Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but isn't the spreadsheet from ONS just distinguishing between people who had or didn't;t have an underlying condition as well, not saying only the ones with no underlying conditions were actually caused by covid? Eg the table below (pasted just for the titles - formatting will be lost) shows 'deaths due to covid' - then breaks them down to with or without underlying conditions, with 16% being without underlying conditions. They're still all due to covid (according to ONS). It doesn't seem to be saying that the deaths were caused by the underlying conditions (but that they contributed) - also, a large section of the population would be classed as having one underlying condition or other if we looked (I've probably got some), and many like this just wouldn't have died without getting covid - do we just forget about them?

The better request might have been 'all deaths where covid was noted as the primary cause on the death certificate compared with when the other condition is listed as such and covid was a secondary cause (or whatever) (ie deaths with covid vs deaths of covid). I think I have seen this data on the ONS before (in their fortnightly summary I think), and it was lower than the overall figure (with covid), but not 16 % (more like 80% from memory). Please correct me where I'm wrong I did skim-read a little bit



Geography Deaths due to COVID-19 of which, number of deaths with no pre-existing conditions Percentage with no pre-existing conditions
England and Wales 9,135 1,536 16.8%
England 8,346 1,387 16.6%
Wales 758 140 18.5%