I honestly don’t understand how this metric is useful.

It seems to just be a surrogate for ‘how many people who died knew they were at risk.’

If we have a virus with no symptoms and people just immediately drop dead, this metric would plummet since people who died weren’t expecting it.

If we all got cancer tomorrow from something released in the atmosphere, this metric would skyrocket due to us all seeking care… even if the cancer took a decade to actually kill anyone.

Covid seems more like the second case than the first… so of course the number went up.

TBF I think the rot set in long before Cameron. They just accelerated it.

You asked the right question, and no, the data presented isn't causative.

More than half of people who died in England last year were on an NHS waiting list, according to statistics.

Unsurprisingly, old people are often on waiting lists for things like knee and hip replacements, and these can be long. They sometimes die while on these waiting lists. In total, around 600,000 people die each year in the U.K. It would be unbelievable if half of those people died because they didn't receive medical care in time.

The article has merit, but the headline is total clickbait.

Bearing in mind it's all a bunch private firms wearing an NHS hat, I would argue corporate murder.

My dad died of legionnaires disease in an NHS hospital because G4S said it was too expensive to replace the legionnaires infested water system, or to install taps that could filter out the legionnaires. This was on a cancer ward for immunocompromised patients. This is a repeated problem at this particular hospital too. The John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxfordshire

So yeah, my dad died to protect some shareholder's dividends.