Junk Science? Number 119: More deaths caused by Lockdown than Covid-19
In a May 2020 BMJ article at least two-thirds of ‘extra deaths’ in the community in the UK, were not caused by Covid-19 but were more the product of Lockdown and an inability to access hospitals. In the USA, according to CDC data, no extra deaths have occurred due to Covid.
1. UK deaths ‘due to Lockdown’
David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, is quite clear and said that covid-19 did not explain the high number of deaths taking place in the community. Yet these extra deaths were largely blamed on Covid-19 in the media.
In just 5 weeks to the beginning of May, care homes and other community settings had dealt with a ‘staggering burden’ of 30 000 more deaths than would normally be expected in this period.
Of those 30 000, only 10 000 have had covid-19 specified on the death certificate. Spiegelhalter said “the huge number of unexplained extra deaths in homes and care homes is extraordinary. When we look back . . . this rise in non-Covid extra deaths outside the hospital is something I hope will be given really severe attention.”
Cancer, circulatory and heart disease, dementia were causes on death certificates and may have been prevented if patients had had normal access to doctors and hospitals. In the week after Lockdown, deaths spiked, but then returned to normal.
Lockdown clearly makes a significant contribution to increases in death rates from non-Covid causes.
2. USA – CDC figures show no increase in deaths due to Covid
So is Covid-19 killing lots more people than normal ‘flu?
Not according to Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Johns-Hopkins, who “critically analysed the effect of COVID-19 on U.S. deaths using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in her webinar titled ‘COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data,’”
Brand showed that while there was a seasonal uptick in death rates from Covid, it is always thus in the ‘flu season, where you see more people dying from inherent health weaknesses – cardiovascular, diabetes and respiratory illnesses.
Brand decided to look into the 200,000 Covid deaths as a percentage of the 1.7 million total deaths between mid-March and mid-September. Looking at the CDC’s figures for the percentage of deaths by age group she saw no change on a normal year. Worse, she saw no volume increases either. Of course, more older people died – they always do. But this was nothing out of the ordinary for any year and any ‘flu season.
3. Latest CDC figures confirm this lack of extra deaths.
Instead of this past year showing a spike in Covid-19 deaths in America as the vaccination boys would like you to believe, 2020 has actually seen LOWER levels of total deaths in the USA year on year. Was the previous ‘flu strain more dangerous than Covid-19?
In 2019 when ‘normal‘ ‘flu strains were in force in the USA, the total number of deaths was 2,854,838. In 2020 with Covid-19 raging and hospitals at breaking point, with 2 weeks to go in the year, the total was 2,835,533. And in the past two weeks the total deaths number has fallen even more year on year.
In fact this has been the story all year. Do you remember the panic in March and April when Covid first hit? Covid deaths were 37,308.
Unfortunately for the Doomsayers the total number of deaths in 2020 were 819,659, and that was 45,522 fewer than in 2019 when deaths were 865,181.
We can’t find the ‘excess deaths‘ everybody keeps talking about.
Or perhaps there should have been a vaccine in 2019.
