UK Covid death toll

[baggy1]

Billy - do you understand the concept of excess deaths? It is basically how many more people that died at a point in, or period of, comparable time. It isn't how many more died in winter than summer. It also doesn't matter what people died of, it is just a direct comparison of total deaths. You can't have a 5 year average of excess deaths, you can have a 5YA for deaths. Your figures are doolally.

So for example in November and December 2017 (weeks 44-52) there were 94,766 deaths - the 5 year average at that point in time for those same weeks was 88,818
Added to that the total deaths for January and February (weeks 1-9) 2018 were 116,986 - the 5 year average was 105,777

So the total deaths for Nov to Feb 17/18 was 211,752 and the 5YA was 194,595, giving an excess death figure of 17,157. Where have you got 49k from? It's simply not true.

So the figure of 63,278 more deaths to date in 2020 is compared with the same period for 2019 (there have been 505,862 deaths in 2020 so far compared with 2019 deaths up to week 44 of 442,584 and the 5YA of 448,764) - that is what excess deaths are and no flu season in the last century has come close to touching that figure and we haven't even got to flu season.

And when you add the fact that the start of the year deaths were below the 5YA (4.8k less in 2020 than the 5YA at week 12) you will see how bad covid has been in terms of deaths this year. We won't be able to give a true figure until March 2021.