Record deaths in the UK? Not even close

For most of the past year I asserted and predicted that overall mortality rates for the United States in 2020 would not be significantly different than what had been expected well before there was any idea of the coronavirus. Why? Well, below a retired pathologist offers his evidence and argument as to the actual number of deaths over a 27-year period in the United Kingdom, then argues that turning public policy over to public health 'experts' is its own form of madness.

October 6, 2020. John Lee - UK Office of National Statistics places 2020 deaths in position 8th of the last 27 years.

February 11, 2021. Planet Normal: Dr John Lee on why scientists shouldn't be running the country. "The idea that scientists should be in charge of public policy is mad, for the lack of medical care that's been given over the last year has been a self-imposed own goal."

John Andre Lee is a retired English pathologist who was formerly clinical professor of pathology at Hull York Medical School and consultant histopathologist at Rotherham General Hospital, later becoming the Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust's Director of Cancer Services. Lee gained a BSc and a PhD in physiology at University College London, and then a medical degree there in pathology.

And the evidence in the United States as to both the absence of excess deaths and the madness of the pandemic political policies is just as strong, if different, if only because the United Kingdom and the United States are similar, but different. How? The US population is five times that of the UK and the United States is more demographically and racially diverse than the UK. Similar -- if different -- language. Similar, yet different, political systems and practices.

That said, the USA has added fifteen million people to the over-65 demographic in the past ten years. Unlike the US, Britain did not have the baby boom the US experienced post World War II. And while the US and UK have significantly different funding mechanisms for healthcare, both countries spend significantly more on death-delaying interventions for the elderly than they do on preventive public health policies. In both countries, 'healthcare' is a massive part of the economy, just as the elderly are a massive part of the healthcare expenditures.

Partially explained by a continuously improving defense against the 'common' flu, the addition of those fifteen million elderly in the United States created a demographic of over 55 million people over the age of 65, and a significant number of those elderly are obese, sedentary and non-ambulatory, and the victims of accumulated negative personal and public policy behaviors that mean they smoked too much, ate too much low nutrition food, and enjoyed too much of their leisure time being leisurely. They also suffered from unhealthy environmental conditions that included particle air pollution, asbestos, arsenic, pesticides, and auto exhaust. Those 55 million had postponed or avoided death for so long that now they were extremely vulnerable to the pernicious effects of the coronavirus, that preyed on the weak, the old, the sick, the obese, the sedentary and, especially, those in nursing homes with mortality rates near fifty percent, absent Covid.