UK Covid death toll

[hudds]

Week 11 to the 19th March gives us another week of normal deaths in England and Wales for the time of year, slightly below the 5YA again by just short of 900 deaths. Next week will be the 12 month anniversary of the 1st week with a noticeable excess death figure and hopefully will be the last week I need to run a comparison.

Looking at the detail behind the figures by age group the number of deaths for all of the 5 year groupings over 75 are noticeably down on 2020, there could be a number of reasons for that including the vaccination and there are less available to die after the last 12 months but lets hope that we are heading back to normality after the vaccination. It is probably worth pointing out that we are still looking at figures that reflect the restrictions in place at that time but it does give us scope to head back to normal.

In the 52 weeks (2020 was a 53 week year so 1 to go) since the 1st excess death week there have been just short of 112k more deaths than the 5 year average. It does look like there will be a final death toll for that 12 month period of 650k compared to the 5YA of 538k and the worst year for deaths in the last 60 years of just short of 600k in 1976. This is a misleading comparison due to population sizes but it does give an indication of the problem covid has bought us, if you take into account population size estimates then this is the worst year % wise since 1996 and that may change because the indications are that the population figure for 2020 is overestimated which will make the picture worse unfortunately.

The big message from all of this weekly misery is that we cannot forget the last 12 months and think that we can just leap back into normality. We have to learn the lessons from the mistakes of the last 12 months and take slow steps to allow us to gauge any changes incrementally, and we also have to accept that as we learn and see unexpected outcomes we will have to react accordingly.

We also have to look at the way we work as a society and make sure that the resources are available to those that need them. One thing that is clear from this pandemic is that it impacts on the most vulnerable, the poorest and the elderly. We can also see how this impacts on those that have underlying conditions and we have to advance science to identify, through regular testing, those underlying conditions and encourage individuals to get healthier through education, diet and exercise. There are so many lessons to learn and it will be easy for us to slip back into 'normal' but as a country we need to heed these lessons to lessen the impact next time (hopefully a long way off).

It also impacts upon the fattest.  Empirically.  Overwhelmingly.  But is not stressed enough. So the message for the health of the nation is prevent gluttony for this specific reason as well as the other obvious, long-standing ones.