Catastrophic Health Collapse (part 6)

In this article I utilise A&E admissions for 2017 – 2021 from a sizeable NHS Trust to reveal trends in respiratory illness with comparison of rates for weighted and unweighted data

In part 5 of this series I plotted out the incidence of respiratory diagnosis and the incidence of respiratory procedure in terms of percentage of total intake for the emergency departments of a sizeable NHS Trust for the period 2017 – 2022. I then derived a ratio for these that I termed the Respiratory Severity Index (RSI). We noted a rather lean year for severe respiratory illness in 2019 compared to previous years and unearthed a curious situation in which indicators of respiratory illness didn’t go through the roof during 2020 as we would expect from a novel and deadly virus. I concluded that we’d been conned, and by those working in the NHS of all places.

These analyses were based on persons being admitted and treated, which is a good starting point, but we can go one step further. Age is always a confounding factor when it comes to matters of health and so we need some way of accounting for this. Professors Norman Fenton and Martin Neil of QMUL have been producing some cracking a…