Analysing the statistics for COVID-19 for England and Wales[1]Pre-existing conditions of people who died due to COVID-19, England and Wales produces some newsworthy findings.
Looking at the 2020 figures, there is an increase of 77,081 in the number of deaths, from 530,841 to 607,922 with the largest proportion attributed to COVID-19 (73,766). It appears that the government was right in its reaction to the pandemic.
That’s until you look closer.
The percentage of people who did not have any underlying condition was 12.8%. Yes, 87.2% of the people who died had some other underlying illness most of which fall into the major categories of mortality.
All of these major mortality categories are associated with low HRV.
In 2020, of people under the age of 65, 1,557 had no underlying condition 0.3% of the number of people who died in the year.
The mortality figures for 2021 have not been released yet, but we already know that of the 67,010 people who have COVID-19 as the cause of death on their death certificate, 14.2% had no other underlying cause of illness. Of these, 2,793 were under the age of 65.
That does not explain the increase in the number of deaths. The numbers do not answer the question yet, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the diversion of resources into dealing with COVID-19 has drawn attention away from other fatal illnesses, and people have died.
There is no question that there was an emergency. In the first quarter of 2021, 49,465 people died from the pandemic. The question is whether the reaction was the right one. We already knew at that point that the people at risk were those with low HRV, many of whom are over 65. But while age is an indicator, HRV is better because it ignores the people who are likely to have natural immunity, and it highlights the people under 65 who are vulnerable.
If we are to learn some lessons from this catastrophe, they would be that we should be working on improving health, eating better, and exercising more, and using HRV to measure who is vulnerable, and who is not.
The COVID crises has proven that medication can help, but it is not the solution.
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