COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[west didsblue]

This doesn't break down the effect of Covid, it merely states the casualties are up. It doesn't give fact on this years numbers for Flu, Cold


So the FT extracted their poll from hospital death recorded
Your own article - The FT’s analysis has extrapolated these figures using the latest trends in the daily hospital deaths

Not sure what point you’re trying to make. The article does a fairly detailed analysis based on ONS data then extrapolates it based on the daily Covid figures available at the time to provide an overall excess death figure. Your original point about flu deaths would be covered in the 5 year average leaving the excess deaths either as a direct or indirect consequence of Covid. When I say indirect, I’m referring to additional cancer, heart attack and stroke deaths etc due to people not receiving routine treatment or being scared of going to hospital when they would normally call an ambulance.

You originally suggested that Covid was being over reported but in reality this data suggests that it is the opposite.

 

[jimharri]

 

[Coatigan]

https://www.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab
This was from 22 April when it was calculated as 41,000. 45,000 was a week ago in an update so it’s probably nearer 50,000 now.

It is an absolutely perverse conclusion though.

As i understand this article, the government have reported a figure of circa 20,000 deaths attributed to over about a 3 months since covid started. FT have found a spike of 18,000 in one (the most recent) month. So over the 3 months, that must then mean the 20,000 is actually 40,000. Horseshit! the spike was indeed in april, people havnt been dying at the same rate over the 3 months.

Take the extreme conclusion away however, the numbers are still horrific and the increase in death over the average is terrible.

 

[west didsblue]

It is an absolutely perverse conclusion though.

As i understand this article, the government have reported a figure of circa 20,000 deaths attributed to over about a 3 months since covid started. FT have found a spike of 18,000 in one (the most recent) month. So over the 3 months, that must then mean the 20,000 is actually 40,000. Horseshit! the spike was indeed in april, people havnt been dying at the same rate over the 3 months.

Take the extreme conclusion away however, the numbers are still horrific and the increase in death over the average is terrible.

That’s not what it says. The ONS data was running a couple of weeks behind the daily figures and the extrapolation was going forward from the most recent ONS data to the date of the analysis using the daily figures as an indication of growth. It certainly wasn’t applying the death rates to previous months.

 

[Dubai Blue]

The UK has over years, decades, posted seasonal flu casualties of 17k per month. This is minus other cold, virus infections that happen every year without the "news" being "on it" so much. I would like to know right now the true figure or who exactly died of Covid today and who exactly died of Flu, cold or other virus. I do honestly think the figures are distorted and ticked as Covid.

17K per month? That's the current average figure per year for England over the last 5 years.
High = 28,330 (2014/15)
Low = 1,692 (2018/19)
https://assets.publishing.service.g...tory_viruses_in_the_UK_2018_to_2019-FINAL.pdf

 

[Coatigan]

That’s not what it says. The ONS data was running a couple of weeks behind the daily figures and the extrapolation was going forward from the most recent ONS data to the date of the analysis using the daily figures as an indication of growth. It certainly wasn’t applying the death rates to previous months.

Not how i read it. The issue is their estimate, not the figures they have extracted.

I read an article in the BBC (teying to find it now) at the beginning of april, which, using ONS data from jan1st to mar30th claimed that covid deaths made up only 2% of the total deaths of the quarter, and that the increase to the average was minimal. How can interpreting the same figures vary so significantly.

 

[Bazzmand Show]

The UK has over years, decades, posted seasonal flu casualties of 17k per month..

That's just not true, the 2017-2018 flu season killed 50,000 people over the period. But that was over a full 12 months, which is about 4000 per month.

 

[west didsblue]

Not how i read it. The issue is their estimate, not the figures they have extracted.

I read an article in the BBC (teying to find it now) at the beginning of april, which, using ONS data from jan1st to mar30th claimed that covid deaths made up only 2% of the total deaths of the quarter, and that the increase to the average was minimal. How can interpreting the same figures vary so significantly.

That is consistent with the FT. There were no noticeable excess deaths until the last week of March. The extra 2% was all in that last week.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

Nobody is advocating uncritical acceptance of anything, we have a right to know why decisions are taken and in a democracy our politicians have a duty to answer truthfully. They and their advisers in SAGE also have a right to meet and discuss the data and the options and issues in private. Confidentiality is a necessary precondition to ensure the integrity and honesty of those interactions and has been a feature of the relationship between elected MPs and their civil servants and advisers in this country for a very long time. It is a system that has served us well and the secrecy is in the public interest and is temporary.

It comes down to trust really George. Nothing more and nothing less. If they can’t engender trust then how can they expect the rest of us to follow? The easiest way of doing that is just by being truthful. For example, in January, the UK had developed one of the first C-19 tests. One thing we do have is a very high level research base and every public health threat, similar to this one, is always Test, Track, Trace and Isolate, as quickly as possible. By February, despite the WHO repeating and repeating this mantra, we decided to not bother with it. We went from trying to contain it to trying to delay it. Aren’t you at least curious why we chose that path, especially as now, less than 2 months later and following at least 30000 deaths, our strategy is moving towards, Test, Track, Trace and Isolate?
Johnson talked, on Monday, of transparency, of learning lessons every day, which is all they all needed to be saying from the start. Then, four days later, we have the ‘testing target day’. People on here saying how we should give them credit for achieving when, in reality, they’d just lied again. It’s not great for building up the aforementioned trust.
If he’d said that we’ve put in a huge effort, almost got to 100k, a target we set to galvanise the system, and going forward we learned a huge amount which will enable us to increase the testing capacity week on week, he’d have had no criticism from me, as the ‘target’ was never a critical milestone. What does matter is that they couldn’t be straightforward at a time when the country needs unambiguous leadership from our government. We all need to be able to trust them and we need to be able to trust them all. If they tell us that 1 metre distancing is as good as 2, we need to believe them. If they tell us that masks ‘make no difference’, we need to trust them. Opening this business, or that business, we need to believe that the science and the interpretation of that science is believable. It’s not rocket science, it’s much more important than that and we deserve a leadership team that treat us like adults and in whom we can trust, I’d have thought.

 

[Saddleworth2]

From BBC. About time we re-introduced track and trace. Just my opinion, but a country with a population the size of Scotland, and the number of cases, this should never have been withdrawn.

Nicola Sturgeon is to set out her plans on Monday for a "test, trace, isolate and support" strategy to suppress coronavirus in the months ahead.
At her daily briefing, the first minister will explain the Scottish government's plan to disrupt "community transmission" of the virus.
She has previously said such an approach will help Scotland "emerge gradually from lockdown".
A paper called Test, Trace, Isolate, Support will be published, setting out the steps individuals are required to take.

 

[SWP's back]

Not how i read it. The issue is their estimate, not the figures they have extracted.

I read an article in the BBC (teying to find it now) at the beginning of april, which, using ONS data from jan1st to mar30th claimed that covid deaths made up only 2% of the total deaths of the quarter, and that the increase to the average was minimal. How can interpreting the same figures vary so significantly.

That’s because between Jan 1 to March 31st, there were only 1,700 hundred CV-19 deaths. Then look how many died in April (over 25,000).

 

[Saddleworth2]

It comes down to trust really George. Nothing more and nothing less. If they can’t engender trust then how can they expect the rest of us to follow? The easiest way of doing that is just by being truthful. For example, in January, the UK had developed one of the first C-19 tests. One thing we do have is a very high level research base and every public health threat, similar to this one, is always Test, Track, Trace and Isolate, as quickly as possible. By February, despite the WHO repeating and repeating this mantra, we decided to not bother with it. We went from trying to contain it to trying to delay it. Aren’t you at least curious why we chose that path, especially as now, less than 2 months later and following at least 30000 deaths, our strategy is moving towards, Test, Track, Trace and Isolate?
Johnson talked, on Monday, of transparency, of learning lessons every day, which is all they all needed to be saying from the start. Then, four days later, we have the ‘testing target day’. People on here saying how we should give them credit for achieving when, in reality, they’d just lied again. It’s not great for building up the aforementioned trust.
If he’d said that we’ve put in a huge effort, almost got to 100k, a target we set to galvanise the system, and going forward we learned a huge amount which will enable us to increase the testing capacity week on week, he’d have had no criticism from me, as the ‘target’ was never a critical milestone. What does matter is that they couldn’t be straightforward at a time when the country needs unambiguous leadership from our government. We all need to be able to trust them and we need to be able to trust them all. If they tell us that 1 metre distancing is as good as 2, we need to believe them. If they tell us that masks ‘make no difference’, we need to trust them. Opening this business, or that business, we need to believe that the science and the interpretation of that science is believable. It’s not rocket science, it’s much more important than that and we deserve a leadership team that treat us like adults and in whom we can trust, I’d have thought.

I agree with every word and have previously posted that the fastest way to grow trust is not to make promises lightly and when you do, make sure you deliver on them. Be honest, don't sugar coat stuff and treat the population like adults. Although I get dogs abuse on here for saying it, exactly like Sturgeon is communicating in Scotland.

That question on 'why did we abandon track and trace' is pretty fundamental. From what was said at the time, it seems like we lacked the infrastructure to cope with the numbers. Now I can accept that in London where the initial infection rate was so high but what about in other parts of the country where the numbers are nothing like as significant. Surely it would have been possible to continue to track and trace everywhere else - maybe not to the extent South Korea did it with forensic analysis by CCTV, financial transactions etc but a simple model that would have been less difficult to administer. That one decision is a major reason why we are facing the scenario we are facing just now.

 

[grunge]

The UK has over years, decades, posted seasonal flu casualties of 17k per month. This is minus other cold, virus infections that happen every year without the "news" being "on it" so much. I would like to know right now the true figure or who exactly died of Covid today and who exactly died of Flu, cold or other virus. I do honestly think the figures are distorted and ticked as Covid.

UK Deaths per week over the last 10 years.

This is the raw ONS data of just deaths registered, no cause attributed. no extrapolations. just the Raw data.

May not be visible on this graph but we were actually bellow average deaths for most of the 1st 10 weeks of the year. about 4700 deaths under the average before Covid kicked in.

 

[SWP's back]

UK Deaths per week over the last 10 years.

This is the raw ONS data of just deaths registered.

I think that’s the starkest graph to show CV19’s effect.

 

[west didsblue]

I think that’s the starkest graph to show CV19’s effect.

And it proves beyond reasonable doubt that those still thinking there was a Covid problem in this country in December are wrong.

 

[ganganvince]

UK Deaths per week over the last 10 years.

This is the raw ONS data of just deaths registered, no cause attributed. no extrapolations. just the Raw data.

May not be visible on this graph but we were actually bellow average deaths for most of the 1st 10 weeks of the year. about 4700 deaths under the average before Covid kicked in.

Which is exactly what we need for comparison from the other countries.

 

[kevin horlocks wand]

It comes down to trust really George. Nothing more and nothing less. If they can’t engender trust then how can they expect the rest of us to follow? The easiest way of doing that is just by being truthful. For example, in January, the UK had developed one of the first C-19 tests. One thing we do have is a very high level research base and every public health threat, similar to this one, is always Test, Track, Trace and Isolate, as quickly as possible. By February, despite the WHO repeating and repeating this mantra, we decided to not bother with it. We went from trying to contain it to trying to delay it. Aren’t you at least curious why we chose that path, especially as now, less than 2 months later and following at least 30000 deaths, our strategy is moving towards, Test, Track, Trace and Isolate?
Johnson talked, on Monday, of transparency, of learning lessons every day, which is all they all needed to be saying from the start. Then, four days later, we have the ‘testing target day’. People on here saying how we should give them credit for achieving when, in reality, they’d just lied again. It’s not great for building up the aforementioned trust.
If he’d said that we’ve put in a huge effort, almost got to 100k, a target we set to galvanise the system, and going forward we learned a huge amount which will enable us to increase the testing capacity week on week, he’d have had no criticism from me, as the ‘target’ was never a critical milestone. What does matter is that they couldn’t be straightforward at a time when the country needs unambiguous leadership from our government. We all need to be able to trust them and we need to be able to trust them all. If they tell us that 1 metre distancing is as good as 2, we need to believe them. If they tell us that masks ‘make no difference’, we need to trust them. Opening this business, or that business, we need to believe that the science and the interpretation of that science is believable. It’s not rocket science, it’s much more important than that and we deserve a leadership team that treat us like adults and in whom we can trust, I’d have thought.

I agree with a lot of that . The government are going to have an incredibly difficult job of getting people to come out of lockdown.

we have watched in the media the horrific scenes in Italy and think it won’t be like that here and then we have seen the deaths rise here

the messaging from the government and media has been deaths, deadly, horrific , unprecedented. Stay in your house , we are all going to die. Building hospitals to cope with the deaths . Story after story of deaths .

then this week they are going to say ok now back to work .unless they can back this up with credible science and data a lot of people are going to be very anxious about returning to any form of normality for the foreseeable. Boris ain’t going to get an economic bounce back anytime soon because they have done a umber on us telling us for the last few weeks how deadly this is .

they can say all they like we are on the downward curve now but when people see 600 daily deaths then they will Make their own kind up .

 

[Claytop]

UK Deaths per week over the last 10 years.

This is the raw ONS data of just deaths registered, no cause attributed. no extrapolations. just the Raw data.

May not be visible on this graph but we were actually bellow average deaths for most of the 1st 10 weeks of the year. about 4700 deaths under the average before Covid kicked in.

I read one of the experts saying that because we’d had a relatively mild flu season this has probably made the Covid deaths spike higher than it would have.

 

[ganganvince]

I read one of the experts saying that because we’d had a relatively mild flu season this has probably made the Covid deaths spike higher than it would have.

Yes but what also will be taken into account going forward is the vast majority of the excess deaths are elderly who would have died naturally over the coming months meaning once we get the virus under control the excess could turn negative for those periods not overall.

 

[blueparrot]

I read one of the experts saying that because we’d had a relatively mild flu season this has probably made the Covid deaths spike higher than it would have.

Think it’s possibly the other way about, the increased awareness with hygiene and distancing kept the flu numbers down.