Thread by @1goodtern

What are people dying from?
How do those causes of death change from year to year?

We have a big database here in England that helps catalogue causes of death. The most recent version is for the year 2024.

This dataset contains official ONS annual mortality data for England, based on registered death certificates and coded using 'ICD-10' codes.

Each death is assigned a single underlying cause, attempting to define, as far as they are able to ascertain, the disease or injury that initiated the chain of events leading directly to death.

The figures therefore represent the best attempt at tracking the primary underlying cause per death, not contributing conditions or multiple cause mentions.

Now, if you look at groups of underlying causes and the proportion that those causes are of all deaths, and you track them from year to year... you shouldn't get huge changes in trends.

Think about it.

There are half a million deaths or so a year here.

You'd have to have quite a significant change in circumstances to produce huge changes over a couple of year...

Let's take the example of intestinal infectious diseases.

You're tracking them from year to year.
And you watch the proportion of all deaths that are deaths from intestinal infectious diseases dropping and dropping...

Joy!

Until something comes along, and changes everything.

Covid infections shred your ability to fight intestinal infectious diseases.

The next funeral I'm taking is someone with this cause on his death certificate.

So I have a strong suspicion that the chart is going to keep climbing in 2025 and 2026.

Now there are lots of ways that this data could be presented.
You could present the total number of deaths, but as the population changes, then it's hard to know if the rise is just to do with how many people there are.

And you could present the deaths as a simple 'mortality rate' - dividing the number of the deaths by the number of people.
But that doesn't take into account the ways in which the age of a population changes or trends in total numbers of deaths.

Presenting deaths from one cause as a proportion of the total deaths also has some of those problems, but it gives a glimpse of the *changing* reasons why people are dying.

Covid infections make you more vulnerable to death from secondary infections, especially in the gut.

And, yes, you can say to me 'but that's only one out of every 330 deaths'.

Well, you can dismiss anything if you try hard enough, can't you?

Can't you just look at the graph and acknowledge something has changed?

Besides, this one is a bigger chunk of the pie.

Are you ready for the reveal?

Covid infections make you vulnerable to death from bacterial diseases.

It's that simple.

Do Covid infections make you vulnerable to death from other viral diseases?

Yes.
I mean, we already know this from the simple science.

But there it is in the data, plain as the nose on your face.

Covid infections make you vulnerable to other viral diseases.

And this is *death from other viral diseases*.

It gets boring doing the reveals.

Here's deaths from other infectious diseases as a proportion of all deaths.

There are some other very significant *bumps* in the data.

This one interests me, because I have long thought that Covid infections make you more vulnerable to the harmful effects of narcotics.

This is *deaths due to mental and behavioural disorders due to psychoactive substance abuse* as a share of all deaths.

Bobbling along and then...

...JUMP

Deaths from other diseases of upper respiratory tract as a proportion of all deaths.

Deaths from suppurative and necrotic conditions of the lower respiratory tract as a share of all deaths.

Not a great way to go.

But more people are choosing it now.
😢

Bobble, bobble, bobble, JUMP.

Deaths from diseases of the appendix as a share of all deaths.

Deaths where the underlying cause was hernia as a proportion of all deaths.

Yes, Covid infections make this more likely.

Twitter's search function is screwed, so I can't find it, but I wrote a whole thread on hernias. 🙁

Covid infections do a real number on your digestive system.

Covid badly affects the membranes of your body, and your digestive system is one massive membrane.

Deaths from diseases of the digestive system as a proportion of all deaths:

LOOK HOW LEVEL THAT WAS BEFORE AND LOOK WHERE IT IS NOW.

The increase in treatments for bullous disorders is reflected in the changing proportion of deaths that are from bullous disorders.

This one makes my heart sink.

Covid infections cause falls.

Falls now are the principle underlying cause of nearly one in 60 deaths.

Why?

Because covid infections cause falls.

And you might say to yourself "this tern is nuts, how can covid infections cause drowning??"

I've been trying to explain it for years.

That trend is heartbreaking.

Here's an interesting one... people dying from previous causes of harm, so they could have had an earlier accident, or assault, or self-harm event... and then they die from it later.

Which makes absolute sense, because Covid infections make you more vulnerable to *existing problems*.

The database on Nomis is huge. You can dive down into an almost obscene level of detail. nomisweb.co.uk

This is a closer level of detail, but it's still not the closest:

And it can also be interrogated by *age*.

Not many kids die, so the numbers jump around a lot, but things like this should be a huge red flag.
⛳️

And then some details like this...

Cerebral infarctions going from being the cause of fewer than 1 in 200 deaths, to causing *more than 1 in 100*.

This gif again.

I had to go and check the data on this one. It felt too on the nose, almost like the computer was taunting me.
These were deaths in *under ones*.

🚨"DISEASES OF CAPILLARIES"

🧐

🧐

This one.

🧐

🚨

🤔

🚨🧐

Here's an interesting one.

Death certificates without a cause yet, because the inquest has been adjourned...

... But these are massively more likely to be among *teenagers*.

So nearly 6-7% of teenagers deaths are not getting included in each year's cause of death statistics.

👀

Among young adults.

Some more among young adults.

👀

Problems caused by Covid infections so often fall into the 'other' categories or the 'not elsewhere classified'.

Working age.

Some of these diseases don't play well together.

They really don't.

This is one to watch.

And we know this is a chicken and egg situation, right?

Covid infection makes you vulnerable to obesity, and obesity makes you vulnerable to the effects of covid infections.

Lipos and lipids and proteins and metabolisms... covid loves messing with this stuff.

Like I said... they stick a lot of covid effects in the 'other' sections.

Covid infections harm your liver and your brain.

So you get this.

These are *deaths* from this cause, not just cases.

Worth watching very closely.

There are some nasty conditions in here:

And here:

Hmm... this is in working age remember.

Very low numbers, but it's a sign of a lot more than just this problem.

Deaths from cerebral palsy.

Whole new level.

This is a tiny number of people... but they don't normally make coding errors with death certificates, it's a serious business.

But death from conjuctivitis.

👀

😬

I mean I know that you've heard about people with problems with multiple valves, but this increase in the proportion of deaths that are caused by their failure... that's quite something.

No, I don't know how you die from this either, but I don't want to.

Back to this one.

Fark.

The next one though...

👀😬🚨

This one does not surprise me in the least.

Covid infections love to screw up those boundaries in the body, membranes, surfaces, interfaces...

😔

Working age men dying as a result of inflammation of their genitals.

💔

💔

One thing people might forget is that a lot of people who try to self harm survive.

But if your body is more vulnerable because you've had Covid, you may be *less likely to survive self harm*.

Older folk are definitely getting hit much harder by sepsis.
This is made so much more likely by covid infections.

And bacterial infections in general.

Those 'other and unspecified' doing a lot of heavy lifting again.

Iron problems.

You know they can kill you, right?

You know that Covid infections cause them, right?

Round and round on that cycle again.

💔, literally.

💔, unspecified.

I am fed up of this.

This one should be labelled public health failure.

Oops... I broke my thread, but I don't have the heart to go back and repost them all...

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