How many Covid deaths ?

 

There is a stat being bandied around Twitter and other social Media platforms, 17,371 people dying of Covid.
It’s in response to a Freedom of information request

Please supply deaths caused solely by covid 19, where covid is the only cause of death listed on the death certificate, broken down by age group and gender between feb 2020 up to and including dec 2021.

Please supply the number of autopsies carried out on those where covid was the only cause stated.

The request is an interesting one, but the results are not as they seem – anyone with cancer, heart disease, pneumonia or diabetes would be excluded by this FOI request. Someone dieing “with AIDS” would likely have pneumonia and AIDS on their death certificate so a similar FOI request would probably have the number of sole AIDS deaths as a very low number.

Spinners of this FOI request are making out that somehow the 17,371 deaths “of” Covid via this FOI request are the only ones that should count & that the remainder simply were sick anyway (Or got hit by a bus) and that Covid was purely coincidental to death.

We can examine how many coincidental deaths there might be by doing some statistical analysis.
I will use England as it has covid rates broken down by age.
On the 4^th January, 2022 Covid cases were at their absolute maximum amongst older age groups in England; the case peak by specimen date was on this date and there were 205,965 cases; the moving average by specimen date was 139,918.3; reported cases were 148,725 and the 7 day moving average 146,332. However you look at it Covid was very near or at the peak.  This means that analysing this date should bring us to the number of deaths where Covid was a major contributory factor and where it was purely coincidental. [1/2]

Let us assume that everyone had drunk a cup of tea on the 4^th January, now babies and toddlers and people who don’t like tea won’t have – but for the sake of this argument let’s just assume it is everyone, and it’s completely non lethal

How many people would we expect to die ‘within 28 days of a cup of tea’.
Looking at the 2019 death stats (the last non pandemic year) I note there were 604,707 deaths in the UK [1].

Deaths registered in England were 496,370

 

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/vitalstatisticspopulationandhealthreferencetables/current

Going through the UK deaths by age, adjusting to England’s population one would expect the following distribution of deaths in one day

 

7.315	0-4
0.616	5-9
0.778	10-14
1.901	15-19
3.649	20-24
4.91	25-29
6.773	30-34
9.66	35-39
12.956	40-44
21.745	45-49
33.71	50-54
47.367	55-59
63.562	60-64
89.34	65-69
138.348	70-74
167.263	75-79
220.721	80-84
244.496	85-89
284.808	90+

 

Tot it up, multiply by 365 and you’ll see it comes back to 496370. Hence within 28 days of drinking a cup of tea you’d expect a mortality breakdown as above on any  individual day. The case rate of drinking tea is 100,000 per 100,000 people in all age groups.

Now let us examine the Jan 4^th English Covid case data / case rates – using these, English population statistics & the 7 day rates we conclude that the cases testing on the 4^th Jan were approximately as follows.

3058	0-4
5818	5-9
7476	10-14
10109	15-19
15284	20-24
17467	25-29
16445	30-34
14214	35-39
12247	40-44
11304	45-49
11694	50-54
10297	55-59
7435	60-64
4887	65-69
3777	70-74
2641	75-79
1606	80-84
1001	85-89
721	90+

 

The complete English population is as follows:

0-4	3,239,447.00
5-9	3,539,458.00
10-14	3,435,579.00
15-19	3,115,871.00
20-24	3,472,522.00
25-29	3,771,493.00
30-34	3,824,652.00
35-39	3,738,209.00
40-44	3,476,303.00
45-49	3,638,639.00
50-54	3,875,351.00
55-59	3,761,782.00
60-64	3,196,813.00
65-69	2,814,128.00
70-74	2,784,300.00
75-79	2,009,992.00
80-84	1,449,189.00
85-89	885,343.00
90+	521,067.00

 

By simple division we’d expect the following 'deaths within 28 days' testing positive for Covid on January 4^th is Covid were truly non lethal.

 

0-4	0.1933476794
5-9	0.02835147754
10-14	0.04740312594
15-19	0.1726906704
20-24	0.4497010668
25-29	0.6367142031
30-34	0.8154194369
35-39	1.028461148
40-44	1.27803005
45-49	1.891518626
50-54	2.848189163
55-59	3.630370918
60-64	4.139227775
65-69	4.344126578
70-74	5.25486876
75-79	6.153638584
80-84	6.848921658
85-89	7.740202258
90+	11.03448099
	58.53566416

 

A total of 59 deaths.

 

As a sanity check, 157,481 is 0.27% of the English population. If there were no age skew in cases we’d expect 106 deaths resulting from people who tested positive on Jan 4^th. Remember this is at the absolute peak of the pandemic.

Looking at it from another angle, 13,558,354 people have tested positive in England. This is 24% of the English population. They didn't, but assume they all got Covid on the same day. Within 28 days you'd expect 24% * 496,370 * 28/365 deaths = 9130 deaths, or 12.6 per day. 

As a further sanity check, this is around 18700 cases per day and ties in with our 106 deaths per day figure above when mulitplied out. 
If we adjust for age skew as per the Jan 4th data an estimate of  5035 deaths coincidentally with Covid 19 is formed.

You simply can not plausibly get anywhere near the implied 100,000+ coincidental deaths that the pundits bandying about “Only  17,000 or so OF Covid” are misleadingly using.

Covid, particularly unvaccinated and even for the vaccinated older, particularly those with comorbidities is far far more dangerous than simply going about day to day life. & the idea that someone’s life isn’t worth anything if they have comorbidities is downright offensive.

Look at the number of deaths with Covid on death certificate, deaths within 28 days of a positive test or excess deaths to ascertain the seriousness of the pandemic in England and the UK, not this 17,371 figure.