UK Covid deaths more than civilian deaths in World War II

[Gloster]

I know you can prove anything with statistics, and I don’t want to get into detail or definitions, but more people have died in the UK of Covid, according to the government’s measure, than the UK civilian casualties in World War II. The government’s figures today put Covid deaths at 67,401, while Wikipedia’s ‘World War II casualties’, which appears to have been compiled from reliable sources, gives UK civilian casualties as 67,200. The World War II figure includes Crown Colonies, which won’t be included in the Covid figures; these may include nearly 1,500 in Malta, but may exclude ‘several hundred’ added in 2017.

 

[farleigh]

I know you can prove anything with statistics, and I don’t want to get into detail or definitions, but more people have died in the UK of Covid, according to the government’s measure, than the UK civilian casualties in World War II. The government’s figures today put Covid deaths at 67,401, while Wikipedia’s ‘World War II casualties’, which appears to have been compiled from reliable sources, gives UK civilian casualties as 67,200. The World War II figure includes Crown Colonies, which won’t be included in the Covid figures; these may include nearly 1,500 in Malta, but may exclude ‘several hundred’ added in 2017.

That's the number who died with Covid. Many more civilians died with WW2

 

[6862]

An equally irrelevant comparison is that more UK people die on the roads every 40 years than UK civillians died in WW2. I say this to point out that such comparisons are pointless. Unfortunately, in the average day, 1600 people die in this country. Death is a sad part of life.

 

[HSTEd]

"Civilian deaths" is a meaningless statistic in the context of total war.

 

[DelayRepay]

What proportion of the people who died during WWII were nearing the end of their lives and suffering from other medical conditions which would, sadly, have meant they did not have long left anyway?

I expect if you use years of life lost, rather than absolute numbers the comparison is very different.

There was a fire in a hospital in Turkey last week. Sadly eight people died. They were all on the Covid ward. If that had happened in the UK, they would have all been counted as 'died with Covid', even though the cause of death was a fire.

 

[chorleyjeff]

And it has happened with road accidents in U.K. But someone with mild flue who dies in an accident is not recorded as dying with flue in flue death stats.

 

[kristiang85]

There was this thing on Twitter going around a couple of weeks back, which annoyed me intensely:

Perspective: most US deaths in a day

Hurricane in Galveston 1900 – 8,000
Battle of Antietam 1862 – 3,675
Dec 9 - 3,263
Battle of Gettysburg 1863 – 3,155
San Francisco quake 1906 - 3,000
Dec 8 - 2,981
Sep 11, 2001 – 2,977
Dec 10 - 2,974
Dec 3 - 2,926
Dec 2 - 2,874
Dec 4 - 2,703

Intelligent people were retweeting it. Yet this just isn't comparable.

I feel the same when I see people talking about COVID deaths and WW2 in the UK... it's just irrelevant nonsense.