Every death is a tragedy - that goes without saying - but we don’t know yet how many of the elderly would have died without having Covid-19. Looking at the ONS stats published this week, c.1/3 of those who died were over 85. We all want our loved ones to go on forever, but sadly something - often a respiratory illness - prevents this and the older the person the more likely death is. With c.500,000 people estimated to live in care homes in the UK - mainly elderly - I guess we would expect tens of thousands to die each year. In addition total UK deaths in 2019 were c. 10k fewer than expected, I believe, so maybe we would have seen a spike in deaths in 2020 regardless?All that said, of course care homes should be suitably equipped and if we later find that deaths were disproportionately high, lessons should be learned. The stat that surprised me most this week was that in 2000, over 20,000 people died in a single week from seasonal flu - more than we’ve seen in any single week so far this year (although we didn’t socially distance then.).
Craig Fordham ● 2392d