It's still the case that about 50 to 60 people are dying a day with or of COVID, which if it was an influenza outbreak would be considered bad but not terrible. Flu tends to have a 2 - 3 month season and the most recent bad year was 2018 with about 1,600 deaths directly attributed (approx 25 a day during the season) . Diagnosis issues probably means you can increase that number somewhat (double it?) but it gives a relative comparison. It remains the case that the unvaccinated and undervaccinated are over-represented in both COVID and influenza deaths. Influenza deaths have been low since 2020, probably thanks to improved public health measures and awareness.



This may be a good time to review the above, the total death numbers (absolute numbers) in England from those who had a confirmed diagnosis of COVID in the 28 days before death. As often mentioned some people in the above would have died of something else. But these figures have been collected fairly consistently through out. Given the huge number of cases we can see:

- exactly the impact of vaccination since the first generation of vaccines - now improved - started to be rolled out in good numbers around February 2021. So if you consider right of February 2021 compared to left you can see that broadly vaccinations removed three quarters of deaths, and equally that the numbers that could have been saved if only the vaccines were already available. And as I say the unvaccinated / undervaccinated keep numbers higher than they should be.

- Given that far more people have caught COVID - though to an extent that's difficult now to quantify - since February 2021 the disease to my mind is less impactful now, and deaths in the vaccinated under 60s is now a rare event.

- See how each peak seems a bit lower than the previous peak.

- It nevertheless looks likely we will have another peak around 20 January 2023.

- The current number of deaths at this point is about a third of the same time last year, and a tenth of the 2020 figure.