In fairness to Dave, deaths/population is a figure used usually multiplied by a factor to get deaths/1000/100000/1M population but lets us use it in it’s proper context by comparing the same figure for all deaths or more correctly the crude death rate.
Using figures from the PHE dashboard “all deaths data” page (bottom right) they give deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate by area which added gives us 79349 total deaths thus defined for the whole UK. Deaths/population x1000 gives 1.16 covid deaths/1000 population.
Using ONS all deaths figures from 2019, there were 530,841 deaths registered in England and Wales, using nrscotland, 58.108 in Scotland in 2019 and 15,758 in N.Ireland from NISRA giving a total 604,707 UK deaths. Using the same calculation the crude death rate is 8.89/1000 population.(I used 68M as the population denominator in both instances).
We now have two comparable figures. Covid at 1.16/1000 population and crude death rate at 8.89/1000 population. It doesn’t appear nearly so trivial now when used in context and compared to the crude death rate/1000 population.
I had to use 2019 figures for crude death rate obviously because all 2020 data isn’t available yet.