My anxiety is sky high after reading the daily Mail article about excess deaths

[behappy1736]

I have health anxiety and I've been trying to distance myself from any media and news articles about the Vaccine.
Today it popped up on my phone about the record number of excess deaths are the highest ever, then I started reading the comments and the amount of people saying 'I told you so' and 'The truth is now coming out' on there is worrying 😩
I feel really panicky and over weekend at the thought of having 3 vaccines inside my body and now all this stuff is coming out about people dying of heart attacks for no reason.
I know there's nothing we can do now but

I'm just terrified.

😟

These are Daily Mail readers, OP. They believe climate change doesn’t exist and that Boris Johnson is a good person. I would be very reassured reading this, and happy with my decision to have the vaccine.

The vaccine is the very least likely cause of the excess deaths. Long term effects of covid itself somewhat more likely. Collapse of the NHS a big contributory factor.

The DM comments section it populated by dim, racist, conspiracy theorists. Don’t go there for information.

Said on the local news tonight that the local (large) hospital hasn’t met it’s cancer treatment targets for any month last year. If people are waiting for life saving treatment more will die.

this will be replicated in most hospitals a do not just oncology but also departments like cardiology, etc. i know someone who’s been waiting over a year for a heart bypass,was told a year ago he could die any minute and sent home to wait for an operation date. They admitted before covid it would have been done within a few weeks.

If you read the Daily Mail you deserve all you get, frankly.

This time of year when it's really cold is prime stroke season in the elderly. The cold causes the blood to be much thicker, and this has a knock-on effect.
Nothing sinister at all.

I am one of those rare unlucky people who had a reaction to the Pfizer vaccine. I fell ill after 24 hours. If you are not ill by now you are not going to be so you are worrying for nothing. Also even though I had a recognized allergy and was treated at hospital I am fine and have fully recovered. There are excess deaths but there are lots of factors at play. Your issue is health anxiety not the vaccine. You really don’t want to be doonscrolling on the daily mail site, that will just fuel your illogical fear.

There is a nice tool for looking at the recent excess death data in UK. PowerBi link

Highlights: the increased risk at end of 2022 was about 7% change for most age groups > 25 (no real change < 25). There's a mid life age group, maybe 50-65, that is especially higher, off hand maybe 14% higher risk. Deaths from dementia are down, below expectations, yes really.

I suppose in terms of should you worry ... if your risk is already very low (say 1 in 500) of dying in next year, then increasing that by 7% means... only a tiny difference. 1 in 465. Is that really a difference? What if your annual risk is 1 in 2000. Making that into 1 in 1700 is still... a very small chance of dying this year. There's still so much each of us can do to not be one of those statistics. Living your life to the full now rather than worry about future is a good start.

If it helps, the statistics say that if you take into account the age and size of the population, then mortality is lower this December than last December. The number of people dying is up, but that’s because there are more older people and the older you are the more likely it is you will die (even if that likelihood is a little lower than it was last year.

It’s complicated!

The daily mail is like a drama queen which loves to sensationalise everything. They often get facts and figures wrong, love bashing the NHS and their reporting is pretty poor.

Unfortunately, good stories, like how many lives are saved day in, and day out, by the hard-working NHS staff will never be reported on, because it doesn't sell papers.

You know what to do - turn off your news feed, and make the pledge never to read the Daily Fail.

The NHS has a whopper backlog, which is the most logical explanation for excess deaths.

The vaccine is long gone from your body - it definitely isn't wandering around your bloodstream like a nano-gunslinger aiming pot shots at your heart.

It might however be worth talking to your GP about your anxiety - CBT can be very helpful. In the meantime do a bit of reading on the basic things that can help, like sleep, food, social contact - and staying away from the news in general and nonsense sites like the DM in particular.

The excess deaths are extremely high compared to 2019, 20-40% higher. This is caused by staff abscences due to the generous sick pay enjoyed by NHS staff, therefore making them abscent and unavailable to patients, and two and a half or sometimes three years of NHS staff treating patients over the telephone, if at all. NHS shut down beginning of 2020 and has no interest in reopening, they still get paid. Hardworking decent staff excepted.
And don't forget that living for 2.5 years in a sterile environment can't be good for your immune system and therefore your health.
This will probably harm populations with diseases much worse than Covid for years to come.
And I don't know why anybody would believe "experts" once again. Last time it happened, most were proven to not believe themselves.

You know labour initiated the crumble of the NHS. Sick of this don’t vote Tory bring trotted out as it takes away the nuance of the problems caused.

You know labour initiated the crumble of the NHS. Sick of this don’t vote Tory bring trotted out as it takes away the nuance of the problems caused

Waiting times/lists were much lower when Labour left power. Can you provide evidence for your claim?

"By 2009 – the total waiting list had nearly halved to 2.3 million, and the 18-week target continued to be met up until 2017. But from around 2012* the waiting list started to rise, nearly doubling to 4.34 million by February 2020"

*Who were in power in 2012 and embarked on a damaging reform of the NHS?

www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/chart-of-the-week-how-has-the-waiting-list-changed-over-the-years

@IlooklikeRonnieCorbett sorry but that's crap, it may not have been amazing under labour but it was nothing like the downright piss poor and dangerous situation that's currently ongoing.

Listen to More or Less on R4 who debunk the heart-vaccine thing admirably!

This and catching covid increases risk of death for at least 12-18 months afterwards

This. Its most likely due to the appalling state of the NHS at the moment. Nothing to do with covid vaccines.

I do think having a novel virus around is messing with the viral ecosystem and rewriting some immunity - we know some viruses stick around for many years (e.g. chicken pox causing shingles) - and it seems like covid could well have unforeseen after effects and cause other apparently unrelated illnesses. But I think it's the covid virus itself that is messing with us and not the vaccine.

It's the Tories that hate nuance. They love platitudes to keep the masses quiet while they destroy everything that made Britain great, and don't care because they're all wealthy and raking it in (like when they shorted the pound and now the stealth privatisation of the nhs). Don't vote Tory. Not if you care about the UK.

The daily mail comments prompted me to look at some of John Campbell's videos on youtube as during covid he seemed to be the voice of reason. He is very concerned about a 7% rise in deaths amongst young people and can't understand why there isn't an urgent enquiry !

@IlooklikeRonnieCorbett
Self-defeating austerity which has wrecked public services while doing nothing to booster economic productivity - stupid Tories. Catastrophic Brexit which has and will continue to further hinder economic recovery - stupid Tories. Total failure to increase housing stock/do literally anything
productive to help cost of living crisis - stupid Tories.

mRNA vaccines are as safe as any other vaccine.

Without vaccines the human (and animal) populations would be much lower and we might nit be suffering the climate change ravages we are now.

Everyday we live, we are one day closer to death so live everyday like it's your last.

Hakuna matata.

John Campbell is not the "voice of reason", he's someone who initially made helpful educational videos for nursing students, but quickly went down the anti-vaccine money making pipeline.

Lots of threads on him on MN - his videos are full of basic errors, speculation, fake claims and conspiracy theories. This is unsuprising given he has no relevant qualifications on what he is talking about.

He earns tens of thousands of pounds a month from his monetised youtube channel. Sensible boring reporting does not clicks, wild claims do. It's deeply frustrating.

I've been worrying about this too so I'm so glad this was my first port of call rather than Google. You've all put my mind at rest somewhat and I'm going to try to forget about it (or replace the worry with something else, but, that's just me!).