The Overblown Covid Narrative: Deaths Were Far Lower Than Claimed, By Brian Simpson
The narrative of COVID-19 as a deadly global pandemic, propagated by governments and health authorities, has been unravelling under scrutiny. Recent Freedom of Information (FOI) responses from Northern Ireland, as highlighted by Norman Fenton, Kathy Gray, and Martin Neil in their August 2025 Conservative Woman article, reveal a stark truth: deaths attributed solely to COVID-19 were vanishingly rare, and the conflation of "dying with COVID" with "dying from COVID" grossly inflated the perceived threat. This misrepresentation, coupled with misguided policies, produced a climate of fear and caused more harm than the virus itself, with excess deaths and healthcare disruptions lingering long after the initial panic.
The data is damning. From March 2020 to March 2025, Northern Ireland recorded only 275 deaths classified as COVID-only, where no other cause was listed on the death certificate, out of a population of 1.92 million. That's a five-year fatality rate of just 0.014%, or 1 in 7,000 people. Compare this to the Imperial College's apocalyptic 2020 projection that over 1% of the UK population would die in the first year alone. The FOI data, spanning March 2020 to March 2024 and updated through March 2025, shows that COVID-only deaths were a tiny fraction of the reported totals, with the vast majority involving comorbidities like heart disease or cancer. Notably, not a single person under 38 died from COVID alone, undermining claims of a universal threat.
Health authorities' conflation of "with COVID" and "from COIVID" deaths was a critical error. The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) data reveals that of 1,831 COVID-related deaths up to December 2020, only 113 (6.2%) listed COVID as the sole cause. This pattern held over five years, with most deaths involving pre-existing conditions like dementia, which was noted in over a third of cases. The practice of counting anyone with a positive test within 28 days as a "COVID death," regardless of actual cause, further skewed perceptions. A 2021 FactCheckNI report confirms that 89.6% of COVID-related deaths by September 2020 listed COVID as the underlying cause, but this still leaves room for misclassification, especially when flu deaths mysteriously vanished during the same period.
The disappearance of influenza as a cause of death from March 2020 to September 2022, only to reappear as COVID deaths waned, suggests a troubling sleight of hand. Fenton, Gray, and Neil's analysis shows flu deaths plummeted to near zero during the peak COVID years, only to surge back when COVID fatalities dropped. This raises a compelling hypothesis: many deaths labelled as COVID were likely flu or other respiratory illnesses, reclassified under loose diagnostic criteria. The overuse of PCR tests, which the FDA later criticised for poor specificity, likely amplified false positives, further inflating COVID tallies.
Government policies exacerbated the harm. The adoption of NICE guideline NG163 in Northern Ireland, which prioritised COVID diagnosis over comprehensive care, led to unnecessary deaths by sidelining treatments for other conditions. Extended waiting lists for critical illnesses like cancer and heart disease, coupled with lockdowns' social and economic toll, drove excess mortality far beyond what COVID alone could account for. The Office for National Statistics noted that non-COVID excess deaths in 2021-2022 were significant, likely tied to healthcare disruptions and delayed diagnoses.
The hype was not just a statistical error, it was a deliberate narrative. Governments leaned on fear to justify sweeping controls, from lockdowns to vaccine mandates, while dismissing dissent as misinformation. The Imperial College model, with its catastrophic predictions, drove policy despite its flawed assumptions, later debunked by real-world data. Meanwhile, the public bore the cost: economic devastation, mental health crises, and a healthcare system still reeling from backlog.
The Northern Ireland FOI data is a cry to rethink the COVID narrative. Far from a deadly plague, COVID's true toll was minimal for those without serious comorbidities, and the conflation of "with" and "from" deaths created a distorted picture. Health authorities' missteps, from misclassification to harmful guidelines, amplified the crisis while sidelining real threats like flu and chronic disease. We have not called it a COVID plandemic for nothing!
Comments