"The data analyst". Brilliant. Thank you for that, it's made my morning.
PS we're still well within 2 standard deviations of where the number of expected deaths for this time of year would normally be. Not an opinion, just a simple mathematical fact. I sacked it off on here as I couldn't be arsed with the abuse I was starting to get.
When this pandemic is effectively over given treatment improvement and the virus just dying the death and morbidity data worldwide will vary little from what it would have been had the virus not been introduced into Wuhan in Oct last year even in countries with death rates from or with the virus above 1 per cent.
The world heath organisation suggest that the best data available and most plausible future outcomes assuming its mutation into further strains are ineffective re transmission from human to human as many covid viruses are that 10 per cent namely 800million will be affected directly and around 4-5 million will die with or from the virus if current health responses are maintained.
Don't be alarmed by this figure as the vast majority of people who get the virus never know they even have it unless they are tested.
Many deaths that have not been reported to date have been with or from covid and some that have been recorded have not given the nature of many public health settings and practices throughout the world.
If we had ignored the virus altogether and made no public or private health response given that around 5 per cent of people with a comorbidity above 75 pass away on average 3 years sooner in males than the average age of death conditional on reaching that age and around 8 years for a female to less than 0.03 per cent of persons under 40 and in particular conditional on many chronic or acute comorbidities in persons of these age brackets would the number of deaths rise significantly in 2020 and 2021 and 2022 by which time the virus will have effectively disappeared through natural immunity?
The deaths that could have been avoided had we had no public response vary in multiplier factor and there is a natural lag factor given the economic , social , cultural and medical and health restrictions in place as a direct response to the pandemic eg lockdowns , business closure , surgery delay , treatment delay from other disease and the list goes on.
I suspect that in the end the extra non covid deaths from responding in the way government have to reduce the speed and impact of human transmission of the virus will well exceed the death numbers in both life expectancy and numerically.
Not by the factor of 4 to 1 as is being predicted for the UK presently but significantly at least.
What should we have done as opposed to what we did do.
Keep the vulnerable and aged care centres quarantined as best as possible from day 1 and isolate as many close contacts as possible as they did in Taiwan.
Compulsory face mask wearing in gatherings and social distancing are the cheapest and most practical and less intrusive means to limit spread.
