The paper can be found here [PDF]. A Guardian article on the findings is here, and the university press release is here. While obviously over a longer timeframe, to put into context, current COVID deaths stand at just under 205,000. (Which if you think about it, means that the Conservative government is responsible for around half a million deaths during its tenure).Compared with what previous trends predicted, an additional c.335 000 deaths were observed across Scotland, England and Wales between 2012 and 2019.
Truss has refused to raise benefits in line with inflation and her government is aiming to make even more cuts to services under a bizarre belief that we have been living in a 'fool's paradise' of overspending that needs to be reigned in. How many more people are going to die before their time is up?
As Dr David Walsh, lead author of the paper and Public Health Programme Manager at the GCPH said,
These figures are not only shocking but shameful. And we must remember that these are more than just statistics: they represent hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been cut short, and hundreds of thousands of families who have had to deal with the grief and aftermath of those deaths. The tragic thing is that these deaths did not have to happen. In the words of the United Nations, in a society as wealthy as the UK, ‘poverty is a political choice’. The UK Government needs to understand the damaging impact of austerity and respond with policies that put us back on the path of improving, not worsening, life expectancy for all. [my emphasis]