Thanks SB & Dan, will consider your points & try to respond tomorrow. In the meantime I'll add this ONS data from 2020 breaking down the pre-existing conditions by type and percentage contribution to the over all death toll for that year:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/preexistingconditionsofpeoplewhodiedduetocovid19englandandwales

The top 7 over 10% were:

Dementia and Alzheimer's disease - 25.0%
Diabetes - 19.9%
Hyertensive diseases - 17.8 %
Symptoms signs and ill-defined conditions - 16.3%
Chronic lower respiratory diseases - 16.0%
Ischaemic heart diseases - 13.2%
Diseases of the urinary system - 13.2%

(from the xlsx file '2020 (Final) edition of this dataset', table 1a )

Just to be clear, it's not my intent to dismiss or trivialise the harm done by the disease to people, young or old, healthy or chronically ill - a peril of looking at stats and drawing conclusions from numbers being that you look callous. The 17K number helps me put things into better perspective and I find it revealing that it's not something that appears to be part of media discussion or broader, terrified public awareness.

cheers for now,
I