Coronavirus “Stay Home” billboard in London. (Photo: Kwh1050. Source: Wikicommons)
As more countries around the world pass the peak of coronavirus infections, it has been reported in British media that the UK’s response to the coronavirus crisis may cause 150,000 deaths that could have been avoided. This figure is much higher than current projections of deaths from COVID-19.
The figure came from Spectator editor Fraser Nelson who claimed it was a preliminary estimate circulating in Whitehall.
Most directly, many people are being denied life-saving medical treatments so that the health service can focus on COVID-19 patients. It is being reported today that leading oncologist Dr Karol Sikora estimates 60,000 deaths from a deficit of cancer treatments if the lockdown should last for 6 months.
Others will suffer from lost income, which alone will cause a great deal of stress and anxiety for untold numbers of people, in addition to any fears they may have of the virus. It is logical that the added element of being made to stay home, potentially removed from loved ones, will contribute to loneliness, depression and suicide. Furthermore, the record-breaking spike in unemployment will very likely lead to greater poverty and hunger among the populace. In times of such hardship, drug and alcohol abuse also tend to increase, as well as other social problems, such as domestic violence and divorce.
The economic and social costs, and those of knock-on effects are incalculable, and they will almost certainly have their own death toll.
More from Peter Andrews RT International…
It is a tragic irony, but scientists advising government ministers predict that the extreme restrictions imposed in response to the Covid-19 outbreak will lead directly to a surge in deaths greater than that caused by the virus.
The shocking estimate, first reported in the Financial Times and the Spectator magazine, was presented to UK government ministers by scientists who had modelled the likely effects of the restrictions.
The cause of the non-Covid deaths will be varied, from cancer sufferers and other seriously ill people not getting treatment, from people avoiding going to hospitals (visits to accident and emergency units are down by a third), from an increase in suicides among depressed people forced to self-isolate and from the effects of increased domestic abuse.
Asked about the 150,000-deaths estimate, the UK’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock sought to play it down, describing it as “not part of our internal analysis.” But Mr Hancock will not be able to give the figure the brush-off for long, as each passing week reveals more clues as to the detrimental effects caused by the unprecedented lockdowns.
The use of the term “avoidable” deaths by the scientists is telling. It stands in contrast to Covid-19 deaths, most of which are likely to be unavoidable, affecting as they largely do the very old and very infirm, who, callous as it sounds, would not have seen next Christmas anyway. It is for this reason that some have estimated that Covid-19 may not in fact cause any extra deaths by the end of the year, even if it does kill some people a bit earlier than they would otherwise have died.
The 150,000 estimate, along with dire warnings about the severe damage being done to the economy by the lockdown, has added urgency to an increasingly fraught debate in the upper echelons of British government about how to start easing the lockdown and return the nation to a version of normal life…
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