Covid Deaths, Not Lockdown Deaths part 2
October 21, 2020
updated Nov. 23
*(in case there's a short version - probably not - mainly just to say sorry this goes on so long)
U.K. Excess Deaths: Caused by the Virus or the Controls?
The global SARS CoV-2 / COVID 19 * pandemic has witnessed massively elevated mortality, with often-massive deaths attributed to the virus, and at the same time, large and disputed rise in supposedly non-covid deaths. This was especially high and prolonged in the U.K., as I considered in some detail here. The graphing below is worth including again here for reference.
* I'm not the only one who's been confused: SARS CoV-2 is the virus named for a syndrome ... similar to the syndrome it causes ... which is called COVID 19 - a syndrome named for that virus, under its alt. name - COronaVIrus Disease (novel in 20)19. Does that make sense? Do I even have the hyphenation right now? Whatever. I'll often use "covid" as shorthand.
Here the blue bars show average daily deaths in England and Wales (weekly totals divided by 7) as they compare to a 3-year average for each week. Some variance is down to these being "estimates" - apparently real numbers, but reporting and time lags of certain basic sizes are known and guess-corrected for - something like that. Iit didn't work perfectly this year, with some weeks oddly low then high to catch up, etc. I also mark in magenta a low-flu yearly baseline that seems more applicable than the average, and daily COVID 19 deaths (all U.K., before and after a count change in England in red vs. blue), and a timeline of control measures and SARS CoV-2 infections.
All-causes deaths vary on an amazing scale, rising from about 1,000/week below average to massively above it. In week 16, there were an estimated 22,351 deaths in England and Wales, compared to a 9,640 3-year average (or a 10,497 5-year average per ONS). That's 213% to 232% as many as usual. Week 17 was also well above 200%, with weeks 14, 15, and 18 fairly close to it. (also noting: I messed up the dates on which weeks end in the UK's system - weeks 16 would end on April 17, not 19, and so on.)
The steep curve of COVID 19 deaths is a U.K. total, including smaller numbers from Scotland and Northern Ireland, and yet only account for a slight majority of this mortality mountain, which again is just in in England and Wales (England alone is a huge majority of UK pop.). The rest of these deaths - besides whatever excess there was in the rest of the kingdom - require an explanation.
Only two significant things had been added to the picture - the virus, and the control measures against it, including "lockdown." As soon as it was possible, a debate emerged over which was more to blame for all that death. Many independent and otherwise-sharp minds have pinned most or all of it on the latter.
For example, some point to deaths rising after lockdown as showing it was to blame. But In fact, as part 1 showed, the pattern of overall deaths - in the UK and just about everywhere - follows the curve of covid ones almost exactly, as seen above and even more clearly in most cases. In 4 major cities and a province that I checked (Madrid, New York, London, Paris, and Guayas, Ecuador), overall excess deaths only pile up badly for about 20 days after lockdown and decline steadily from there. Here: London, with the slowest response of the five, peaking only at day 21. The original analysis conveniently misplaced lockdown markers (red bars) by one week, forcing many deaths preceding it to appear as if they came after it ... as if caused by it, as argued. Huh.
The span I used there - 20-33 days - isn't crucial. It's the way the results line up so close to that 20 end that was so interesting. As noted in part 1, that's the early end of the span I estimate it takes for long-struggling fatalities to die, following on an infection just before lockdown. The median for that should be somewhere in the early middle of 20-33 days, but quite a few earlier, relatively sudden deaths are expected, and would offset the center of this spread - perhaps to just the 18-21 days that kept coming up.
This consistent pattern alone suggests the lockdown worked, by keeping peak deaths from being higher and later. And in the same stroke, it suggests that the clear bulk of those other-causes deaths were yet more virus deaths that were simply never verified, and classed wrongly as something else. How?
Besides its immediate pneumonia-like illness, COVID 19 is known to cause damage to the heart and blood vessels, lungs, kidneys, neurological system, and more. Numerous conditions involving these are the same co-morbidities most covid fatalities have (in more detail below). Some will suffocate during the immediate illness, while others will pull thorough that only to die soon after from the new and old damage combined.
In cases where the virus kills without being confirmed, adequately suspected, etc. to be identified, the person might be listed as dying from a mysterious pneumonia, or have the known and relevant co-morbidity get the entire blame. If that happened to any serious degree, you would see unusual elevations of those death causes, roughly corresponding with deaths from the virus. And as I'll begin to show in this article, this is just what's seen in the UK. I've already shown it in the United States, overall and more clearly in some hard-hit states. Widespread and often fatal organ damage has been noted widely already, and in time it will be known as a heavy cost of the pandemic we were slow to recognize.
The U.K. Office of National Statistics (ONS) has now issued two reports on "non-COVID 19" deaths in the UK (mainly England and Wales): early August overview - old version from June. These were able to make a solid case based on data that quite a few virus deaths went misdiagnosed as other causes, which are notable elevated in just the patterns to suggest that. For example, they explain:
"Deaths involving COVID-19 could have been recorded as non-COVID-19 deaths if the person had a severe underlying condition that was exacerbated by COVID-19. This could include deaths due to conditions such as chronic lower respiratory disease, dementia and Alzheimer disease and "symptoms, signs and ill-defined conditions", possibly where pneumonia has been mentioned as a contributory factor on the death certificate because of the similarity."
They suggest a "severe underlying condition," but I don't see why the same couldn't happen with a moderate or mild one, or none at all, where the virus has the main or exclusive part. All a condition needs to be blamed is to be listed, with it partner in crime left undetected. And ONS stats agree the 4th most common class of co-morbidity for COVID 19 (see below) is "No pre-existing condition" - in some cases it's unknown or simply doesn't exist.
The ONS reports also notes that, while some deaths will be "related to undiagnosed COVID-19," others "could suggest a delay in care for these conditions," - much service was disrupted and curtailed "as the healthcare system adapts to ensure it has capacity to treat COVID-19 patients."
A fuller picture will take longer for some deaths with delayed reporting to come in, but all considered, they found as of early May:
"There is not enough evidence to suggest the other theories investigated can explain much of the increase in non-COVID-19 death registrations; these other explanations were reduced hospital capacity and increases in deaths caused by stress-related conditions."
Anti-Fascist Resistance?
With his website "In This Together," Englishman Iain Davis claims to fight for the infected and the susceptible alike against what might be the biggest plot ever. "So-called western democracies have copied the Chinese model of technocracy to create a single biosecurity State" or, as he also puts it, an emergent "global fascist dictatorship."
Davis seems to share in a widespread impression that the virus is a harmless part of nature's balance, while human measures will be sinister, almost by definition. His reading has led him to feel "COVID 19 is not a high impact infectious disease, it has low mortality rates and is absolutely comparable to influenza. It isn’t even clear that is can be identified as a disease at all." ( Covid World - Resist! ) So why else do the corrupt authorities all claim otherwise? There must be an ulterior motive, right?
All considered, I think Davis is a genuine good guy at heart. But he's not the clearest thinker, and is currently mired in some deep confusion that's not to his credit. So I'll just be brutally blunt about that.
It's implied that nearly all world governments, including staunch enemies like China and the United States, Russia and the UK, Israel and Iran, and all their relevant doctors and health experts and responsible officials at every level of government have been co-opted somehow into acting on this huge plot. Or perhaps in ignorance they help exaggerate the viral threat as a pretext to re-make society. From Wuhan to Tehran and London, from Bergamo to the Bronx, Madrid to Moscow, Washington, Caracas and Copenhagen, Helsinki and Havana, Riyadh and Tel Aviv, etc. ... the parasitic global elites all started killing their people right off with their business closures and ruthless stay-at-home orders, to be followed with behavior-modifying mask orders.
My main focus here is Davis' June 13 article "Lockdown Regime Deaths and the True Cost of LOKIN-20" (In This Together, re-published at Off-Guardian), regarding the British experience. Elevated deaths in the United Kingdom "correspond with the lockdown regime," he notes, before exploring some other details and finally assuring his readers "there is no doubt that the Lockdown regime has resulted in the unnecessary deaths" of what he ultimately claims to be more than half of all above-average and Covid deaths up to June.
"Sadly, it appears the UK State are intent upon continuing their Lockdown regime. In all likelihood this policy has already led to the premature deaths of more than 34,000 British people. Unfortunately that figure is set to rise."
That was Davis's warning in mid-June. In fact overall fatalities were falling and near average as he wrote. They fell to below average shortly thereafter, and stayed there for weeks, even for a while after lockdown was ended and the pubs re-opened on 4 July. Above we can see from weeks 25 to 32 is where it's low (again, subtract 2 days on the timeline). The first part of this span, to week 28, is the second half of the "lockdown regime," where virus, the controls, and all else combined anti-kill, compared to usual. I've seen lockdown critics puzzle over this anomaly, suspecting the numbers are fake, and another sign of a mass deception. But this time sees Covid confirmed deaths dipping to 0-9 per day, alongside relaxed controls. Lockdown, strictly defined, was over.
Then as many refused to have their behavior "modified" by wearing a "useless" mask, infected people were able to spread the mild, flu-like virus wider than they would. Maybe in a coincidence, all-causes deaths crept back to and above average, as barely shown above, hitting significant excess again in weeks 33-37 and nearing it again in weeks 39-40. COVID 19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths had climbed slowly over this time as well, getting a bit ominous by mid-September.
Only then was was a second round of lockdown threatened and even implemented in places. Now in mid October there are 100-125 deaths per day and rising, from infections 2-3 weeks go. Higher deaths will come from the current 1,000 hospitalizations/day, and rising. Higher yet is promised by current confirmed cases, risen to to about 20,000 per day. Unconfirmed infections ... unclear but surely massive, despite more widespread testing now. All-causes mortality, non-covid and past-28d covid: expected to swell again. (my post on that, FWIW - not that good so far, if ever - needs updated)
Davis and his ilk will probably dispute these new deaths as caused by the lockdown. So let's have a look at how that was argued the first time.
How Lockdown is Said to Kill
Naturally, any shift on such a huge scale, with enforceable stay-at-home orders, massive closures, and so on is likely to cause some deaths that wouldn't happen otherwise. Depending how it's done, it might cause others it was never bound to cause. Such deaths definitely exist, proportion unclear but well worth considering, as I will in another post, took a quick stab at with this graphic and tweet, and will consider briefly now.
So yes, lockdowns and related measures have very high costs - primarily economic, sometimes immediately fatal. There can be little doubt an excess of idleness, isolation, and depression would lead to increased fatalities from suicide, and from drug and alcohol abuse. And domestic violence, fatal and not, seems to have increased. But the scale of these deaths should be quite small, proportionally. For example in the gun-toting, car-crashing USA, natural causes still account for at least 90% of all deaths, even in a normal year (it's far higher in 2020, including COVID 19 and unexplained elevation of several top killers like heart diseases, Alzheimer's, and cerebrovascular disease). Less than 10% of deaths are from traffic and other accidents, domestic and other violence, starvation, drowning, suffocation, etc. combined. Even a 100% increase in one of these categories hardly makes a difference, statistically speaking.
And the detested control measures are also bound to prevent at least some deaths that would otherwise happen. Davis and his ilk tend to gloss over that as possible, banishing balance from their assessments. But it's obvious on reflection that, if measures had been lesser or later, there might have been tens of thousands - possibly even hundreds of thousands - of further confirmed COVID 19 deaths. And there might have been around 40-80% as many unconfirmed ones along the way. Whatever excess or imbalance may exist in these policies, the solution would require a clear-eyed assessments of the threat posed by SARS CoV-2.
Davis's analysis didn't get hung up on the possible lives saved by U.K. lockdown, nor on the smaller-scale costs like increased overdose deaths. He stuck to the costs only, and wisely focused on the larger - and more disputable - effects one might expect from diminished hospital care. He pointed to the ONS report from June (as linked above) and its suggestion of covid death mixed into the non-covid ones. For that I have him to thank - I hadn't noticed the report before. But he was critical of that notion, instead focusing on and magnifying the report's consideration of lockdown and related measures likely contributing to the death toll as well.
I've heard many lockdown opponents claim UK policy forced COVID 19 patients from empty hospitals into nursing homes where they spread it and killed many. That might be, and/or refusing to accept patients - I still haven't looked much into the details of that. But either way, the ONS reports confirm all kinds of admissions, treatments, and deaths occurred far less in hospitals as they spiked badly in care homes and private homes. That seems to start at week 15 ending April 10, just before the peak of covid deaths. The first report noted the same issue as well, with a bland and likely incomplete explanation: "As the healthcare system adapts to ensure it has capacity to treat COVID-19 patients, some facilities may be less available because of COVID-19 and care for other diseases may be reduced."
I'd need to look into this a bit more to say, but this could be a genuine dark side similar to disturbing euthanasia policies in Sweden, at least (I've heard lockdown opponents claim similar happened in Madrid and in New York as well). Some people were just given up on, given some morphine and left to die. But in general, something like this is more likely to be a decision of grim necessity, maybe carried too far in some cases. If so ... in Sweden alone the necessity was invited by government policy and, if Tegnell et al. are to be believed, some gross lack of foresight.
Anyway, wherever such a course is taken, many infected people would be left to die with no help. However, it may be the vast majority of them couldn't be saved; priority might've been given to those with the best odds, as the Swedes were clear in doing. To do much past that - in England - might continue the terrible overload of the hospital system, and infect even more of the crucial medical staff along the way. In fact, between NHS staff, paramedics, and social care workers, more than 620 reportedly died from COVID 19 by August, most of them in the early days before this controversial policy, when hospitals were swamped with infectious patients and running out of protective gear. (The Independent).
Davis points to a drastic drop in admissions to the hospital emergency room (A&E) in this time; "both general A&E presentations and those for heart attacks were down by half." This might ignore how admissions were down 50% from an unsustainable 220% of the norm in the days before that, as thousands of paramedics, nurses and doctors were infected in the process, hundreds of them bound to die. He also noted slowed ambulance response as likely adding to the death toll.
Perhaps more relevant: "crucial surgery and diagnostic tests, for a range of other serious conditions, have been delayed in huge numbers," Davis accurately points out. Exact details aside, he might be right that "treatment and essential screening has effectively been withheld" for all five of the U.K.'s five top killers (aside from a novel virus this year). As cited and generally agreed, these are:
* Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease
* Ischaemic heart diseases
* Cerebrovascular diseases
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases
* Influenza and pneumonia
We'll come back to these and other co-morbidities below and, as we'll see, the bulk of officially "non-covid" deaths are listed as dying primarily from these same causes as they claimed far more lives than usual. Davis had that fact ready, and the denied treatment and screening cause explained, yet he made little use of it. Maybe he realized that wouldn't make much sense to explain so many deaths in such short order. Maybe it even struck him that they might wind up weakening his case against lockdowns, or even flipping that case upside-down by suggesting SARS CoV-2 was to blame.
Only one of these causes is specified as elevated: "Cardiovascular disease kills nearly 170,000 people every year in the UK. With an average mortality of 460 deaths per day, a 50% drop in presentations, over the nearly three months long Lockdown regime period, has and will significantly increase mortality from cardiovascular disease." Here he specifies lockdown already "has" increased cardiovascular deaths caused by reduced care, but he doesn't give any kind of estimated figure. But as an ONS table below shows, the leading part of that (ischaemic heart diseases) was increasing before any lockdown or changes in medical service, just about as covid deaths were rising, and then peaked and declined at about the same time as them. The continuing deaths projected over the months have yet to materialize.
The second ONS report's figure 10 shows numerous "Conditions which can quickly become fatal if not treated in time" rising dramatically in weeks 11-18, and that some "have continued to appear above five-year average levels during Weeks 19 to 28." In particular, "symptoms signs and ill-defined conditions," diabetes, and hypertensive diseases remained well above average. No causes are worse then they had been - all had the greatest deaths during the time of massive covid deaths (known and unknown), so it remains hard to untangle the excessive demand aspect from the limited supply aspect. All those shown had improved in the following weeks. Dementia-Alzheimer's in particular - likely the far-and-away top contributor by numbers - had deaths fall to almost exactly average from 140-145% over in w11-18.
The first ONS report says the effects of diminished treatment "might be most apparent in long-term serious diseases where delayed treatment increases mortality within a period of weeks, including renal failure and cancers with a moderate rate of survival." Just the two relevant death causes are mentioned - neither in the top 5. The report's figure 15 shows how both have overall level increases at week 14, and from there on they have less hospital deaths, and increased ones at care homes and private homes.
The cancers will include a few kinds, so it's hard to say if the virus might amplify these deaths. And their overall levels seem barely affected, despite the alarming rise seen outside hospitals. We see only a tiny rise at week 14 and forward, possibly due just to decreased care. But renal failure is especially high, passing well over 200% normal outside hospitals, and peaking - for 3 weeks in a row - at about 140% above average altogether. And this might well be elevated by COVID 19; kidney damage has been noted following known infections, should do the same for unknown ones, and of course the time-frame is consistent.
There's more on this aspect, but I moved it below. First, a bit on what else Davis does to try and assign more blame to lockdown and less to the virus.
LUMPIN 20 And Re-Branding the Dead
"Unless there is some unknown pathogen ravaging the nation," Davis wrote in June, "what remains are excess deaths which correspond precisely with the Lockdown regime period." We know what caused that, after causing widespread confirmed infections and associated deaths, and the high case-fatality ratios between these. We know it also caused enormous unknown infections, driving down the actual infection-fatality ratio (IFR), as generally calculated.
And we should suspect it caused at least moderate unknown deaths along the way (an important factor, then, to set a real IFR). That would be the "unknown pathogen" ruining his "unless there is" construct. But Davis rules that out from the start, and declares "we don’t have any other explanation for this loss of life," and since "all deaths occurred during the Lockdown," he decided "We will call this LOKIN 20 mortality."
"We" is a group not including me. His "LOKIN 20" ... syndrome is it? ... is by name an inversion of COVID 19, where "LOcK-IN" somehow kills even more than the virus. I'll be talking about this quite a bit, but we'll call it LUMPIN 20: he makes some specific arguments to move as many fatalities as possible into his category of possible lockdown deaths. But as I'll show, it's an ill-defined catch-all for any deaths caused by lockdown-related policies, and any others - including covid deaths - he can raise any specific questions about. The questions don't even need to be good ones. All this simply LUMPed IN is what Davis proudly puts a very big number on, and pretends that means something.
While counts vary some, Davis used a figure recently publicized by the BBC of 63,708 above-average deaths in the UK up to then. "With 50,107 deaths allegedly attributed to COVID 19," (as it was then reported - revised down since), he explains "the BBC report 13,601 LOKIN 20 deaths." Here Lokin = excess deaths of all non-covid causes. As we've seen, these primarily happened in weeks 13-17, early in the lockdown. The later revision removed nearly 5,400 deaths past 28 days in England, arguably giving Davis the same number he could add as lumpin, by that same token. He could now claim almost 19,000 - but only by adding people who had COVID 19 and died quite soon after - mainly within 60 days - and so were statistically unlikely to be killed by anything much but the virus. So LUMPIN 20 would include 5,400 almost certain covid deaths. It already includes far more than this, so why not?
Next, he turned to the deaths "allegedly attributed to COVID 19." He finds, reasonably enough, that "approximately 95% of COVID 19 decedents have at least one other serious comorbidity," as if this is new or matters. Another "9,510 were identified by symptoms alone" and/or compelling context, so "it is not clear how many of these deaths can legitimately be attributed to COVID 19." The numbers he considers writing off are immense. But in particular, he found a few more specific questions he used to re-brand nearly half of these as ambiguous enough to claim as more fatalities of the "lockdown regime". So LUMPIN 20 also means COVID 19 plus some debatable ambiguities.
"where and both pneumonia & influenza are also mentioned on the death certificate, it cannot be objectively determined that these deaths were from COVID 19." Davis writes "For weeks 14 to 22 the ONS report that 37.3% of all COVID 19 deaths also mentioned both pneumonia and influenza," maybe in a sense of first guess, second opinion, best-informed diagnosis or confirmed test saying Covid 19. And he thinks "diagnosis is by observation alone" in a lot of those cases, and so he concludes "it is not reasonable to claim these deaths were from COVID 19." ... "While we don’t know the distribution of these deaths between those identified by test results and those identified merely by symptom, we can reasonable state that at least 3,547 of the 9,510 symptom diagnosis were inconclusive." (he doesn't know how many, but it's 9,510?)
Since it can't be all three, it's probably not the one, or it's inconclusive, anyway. Adding this to "the BBC's" all unexplained excess deaths, he decides "his leaves us with potential LOKIN 20 mortality figure of 17,148." (emphasis mine).
Finally, "There is a significant problem with claiming that a positive test result for SARS-CoV-2 proves that the patient was suffering from COVID 19," the resultant disease or syndrome. Many of those infected are asymptomatic, and "this means they have the virus, not necessarily the resultant syndrome of COVID 19." They're at least sometimes contagious, perhaps leading to other peoples' deaths, but "without COVID 19 they don’t have a disease that will impact their health." They don't have any symptoms, suffer no damage, and therefore any sudden turn in their health resulting in a swift death might be some sort of coincidence, and should be fairly rare on the timescale involved.
It's hard to see how Davis could subtract many covid deaths by discounting infected people who died despite suffering no illness. But he uses some averaging to decide "42.5% of positive test cases" are asymptomatic, and "This means that 17,211 of the claimed 40,497 COVID 19 deaths ... are unlikely to have had COVID 19." (emphasis mine) That's quite a leap. Nearly a third of those people who died after testing positive - falsely or truly - must have not had the disease at all. They died in a massive crush due to some other coincidence ... that ... hey, just might be from the lockdown, the lumpin, whatever. It was something more contagious or coincidental, and even more symptomatic (deadly) than COVID 19, and targeting people who also tested positive for that, and almost entirely in the early days and weeks of the lockdown "regime," as pre-lockdown infections were still dying. It was LUMPIN 20.
"Added to the potential 17,148 LOKIN 20 deaths already noted," Davis concluded, "it appears LOKIN 20 accounts for at least 34,359 of the 63,708 deaths reported by the BBC" - and not just potentially - it's apparent now. That's well over half the total excess deaths in the U.K.. He'll suspect others in there also belong, but since he couldn't be quite so rigorous about all of them, it would be hard to set a number and lump them in properly. At least 53.9% of all covid-and-above-average fatalities up to June, killed by that ill-defined cluster of real causes, doubts, and ignorance we call LUMPIN 20. COVID 19 and anything else combined only "legitimately" killed 46.1% of them, at most.
He also makes a tentative case - already amplified into a fact by some - to suggest far less covid deaths and more lumpin ones, but without claiming explicit numbers. As noted above, some 95% of deaths had pre-existing conditions. He expanded on this: "Using ONS data for England and Wales we can calculate an estimate of the likely percentage of deaths that were genuinely attributable to COVID 19. We can then apply these percentages to the figures reported by the BBC to extrapolate estimates for the UK."
Covid patients who actually died from co-morbidities acting alone (??): 24,419
"Genuinely attributable" to COVID 19: 1,318.
The questioned deaths are surely above average expected death rates for every class, and incredibly far above for most of them. "In this together" floats this argument hardly any deaths were "genuinely attributable to COVID 19," belying control measures to "save more lives" when hardly any were really lost - to the virus. But that opens a question that's easy enough to answer; in this roundabout way he blames the same measures for some 95% of those killed (in the sense lockdown = LUMPIN 20 = all disputable deaths) . What a genuinely sick joke of a concept.
But then Davis didn't really go that far, taking a more reasonable course of claiming only the larger half of all excess deaths (at least) based on this basic deniability plus any other question he could find. In review, Iain Davis' LUMIN 20 mortality as of mid-June:
* 20,758 total Covid deaths (officially, and he concedes some might have died from it, it's just inconclusive)
** 17,211 estimated to never have had covid (might admit estimate could be off - estimate makes no sense - how many can have no symptoms and then die of whatever else - that's lockdown-related - on this short a scale?)
** 3,547 that are inconclusive (might have had it, but I/P also mentioned)
* all 13,601 non-covid excess deaths to June (regardless of cause or details)
= 34,359 total
This will read as reasonable to many poor thinkers in allowing for perhaps half of overall excess deaths to be from COVID 19. But unlike the virus, Davis feared lockdown was set to keep killing for years to come with the unavoidable damage it has unleashed. He probably thinks England has natural herd immunity by now, and always did, and so did everyone, or whatever.
So he doesn't have the best overall thought process. But he's right that lockdown etc. will have caused some deaths, and we still have an enormous number of unexpected deaths caused by something, which I'd like to come back to.
What Kind of Excess Deaths?
Timeframe and Age Brackets
No infection picked up during lockdown is likely to explain the accelerating deaths witnessed in its first month, unless one wants to argue it spreads better through walls than through inches of air. A contagious illness that hit them about 2-3 weeks earlier - mainly prior to lockdown - is not just possible but, as I'll show, all but certain. But Davis doesn't suggest that - perhaps because the illness would probably be Covid 19, which he labors to absolve of these deaths.
So the mystery forces behind LUMPIN 20 should no be a contagion. But they worked in the same time-frame; as the graphic above shows, weekly all-causes deaths (in England and Wales) increase from below to far above average just as covid deaths are rising, prior to lockdown. They peak about 3 weeks out from lockdown, about a week after virus deaths peaked, and then fall with them from there. That alone suggests that the solid majority of these deaths were caused by COVID 19.
Further, data from the European Mortality Monitoring project (EUROMOMO) shows the people dying across most of Europe, even beyond those killed by SARS CoV-2, are primarily elderly, just like the virus kills. Those in England include more in the 15-44 bracket than usual (most likely with 95% of those in their 30s and 40s). But other member states - notably Spain - also have more younger deaths than many would expect,. This trend that has gradually increased over the pandemic, and from the way it spreads between age groups, is likely due to the ups and downs of the virus in question and the varied learning curves regarding it. The younger vulnerable people aged under 59 - and especially in the 30s and 40s - often fail to realize the danger and/or simply can't afford to avoid it well enough (they aren't retired, have to jump in the fray going to work every day). And so excess deaths across Europe are increasingly young - especially but not exclusively in England, and especially in the East Midlands of England (see here).
Public Health England made a switch, back in mid-August, to match the rest of the UK (and just who else I should find out) in counting covid deaths only to 28 days past confirmation. Those who die before then, whatever the cause (including car crash, etc. - likely very few) are listed as virus deaths. But ... when they die even directly from the virus on day 29 or later, they're not listed as covid victims, except on a list where they still are (several tallies are still kept by different agencies).
With a bit of work, I was able to show how, in England, those with Covid who live past 28 days wind up dying, on average, at several times the usual rate: 8x English average at last view, up to 14x before that, maybe just 4-5x normal by now. Combined deaths have been below normal while the very many covid survivors die well above, so to average out, everyone who's avoided infection fares far better under the lockdown reign of terror. Why does lockdown or whatever target COVID 19 patients so heavily, and give the rest of the populace such a break?
Returning to unconfirmed deaths: ... we do see Covid-linked death causes seeming to kill on their own but at elevated levels, at the same time deaths linked to the virus are the highest. The ONS reports on "non-covid 19" deaths in the UK (mainly England and Wales) - the links again: early August overview - and old version from June cited by Davis.
LUMPIN 20 and Covid Comorbidities
And as shown here in part (to be be explored further in another post), "LOKIN 20" also kills them in the same range of ways, physiologically speaking, and mainly whenever covid is going strong, and especially the first time it hit. as already explained ...reword: damage to the heart and blood vessels, lungs, kidneys, neurological system, and more. Numerous conditions involving these are the co-morbidities most covid fatalities have - it's the same in the United States too.
Thanks to Deus Abscondis for finding this (on Twitter).
From the ONS total Aug. 21 - out of 50,335 "deaths involving COVID-19" just in England and Wales, one is "Fracture of femur" (195 deaths), but the rest seem pretty likely to matter. Top ten:
Main pre-existing condition Number of deaths
Dementia and Alzheimer's disease 12,869
Ischaemic heart diseases 5,002
Influenza and pneumonia 4,582
No pre-existing condition 4,476
Chronic lower respiratory diseases 4,061
Symptoms signs and ill-defined conditions 3,428
Cerebrovascular diseases 1,781
Diabetes 1,273
Diseases of the urinary system 1,132
Hypertensive diseases 942
I'll suggest from how common it is, entry 4 "no pre-existing condition" primarily means no KNOWN condition. It might be 99% of fatalities have conditions for all I know.
A flip-side of lowered hospital admissions right at the covid peak: much case confirmation happens at hospitals, among those coming in very sick, often to die. When they stop taking in as many patients, some number of actual infections will die at home with no help and no confirmation, to have the known condition solely blamed. There's a rise in all these death causes covid is known to partner with. Whatever role limited care had in that, unknown infections probably matter far more, by requiring such a vast degree of often-futile care to begin with.
Above we looked at deaths from renal failure rising sharply over a class of cancers, and kidney damage is known to result from some infections. Missing treatments are likely enough to be a large factor, but still much of the excess (absolute numbers unclear) probably adds a bit more to the explanation for those 30-40,000 excess deaths left unexplained. A bit over 2% of covid deaths also involved urinary (and kidney) diseases.
I've also mentioned a couple of times how top 5 killers and covid co-morbidities have been on the rise. Now let's look at a couple of these other and larger causes of death in a bit more detail.
An Unseasonable Increase in Respiratory Illness Deaths
"Seeing as COVID 19 is supposed to be a pandemic," Iain Davis reasoned in his lockdown deaths article, "if under diagnosis is an issue, we should see an unseasonable increase in pneumonia deaths within the non COVID19 mortality figures." Influenza and pneumonia are usually combined into an I/P category, which is mainly by bulk a variety of pneumonias, and misdiagnosed covid cases are often listed as "atypical pneumonia." So indeed, if this happened much, we'd likely see a mysterious increase in deaths, probably right alongside covid ones.
He suggests there was no such rise, but there was. I had already plotted an unseasonable rise in I/P deaths in the United States, including a bulge at the new year responsible for at least 4,000 deaths above natural levels. And the same appears in the U.K. ONS reports: in early 2020, "deaths due to influenza and pneumonia were below the five-year average" while overall, al-causes "mortality levels from the beginning of 2020 were lower than average," in both cases "possibly" or "probably because of the relatively mild winter and low levels of circulating flu."
Davis complains how ONS was suggesting covid death had been lumped in with I/P but then "contradict this notion in their own report. That does find it "unlikely that symptoms of COVID-19 have been mistaken for pneumonia since Week 14 (week ending 3 April 2020). It is possible this contributed to non-COVID-19 excess deaths observed before that time.” (emphasis mine) - apparently the point they started applying a more exhaustive sorting of deaths, besides accepting far less patients. He cites their figure 13 which claims to show "no clear increase" in "the percentage of non-COVID-19 deaths due to each of these underlying causes where pneumonia or influenza is mentioned" - noting some slight rises but final lows allowing for little false inclusion.
But the best place to see any rise is with the cause mentioning pneumonia most frequently. Chronic lower respiratory disease (death cause #4, 18,783 deaths in 2018) has this on 45% of certificates, until exactly when covid deaths were spiking but still heavily misdiagnosed. Here it rises slightly to 50%, and then drops sharply to about 38% after covid is filtered out better, meaning an extra 12% was mixed in prior to that visible spike. But when did it sneak in? I/P deaths usually show a strong seasonal decline in this span, but the line here just stays flat at 45% for a long time, as if the natural decline had been offset by a small but growing number of undiagnosed Covid 19 deaths starting around week 7 - just as SARS 2 community transmission was first noted in early February. Adding this to their plotting:
Next up: all deaths "where the underlying cause was respiratory disease (ICD-10 J00-J99)" in England and Wales, flu season 2019-20. Actual weekly numbers are included in the ONS yearly fatality summary (PDF), usefully listed by week, right alongside Covid19 deaths. This is I/P and chronic lower resp. disease (killers 4 and 5), combined with a few others. I plotted these, noting the same interrupted seasonal decline mentioned above, first just traced in, based on the interrupted fall and lower levels seen later.
If this baseline is correct, the suspicious overage in respiratory illness deaths would be the shaded area, peaking in week 14 at about 900 above normal - nearly double the expected number. Combining weeks by visual estimates, rounded to the nearest 50 yields around 6,150 above-normal deaths by week 21. In the later weeks, baselines and comparisons are unclear, and case transmission should be low, so it didn't seem worth trying to count any excess. The little bump in weeks 33-35 seems to matter, but I'm not putting a number on it.
Later I found, from the ONS reports, a 5-year average for this mimicking the same patterns but higher on the scale. As with most relevant death causes, 2019-2020 was a low season to start. Compare to that, there's no above-average deaths until week 14, but I think the full pattern comparison shows how meaningless that is. 5-year average surprised me in showing the same New-Year's hump but higher on the scale, with a similar decline also staying higher. Usually this is shallower than in 2020, and continuous as I guessed - it doesn't go flat at week 7. There's even a similar rise at week 14, right after 2020 hits average at week 13. But the rise is much smaller normally, when there's no Covid 19 epidemic to strangely mimic. As you can see, my estimate was pretty sound, and so there were around 6,000 excess respiratory deaths to week 21. The possibility of these continuing since then appears a bit stronger now.
Considering lockdown and social distancing, all contagions should suffer in their ambitions, and the baseline for legit non-covid death may well be lower than this, making for even more excess. We could add a token 50 fatalities to get a fair and conservative minimum of 6,200. This doesn't add to prior calculations of 30,000-40,000 non-covid excess deaths in the U.K.. It just explains 15-20% of them, and gives an idea of the scale of relevant deaths that could plausibly add up to just the big range I propose.
LUMPIN20 Recruits the Top Five Killers
Aside from emergency visits, Davis points out that "crucial surgery and diagnostic tests, for a range of other serious conditions, have been delayed in huge numbers." Some conditions left unchecked will be ones with a normally low death toll, but he suggests the same applies to all five top killers (aside from covid). As Davis points out, for sufferers of these conditions, "during the Lockdown regime, treatment and essential screening has effectively been withheld." Once again, these are (by what seems to be 2018's figures):
* Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease: 13% of all deaths registered were due to one of the two and they are the leading cause of death for women. In total, 51,407 deaths were reported due to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in 2018
* Ischaemic heart diseases: 23,662 deaths.
* Cerebrovascular diseases: 20,523 deaths.
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 18,783 deaths.
* Influenza and pneumonia: 17,614 deaths. (source)
Davis explains "The top 5 leading causes of death account for more than 40% of deaths" in England and Wales in 2019. "On average these five causes kill 0.37% of the population every year, equating to approximately 0.06% every two months. Roughly the same figure as reported COVID 19 deaths." By his math, the one virus officially killed as many as all of these do combined in a normal year. In 2020 they killed quite a few more, but most likely they didn't do that on their own. No, they had help - from the year's top killer and/or the lockdown.
Most of these are also included in the above list of "conditions which can quickly become fatal if not treated in time." But I don't think all of these five require tight weekly management to avoid sudden massive deaths, that sometimes begin a few week BEFORE any lockdown-related changes occurred (see above, weeks 11-14). So that in itself cannot explain all of of the rises shown in ONS 2nd report, figure 9 (with added notes). This shows weekly deaths from top 5 killers # 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, plus lung cancer and the elder-oriented "symptoms/ill-defined," shows as percentage difference from a 5-year average for the same week. There's simply no good reason for these to do much more than wiggle a little above and below average, aside from deaths involving COVID 19 wrongly mixed in.
Limited treatment likely contributes a bit to the deaths rate for one or two of these, maybe a fair amount for another. But such spikes with all of them (considering rises and declines) could be better explained by new damage caused widely by unknown covid infections incurred a few weeks before.
The worst effects and best indicators are with Alzheimer's-dementia - up as much as 120% above normal (220% the usual number) in week 16 - and "symptoms, signs, and ill-defined conditions" (meaning general debility, frailty, senility etc. of older folks) up as high as 150% above normal in the same week 16. The other taken-as death causes included show a rise and then fall at the same basic time, but to lesser degree (proportionally): chronic lower respiratory infections, cerebrovascular diseases, ischaemic heart diseases, lung cancer, and influenza and pneumonia.
Note how the these likely false inclusions vary first with a mild rise than massive spike of deaths in week 14, then better but imperfect filtration mellow the increase, then more deaths steepen it anyway, and then finally an oddity: as the effects of lockdown could win over the effects of the virus, there are far less of these deaths - they fall back to their yearly norm of well below average. That happens quickly, by week 19. As noted above, Davis worried about cardiovascular deaths "over the nearly three months long Lockdown regime period." As shown in fig. 9, a leading part of that (ischaemic h.d.) is shown above increasing before 3 April (app. start of curtailed medical care), then peaking and falling alongside covid deaths before falling to normal. It killed at elevated levels for about six weeks, not the whole 3 month.
Again these are the five top killers in the UK (aside from Covid 19 this year), all markedly elevated in just that pattern suggesting many, most, or all of the excess deaths are NOT "non-covid" after all.
Among the smaller-scale killers in England and Wales are other elevated causes of likely relevance. Again, Covid 19 has wide-ranging effects on the lungs, heart, blood vessels, kidneys, and probably on the brain and neurological system, and several of these conditions are known to be linked to confirmed virus deaths. They will connect with unconfirmed deaths too. That's probably the main reason the following causes were all in general and drastic increase during the UK pandemic, although medical service changes and other factors will also play in.
cause peak rise above 5-year average
(in weeks 11-18, age 65+ unless noted)
Cerebral Palsy etc. 31.73%
Diabetes 42.3% (under 65)
Parkinson's disease 39.41%
epilepsy 33.58%
hypertensive dis. 53.23%
cardiac arrythmias 33.47 (w19-28, under 65)
cardiomyopathy 31.10% (w19-28, under 65)
heart, ill-defined 23.01% (under 65)
pulmonary h.d. 22.91%
urinary/kidney dis. 23.26%
All to get a little more detailed consideration in time.
Conclusion
Iain Davis' "LOKIN 20" was supposed to encapsulate a majority of abnormal U.K. deaths as caused by lockdown and related measures, leaving relatively little to blame on COVID19. Instead, it's just a poorly-defined catch-all trying to claim some half of all covid deaths, and all others above average, regardless of cause - hence we call it LUMPIN 20. Yet the mysterious combined forces behind that kill overwhelmingly when COVID 19 is killing, and then relent when it does - starting about 3 weeks after lockdown. It kills at the basic speed as that syndrome, and in the same age groups. And it kills its victims in the same range of ways, taking advantage of the same conditions it turns to co-morbidities just like covid does.
LUMPIN 20 comes across as COVID 19s' evil twin. But in reality, it's the same thing with some ignorant doubts slapped on.
Davis dismisses COVID 19 as killing only those with serious and largely age-based conditions that would have killed them fairly soon anyway. In fact that seems to be his main basis for deciding the virus "has low mortality rate" and/or one that was not "high impact," making it "absolutely comparable to influenza"
It was made to seem as if the 34,359 lives taken in a panic by LUMPIN 20 were of an ordinary spread, including plenty of productive lives cut well short. But Davis never specified this, leaving the type of lives lost rather vague. Either way, as a slight majority of deaths or greater, he'd say LUMPIN 20 clearly outweighed the smaller number (maximum 46%) of relatively marginal lives taken by the flu-like virus.
