruption is so in our faces (or would be if our media weren’t also corrupt), you can’t make it up.
Oh and let’s not forget tech and the money the pandemic tipped into the pockets of tech billionaires.
Nor the role the war in Ukraine is playing in inflating fuel costs that have proven so lucrative.
Excellent article Gary as usual, just hope Toby doesn’t think you’re a conspiracy theorist by going down that rabbit hole. By the way I hate being a pernickety old fart but isn’t that seven people you quoted?
I Googled RGHI, not very comforting reading. Proclamations of research and guidance from the learned to the plebs.
Can this emanation (RGHI) have come from the Reckitt & Colman where many of my family worked in decades past, and which invited denture- wearers to leave their choppers for an afternoon of Steradent testing while they adjourned, toothless, for tea and soggy biscuits and gummy conversation.
Dear me – they should have stuck to Harpic and Dettol.
Had some old friends round for dinner Saturday, one a lawyer the other a midwife. I mentioned the latest findings from Cochrane Review regarding the ineffectiveness of masks. None of them had heard of the report of course, but in unison announced “Oh but of course masks work!!”. Lawyer said “yes they work because they protect the wearer from getting Covid”, Midwife said “No, that’s not right, they don’t protect the wearer, but they do protect other people, that’s why you must wear one”. So they are both utterly convinced masks WORK but have absolutely no idea how or why they are wearing them! Muppets.