The Lemon Fool

The current figure for excess deaths in the UK is running close to 20% and is higher than the figure for much of the covid pandemic.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why ... ing-covid/

This is not just a UK phenomenon

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exce ... EU~FRA~AUS

The silence from the government is causing the conspiracy theorists to speculate.

Various theories include, heart problems caused by delayed testing and treatment and ambulance delays but nobody has the nswer yet and it would be likely to be multi-factorial but we do need the answer asap.

My guess is that some of the deaths might be due to long term sequelae of covid infection causing an increase in CV problems.

Any thoughts

John

redsturgeon wrote:The current figure for excess deaths in the UK is running close to 20% and is higher than the figure for much of the covid pandemic.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why ... ing-covid/

This is not just a UK phenomenon

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exce ... EU~FRA~AUS

The silence from the government is causing the conspiracy theorists to speculate.

Various theories include, heart problems caused by delayed testing and treatment and ambulance delays but nobody has the answer yet and it would be likely to be multi-factorial but we do need the answer asap.

My guess is that some of the deaths might be due to long term sequelae of covid infection causing an increase in CV problems.

Any thoughts

John

Hi John,

I hope you're well. I think you're much closer to this subject than many of us, or at least me. I have no idea if this is pertinent but the NHS hired 3.5K managers in 2019. I think, but stand to be corrected, that they were hired to sort out waiting lists.

They don't seem to have had a great impact.

As many are aware my experience of the NHS has been nothing short of a joke.

1. No diagnosis whatsoever for over 21 years of complaining about symptoms - No diagnosis
2. When first diagnosis made it was diagnosing symptoms not cause - late & incorrect diagnosis
3. Wrong diagnosis made again in 2016
4. Correct diagnosis made in 2022 - a wait of 43 years

I suspect my experience may explain some of the underlying issues within the NHS.

1. No diagnosis
2. Late diagnosis
3. Incorrect diagnosis

All consume huge amounts of resource with no satisfactory outcome. I managed to survive. I'll remind you that other members of my family have not. I rang to make an appointment with my GP yesterday. I was unable to do so. I couldn’t get by the stupidity and obstructive mindset of the receptionist.

Bums on seats does not equate to having the experience needed in the NHS. GP’s are maxing out their LTA’s and retiring or working less hours. Experience is leaving the NHS at an amount that cannot be replaced at the same speed.

The NHS is driven by politicians. Big mistake

AiY(D)

It's the bulge.

While there is no doubt that the NHS faces significant problems at the moment, the excess death figures are not just in the UK and indeed Germany figures are twice that of the UK at the moment.

CliffEdge wrote:It's the bulge.

Care to expand on that?

redsturgeon wrote:While there is no doubt that the NHS faces significant problems at the moment, the excess death figures are not just in the UK and indeed Germany figures are twice that of the UK at the moment.

I read this a while back regarding the situation round these parts https://theconversation.com/thousands-more-australians-died-in-2022-than-expected-covid-was-behind-the-majority-of-them-196281
I'd expect it to be similar elsewhere

CliffEdge wrote:It's the bulge.

I thought that led to more births

pje16 wrote:

CliffEdge wrote:It's the bulge.

I thought that led to more births

Exactly. It's the old joke about the physicist, mathematician and engineer.
According to physicists time doesn't exist anyway so there you are.

CliffEdge wrote:It's the bulge.

Rather, it's the "Battle of the Bulge"?

redsturgeon wrote:The current figure for excess deaths in the UK is running close to 20% and is higher than the figure for much of the covid pandemic.

My guess is that some of the deaths might be due to long term sequelae of covid infection causing an increase in CV problems.

Any thoughts

I don't have an answer, or a clue really, though it sounds as though you may well be right. I suspect it isn't a simple matter.

I can only relate my personal experience which, as an example of one, is hardly conclusive evidence. I have come to realise that I too am now in some ways a victim of the pandemic - though AFAIK without ever having caught Covid-19 and being fully vaccinated.

Before the pandemic/lockdown I was a reasonably healthy 72 Year old (give or take a stroke or two!) but have for the past 6 months or so suffered from sometimes crippling pain.

Now this might just be a consequence of advancing age, however I think there is more to it than that. In retrospect IMO it's to a large part my own fault, though it obviously came about as a result of changes in my behaviour due to COVID continuing even after the lockdown ended.

The investigation into my condition is ongoing. Meanwhile, perhaps prematurely, I have self diagnosed what is going on and it's (IMO): a bit complicated - with possibly even a psychological aspect.

IF (a big if) my situation - though it's hardly terminal - is representative of what is going on then the NHS may be faced with ongoing complex medical conditions, particularly in an elderly population, even before we come to 'Long COVID'.

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:I have no idea if this is pertinent but the NHS hired 3.5K managers in 2019. I think, but stand to be corrected, that they were hired to sort out waiting lists.

They don't seem to have had a great impact.

I think we also have to ask ourselves how many managers resigned in the same period.

If there were 3,501 or more resignations the lack of impact from the new guys is no great surprise. Its a moving target I'd have thought.

Politicians and they statistics, eh? I've heard them (or Boris, probably) telling us we are getting 6,000 new GPs too, but never a mention of how many have retired so we can make a meaningful judgement.

As this is not local to the UK, then I don't think we can blame the NHS. As mentioned, there will doubtless be many contributing factors.

Firstly I haven't looked at the causes of these deaths, so the increase could be heart disease, cancer, respiratory, alcohol related, etc., although looking at the basic gov.uk info it seems to be slightly skewed towards the oer 65s.

My gut feeling, and also personal experience from family members, is that a lot of serious illnesses were not diagnosed, or not diagnosed in a timely fashion, during the last 3 years. Also those that were diagnosed (like a young relative's bowel cancer) were slower in response than hoped, and treatment was postponed several times and I suspect monitoring reduced (this family member is not expected to see summer this year). A similar story with a fellow dog walker in the village, who's lymphoma went undiagnosed until summer 2022, at which point the consultant was apparently horrified that the obvious hints had been missed.

Then there are those who sat waiting well beyond the Golden Hour for ambulances with broken bones and internal injuries or circulatory problems, they might recover, but not fully and lifespan is shortened. Add in the fact that many people hardly had been exposed to any sort of bug for 2 years so any infection ran riot, uncertainty over what to put in the flu vaccine, so there's a whole bunch of repiratory issues there, and that's before the long term effect of Covid are known.

An of course there's the vaccine. As one of the labourers working on our house proudly said last week, he hadn't been vaccinated because he knew about 2 people who'd been vaccinated and had then died. We decided not to press him on the details of cause of death, or how long after thay had been vaccinated, as it turned out they were friends of friends who he'd never met.

Paul

redsturgeon wrote:While there is no doubt that the NHS faces significant problems at the moment, the excess death figures are not just in the UK and indeed Germany figures are twice that of the UK at the moment.

My Mum died in December 2021. She had cancer and much of her treatment was delayed due to covid. Patients on Chemotherapy have surpressed immunity and cannot fight covid off. We have two local hospitals and both seem to be experiencing continued issues with covid on the wards and NHS staff off work due to covid. It think bluntly these places are petri dishes for covid and many patients will have treatment delayed due to the sort of issues mentioned above.

AiY(D)

AsleepInYorkshire wrote: It think bluntly these places are petri dishes for covid and many patients will have treatment delayed due to the sort of issues mentioned above.

My opinion too. The probability of contracting Covid in hospital seems to be completely ignored by doctors in the media who urge people with symptoms of serious diseases to still go and get checked out.

XFool wrote:

redsturgeon wrote:The current figure for excess deaths in the UK is running close to 20% and is higher than the figure for much of the covid pandemic.

My guess is that some of the deaths might be due to long term sequelae of covid infection causing an increase in CV problems.

Any thoughts

I don't have an answer, or a clue really, though it sounds as though you may well be right. I suspect it isn't a simple matter.

I can only relate my personal experience which, as an example of one, is hardly conclusive evidence. I have come to realise that I too am now in some ways a victim of the pandemic - though AFAIK without ever having caught Covid-19 and being fully vaccinated.

Before the pandemic/lockdown I was a reasonably healthy 72 Year old (give or take a stroke or two!) but have for the past 6 months or so suffered from sometimes crippling pain.

Now this might just be a consequence of advancing age, however I think there is more to it than that. In retrospect IMO it's to a large part my own fault, though it obviously came about as a result of changes in my behaviour due to COVID continuing even after the lockdown ended.

The investigation into my condition is ongoing. Meanwhile, perhaps prematurely, I have self diagnosed what is going on and it's (IMO): a bit complicated - with possibly even a psychological aspect.

IF (a big if) my situation - though it's hardly terminal - is representative of what is going on then the NHS may be faced with ongoing complex medical conditions, particularly in an elderly population, even before we come to 'Long COVID'.

Follow the Zombieland rulebook.

Rule #1. Cardio. When the virus struck, for obvious reasons, the first ones to go were the fatties.

https://zombieland.fandom.com/wiki/Zombieland_Rules

redsturgeon wrote:
My guess is that some of the deaths might be due to long term sequelae of covid infection causing an increase in CV problems.

Any thoughts

John

Just a single anecdote but my father-in-law developed heart issues about 3 weeks after getting Covid. He was otherwise fairly fit for an 80yr old.

RC

ReformedCharacter wrote:my father-in-law developed heart issues about 3 weeks after getting Covid. He was otherwise fairly fit for an 80yr old.

In my obviously amateur status I never think of the heart as being the kind of organ that "catches" something in that sense. But rather it gradually declines over a long period of time. even if the manifestation of that decline can erupt very quickly.

But of course any external assault on one's health and well-being could trigger a cardiac "event".

redsturgeon wrote:The silence from the government is causing the conspiracy theorists to speculate.

We have just had 2 years where primary and secondary health services around the globe have been practically shut down for everything other than covid.
When millions of people haven't had their cancer screening or their heart medication prescribed, it shouldn't be a surprise that some proportion of them start dying at a younger age.

The uncomfortable truth is that a functioning health service does save lives.

Given the huge extra demands the health sector has seen due to covid, it would make sense to increase funding and recruitment, but instead they have had shrinking wage packets, an exodus of worn out staff and so an increased workload for those who remain. None of that is positive for future health outcomes.

It is not difficult, but for some reason many people want to believe the vaccines are killing people, against all the evidence - why??

This cohort study on the entire population of an Italian Province assessed the incidence of potentially vaccine-related serious adverse events (PVR-SAEs) by COVID-19 vaccination status. From January 2021 to July 2022, we extracted all deaths and hospitalizations due to several cardiovascular diseases, pulmonary embolism, and deep vein thrombosis from National Healthcare System official data. - COVID-19 Vaccination Did Not Increase the Risk of Potentially Related Serious Adverse Events: 18-Month Cohort Study in an Italian Province

Lootman wrote:

ReformedCharacter wrote:my father-in-law developed heart issues about 3 weeks after getting Covid. He was otherwise fairly fit for an 80yr old.

In my obviously amateur status I never think of the heart as being the kind of organ that "catches" something in that sense. But rather it gradually declines over a long period of time. even if the manifestation of that decline can erupt very quickly.

But of course any external assault on one's health and well-being could trigger a cardiac "event".

There seems to be some decent research showing heart issues post-covid, I must admit I haven't digested the whole paper, but:

To better understand the change in the relative rates of incident cardiovascular outcomes before and after the COVID-19 exposure, we developed a difference-in-differences analysis to estimate the adjusted incident rate ratios of the cardiovascular outcomes relative to both the contemporary and historical control groups in the pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 exposure periods. The results showed that the adjusted incident rate ratios of cardiovascular outcomes in the post-COVID-19 exposure period were significantly higher than those in the pre-exposure period (ratios of incident rate ratios for all cardiovascular outcomes were significantly higher than 1) and exhibited a graded increase by severity of the acute phase of the disease

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01689-3

RC

XFool wrote:

redsturgeon wrote:The current figure for excess deaths in the UK is running close to 20% and is higher than the figure for much of the covid pandemic.

My guess is that some of the deaths might be due to long term sequelae of covid infection causing an increase in CV problems.

Any thoughts

I don't have an answer, or a clue really, though it sounds as though you may well be right. I suspect it isn't a simple matter.

I can only relate my personal experience which, as an example of one, is hardly conclusive evidence. I have come to realise that I too am now in some ways a victim of the pandemic - though AFAIK without ever having caught Covid-19 and being fully vaccinated.

Before the pandemic/lockdown I was a reasonably healthy 72 Year old (give or take a stroke or two!) but have for the past 6 months or so suffered from sometimes crippling pain.

Now this might just be a consequence of advancing age, however I think there is more to it than that. In retrospect IMO it's to a large part my own fault, though it obviously came about as a result of changes in my behaviour due to COVID continuing even after the lockdown ended.

The investigation into my condition is ongoing. Meanwhile, perhaps prematurely, I have self diagnosed what is going on and it's (IMO): a bit complicated - with possibly even a psychological aspect.

IF (a big if) my situation - though it's hardly terminal - is representative of what is going on then the NHS may be faced with ongoing complex medical conditions, particularly in an elderly population, even before we come to 'Long COVID'.

Shh! I may be recovering... It's about ****** time!

And I didn't even get COVID-19, AFAIK. Can't imagine what would have happened if I had (Head exploded? All bones turned to marrow-bone jelly overnight?), based on what happened without catching it.

First I had Jamie Lee Curtiss Syndrome.
viewtopic.php?p=450760#p450760

Funny in retrospect. Can't see how the GP would have got unto diagnosing that one very quickly: "Well Mr XFool, I have just been reading The Guardian and see that the latest film in the Halloween franchise is due to be released..."

Then later I had, what? Crippling osteoarthritis? An auto-immune/neurological illness? Both? The same thing? (Perhaps it's just old age?)

Did anyone else get clobbered by amusing, 'abnormal'(?), strange, unexpected conditions following the pandemic/lockdown?