How on earth did I spell salts as sorts!

Need more coffee.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Ridiculous response!

I have no problem with anyone speculating. You don't though speculate. You take raw data, which has questions surrounding its veracity, and draw conclusions, without any caveats.

When the ONS themselves accept that finding a reliable way to measure the statistics in a way that can then be meaningfully interpreted, has not yet been achieved, any amateur doing so sets themselves up for ridicule. I though, didn't conclude. I speculated. Hence, "probably help".

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.

A long protracted enquiry. In which blame will be noticeably swerved for those mis-handling and exploiting the situation. No-one will be held to account, except the tax payer funding yet another charade.

Those who should be held to account have already been given Honours by Her Maj, or will be by His Maj.

Edited by Forest Hillbilly (14 Apr 2023 4.05pm)

I disengage, I turn the page.

Why don't you write to the PM and tell him to cancel the whole thing and save a lot of money?

Why throw good money after bad when there are people like you who already know all the answers?

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.

Get a grip! It's not the job of the ONS to investigate the reasons behind anything they report. It's their job to ensure that what they measure is done accurately. Their concern is therefore to ensure that what is regarded as an "excess death" is universally accepted and trusted.

They are politically blind and if you think those who work for them would tolerate government pressure (or handouts from the pharma industry) to publish misleading data, then I think you are being both naive and disingenuous at the same time. You could not keep a lid on something like that. It would spark leaks, protests and resignations. Statistics like these are not produced by senior civil servants sitting in ivory towers waiting for a knighthood. They are produced by groups of statisticians, working together, sharing information and devoted to the truth.

So why has there been a trend of excess deaths being perhaps 10% (not 20%) higher than the average of the previous 10 years?

Whilst the answer to that has yet to be answered, it looks to me to be inescapably connected to Covid and therefore something to be investigated and determined by the enquiry.

Weaponising the statistics by those intent on finding support for their theory that lockdowns were a mistake is politically inspired nonsense.

There are many things involved. Covid is still causing deaths, particularly among the unvaccinated. The long-term impact of Covid on other health conditions is only now beginning to be recognised, let alone understood. The pressure on the NHS during the peak of the Covid crisis caused some conditions to go undiagnosed and other treatments to be delayed. The NHS remains understaffed and overstretched.

The restrictions kept the numbers hospitalised for Covid at a just about manageable level so that other treatments could continue, although still impacted.

So not locking down would almost certainly have made these problems worse, not better, and the excess deaths even higher than we are now seeing.

Finding the truth over the theoretical idea of what would have happened if we had not locked down, cannot be achieved. All we can do is run scientific modelling based on accurate statistics and expert interpretation of them. Something I am perfectly prepared to accept, but no-it-alls with an agenda to prove a conspiracy theory are not.

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.

Must be a miracle I am still alive. Along with millions of my kind......snooze snooze