John Burn-Murdoch, Chief Data Reporter for the Financial Times has an excellent Twitter thread ([https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1562004612172873728](https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1562004612172873728)) breaking down the data behind this claim – I highly recommend reading it, since the charts and diagrams really aid understand. To summarise though:
* Many countries are experiencing a high level of excess deaths…
* but when you control for aging population and general growth, only 3 European countries (including England & Wales as one ‘country’) still have high levels of excess deaths
* 2 of these (Spain and Portugal) can be explained by an early summer heatwave. But since the data comes from *before* the English heatwave, that can’t be the explanantion.
* That leaves just E&W. Covid is a potential explainer, but when we remove deaths related to covid we still see a high level of excess deaths.
* Perhaps Long Covid is to blame? He breaks down excess deaths by cause and this seems to explain it well with a much greater rise in heart/circulatory problems…
* …but it becomes clear that is just because those types of problems are always more common. When you look at % change in excess deaths per category we see a rise in every category.
* This suggests a more wide-spread issue that affects all possibles causes of death… like maybe the incredibly long waiting times
* Studies have been done into how longer waiting times increase risk of death. When you combine that data with other data on increasing waiting times in E&W you get an almost perfect match to the observed numbers of excess deaths.
My conclusion? The Tory’s NHS policies are now killing about 500 people a week.
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\[Side Note: This is also the kind of journalism I would love to see more of – a thorough investigation of the data, cleanly explained leading to logical and relevant conclusions.\]
17 comments
Twitter Thread reader….
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1562004612172873728.html
Only those unwilling or unable to use private healthcare so Tory policies working exactly as intended.
We regularly displayed during lockdown we were happy with 500+ deaths _a day._ What’s a week to these people.
Fwiw I don’t have a strong view on what’s causing excess deaths, I haven’t looked into it, it’s probably a mix of things but I don’t know.
Just interesting to see the right release the excess death story and blame lockdown, and see the left release the story and blame A&E.
Both grinning that they think they’ve released a howler when in fact no one actually knows for sure what’s causing it.
Look, just get it privatised. The country voted for it in 2019.
> This is also the kind of journalism I would love to see more of
It’s a shame that posts on Twitter count as journalism.
Never vote Tory.
Working as intended for the Tories, getting rid of the surplus population (i.e. the poors).
The increased excess deaths we have right now have been predicted for the last 2 years as a direct result of stopping cancer screening during lockdown.
Lockdown deaths more. I tried explaining at the time that they wouldn’t start happening in large numbers for a while but eventually you have to accept that there will be some collateral damage from prioritising covid above literally everything else for 2 years. Heart, Stroke and Cancer charities have been warning us about this from very early on.
I gashed my finger a couple of months ago on a broken plate – really took me by surprise how quickly the blood started flying out of it. Wrapped it up and elevated it, kept as much pressure as I could for ~20 minutes, had a look and it was still absolutely gushing.
Said fuck it, banged as much kitchen roll and sellotape I could round it, put some spare in my pocket, and drove to A&E. Only ~10 minutes or so, but the thing was sodden by the time I got there.
People were queued *outside*. Just barely standing up, some struggling for breath, some kids, some elderly, some cut, some swolen or broken, a woman barely able to get out of a taxi.
I stood in that queue for ~an hour before I got inside and spoke to the triage nurse. The actual waiting room was also full. I got sent through to a separate part of the hospital and waited there for a couple of hours.
Eventually I dared take the pressure off and have a look and the cut had slowed to a dribble, so I figured I could stick a plaster on and get through the night.
I told the nearest official I could, and left. I’d been there from about 8pm until just before midnight. This was on a Sunday evening. Not club kicking out time on a Friday.
I genuinely fear for if I have something that does not stop bleeding, or chest pains, or shortness of breath, or basically fucking anything.
Is that it?
How many was this government allowed to kill without approval ratings dropping? 20k care home deaths?
If that didn’t matter to popularity I don’t see why this would be of concern to anyone other than powerless individuals shouting into the void, 500 a week to Tory voters is
“Good, 500 fewer mouths to feed”
Genuinely
Plenty more coming over the channel though eh?
One of the costs of lockdowns.
Brought my Dad into A&E at 515pm today and it’s 1225am. He’s still waiting for a medical team to come and take him to a ward bed. It’s been about an hour since that conclusion was reached. The last time he was here, it took just under 13 hours to get him admitted. The medics are working hard as far as I can tell. The system is straining, from where I’ve been sitting waiting. I pray somebody sees sense and returns the good old NHS to its former glory. I do not want to discuss those death stats and whose fault it is today.
My mom was affected as well.
The quality of healthcare she got was worse than third world countries.
Care was just piss poor. Planning to file police complaint.
Aren’t we lucky that the man who allowed most of this chaos happen has gone from being health secretary to chair of the health select committee to scunanise his past actions. Jeremy Hunt whata guy!