Weekly All Cause Death+
Additional slides for paid subscribers
Some additional slides for paying subscribers. The April 2020 bump in weekly deaths is normally attributed to the first wave yet it also corresponds to drastic NHS policy changes such as shunting of thousands of elderly/frail patients from hospital beds to care homes. In the trade we call this unsafe discharge. These people were also subject to end-of-life care pathways (removal of regular medication and nil by mouth/DNR notices) whether they were nearing end of life or not. Emergency Laws preventing relatives from witnessing this. In the trade we call this iatrogenic death.
In this instance excess death is simply the observed weekly all cause death count minus the prior 5-year mean baseline for corresponding weeks; this being a simple method favoured by the ONS and others for visualising what is going on. What is going on are two peculiarly sharp spikes. I say ‘peculiar’ because this was supposed to be a novel virus that raged through the population. The excess death trend reveals this was not the case…
Zooming in to 2020 - 2021…
"These people were also subject to end-of-life care pathways (removal of regular medication and nil by mouth/DNR notices) whether they were nearing end of life or not. Emergency Laws preventing relatives from witnessing this. In the trade we call this iatrogenic death." Or maybe they suffered from Shipman's Disease? Is anything ever going to be done about this?