Well Well Well, Who'd Have Thought It?

[youngmafbog]

Not news for some of us and I'm sure those behind the sofa will scoff at it but it seems the worm may be turning. Maybe, just maybe the MSM is doing it job rather than simply peddle Johnsons propaganda.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8971669/What-DONT-tell-Covid-facts-twisted-strike-fear-hearts.html

[THECORBYLOON]

What like would the figures have been without the new measures having been taken?

[agchristie]

Well I havent got a cynical bone in me body but I just dont kno who to trust anymore :-)

[jim360]

As is usually the case, the possibility that the action may well have been successful is, in a sense, being used as evidence against it. In the last week, the number of daily deaths has appeared to level off. I can't claim that this is definitive evidence that Lockdown 2 has had an impact, or discount the possibility that this was due to Tier 3 measures leading up to it. But it defies common sense to suggest that, left unchecked, the trajectory of the disease would have been exactly the same.

Back a month ago, when we were asking how many Covid-19 deaths would be an "acceptable" loss, I'd suggested that around 5,000 total in the period from October 15th-December 25th would mark a relative success, and later revised that up to 10,000. We passed that total yesterday. In that sense, the Government acted far too late, if anything.

[Peter Pedant]

usual daily wail
usual denial on AB

I am over 60 and pretty obviously am going to have other things I cd die from - cancer - the other cancer - and relapse
but that doesnt mean there is a virus out there doing the job

Trump is ignoring 200 000 deaths
and I suppose 50 000 you know is easier to ignore ( smaller pile of bodeis)

and as J M Keynes said - in the long run we are all dead

yeah - OK -I am really frightened for you

[Peter Pedant]

jim#
you are obviously into big boys journals
see here
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03132-4

why are death rates falling . just out of interest

[jno]

pretty sure I'd heard all this already, but considering that the April peaks reflected very early days, and that they've found out a lot about what tratments work best (and that a lot of the most vulnerable have already died), I should certainly hope they were lower now.

However:

///scientists estimated that there could be 119,000 deaths if a second spike coincided with a peak of winter flu. Yesterday, that figure stood at 54,286 – less than half that.///

Well, the second spike *hasn't* coincided with a peak of winter flu, so that's hardly a myth debunked, is it?

[jim360]

There's a clear limit to what I can say about how to interpret the data; I simply don't have the medical background to say more than what's publicly available. Medical science advances quickly, though.

[Peter Pedant]

is this thread really about:

not enough people have died ( some computer predictions/models over estimated months ago)

so we can conclude - no one has died [er from covid that is]
If you want to believe that - fine ! Mr Nice Guy this week end

and so you dont have to do anything - "lets party ! yaaaaay!"
erm no I think you should obey the current law

as I have said before
if you have a computer model of a car speeding towards a wall and it is doesnt brake and stop the occupiers will splatter against the wall wiv blud everywhere !
and someone puts on the brakes and it stops

the correct conclusion is NOT - computer modelling is always crap

but on AB it seems to be

[Peter Pedant]

if the thread is about
for every 10 000 cases far less are dying than did in March 2020

yes - and they are not sure why ( see ref in Nature above)

[woofgang]

yup...lies damn lies and statistics.....all of the info on there is freely publicly available so I am not sure who isn't telling us what......and again the "nightmare scenario" thing was always cited as worst case if nothing is done....once you do something of course the scenario changes and hopefully for the better. Exactly the same thing happened at the Millenium when it was suggested that certain key software would fail because it hadn't been designed to allow for years that started with a 2 instead of a 1. Nothing catastrophic happened so the conclusion was drawn that the story had been a fake, totally ignoring all the work that had been done to prevent disaster. Would it have been ok without the work? who knows? The fact is though that its not sensible to rely on doing nothing.

[pixie374]

Tbf, I am cynical about the measures used... but this seems to just suggest they have worked. We have nothing to compare it to.
Whether this is more important than the rest of the population, might be a different discussion.

[jim360]

It's also bizarre to look at only the UK's data, if it comes to that. In the last month, the average number of daily announced Covid-19 deaths globally has almost doubled, with increased death rates across Europe, and the US in particular. Deaths are also rising again in Brazil, one of the worst-hit countries so far, and no longer falling in Mexico and several South American countries. We are not the only nation suffering; we are not the only nation where people are dying in large numbers.

Even if you make the argument that Covid-19 predominantly affects those who were suffering from other illnesses, they still are dying far sooner than they would have liked. And, again, I cannot stress this enough: I've focused on death counts in this, but people who don't die can still suffer severe and debilitating, apparently long-term effects. Even if the worst-case scenarios don't come to pass, the disease is still terrible, still devastating to many.

[woofgang]

what jim said.

[pixie374]

I agree with Jim... but others are dying of things other than covid. They are not being prioritised, or even treated, sometimes. Surely, not only covid figures are important?

[jim360]

Well, yes, you would have hoped so. In the first stage of this crisis it was certainly a mistake made. I had understood that this time round, other medical procedures were still taking place, and indeed that was claimed to be the entire point.

[pixie374]

It was... but many haven't happened, and people have literally died- because they don't have Covid. It skews the figures somewhat.

[woofgang]

pixie, its my understanding that some of those very sad non covid deaths happened in the early stages because doctors were reluctant to put frail people into hospital where they might catch covid? I cannot imagine that anybody in the health service had any kind of thought or belief that people with covid should take any kind of "this illness is more important than that illness" priority.

Its also wandering a bit from the topic? I am not sure how not taking the precautions that have been taken would have freed up more NHS resource? whether or not they were needed, surely one of the aims was to reduce the amount of NHS resource that was needed by covid patients?

[jno]

woofgang, a friend of mine didn't believe the millennium bug hype and did nothing. Come 0001 on 1 Jan 2000, her company system crashed. She got on the phone to HQ somewhere (America?) and they sorted it out remotely before the millennium hit them too. Naturally, she didn't tell anyone what a mug she'd been. Perhaps she was the only one in the world it happened to, but I suspect not.

[pixie374]

It doesn't seem so, woof... people have been denied treatment over the last six months- knowing they would die. That may have changed this month.... I'm not sure.

[woofgang]

pixie, how would not taking precautions against covid have helped that?