Broccers wrote: ↑Thu Jan 20, 2022 7:27 am
You're disagreeing with facts from the ONS. Up to you.
It clearly states OF COVID.
Broccers, even the article you posted isn't trying to change the last 2 years' figures. It's just tweaking figures for deaths in the last week or two; that's what the ONS does, it produces accurate figures after the event instead of relying on easier to produce estimates. There have always been two figures produced:
(1) the daily figure produced by the Government showing deaths within 28 days of a positive test (which is an estimate of the total COVID deaths because it cannot consider the cause of death on the death certificate - it doesn't do so in order to get up to date daily data); and
(2) the ONS figure showing the number of deaths where COVID is stated on the death certificate to be the cause of death. That is undeniably 'of COVID' not 'with COVID'. See the ONS article here:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transpar ... sitivetest
The second figure has been consistently higher until now. There are various reasons; deaths at home which take a while to be registered, deaths where the cause was COVID but the person hadn't had a test before becoming seriously ill, slower deaths - all increasing the figure compared to the daily published one. There are also deaths where the person had COVID but it didn't kill them - which will reduce the figure. But the net effect has been shown to be a significant under-estimate for most of the last two years.
It's gratifying to see that fewer deaths are actually caused by COVID now and the current daily deaths are an over-estimate. But that does not alter the figures for number of people who have died with COVID stated on their death certificates as the cause, which (from the ONS, who you clearly see as an authority) as at 18 January is 174,305 - see the data here:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... ths#deaths