Is the fear of disease worse than the disease itself?

According to the coding and registrations, these excess deaths were seen in both those with or without COVID-19, suggesting that mortality was increased by both the direct and indirect consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whatever the reason, this has led to concern that patients are presenting too late or not presenting at all, with recent studies demonstrating an increase in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.8 However, to date, there has been no assessment of the effect of COVID-19 on cardiovascular death. [...]many such events could have occurred during any viral pandemic, such as with influenza,2 and this is particularly pertinent to care homes and hospices. Here, the risk of fatal stroke and myocardial infarction outweighs the COVID-19 risk to the patient, and the healthcare system had capacity within acute specialities outside of the intensive care and dedicated COVID-19 units to provide life-saving treatments.