They do offer one, perhaps the most likely: a rise in influenza or other respiratory illnesses. The Covid pandemic considerably limited our social interactions then suddenly threw us all back together. So it reduced our natural immunity, bolstered by regular vaccinations many of us have, to new versions of 'flu. Even the common cold had a very Happy Christmas, too; for much the same reasons.
There might also have been more deaths from pneumonia and bronchitis, though I would have thought they would been mentioned. These can kill at any age.
I think our main problem was that SARS_CoVid_19t was a new disease to our species, finding its way extremely rapidly through a population not already immune to it, and modifying itself rapidly as it went. It is also a strange disease with many possible effects so an infection could be highly specific to the individual, depending on his or her own health generally; and any disease including Covid and Influenza can ruin your defences against something else. Or vice-versa.
Merely quoting "excess deaths" figures alone is of no value even if it keeps newspaper editors in work, though I would trust [i]The Times[/i] a lot more than some other papers. It needs comparator numbers, analysis and reasons as well, and in the context of public health and epidemiology generally.
I don't know if you are looking for some "answer" that will entertain the conspiracy and pro-pandemic types, rather like those who demand "Full Public Inquiry" then scream "whitewash" if its answers are true but not what they wanted.
Nevertheless, it is a serious question that needs a serious answer whether it suits them or not.
@ArishMell Strange coincidence isn't it how the most vaxed nations on earth seem to have the highest sudden deaths while the unvaxed nations have virtually no sudden deaths. I think we should all look for coincidences. SQUIRREL!!!!!
[c=008099] When media sourcesdomentionthe rise in excess deaths, a number of likely factors are generally offered, such as the recent resurgence in flu cases, along with Covid’safter-effects. Government data informs us that Covid-19 accounted for just a small percentage of total excess deaths throughout 2022 and into 2023. Clearly, other factors are driving the high levels of mortality.
Matters related to lockdowns get a lot of blame. A report from theBritish Heart Foundationfound that over 30,000 people in England died ‘needlessly’ of heart disease since the start of the pandemic – 230 excess deaths per week – in part due to treatment delays during lockdowns.Yet the charity egregiously ignores the part vaccines have played in these cardiac arrests.
Certainly there was a huge drop in the numbers of 40- to 74-year-olds receiving health checks owing to lockdowns. And yes, there have been increased rates of depression and of suicide, of obesity, of drug-taking, of alcohol abuse, all of which affected large numbers of people during lockdown.
Theirony however is striking: Lockdowns were enforced to protect us from death and illness through Covid. Now we’re told that these very lockdown measures have proved the actual cause of thousands of other deaths and serious health issues all over the country. Are we meantto regard this as normal, or accept it as necessary collateral damage?
Next we are given the NHS crisis –the reasonmost frequently proffered to explain away the death surge.It is persuasive, as Kathy Gyngell arguedhere,not least being theimpact of recent strikes. Butusing the NHS crisis as the main explanation for the UK’s high excess deaths is untenable.Excess mortality is occurringright acrossthe Western world, including nations such as Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany;some of whose healthcare services are not under the same degree of strain as here in the UK. Likewise, in the US, a country with one of the most accessible health care systems in the world, the rate of excess deaths is similar to much of Europe (one of the hardest-hit age groups being the under-50s).
In contrast, South Africa and Bulgaria – two middle-income countries with much lower levels of Covid vaccinations – have reported normal or below-normal deaths for several months. Most intriguingly, in most other African nations, where vaccine uptake was less than 5 per cent, excess deaths are in general not being observed at all.
This brings into question the motive ofnurses, paramedics and physiotherapists, choosing to strike at the very hour when thousands more people are dying than usual. Not only so, but polls suggest that such action is supported by 60 per cent of the British public (sympathy vote?). Would even 1 per cent of the public have supported NHS strikes during the height of Covid?
The possibility that adverse reactions from Covid vaccines are contributing to the excess death statistics is all but ignored. This despite the fact that increasing numbers ofdoctors and scientistsare now raising their heads above the parapet – in the face of threat totheircareers– and speaking out about the dangers associated with the Covid jabs.
Where diagnoses can be made, causes of deaths in younger age groups often involve cardiac issues, strokes and blood clots in various organs – the same categories to be found in the vaccine adverse effects lists, such as the MHRA’s Yellow Card scheme and America’s VAERS system. Post-mortems, when done, often reveal tell-tale findings of spike protein damage.
Not that sole blame for excess deaths can be placed on the vaccines, any more than they can on lockdowns. Sweden vaccinated a higher proportion of its population than the UK did, yet we don’t seesuch high levelsof excess deathin that country.
The point is that despite increased pressure fromhealth professionals (ofall genres),academics,politicians,insurance brokers,funeral directorsand some charities (sadly, notably few church leaders) to investigate vaccineinjuries anddeaths, the government is refusing to show appropriateconcern about what may prove to be the greatest health crisis to face Britain. Just a few days ago, a group of 100+ UK health professionals and academics, ever concerned at the level of excess deaths,repeated their callfor ‘an urgent pause in the Covid vaccination programme, pending a thorough and independent review of all available safety data’.*
As long as the mainstream media remains soeerily silenton this momentous issue, and as long as the government stubbornly and negligently holds back from investigating the matter, speculation will continue to mount as to why we’re being barred from ascertaining the real cause(s) of this unacceptable surge in human deaths across our country. Otherwise, trust in governing authorities, already at an all-time low, is likely to give way to an aversion towards them.
*Doctors for Patients UK, The Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART) and the UK Medical Freedom Alliance have also written ajoint open letterto the Charity Commission, expressing deep concern regarding ‘allegations that the British Heart Foundation is involved in concealing and withholding important information relating to the potential of the novel mRNA vaccines to damage cardiac tissue and function’. They call for the immediate release of important information, and for an independent and urgent investigation.
Martin succinctly lists what he thinks credible causes, some of which are in that article. The problems of delayed treatment, isolation and the like are certainly ones that do need addressing.
Those brought by isolation might have been a consequence unlikely to have been thought of at the start. We had to move, far and fast, and did - and had that moving been all smooth and untroubled it must have been on another planet.
I wonder too if there is something about the CoVid-19 disease itself not yet spotted. We know it can have serious long-term effects but these are evident to the patient from the start. We also know people can be infected asymptomatically. Might there be something in the disease that strikes much later? I don't know, but there are diseases that can lie dormant for months or even years, so I offer it as a serious suggestion.
Blaming the vaccines is all very well but too easy. All medication has potential side-effects, we know this hazard and most of us accept the risk - helping know risk from hazard helps. Tragic though it is for those affected, mercifully of all who were vaccinated, many at least three times and with different ones* the proportion who later suffered fatal complications that might be from the vaccine, is still very small. That does [i]not[/i] mean it should be ignored. It should be investigated, properly and impartially; but if none had been were vaccinated at all, the death-toll in the first year alone would have been horrific.
Deaths not only from CoVid itself but of so many unable to be treated as nations' health services became overloaded by the corona virus; far worse than what we saw in reality.
Whatever our present predicament, clearly we must try to understand fully just what is happening.
SARS_CoVid_19 has not and will not go away. Nor have poliomyelitis and bubonic plague. Also, it is not the only pandemic or epidemic we have seen so far in this Century alone, and it will not be the last. As human population and movements grow so will the opportunities for infectious diseases, new or old, to break out; and we can all only hope for the lessons of this one to be learnt - including not only the science and medicine, but also avoiding them becoming cheap political tools.
###
* (As I was: Covid booster, plus pneumonia, shingles and flu, all in one week.)
I've been reading and learning quite a bit about all of the different things causing heart attacks. In addition to these excellent suggestions below, napping too much or too little causes heart attacks too.
BTW...if being sarcastic causes heart attacks then I'm in serious trouble.
@BizSuitStacy Don't let's forget climate change. Remember, that thing they used to call Global Warming, until they discovered the planet is cooling? If you garden, you are fully exposed to the climate, which men have abused so much (by breathing, etc.) that it can now murder you?
If you must be sarcastic ( which it is, let's face it, difficult not to be, in view of the loonies who lead us), then avoid doing it outdoors.
Although the drafting is not entirely clear, I assume the author means factors other than Covid itself. These are, in my view, a wide range of consequences of the government’s lockdown policies, including: reduced immunity caused by people being isolated from infections; people failing to seek or obtain treatment for non-Covid conditions during lockdowns; and economic decline resulting in things like poor nutrition and lack of heating for the less well-off.
In addition the nhs, which hardly buckled during the pandemic because demand for its services for other illnesses was reduced, is now crumbling in some areas. It’s ironic that if this number of excess deaths had been, or were believed to have been, caused directly by Covid or by some comparable disease, there would be an almighty panic. As it is, people just shrug their shoulders. And no-one in politics will admit that lockdowns may have been a mistake, because all parties supported them at the time.
When media sourcesdomentionthe rise in excess deaths, a number of likely factors are generally offered, such as the recent resurgence in flu cases, along with Covid’safter-effects. Government data informs us that Covid-19 accounted for just a small percentage of total excess deaths throughout 2022 and into 2023. Clearly, other factors are driving the high levels of mortality.
Matters related to lockdowns get a lot of blame. A report from theBritish Heart Foundationfound that over 30,000 people in England died ‘needlessly’ of heart disease since the start of the pandemic – 230 excess deaths per week – in part due to treatment delays during lockdowns.Yet the charity egregiously ignores the part vaccines have played in these cardiac arrests.
Certainly there was a huge drop in the numbers of 40- to 74-year-olds receiving health checks owing to lockdowns. And yes, there have been increased rates of depression and of suicide, of obesity, of drug-taking, of alcohol abuse, all of which affected large numbers of people during lockdown.
Theirony however is striking: Lockdowns were enforced to protect us from death and illness through Covid. Now we’re told that these very lockdown measures have proved the actual cause of thousands of other deaths and serious health issues all over the country. Are we meantto regard this as normal, or accept it as necessary collateral damage?
Next we are given the NHS crisis –the reasonmost frequently proffered to explain away the death surge.It is persuasive, as Kathy Gyngell arguedhere,not least being theimpact of recent strikes. Butusing the NHS crisis as the main explanation for the UK’s high excess deaths is untenable.Excess mortality is occurringright acrossthe Western world, including nations such as Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany;some of whose healthcare services are not under the same degree of strain as here in the UK. Likewise, in the US, a country with one of the most accessible health care systems in the world, the rate of excess deaths is similar to much of Europe (one of the hardest-hit age groups being the under-50s).
In contrast, South Africa and Bulgaria – two middle-income countries with much lower levels of Covid vaccinations – have reported normal or below-normal deaths for several months. Most intriguingly, in most other African nations, where vaccine uptake was less than 5 per cent, excess deaths are in general not being observed at all.
This brings into question the motive ofnurses, paramedics and physiotherapists, choosing to strike at the very hour when thousands more people are dying than usual. Not only so, but polls suggest that such action is supported by 60 per cent of the British public (sympathy vote?). Would even 1 per cent of the public have supported NHS strikes during the height of Covid?
The possibility that adverse reactions from Covid vaccines are contributing to the excess death statistics is all but ignored. This despite the fact that increasing numbers ofdoctors and scientistsare now raising their heads above the parapet – in the face of threat totheircareers– and speaking out about the dangers associated with the Covid jabs.
Where diagnoses can be made, causes of deaths in younger age groups often involve cardiac issues, strokes and blood clots in various organs – the same categories to be found in the vaccine adverse effects lists, such as the MHRA’s Yellow Card scheme and America’s VAERS system. Post-mortems, when done, often reveal tell-tale findings of spike protein damage.
Not that sole blame for excess deaths can be placed on the vaccines, any more than they can on lockdowns. Sweden vaccinated a higher proportion of its population than the UK did, yet we don’t seesuch high levelsof excess deathin that country.
The point is that despite increased pressure fromhealth professionals (ofall genres),academics,politicians,insurance brokers,funeral directorsand some charities (sadly, notably few church leaders) to investigate vaccineinjuries anddeaths, the government is refusing to show appropriateconcern about what may prove to be the greatest health crisis to face Britain. Just a few days ago, a group of 100+ UK health professionals and academics, ever concerned at the level of excess deaths,repeated their callfor ‘an urgent pause in the Covid vaccination programme, pending a thorough and independent review of all available safety data’.*
As long as the mainstream media remains soeerily silenton this momentous issue, and as long as the government stubbornly and negligently holds back from investigating the matter, speculation will continue to mount as to why we’re being barred from ascertaining the real cause(s) of this unacceptable surge in human deaths across our country. Otherwise, trust in governing authorities, already at an all-time low, is likely to give way to an aversion towards them.
*Doctors for Patients UK, The Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART) and the UK Medical Freedom Alliance have also written ajoint open letterto the Charity Commission, expressing deep concern regarding ‘allegations that the British Heart Foundation is involved in concealing and withholding important information relating to the potential of the novel mRNA vaccines to damage cardiac tissue and function’. They call for the immediate release of important information, and for an independent and urgent investigation.
