Moving Figures 2

Friday 15th May 2020 – 1pm

Sadly we may never know the numbers of those who have died of Covid-19 in the UK.

In order to find a truer figure than the one the govenment is working on we have to estimate. We know the numbers who have died so far this year, and we know the numbers who have died last year by this time. The difference between those figures is called the excess deaths. That is, a figure of how many more people have died this year than last in a comparable period. Most of these will be Covid.

The best estimate of this is over 20,000 excess deaths. So a more accurate figure than the govenment estimates would be more than 50,000. And that is a conservative estimate. It is almost certainly 10,000 more than that.

The civilian death toll in WWII was 70,000 largely consisting of 40,000 civilians who died in the seven-month period between September 1940 and May 1941 – The Blitz. By the time we have done seven months of Covid-19....well, you can work it out.

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