Deaths due to Covid-19 much higher than government figure

[Fambo Number Mive]

The number of people who have died because of Covid-19 is nearly twice as high as the figure we hear announced every day.

By 1 May, the number of coronavirus deaths announced by the UK government was just over 28,000.

Looking back at death registrations filed then, the figure is higher: just under 36,000 death certificates mentioned Covid-19.

The measure preferred by statisticians, counting all deaths above what would be expected, was even higher: more than 50,000...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52623141

Over 50,000 up to 1st May, how many more since then?

[Absorb the anus burn]

Of course they fucking are! [nb]I'm not being snarky, it's just these cunts are the lowest of the low.... They will lie and lie and lie and lie about EVERYTHING.[/nb]

[Zetetic]

Do ONS outputs count as "government figures"?

[Captain Z]

Would you like to respond with:

a) Every country is hiding their true figures so it makes no difference
b) You can't count predictions, where's the evidence
c) Just imagine Diane Abbott lololol

[Cardenio I]

Deaths above what would be expected is an interesting one, because it presumably includes within it all the second order effects of this (people being more reticent to go to hospital, some cancer screenings being cancelled/postponed, etc) but there are also second order effects which you'd think would reduce mortality (less traffic, fewer workplace accidents). I don't suppose anyone's been able to take a deep dive into those numbers yet and I have zero understanding of statistics, but it would be interesting to get a moron-pitched explanation of those numbers and what they mean/what they tell us about both Covid mortality and the wider public health effects of lockdown.

[Zetetic]

We're probably not far enough along for additional cancer deaths to start piling up in large numbers. It's possible we're seeing a few more stroke and MI deaths as people stay away from A&Es, and maybe even some less obvious things like accidental overdoses (although these tend to have a large death registration delay, so won't be ONS data yet anyway) for a bunch of reasons.

Right now, it looks as though almost all excess mortality is probably COVID-19 related; notably in some parts of the UK, COVID-19 related deaths fairly closely match the excess deaths.

(You see more of a gap in others, but you do just get different fads in death certification in different places - and there were hints of some English organisations encouraging no mention of COVID-19 in the absence of a positive test. Not really clear why, though. I don't think it was nefarious, but perhaps I'm naive.)

[Zetetic]

The differences between:
  1) the daily reported mostly-hospital after-a-positive-test deaths,
  2) death certificates indicating COVID-19 as the underlying cause,
  3) death certificates mentioning COVID-19 anywhere, and
  4) excess deaths that we think are probably mostly down to COVID-19,
mostly aren't down to anyone anywhere trying to suppress or inflate any numbers as far as I can tell.

All of these numbers are available to the public, and they're different because they're produced in different ways by different people for different purposes.