Some positive news within this whole mess. Only 394 people died of flu between January and August.

[Treesofwood]

Considering the numbers are usually between 10000 and 30000 in a good year this is a vast difference.
Must have been a very effective flu vaccine programme last winter.

And schools shut and lockdown from March!

Surely that's because a fair few who would have died from flu died from coronovirus instead?

Wasn’t that after last winter’s flu peak and wasn’t it generally accepted, that last winter was a mild flu year?

Rafals Possibly, or maybe because doctors didn't need a positive test result to certify someone as having died of covid.

That doesn’t seem right, what is your source for this?
Whenever posting figures like this, it’s really best practice to provide the evidence.

Found it

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsduetocoronaviruscovid19comparedwithdeathsfrominfluenzaandpneumoniaenglandandwales/deathsoccurringbetween1januaryand31august2020

Must be a record low

I wonder if it’s because we actually had an early flu peak in the 19/20 season, so perhaps there were more flu deaths than usual at the end of 2019

The measures we have undertaken to combat coronavirus will also help to keep flu at bay. Hence Australia and New Zealand are having an almost non existent flu season.
Thanks for posting, OP. I find this quite motivating.

According to the ONS NOMIS database, 1,223 people were recorded as having Influenza as their underlying cause of death (coded as ICD-10) in 2019; this is the number that is the equivalent to the 394.

www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/influenzadeathsin2019and2020

www.nomisweb.co.uk/query/asv2htm.aspx

The much larger number is deaths from "influenza and pneumonia" - which is significantly bigger, as many people's ending/contributory cause of death ends up being HAP (hospital acquired pneumonia) as the body shuts down, even if they went into hospital seriously ill with something else.

I think we'll see all kinds of unbelievable skewed figures, depending on what gov want us to believe.
Those dying of flu will no doubt be classed as covid.
Why do people even bother watching/ listening to the news. I don't get it.

Looking at that report as well -

The five year average for deaths from Influenza and Pneumonia together is 19,534 for Jan-Aug; this year it was 14,013.

So a statistically significant drop, yes.

In the same period, 48,168 deaths were recorded with Covid as the underlying cause of death.