THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR

SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times that have won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything’s going to be all right read Professor Positivity.

REGULAR readers of this column will be fully aware of my growing concern surrounding the number of excess deaths in the home.

So far this year there have been over 25,000 more deaths in the home than the five- year average for the same period and only a small fraction of them have been related to the virus.

That is a startling statistic.

Every day the number of coronavirus fatalities is reported, understandably, very widely and it’s right that we understand people are sadly dying but that does not mean that these figures should be ignored.

For months now we have seen sustained and significant excess deaths in the home, but it barely gets a mention. Many more people are dying in their own homes than we would normally expect. Surely that warrants some attention?

The figures are complicated. Some would have sadly died at home or in a hospital regardless, but for many others, if they had received proper medical care it could have been very different.

It’s important to remember that this is just people who died at home.

There will also be a huge number of people whose health conditions have deteriorated because they didn’t seek treatment and now the prognosis is much worse.

Sadly, the consequences of this are already being felt and will continue to tear families apart for years to come.

As the debate swirls around whether or not we get plunged into a new lockdown, we need to at least acknowledge what is happening here.

People listened to the Prime Minister’s message to stay at home. They did just that and in many cases it cost them their lives.

We have to give people the confidence to seek help otherwise the numbers will continue to rise.