Nimrod103 wrote:The ONS are saying that (having studied the true causes of death) 25% of deaths previously attributed to being caused by Covid, were in fact not caused by Covid - this pertains to the current situation. The victims may have had Covid when they died, but Covid did not cause their deaths.
No, that is not what they are saying.
They haven't studied the true cause of death, or gone back and revisited old cases, and the cases were not previously attributed to being caused by covid.
This isn't some scandal where previous figures were wrong and are being recalculated, there are two sets of figures, this is the difference between them.
I think you have been mislead by the reporting.
They are comparing a) deaths where covid was listed on the death certificate as a possible cause or complication to b) deaths where covid was listed on the death certificate as the underlying cause of death.
Edit: From the ONS notes:
Deaths "involving" a cause include all deaths where the cause was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, as a main cause of death or a contributory cause. Deaths "due to" a cause are subset of "involving", and only include deaths where the cause was the underlying (main) cause of death.
Btw, the ONS also provide the same pair of figures for influenza and pneumonia. There the difference between involved and from for the same week was 78%.
But it seems reasonable to extrapolate that 25% of deaths at the various peaks of deaths during the last year were also not caused by Covid.
You are saying that applying that 25% to the past data is incorrect? Why?
Because is it.
You can look at the actual data from ONS that I posted earlier that shows that.
If you believe the ONS data for last week, why wouldn't you believe it for all weeks?
For w/b 2nd April, the difference between 'involving covid' and 'caused by covid' was 23%.
For w/b 8th Jan it was 11%.
As to why, there seems at least two obvious answers.
a) Hospitals are better able to cope with cases, increasing survival chances for all
b) The people catching covid now are, on average, younger than those catching it earlier.
That makes their chances of surviving covid much higher.
That means there is more chance of them happening to die of something else.
Putting it very bluntly, those most likely to die of covid already have.