David Spiegelhalter

And then it came out that these were only in-hospital deaths.

And then it came out of people who had been tested.

Then it came out that there was quite long delays, up to two weeks, but definitely a few days.

Then we start seeing these huge weekend effects.

So those daily deaths, which we'd like to use to monitor, are we reaching

peak are we slowing down are we reaching a plateau are we dropping are deeply flawed and we have to wait for the office for national statistics to release their death registrations which i must say it's fantastic organization every week really really quite rapidly they they do weekly updates on the number of deaths and causes of death you know it's a great operation which normally no one takes the slightest bit of notice of and then suddenly now tuesday mornings at 9 30 everyone's pouring over this data

because when it came out yesterday, it revealed a massive spike of 6,500 more deaths in one week, registered in one week, up to April 3rd.

So it's still some time ago, 10 days ago or so.

And 6,500 over the normal, what you'd expect, around about 10,000 each year, each week at this time of year.

So it's a 60% increase, but only just over half of those cases

6,000 extra, maybe about 3,500 were labelled as COVID on the death certificate, which leaves on its own a huge spike of 2,500 extra deaths in one week without COVID on the death certificate.

Exactly.

Now, this is a massive, you know, in a sense, mystery.

When I saw that data and graphed it, it was staggering.

Not the COVID spike, which I'd expected, but the non-COVID, you know, label death.

Now, this follows a pattern that's been seen in Italy and other places.

They report that the number of deaths actually labeled as COVID is roughly half the actual excess deaths recorded over the period.

Now, why?

Oh, my goodness.

You know, I...