I live in the north of England. We’ve lost 2 family members to Covid-19 and another was seriously ill. We have seen neighbours die and know through friends/contacts of many other cases/deaths.

Covid-19 deaths are MUCH higher than officially reported here in the UK. The official stats are ONLY the people who died in hospital and tested positive for the virus. Care home deaths are time-lagged and reported seperately. The numbers reported by each country are deaths confirmed in hospital. We have over 140,000 care homes in the UK. 16 died in 2 weeks at one of our local homes, compared to an average of 1. The first few died within a few days and weren’t allowed into hospital for tests (because they knew they wouldn’t be able to save them). They had to die painfully, with no medical care other than paracetamol and no family members. It became obvious this was Covid-19, so the rest were given tests and it was confirmed they all died from Covid-19. That is one care home out of more than 140,000 !

In the week before our first reported UK Covid death, seasonal flu had subsided, with only a handful of serious cases and fatalities. We have an average of around 17,000 flu deaths in the UK each season (mainly between Nov and Feb). Looking at the available graphs, around 10% of flu deaths occur outside of those months, so perhaps 2000, between March and October. So perhaps a few hundred on average in March and April. Covid-19 (hospital confirmed deaths) are around 20,000 in the last 6 weeks or so. With care home deaths and deaths at home, that number is likely to be closer to 30,000 and we are due to see thousands more deaths before this tails off in a few weeks (hopefully). All told, we could be close to 40,000 deaths in around 3 months. All at a time, when there would normally be just a few hundred flu-relate deaths !!!

This is starting to show in the stats, with the graph for all UK deaths clearly showing the dramatic effect of Covid-19 on our excess mortality rate…

Please don’t tell me this is comparable to Flu. It isn’t. It’s quite amazing that we had our flu season, which passed through the community and caused the deaths of thousands of vulnerable people, and yet, even after that had happened, Covid-19 was still capable of taking another 40,000 lives in a few weeks (including over 100 frontline medical staff and thousands of people below the age of 40, many without any known health problems). We prevented it spreading and got the ‘r’ number below 1, and estimates suggest at least 80% of the population haven’t had it yet. Without lockdown, projections suggest 80% of us would have had it, resulting in 4 times as many deaths. That’s 160,000 deaths. But wait, that’s not right. The deaths would’ve been MUCH higher, because hospital and ventilator capacity would’ve been exceeded (because of lockdown, we flattened the curve and kept demand below capacity). Without the strict lockdown, UK deaths are estimated to have been closer to half a million.

Before you say, the predictions here ion the UK can’t be trusted, the ‘curve’ prediction at the start of lockdown is almost precisely what the real curve ended up looking like. The prediction was eerily accurate.

So, to summarise…

Flu kills an average of 17,000 people in the UK over 4 months, and maybe 2000 in an average March/April

Covid-19 has just killed over 20,000 people in 6 weeks and likely over 30,000 in March/April altogether

Therefore 10 times the normal death rate from ‘flu-like’ illness

All of that whilst taking extreme measures to prevent spread.