Breaking News: HIQA Says Covid deaths in Ireland over-estimated. Likely figure lower by 500+

The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has released a press release today where they did their own analysis of the excess deaths in Ireland since early March and the figure they come to is between 1,100 and 1,200 which is substantially lower than the "official" Covid death toll of 1700+.

This means that as was suspected the official number was way too liberal with categorizing deaths as due to Covid. This new figure is closer to a regular year of flu in terms of number of deaths and conclusively proves that Covid is barely any more dangerous than flu in terms of threat. What we see here is a slow back track and while the emphasis is still on social distancing, this is merely to give cover to the fact that at a minimum this has been one big mistake and a massive over-reaction but is true of many other countries but not all. It could be viewed as how badly group think has taken over our society because there were moments in the last few months where one dare not challenge the official figures for fear of social ostracizing

The full report is available at: https://www.hiqa.ie/hiqa-news-updates/covid-19-causes-13-increase-deaths-ireland-between-march-and-june-2020-hiqa

The report assesses the number of deaths that occurred in Ireland from 11 March 2020 to 16 June 2020, relative to the expected number of deaths, using data from the death notices website RIP.ie. It also examines whether the reported COVID-19 death figures provides an accurate estimate of excess deaths during the epidemic.

HIQA’s Chief Scientist, Dr Conor Teljeur, said: “Based on an analysis of the death notices reported on RIP.ie since 2010, there is clear evidence of excess deaths occurring since the first reported death due to COVID-19 in Ireland. There were about 1,100 to 1,200 more deaths than we would expect based on historical patterns; a 13% increase between 11 March to 16 June. However, the number of excess deaths is substantially less than the reported 1,709 COVID-19-related deaths over the same period.”

HIQA found that the officially-reported COVID-19 deaths likely overestimates the true burden of excess deaths caused by the virus. This could be due to the inclusion within official figures of people who were infected with SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) at the time of death whose cause of death may have been predominantly due to other factors.

The notes found on their press release have three interesting sections. The first one is this:

Deaths due to COVID-19 have been presented to the public in a variety of ways, often as a case-fatality rate (the number of COVID-19 deaths divided by the number of COVID-19 cases). The case-fatality rate is dependent on accurate coding of cause of death and on the volume of testing to detect cases. Excess mortality eliminates the reliance on identification of cases or cause of death.

In other words it is a gentle criticism of what the other arm of government have been up to during the crisis and they are calling out the scare tactics used to give a misleading high death rate on the nightly news during the lockdown over the past few months.

The second note of interest is this one:

The data were analysed using a time series approach whereby expected deaths were predicted using historical RIP.ie death notice data. Since 2010, the number of deaths annually has followed an increasing trend due to an increasing and ageing population. Using an average of previous mortality without adjusting for the increasing trend would underestimate expected mortality and therefore overestimate excess mortality.

The key point here is the ageing population and the obvious point being that the older end of the population are more likely to die and this should be taken account of. During the crisis this tended to be glossed over as the emphasis was on generating fear and implying by any means that those dying or affected were younger than they were.

The last note of interest speaks for itself:

COVID-19 may have accelerated time of death in frail and vulnerable individuals over the peak period. The excess mortality observed at the peak is now being followed by a period of decreased mortality as date of death for individuals who would ordinarily have died during this time occurred earlier than expected by a matter of weeks or months.

To conclude then HIQA have actually provided the proof that puts a pin prick in the bubble of hyped up fear around this whole Covid-19 crisis.

It should be stressed that anyone's death is a sad affair for those involved and their close relatives and friends and the point is not to belittle things by comparing them to flu. Flu is a dangerous disease that does kill quite a lot of people every year -in fact according to WHO figures 650,000 worldwide per year, but it does predominately kill those who are very near the end of their lives anyhow and the point is that we don't and never have shutdown the economy for it and no-one would expect to do so because it actually wouldn't save any more lives.

Likewise for those who die of Covid-19, it is not good. But the long term consequences of shutting down the best part of the global economy has and will cause more deaths primarily for those who needed urgent hospitalization during the crisis but were too afraid to go and died of heart attacks or strokes at home. Then there are all those who have cancers that have been diagnosed much later and will therefore have more detrimental results.

Then there are all the millions of people who have put on excess weight and will increase their level of risk of a multitude of diseases and we will see a small increase in deaths over time due to that. Then there are all the old people who have been locked down for months who will have lost muscle mass which is very hard to regain when you are older. In addition there will be increased mental health issues due to isolation and lack of social interaction.

There are also many people who are susceptible to depression and various mental health ailments have been pushed over the edge due to the lockdown and may now become medication dependent for many years ago with a huge impact on their quality of life.

The suicide rate is also up. The domestic violence levels are up. And we still have not got to the fallout from the coming economic recession but very likely depression.

Full Report on Analysis of excess all-cause mortality in Ireland during the COVID-19 epidemic 1.28 Mb