Ah, now then, according to the ONS, for the Winter of 2017-18, there were over 50,000 "excess deaths" which were put down as due to the "deadly strains of flu which swept the nation over the winter months and were the highest in forty years.

A lot of those were probably respiratory diseases brought on by the flu. Guessing on a non-technical level, I'd say that as with covid-19, those people wouldn't have died if they'd not got the flu.

The peak of excess deaths in January 2018 was running at over 2,000 per day. 

If you go back a lot further, you'll find much higher numbers.

At the time of the 2017-18 winter, 55,000 operations were cancelled in January alone to relieve pressure on the NHS. Sounds familiar?