In this instance, the stopped clocked that is friend Biscuits happens to be telling the right time. I accept that there is still an underlying elevated death rate (even if it seems to have settled down from mid-2023 onwards); but it is purely an assertion on your part,
@droid, that this is due exclusively to people dying from
new covid infections.
First off, there are obviously airborne pathogens other than covid-19. You ludicrously tried slander me as being "pro-eugenics" when I pointed out that a large part of the excess could be due to an particularly bad flu season: your own post acknowledges this;
"Veena Raleigh, a senior fellow at the health think tank the King’s Fund, told The BMJ that there had been large numbers of deaths related to flu and covid-19 in December 2022 and January this year, which was influencing the figures"
This paper ("
Influenza kills up to 25 000 people a year in England and Wales") is from the pre-pandemic era, but given that we may be routinely underestimating the death toll from ordinary flu, it strikes me as very likely that a big part of the current excess is that people who didn't fully recover from covid infections picked up during the two big waves in 2020-21 have been left especially vulnerable to flu and even the common cold (plus heart disease, liver disease, neurological conditions, and probably pretty much anything else you could name, because as you of course know, there isn't a single organ or system that SARS-COV-2 doesn't potentially attack).
There's also the health impact of two lengthy lockdowns, in which we were stupidly ordered to stay at home and only venture out when absolutely necessary, despite evidence very early on that the risk of transmission from meeting outside in small groups was extremely small. The spring of 2020 was one of the balmiest I can remember, so it would have been a perfect opportunity for people who were on furlough or WFH to take long walks, jog in the park, and meet up with friends for a coffee and an ice cream. Instead, we all sat on our arses in front of our TVs and laptops and got fat(ter), drunk(er), lonely(er) and sad(der). We also got on each other's nerves and there was an explosion in domestic abuse. There are quantifiable physical and mental health impacts from that that we still haven't recovered from, to say nothing of impact on children's psychological development and education.
In addition, as I think I've already said, the impact on the NHS was appalling, with the result that huge numbers of front-line staff became ill, either from catching covid themselves, or from stress and overwork. Staffing levels still haven't recovered, and we have record numbers of people waiting for operations. All of this is contributing to an indirectly, rather than directly, covid-boosted death rate. Plus, of course, ongoing economic misery - bad enough already thanks to 13 years of austerity and counting, wages which still haven't recovered from the 2008 crash, and then compounded by Brexit happening at the same time as large parts of the economy shutting down entirely, and now inflation at a 40-year-high, with the figure for food having recently hit nearly 20% - which does nothing good for anyone's longevity.