2022 Excess Deaths All Around the World Raise an Alarm
2022 Excess Deaths All Around the World Raise an Alarm
Rab Wardell, the newly crowned Scottish MTB XC champion, passed away in his sleep a few days after winning the Scottish cycling title at the age of 37.
Katie Archibald, his partner and Olympic champion, tweeted that “he had suffered a cardiac arrest.” According to Archibald, although she tried her best to revive him, and the paramedics arrived within minutes, they still couldn’t save him.
In a statement, British Cycling expressed its sorrow to lose a “brilliant rider, friend and ambassador for our sport.”
At the time of writing, the cause of Wardell’s cardiac arrest still remains unknown.
Inquiry Into Excess Deaths in Scotland Since the Start of COVID-19 Pandemic
The Scottish government has started an inquiry into the causes of excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland.
Excess deaths refer to the total number of deaths in a week in 2022 minus the average number of deaths in the same week over the period from 2016 to 2021, while excluding 2020 to not inflate the previous years’ average, as there was a large number of deaths in spring 2020 (Excess Deaths = Total Number of Deaths – Average Number of Deaths in Previous Years).
Excess deaths include deaths caused by the pandemic and those from other causes.
According to the official website of the Scottish Parliament, the weekly numbers of deaths in Scotland between April 2020 and April 2022 (the latest available date) are larger than the average numbers of deaths in the same weeks of previous years, for most of the weeks during this period.
For instance, for the week beginning January 4, 2021, there were 1,720 deaths, while the previous years’ average for the weeks beginning January 4 (from 2016 to 2019) was 1,276, so the number of excess deaths was 444 (34.80 percent).
However, what’s unclear is the extent to which the excess deaths are caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, or if they are due to other reasons.
In June 2022, in an article published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology, recommended gene testing athletes to prevent sudden cardiac death.
Sports cardiology is an advanced field of practice that evaluates athletes for genetically determined cardiac conditions which may lead to malignant arrhythmias, heart failure, and sudden cardiac death. Genetic testing is becoming more widely used in sports cardiology, and it is generally considered as part of a comprehensive cardiac assessment in athletes.
According to the statistics, up to 80 percent of athletes who die suddenly had no symptoms or family history of heart disease. Moreover, other than the case of Rab Wardell, a universal pattern of increased excess mortality has been reported all over the world.
However, genetic factors are rather stable factors which won’t normally directly cause death unless there are significant external risk factors. As the saying goes, internal causes are like basic prerequisites, like a seed, while external factors are like sunlight or water. The seed will grow into a plant only with the suitable conditions of temperature, sunlight, and water.
We could not attribute a large number of excess death rates to the genetic factors alone. There must be other external triggers to be found.
Excess Mortality in England and Wales
Beyond Scotland, other areas of the UK also experienced an unexplained rise in excess deaths. According to the latest data from the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), from June to late August 2022, around 1,000 excess deaths took place in England and Wales each week. However, most of them are unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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