Excess Mortality

European excess mortality data from Euromomo, which is worth considering for a moment.

A day almost never goes by without someone in the UK media suggesting that a proper testing regime may well reveal that many more have become infected than we originally thought and so the overall mortality rate of this pandemic will turn out to be broadly in line with the annual experience of influenza. 

In other words, not only will testing help solve the problem, it will also reveal that the problem was probably over-hyped to begin with. 

Those peaks across the winter months in '17, '18 and '19 were forced up in part by seasonal flu. 

Now look at 2020. Those are registered deaths of all kinds. If it's not covid-19 causing the extra mortality, what might it be? 

Bear in mind that road accident fatalities and the like have dropped substantially. Flu doesn't usually empty our cities of cars and pedestrians. 

There may ultimately be an effect on cancer mortality from the pandemic and our response to it, but that would kick in later. 

And now let us remember what Robert Redfield of the CDC was trying to say about the alarming possibility of having to cope with both seasonal flu and a resurgent covid-19 come September.