Assessing the evidence for excess cardiovascular deaths

We have only one option—we’ll keep digging for the evidence.

In November 2022, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) lamented that “millions of people were not able to get the routine care they needed and that ambulances took too long to reach heart attack patients.”  More recently, they upped the ante, reporting, “We are in the grip of a heart care crisis.” 

THE BHF reported “that as of June 2023, nearly 100,000 excess deaths in England involving CVD have occurred since the beginning of the pandemic, and excess deaths involving CVD outnumber those involving all other individual disease areas since the beginning of the pandemic in England.”

In January 2023, The BHF considered severe ambulance delays, inaccessible care, and waiting lists contributed to “heart patients dying needlessly.”  A BHF analysis reports over 39,000 people in England died prematurely of cardiovascular conditions in 2022, including heart attacks, coronary heart disease and stroke—the highest yearly total since 2008.

TTE showed that a fall in drug treatment or a drop in CVD risk monitoring couldn't account for the excess deaths, contradicting Professor Whitty’s clumsy excuses. So, what causes the excess depends on what you read—or, in the case of the ONS, which method you choose. 

Why has the ONS waited until now to change its excess death figures?

So here at TTE, we thought we’d examine the evidence of what is causing the excess deaths.