That I need to preface this article by saying that all deaths are regrettable is a reflection of the hysteria that the Covid GroupThink has created, which thus drives a mob torching of anyone challenging that GroupThink. But here are some bald facts. In April 2021 – a cold month – the England death rate was, at 851.2 people per 100,000, the lowest since the ONS started tracking mortality rates in 2001. 38,899 folks died in April, 6.1% below the five year average.
Of those deaths, just 2.4% mentioned Covid on the death certificate making it only the ninth biggest cause of death. Since then, there have been even fewer deaths meaning that on the death league table Covid is now very much battling to avoid relegation from the Premiership.
From this we can read two things:
- All those lockdown measures were meant to flatten the curve and save the NHS. The NHS is now in no danger whatsoever of being swamped and thus all those measures can be scrapped at once unless we are now moving the goalposts and justify restrictions which are ruining lives and costing manifold bad side effects to try to eliminate a disease which causes very few deaths and could, anyway, be reimported at any time even if it was temporarily eradicated in the UK.
- As some of us noted during the hysteria, the average age of a covid death in the UK was greater than average life expectancy. Covid killed off the old, ill and frail. Those folks dying in 2020 would almost all have died in 2021 anyway. The continuing low mortality rates we see now suggest that I was 100% right.
And thus one might ask if the cost of wrecking the economy, racking up enormous Government debts, of a massive spike in suicides and depressions, of millions of missed cancer appointments which are condemning younger people who could have been saved to a much earlier death, was really worth it? Just to add a few months of lonely existence, rather than life for much of 2020 was, for many, not living, to those already in their last year on this planet: was it all worth it?
When the zealots finally take off their pointless and ineffective face nappies, leave the GroupThink tent created by the media and political classes, and stare dispassionately at the facts of what we achieved as a society we will, I hope, really consider was it all worth it? If one looks at the hard data, the answer has to be no. We will conclude that the GroupThink got it horribly wrong and, I hope but do not expect, that those responsible are held to account.