This is an updated version of an article that we ‘unpublished’ due to confusion over one of the Government charts.
For well over two years into the covid era the ‘headline’ number of covid deaths (and the one most prominent on the UK Government covid dashboard) were those defined as “anybody dying within 28 days of a positive PCR test”. While the chart of such “covid deaths” is still prominently displayed on the dashboard to this day, it is no longer the first chart shown. Instead, the first shown is now the (more reasonable) number of deaths “with covid on the death certificate”. But looking at the dashboard today filtered for England there is an uncanny likeness between the two different ways of counting covid deaths:
Note that, while the graphs are very slightly different, the cumulative totals of deaths are almost identical:
England: Total deaths with covid on death certificate: 192,231
England: Total deaths within 28 days of positive test: 192,320
This is a freakish likeness of numbers which should surely be very different. In an earlier version of this article I assumed these figures must be wrong because when I looked at the dashboard filtered for the whole of the UK I found the following:
So it appeared that the whole UK total for deaths within 28 days of a positive test (178,407) was lower than for England (192,320). But what I failed to notice is that, unlike the England data, the UK total for deaths within 28 days curiously only goes up to May 2022.
But, even if we assume that the UK figures are correct there remains a fundamental problem. We would expect the total deaths within 28 days of a positive test to be much greater than the total dying with covid on the death certificate. This is because surely almost all of the latter would have tested positive within 28 days of death; and we would expect many of those dying within 28 days of a positive test to have died from causes other than covid and hence that covid should not be on the death certificate.
So why are these numbers essentially identical? In fact, it gets even stranger because if we look at the cumulative totals up the end of 31 Dec 2021 (i.e., a period that covers the main two years of the pandemic 2020-2021) we find (for England) that the total with covid on the death certificate is over 20,000 higher than the total within 28 days of a positive test:
Total deaths with covid on death certificate: 151,088
Total deaths within 28 days of positive test: 130,756
This is partly explained by the fact that in the first few months (before mass PCR testing) some people dying with covid were diagnosed based on symptoms alone. But since August 2020, with everybody entering hospital for any reason being tested almost daily, it is inconceivable that a person could die with covid listed as a cause unless they had tested positive within 28 days.
While the number of deaths within 28 days of a positive test has been gradually ‘catching up’ (to be exactly equal as of today) the only way to explain why the numbers are still so similar is that:
a) almost every person dying within 28 days of a positive test must, for a very long period, automatically have had covid listed as a cause written on the death certificate. This is something we were assured was not happening; and
b) even after the introduction of mass PCR testing many people were somehow determined to have died because of covid without any test.
And, of course, there is other data which confirm that the figures for total deaths with covid on their death certificate must be a massive exaggeration of the true number of covid deaths. Consider, for example, the total (mentioned above) of 151,088 deaths in England up to 31 Dec 2021 with covid on the death certificate. This figure is non-sensical given this response to an FOI asking for number of deaths where covid was the only cause mentioned on the death certificate. The response confirmed that less than 5% of all officially classified covid deaths in England and Wales up to 31 Dec 2021 listed covid as the only cause of death on the death certificate:
What can we conclude from all of this?
It is a statistical freak only that, as of today, the total number of England deaths with covid on the death certificate is equal to the total number of deaths within 28 days of a positive test.
The covid death numbers for the UK as stated on the UK Government dashboard have been - and continue to be - massively exaggerated.
Update: Here is a video based on this article:
URGENT UPDATE: It turns out that the Government data on deaths within 28 days of a positive test only goes up until May 2022, so I need to revise this article.
Professor Fenton keep going after them. You are the only one who can. We are all in awe of your math/statistical abilities. For the next pandemic, we will rely only on your numbers and estimates.
Lord forgive me, but I really despise these people who propogate such crap, and who changed the rules to suit their fear agenda.