Updated: 16/02/2021 with December 2020 figures
Almost double the number of people died this April, in England and Wales compared to any April over the past 15 years. Since 2006, the average number of deaths in April — for any reason — has been in the 45,000 range. This April, 2020, almost 90,000 people died. This alone shows that the situation right now in the UK is pretty bad.
More and more, my social media seems to be filled with comments and posts that are denying the severity of COVID-19. There is a deep-rooted lack of trust between the populace of the UK and the government. Over the past 10 years, we have been repeatedly told to not trust the experts, that we’ve had enough of them and that ‘we’ know better (Thanks, Mr. Gove).
This has lead to a rebellion against authority. It doesn’t matter what is asked of us; we simply don’t want to comply because we know what’s best. There is a mentality that the ‘MSM’ (mainstream media) are lying, fearmongering and spreading propaganda for the government, and that we must fight a supposed ‘New World Order’ who want to break our society down and rebuild it to suit ‘them’ (despite the fact that those who are accused of being part of this already have a system that works fantastically for them).
Often those that believe this are people who also, to some degree, believe COVID-19 is a hoax, or at the very least, that measures like social distancing and/or compulsory mask wearing is an infringement on their ‘freedom’. So is wearing a seatbelt in a car — and yet that is law. We do it because it’s common sense to protect yourself. The only difference I can see is that wearing a seatbelt protects yourself. Wearing a mask protects others. This leads us full circle back to the ‘I know best’ selfish attitude that has become more popular over the last few years. Many old photos of the Spanish Flu pandemic show everyone wearing masks. It is not a new concept that wearing a mask protects yourself and others around you. If there is even the slightest chance that wearing a mask may help avoid passing on a disease that someone may die from, it is worth it.
Many of those who I see on the more extreme end of rebelling against this so-called government control are the same people who just a year ago could have suggested wearing a facemask to avoid CCTV facial recognition technology. It appears to me that if our government were claiming COVID was nothing to worry about or taken seriously, these same people would be the ones wearing masks and calling for tougher restrictions to save lives. It is about the rebellion against authority, not necessarily the actual issue that is being rebelled against.
But that’s just my opinion.
Following a recent spate of (dangerous) posts about how we are taking COVID way too seriously, that it’s no more severe than the flu, that COVID death figures have been drastically conflated to pump up the numbers and scare you via the aforementioned ‘MSM’, how lockdowns don’t work, how we need to just get on with our lives, that the vaccine is dangerous, I decided to create a very visual way of seeing just how different this is to our normal flu, and normal yearly deaths.
I have been told many times — “do your own research”. So I did. One of the things that keeps coming up is people arguing there haven’t been any more deaths than there usually would be over the year. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) 5 year excess deaths figures are not enough; many people say that deaths vary wildly anyway. We need to check against a longer time period.
Now we’re at the end of the year, the data is available for us to check.
The ONS website conveniently has a publicly accessible record of every death recorded since 2006 in England and Wales, broken down by month:
These figures, I thought, would be the easiest way to tell if there is a large difference in the number of deaths in 2020 compared to death figures of the past 15 years. Put aside the argument of ‘fake death certificates’ listing COVID as the cause of death, let’s just look at how many people have actually died regardless of cause each month since 2006.
The first thing I did was put all these numbers into one table:
Following this, I then built a visual chart of this data:
Looking at this data, it is really clear that for some reason or another there is a huge rise in deaths in 2020 around April and May 2020.
If you follow the 2020 line, you can even see where different policies are brought in. The spring lockdown is announced at the end of March, and over the next couple of months after the April boom, deaths drastically fall off into the summer. July, August, we’re back within the average — things don’t look to bad. ‘Eat Out to Help Out!’ commands Rishi. ‘Go back to work!’ advises Boris. ‘Open the schools!’ says Gavin. Then September, October and November, unsurprisingly we start to see a rise above the average again.
Month-by-month breakdown:
Jan: Normal, we’re right in the middle of the 15 year average.
Feb: The same as Jan.
Mar: We see a bit of a rise — we’re now surfing the upper numbers of the 15 year average, and when you break it down further (week by week) there is an increase over the month. Therefore we go into lockdown towards the end of March.
April: Allowing for roughly a two week incubation period, it is the middle of April when we see most cases, and shortly after, deaths (which peaked on the 21st April). After that, new infections begin to fall off for the second two weeks of April, but we are still dealing with the ones from March. That’s when ICUs were overrun, there was no large scale testing, no large scale test and trace, PPE shortages and so on. So mid April is a lethal period even though it’s during the lockdown, because we’re seeing the results from the two weeks prior. This explains the huge increase in deaths in April compared to the 15-year-average.
May: We have a drastic reduction in new cases as a result of the lockdown, and the deaths follow that trend and reduce as well. It’s still much higher than the average though — the previous 15 year high in May is around 45,000 deaths — this year was around 55,000. So it’s another 10,000 deaths that are related to COVID-19, whether they are from the disease itself or from the restrictions surrounding it (I will go into this in more depth below).
June: Thankfully, the downward trend continues. We’re still high compared to the previous 15 years, surfing the very top of the average, but only by around 500 deaths from the previous all time high — it’s back to acceptable levels. Virus under control (or so it seems).
July: Back into the middle of the averages. Safe. Time to get economy back — Eat Out to Help Out. Schools will reopen next month. Go back to work posters on public transport and billboards.
August: It appears we’re actually fully done with the virus. Deaths lower than many years previously. Economy picking back up — let’s extend eat out to help out. Schools start back this month. If you can go back to work, do. Smaller events allowed to happen. Furlough reduced so more people are forced to find work.
Sept: Hold on, why is the line going back up… we’re back surfing the top of the 15-year-average. Previous all time high is around 1,500 deaths less. At this point it (retrospectively) becomes clear that Eat Out to Help Out, schools returning, and work going back has increased transmission rates again. Once again if we break it down by weeks, we see the same as we did in March — the trend is increasing every week.
Oct: Now we’re about 2,000 deaths over the average. One other year is up there — 2019, which is really interesting. Still around 1000 deaths less than 2020. If you follow the 2019 line, you can see that from Oct 2019 it begins to rise and follow above the 15-year-average. The only year higher is 2020! Which leads to the question of whether we had COVID-19 around long before we realised — but that’s another article! Given the way that we were almost exactly mirroring the trend from the spring in terms of increases, the government opted for a four-week lockdown to help avoid that.
Nov: Following the steady rise in cases, we went into a ‘lockdown’. Clearly, too little, too late. It felt nothing like the first lockdown; it was weak, and many people didn’t stick to it. Lockdown fatigue is real, especially in winter when we are all struggling with the lack of social contact amid cold, dark and wet days. The fun and excitement of the first national lockdown is long gone. We all want to see our friends and family. Many, many people decided to ignore the advice to stay home and safe.
Then, unfortunately, a new strain was identified in late November… which is estimated to be around 50% more transmissible than the previous ‘regular’ strain. The highest November death rate (from all causes) in 15 years.
Dec: On 30th Dec 2020, deaths attributed to COVID almost doubled overnight. Now of course, due to the 28-days-later system, the number of Covid deaths that have been reported is not necessarily totally accurate, so it will be interesting over the next few months to see what happens into the new year in terms of total mortality. New reported cases rose by 10,000 in one day. It’s like the lockdown didn’t happen and the ‘normal’ COVID-19 trend continued, apart from it did happen and there’s a new -faster spreading- strain.
Many people argue that some increased deaths were due to medical care being put on hold, mental health strains due to lockdown leading to increased suicides, and so on. Sadly, that is most likely true — there has been a rise in calls and visits to mental health support lines and websites, and many surgeries and check ups were put on hold which inevitably have lead to some deaths. The slashes to NHS funding over the past decade have brought it to a point where it struggles at the best of times. Let alone now.
That said, I don’t accept that a doubling of our 15-year average death rate in April is due to delayed treatments and increased lockdown struggles alone. The only logical explanation here is that COVID-19 has played a huge part.
At this point, anyone who is still arguing that COVID is a myth, that doctors and nurses are being paid to lie, that the establishment are trying to break down the world, are simply avoiding the facts and desperately searching to fulfil their confirmation biases. A little bit of critical thinking here goes a long way; pandemics happen! We know they have occurred throughout history. Some of our most famous nursery rhymes are based around them (‘Ring a ring of roses…’. As a side note, I wonder if people denied the bubonic plague existed?).
And I get it. It’s horrible to accept that this is something serious that has killed tens of thousands of people in the UK, (and many more across the world), something that is changing our lives, but it is real. Even if it was only the elderly and those with underlying health conditions who are at serious risk from this virus — they deserve to live too.
We need to come together to fight this. Our government’s response has been pathetic, constantly trying to do the minimum and then jumping into action just after it’s too late.
Stick together.
Check on your friends and family.
Spend time doing things you enjoy.
Wear a mask.
Respect social distancing rules.
If you know someone working in healthcare, support them.
We will get through this, but for now, it is more important than ever to work together to slow and stop this virus.
