How has COVID-19 affected the Top Causes of Death?

One of our Freedom Of Information requests came back yesterday from ONS regarding Causes of Death 👇🏼

The question we asked on 31st October was: 

“​Regarding the weekly Registered England and Wales Deaths report, is it possible to provide further categories, say the Top 10 Underlying Causes of death? This would help assess to what extent any excess mortality seen through the Autumn/Winter is driven up by COVID-19, or in actual fact by other causes.”

Given the frequency of this request, ONS have actually created a monthly England (& Wales) report to answer this exact question, as well as showing age-standardised and population-adjusted analysis.

Conclusions

The details are VERY TELLING. In the 4 months between July and October, what can be deduced is as follows:

1. Statistically, people are NOT dying before their time.
2. Clearly there is a diagnosis shift from Pneumonia/ILI to COVID-19
3. (~approx half of COVID deaths).
4. Clearly there is a one-to-one Diagnosis Shift from a person’s Chronic Condition(s) to COVID-19.
5. We’ve witnessed 4,410 extra deaths that are NOT due to top causes or COVID-19.

Look at the totals…

Do make sure to wrap your head around the totals…

😮 There is a 600 reduction in Deaths across the Top 10 causes, and that INCLUDES deaths tagged as the underlying cause being COVID-19.

What this means is that during this period, COVID-19 – be it the genuine disease state or false positives – is DISPLACING deaths that would otherwise have occurred.

🤧 Nowhere is that more pronounced than deaths due to Pneumonia or Influenza Like Illnesses.

🤔 The fact that the traditional Top 10 causes have shrunk by 4,561 deaths yet there is an excess of all-cause mortality during this period is most perplexing.

😢 Clearly, less popular forms of death – probably diseases of metabolic dysfunction such as Diabetes as well as Mental Health and self harm related deaths – is swelling up this year in particular.

Time to zoom out

This insight is important.

We need to ZOOM OUT and start considering the total negative consequence and collateral damage from being myopically obsessed with one mild disease form that targets those close to the end of their natural life.

#Context #FactsNotFear

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SOURCE: ONS Monthly Mortality Analysis England & Wales. Link to the datasets is listed in the below comment. 👇🏼

🟢 ONS Monthly Mortality Analysis England & Wales – all datasets

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