England & Wales Crude Mortality 1970 - 2021
From The Office For Nobbled Statistics
In my post dated 4th Jan 2022 we took a look at the weekly all cause mortality rate (deaths per 100k population) for the 15 – 44y age group for the period 2010/w1 – 2021/w50. Some interesting long-term patterns appeared to emerge so I decided to brush the dust off data going back to 1970 and take a good, long view on matters. Unfortunately I don’t have this data broken down by age band, so all cause for all ages will have to suffice for now.
This is a fascinating slide but before we get stuck in we need to realise that disease patterns and healthcare provision for 1970 are not going to be the same as for 2021. The same holds true of every possible risk factor you can imagine from transport (road traffic accidents) to diet (cholesterol etc) to attitude to health to career (manual vs. skilled labour) to housing standards to unemployment to pollution to the economy and back again several times over!
Bearing all this in mind we see a general trend in better health until this hits the buffers around 2010 when austerity begins to bite. We also see that the pandemic peak of 2020 is excelled by peaks during 1970, 1999 and 2000. The jagged pattern reminds us of the perpetual annual price we have to pay for living on a small, damp island washed by a cold Northerly sea at high latitude.
Anybody with a set of callipers will be able to confirm that the net saving in health benefit arising from technological, medical and pharmaceutical developments over the last fifty years – a considerable period for innovation in healthcare – is swamped by seasonal disease each and every year. It seems to me that we are in the business of fixing symptoms; presumably because that is where the money and glittering careers lie. It is a crying shame that don’t spend decent dosh on poverty, nutrition, education and primary care.
With the UK economy now down the toilet and going deeper as a result of successive misguided government policies we may ask where the £170B for next year is going to come from to keep the NHS limping along in the sorry state it has reached at a time when waiting lists are growing and the cost of delayed diagnosis and treatment over the past 2 years is going to be sorely felt. I know, let’s build a new hospital shall we, so a smiling Minister can cut the shiny ribbon for the cameras, and perhaps blame unvaccinated vermin for all our troubles whilst he's at it?
I'm sure you know that "the perpetual annual price we have to pay for living on a small, damp island washed by a cold Northerly sea at high latitude" was known to the Romans, who thought this island wasn't at all habitable, but then they didn't know about the lungwort that grows profusely here. Neither do most of those running the NHS, seemingly. Your mention of funding this insatiable, overblown beast reminded me of someone, I think it was Dr Robert McFarlane, who said that American hospitals are being paid $3,000 for every Covid death. I'm assuming then that they're being similarly paid here, in the UK, and if so, it's not much of an incentive for a so-called health service to get pneumatic disease sufferers back to full health again.