Living on Plague Island

‘Have you heard about Paul O’Grady. What a tragedy. He was only 67. I suppose it is in the lap of the gods - any of us could drop dead tomorrow’

Yesterday the UK woke up to the news that much loved comedian Paul O’Grady had died ‘peacefully’ in the night aged 67. The above quote comes from a neighbour who I bumped into. The problem is that excess deaths are running at over 10% above the 5 year average where the average includes the high death years of 2021 and 2022. And sudden death appears to be becoming more common.

This death is without doubt, very sad news and there has been blanket coverage across all the news websites. Many of these refer to the fact that Paul had a heart condition and had suffered two heart attacks in 2012. Yet not a single website mentioned the fact that he had suffered a very severe case of COVID-19 in July 2022 and had struggled to recover. In an interview with the Daily Express from February 2023 he said ‘ It wiped me out, I was shocked at how bad it was. I (took) a good two months getting over it. My breath had gone’. Other sources describe how Paul was determined to get back to work and drove himself forward.

We cannot be sure how far the COVID episode contributed to Paul’s death but it seems to be a strong possibility given what we know about the impact of the virus on human organs – particularly the heart and lungs. We will produce a paper on these wider impacts shortly.

But this case well illustrates how the UK media do not want to acknowledge that the COVID pandemic is still a major threat as evidenced by the continuing high number of deaths from COVID, and particularly the continuing high numbers of excess deaths, not to mention the devastating impact of long Covid. The main culprit is of course the government and its agencies. The story continues in subsequent blogs ….