A British study just published identifies 16,000 people who died in March and April alone, through denial of medical treatment caused by the lockdown.
We can only speculate how many have died, or will die, as a result of our lockdown denying them cancer treatment, operations and medical consultations.
Extrapolating Britain’s two months figures, we can reasonably assume it numbers a few thousand.
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Wouldn’t a responsible public health service publish our numbers promptly?
Since these died supposedly to save others the least we can do is identify and recognise their involuntary sacrifice properly.
I read a similar report that UK cancer detection numbers had halved because of the NHS cancelling routine scans. Deaths, sadly, inevitably have followed.
In New Zealand it would be reported as “Jacinda reduces cancer by 50 per cent following funding increase by Labour”.
These numbers are available. In March more people died in New Zealand than have ever died before. I expected this to increase dramatically over April to June. I was wrong, all three months were well below average.
I still suspect that long term there will be a large increase in death, a lot of people seem to think cancelling elective surgery was not being allowed breast implants, but it excluded a lot of cancer treatment etc, combined with people too scared to go to hospital. Combine that with the massive repayments on debt and how that will affect health spending long term (Pharmac etc) and to save 1,000 lives now will prematurely end thousands of lives for 50+ years.
You pretty much nailed it.
Probably as a result of fewer deaths from influenza? The masks and so forth reducing that traditional winter die off? Plus fewer vehicle accidents?
In the UK last month near 33% increase in positive test infection. That’s a whopping near 100,000 new infections. Those, people confirmed infected rose from 332,000 to today’s 446,000. Total death from Covid rose by 575 or 1%, from 41,498 to today’s 42,072.
So to put into perspective
Of the first 300,000 infection 42,000 died.
Of the last 100,000 infection 575 died.
Accepting some of those 575 may be of the first 300,000 group.
So the mass media hysteria lock down, probably will cause more death going forward, expect a spike in other cause morbidity, as the flow on effect of missed diagnosis, treatment delays, fear, depression, mental illness, take hold. Though, this may not hit home to our media, politicians, and medical community, until it’s them or their loved ones who suffer from the consequence.
So all in all, this suggest to me that there are a few possibilities for this:
1. Treatments have vastly improved, where mortality is less of and endpoint.
2. The virus has infected and wiped out the old sick and vulnerable. Many of whom had early infection or susceptibility and unfortunately had succumbed.
3. People have gotten a whole lot healthier from lock downs.
4. The Old, sick and vulnerable have been better protected from infection.
5. The virus has mutated into a less deadly strain.
6. This was a mass hysteria driven over reaction to a serious virus, which always was expected to cause 2-3 times the death caused by seasonal flu.
7. Herd immunity has been achieved to some extent.
My thoughts are more along the lines that the old, sick, and vulnerable, will succumb relatively early. Morbidity will increase though, at a much reduced rate, as evident in the numbers, worldwide.
Though I digress, we must Be Kind, stay safe, team of 5 million, let’s do this, let’s keep moving!
As a proportion of overall mortality, Covid-19 is now a nothingburger in Britain. The normal respiratory diseases are now on ten times as many death certificates as Covid-19 is. Covid-19 has dropped out of the top 20 “causes of death” even though it is often wrongly elevated to cause of death just because it is present. Yet the hysteria continues. Did these people’s ancestors really endure the Blitz without demanding Winston Churchill just accept Hitler’s terms for peace?
Oddly, in contrast, NZ’s mortality from a wide range of causes is apparently down, the Funeral industry is having cashflow problems. I say this is because, as Sir Bob said all along, NZ’s environment is so much healthier than places like Britain, we get much more positive outcomes from distancing and lockdowns than they do, the transmission of all kinds of pathogens are reduced. But in Britain with its appalling weather and urban crowding and dinge-ey old housing, even with months of hard lockdown their performance is one of the world’s worst, worse than non-locked down Sweden which also has urban crowding problems and climate problems.
NZ would never have been as bad as either of these countries even just trusting the public to exercise common sense caution. Now we are facing the problem pointed out by honest doctors and experts in their list of criticisms of panicked policy everywhere, that the human immune system requires a certain amount of regular exposure to pathogens to keep it working effectively. Even if Covid-19 is not “the” problem next flu season, expect our averted 2020 deaths to cause a mortality spike in 2021. Perpetuating the morality of the 2020 hard lockdown strategy, we should just stay locked down forever, because no spike in mortality of elderly people, no matter how high the average age of death, is “acceptable” if “we” could have “prevented it”.
Theyre doing a great job in auckland reasigning new dates, but theres definately losses that could have been avoided.
The intersting thing about the Keep Moving log of labour is that it is not clear whether they will move us up or down (i believe it means moving down!)