The Financial Times in their coronavirus update (no £) claimed yesterday that the official death toll of 17,337 is in reality around 41,000. Using figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which are about 11 days behind because of delays in filing death certificates, they extrapolate from the government's figures for hospital Covid-19 deaths and claim the actual number as of Tuesday this week is in reality 41,000.
They reach this conclusion by looking at the overall number of deaths from all causes compared to the figures that are seen at the moment. Chris Giles a reporter at the FT tweeted this:
The England and Wales chart, compared with the previous 50 years shows this is not a normal seasonal flu— Chris Giles (@ChrisGiles_) April 22, 2020
Carl Henegan, professor of evidence based medicine at Oxford university, says: "I don’t think we’ve ever seen such a sharp upturn in deaths at that rate" pic.twitter.com/Wg18u9Oxcy
The number of deaths in the UK has moved from running at below long-term averages to well above them as a result of the pandemic. Excess deaths from all causes stand 16,952 above the seasonal average across the UK since fatalities from Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, began to mount in mid-March.
From the FT again:
The “all cause excess mortality” figure is widely recognised as the best measure of the death toll linked to the pandemic.
David Spiegelhalter, the Winton professor of public understanding of risk at Cambridge university, said it was “the only unbiased comparison” given the problems measuring deaths and their causes.
The ONS data showed that deaths registered in the week ending April 10 were 75 per cent above normal in England and Wales, the highest level for more than 20 years. From this the FT extrapolate the present figures for hospital deaths only and arrive at a graph which looks like this:
And it's very hard to argue against it isn't it? What other possible cause could there have been?
