Covid Deaths Update

[fiction-factory]

The method for counting deaths as Covid in England has been changed to bring it into line with Scotland, so deaths for any reason (eg heart attack, car crash) which occur more than 28 days after a positive test are no longer counted. this has brought the UK death figure down from around 46000 to 41000. It now means that we have moved down the league table of DEATHS PER MILLION population:

1 San Marino 1,238
2 Belgium 854
3 Andorra 686
4 Peru 657
5 Spain 611
6 UK 608
7 Italy 583
8 Sweden 571
9 Chile 533
10 USA 511
11 Brazil 490
12 France 465

The UK figure is still alarmingly high compared to say Germany and Greece but we do have a lower figure than Spain and Belgium and is not too far above Italy. Of course we still can't be sure all countries are counting Covid deaths in exactly the same way but there does seem to be more consistency as time goes on.

It's amazing though how low the figures are for the country where this started- China reports 3 deaths per million compared to our figure of 608. The figures seem low in Eastern Europe and Africa too.

[tiggerblue10]

Excess deaths may also be caused by non reporting of other illnesses during lockdown like heart attacks, cancer etc, and other factors like suicides. Many may have been too afraid to seek help or the emergency services were over-stretched.

[youngmafbog]

Jim 2020 is not normal. Yes, I thing everyone is in agreement with that.

My point is ~(and always has been) we need to properly asses the data and understand what it means rather than just use blunt instruments such as your graph.

Why are you so unwilling to agree this is the best way forward to enable better and more informative actions in the future?

[jim360]

Perhaps because I don't see it as a binary choice. I agree that the full picture will not be clear for a long time yet, and frankly will never be available. On the other hand, we can't wait to assess the damage and mistakes as best we can, in order to try and avert the risk of a damaging second peak. If we're always waiting to see what happened then, by definition, we're never taking action to try and prevent it from happening in the first place.

The scope of what counts as a mistake is perhaps also contentious, but, still, the point is that the future is *now*, rather than in a decade's time or more.

[New Judge]

//If we're always waiting to see what happened then, by definition, we're never taking action to try and prevent it from happening in the first place.//

There is no way to prevent it from happening, bar confining everybody to their homes, and even that would not be foolproof because you'd also have to prevent them receiving any deliveries, post, etc. which is clearly impossible (unless you're quite happy to see them die from starvation - at least it wouldn't be from or with Covid, I suppose).

I just don't know how many times this needs repeating - the virus will spread. We may be able to control the speed of the spread to a limited degree, but that's about it. New Zealand had one of the strictest lockdown procedures in the civilised world. And it's got a new wave starting up. Humans interact with each other; it's what we do. All this fannying about with masks, "anti-social distancing", narrowing roads, widening pavements, limiting the numbers on buses and trains is simply slowing the speed of the spread. That's all it does and that's all anything will do until the virus either mutates or disappears. Stuff happens and we've got to get over that fact.

[tomus42]

// China being an authoritarian country additionally it is easier for them to impose travel restrictions //

..and also to tell lies.

Because we don't know what different countries are counting as a Covid death ( we don't even know what WE should count as a Covid death) comparing figures like this is pointless.

The only numbers that are going to accurately represent the impact of the pandemic are those for excess deaths, ie the number of people dying from any cause at this time of the year compared to the average for previous years.

[ichkeria]

Exactly NJ.
I was going to mention NZ.
Of course, by the time the virus returned there they had returned to life as normal: packed rugby stadiums etc. But it shows that if your aim is to eradicate the virus you are going almost certainly going to fail - and it worries me that there some medical and scientific bods advocating trying to do just that

[jno]

ichkeria, the thing about NZ is that, having for practical purposes near-eliminated it, they're well placed to trace and test people. They still have to figure out where it came from but they can deal with it, so the current lockdown is for days, not months.

It will be interesting to find out where it did come from - my guess would be someone without symptoms who infected someone without realsiing it. There will probably be something useful about transmission to be learnt from it. It probably won't be anything to do with rugby, though

[jno]

sorry, that posted itself ... just adding that there don't seem to have been any superspreading events involved, as I've read the coverage.

[Mozz71]

//don't worry FF the anti British will be along to spin it!//

Jesus wept, do you ever change the bloody record? You're starting to turn into a blue version of Diddly with the claptrap you spout.

[ichkeria]

The point is, jno, it came back.

[Peter Pedant]

// Excess deaths may also be caused by non reporting of other illnesses during lockdown like heart attacks, cancer etc, and other factors like suicides.//

um er not really
excess is excess on previous years and so takes into account underreporting of the 'true' ( previously reported rates )

altho Carl Heneghan ( in my class you know ) will doubtless get knighted for services of making the govt feel and look better - even the hacks have noticed they are still dead and it doesnt make much difference in the long term

[fiction-factory]

Hi PP- I think you may have misunderstood tiggerblue's point, there.

[Peter Pedant]

// //don't worry FF the anti British will be along to spin it!////
oh have a heart mozza
call not TTT a useless tozza !
this is my bee-nice day ( bee is the emblem of Manchester post bomb)

and TTT ( bless !) has a point....[god I am stretching this. I know]
Brits are ready to point to the fat bonker old etonian PM and call him

have you noticed - Trump - "drink dettol" - and they all sat there !
they didnt look as tho they were gonna try it I admit - not there and then anyway - but none of this "Oh god Mr President be serious for a change!"

not a squeak = now THAT is pro-american. Being pro trump when he is in the middle of the greatest experiment in Human Sacrifice ( his 'response' to Covid that is!) that has ever been done

[there - a post where I did not state that an Aber any Aber has a monkey brain. can I have a gold star from my frij?)

[Peter Pedant]

tiggers point is that if all suicides are covid related, it will affect the corrected figures
and I am saying they are referring to a baseline of previous years
against a dead body count now
the difference being the excess

so any hoop la with other causes will be automatically accounted for

-----

cd be wrong - I was atounded to read today that covid contact tracing here didnt involve 'where dja get it from' - but only who dja give it to
[erm the whole point of contact tracing innit]
and they thought they might start the backwards look bit in a few weeks

I sat there stunned

[jno]

something came back, ichkeria, but so far as I know they don't know what or how, that's why it will be interesting to find out. Have they/we overlooked something? Or do we just not know enough about the way the virus behaves yet? The last theory I saw was that it arrived on frozen food packaging.

[jim360]

NJ's post takes too narrow a view of "prevent it happening". I don't mean "stop all deaths" -- that was impossible once the virus escaped the original source -- but I don't believe that what happened in March/April was inevitable either. At least one way to have reduced the issue, for example, would have been to not send sick people back to their care homes without establishing proper quarantine measures beforehand. That's a simple, clear, and obvious mistake that will have led to many premature deaths.

As to New Zealand, I am not sure that a local outbreak of just over a dozen cases constitutes a "new wave". The disaster in the UK (avoidable or not) arose because the disease was able to spread, undetected, through hundreds or thousands of people who'd travelled from across the globe and reached many of our cities, so that it sprung up more or less everywhere at once. It's a completely different picture, not just to New Zealand but also to the UK at the moment. Referring to the graph from earlier, it also shows that there have been no excess deaths in England/Wales for something like two months (up to the end of July), even though some people are still dying of/with Covid. At the moment, as far as I can see, data suggests that the virus is within the "stuff happens" levels that we can live with.

But we presumably would still agree that we ought to prevent, if at all possible, a return to the March/April/May horror show. Never mind the tens of thousands of premature deaths and severe illnesses from Covid alone if that happened, it would also cripple the health service in general again.

[dave50]

Problem is Jim360 is that too many people are unwilling to accept "stuff happens" level we can live with, they want no deaths which is ludicrous. Also politicians are frightened of death of presiding over even a small increase in deaths because of the accusations by those playing politics and the hyperchondriacs of somehow being guilty of murder. We are in a ridiculous situation now that nobody has the guts to come out and say sorry, we will have to live it for the foreseeable future, get used to it.

[webbo3]

Germany seperate the deaths, those who have died FROM and those who have died WITH coronavirus.

And do we believe all the other countries.?

[jim360]

What I'd say to that, dave, is that the fear is not (or ought not to be) what happens *now* but what may happen in a few weeks or months. There are reasons to suspect that a second wave may hit, perhaps during the Winter months, and if so that could be devastating again. At the moment cases are creeping up slowly and linearly, and at a level I'd expect is still manageable. Other critics might be more stringent, I don't know.

As to webbo's post: there are statistics from some countries that we probably can't take seriously, most notably Iran, Russia, and China. But there's nothing new in this criticism, and even if you attempt to "correct" the figures of those and other countries, it doesn't hide the fact that the UK has been among the worst-hit in the world so far. Be that the Government's fault or not, the cold, hard truth is that we've suffered greatly.

[jourdain2]

We have indeed suffered greatly Jim, no matter whose fault. It cannot continue to wreck our communities or lead to more insidious suffering (misery, isolation, lack of healthcare, desperation, bankruptcy, debts, suicides etc.) will happen. This will cumulatively be a far worse total over the years. The only solution is to gird loins etc. (I know - it sounds daft, but everyone knows what I mean) and solve those problems we can. i.e. the economic and social ones by getting the country moving again.

Yes there will probably be an upsurge (and I am vulnerable as is Mr. J2) but society absolutely needs it. Treatments are improving all the time (told so by medical friends).

Covid is here, here to stay - you can't put the genie back in the bottle with an 'abracadabra' - so we learn to put it on the same level as 'flu (which is about what it is really if you discount the sudden hit) and get on with really normal life. There are 6 people in our small village who are terrified to go out and ready to isolate for the rest of their lives. Is that healthy? At 87, Mr J2 refuses to live the last bit of his life hiding in a corner and I am with him on that. Now we need places to go. :)