Excess Deaths Latest

BoroMart said:
I have yet to see any reasoning why Covid should not be classed as the death after 28 days. We've all read about long covid effects. I suspect these excess are people that took months to die after contracting covid and died because on underly issue was worsened by covid.
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Long covid? Or post viral fatigue?
 
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Long covid is no reason to say that people are dying after 28 days.. infact the more testing that happens the more likely you are to dragnet unassociated deaths into being pulled into the figures (as we know already happens).
If you are in the PHE numbers you will by default be in the ONS figures as 'positive covid test' will be mentioned on the death certificate.

Top Italian doctors have come out and said it's madness and should be done on clinical diagnosis rather than the result of a test (I'm not sure how they count currently.)

This all comes back to my point there should be a genuine discussion on how we decide what is and is not a death, the covid measure has never been done before and is completely open to being over counting or under counting (depending which way you want to look at it) and provides nothing but further fuel for the various media outlets to say one thing or another .
 
bear66 said:
Long covid. Even asymptomatic equally likely to suffer. 1 in 10 under 50s was the figure quoted today (Kings College, London).
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It counts 4 weeks as long covid bear.. and those most likely to suffer it are in my post above, it's interesting as it also seems very similar to fibromyalgia symptoms...

It also states that you are likely to suffer it if you have displayed 5 or more symptoms. 👍🏻
 
Alvez_48 said:
It counts 4 weeks as long covid bear.. and those most likely to suffer it are in my post above, it's interesting as it also seems very similar to fibromyalgia symptoms...

It also states that you are likely to suffer it if you have displayed 5 or more symptoms. 👍🏻
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Obviously the latest information is far more worrying. We'll have to wait for the full Kings College report.

To quote Hancock today (excerpt from Guardian blog, but Hansard should have the full statement)

Hancock said people could suffer from long Covid even if they had no symptoms when first infected. There seemed to be “no correlation” between the seriousness of the original illness and the long Covid after-effects, he said.
In some cases people have no symptoms of the coronavirus initially, but then can find that they have months and months of a fatigue, and a brain fog, and a muscle pain, and they didn’t know where it came from until they’re diagnosed with long Covid. It is a very serious complication.

He said younger adults seemed to be particularly at risk. Evidence from King’s College London suggested about one in 20 people with coronavirus get long Covid, he said. But he said there was other evidence suggesting that, amongst adults under 50, it was more like one in 10. He went on:
So there does seem to be some correlation which implies that it is more of a problem amongst younger people. But understanding this is long Covid is still in early stages and an awful lot more research is needed.

He said it could have debilitating effects on young people.
I’ve met people in their 20s and 30s, unable to work, sapped of all their energy, living with the long-term effects of a virus that has completely changed their lives. So to anyone, of any age, catching Covid can be very grave.
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bear66 said:
Obviously the latest information is far more worrying. We'll have to wait for the full Kings College report.

To quote Hancock today (excerpt from Guardian blog, but Hansard should have the full statement)
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Quoting Hancock?
The man is full of **** and couldn't lie straight in bed 😂😂😂

'Long covid' and post viral fatigue are one and the same.
 
Alvez_48 said:
That report was from today mate..
Don't quote Hancock and then call him full of nonsense in the next breath. Everything he says should be dismissed out of hand.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...t-greatest-risk-of-long-covid-experts-suggest
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Thanks for that. I saw it yesterday. The survey had an unrepresentative sample towards women younger than 70 so I was surprised with the conclusion.

I agree with you that I don't trust our health secretary, but if his information is correct, then we will see more information as time goes by. It is certainly in contrast to your link. The asymptomatic finding wouldn't be totally surprising as there have been studies showing lung damage in asymptomatic cases.
 
Alvez_48 said:
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This all comes back to my point there should be a genuine discussion on how we decide what is and is not a death, the covid measure has never been done before and is completely open to being over counting or under counting (depending which way you want to look at it) and provides nothing but further fuel for the various media outlets to say one thing or another .
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Completely agree with this. There are far too many questions surrounding what makes up the covid death figures.
 
1finny said:
I think we may be agreeing?
Deaths are going up as cases rise
But
The 5 year average suggests we would have had deaths at this rate and this time of year anyway.

Another way of looking at is
If Covid wasn’t around the death rate would likely trend the 5 year average. A lockdown would be inconceivable under those circumstances.

With rising Covid cases we are still following the 5 year trend for deaths yet are all over the place with lockdown policies.

Something doesn’t add up.
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I wouldn't agree that if Cpvid wasn't around that the death rate would automatically track lower. That pre supposes that social distancing, mask wearing and local lockdowns only stops transmission of Covid.

It seems strangely overlooked that all the anti covid measures are also reducing the spread of all other commutable diseases. Some of which, such as flu, can be extremely lethal in themselves.
 
FabioPorkpie said:
Completely agree with this. There are far too many questions surrounding what makes up the covid death figures.
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The reality is that every single pandemic ever and other world events that cause large numbers of deaths cannot accurately state the numbers. There are no accurate death numbers for polio, for WW2 or for african famine. There are ranges. We can give a range of values for COVID on the UK the bottom end being where a patient was covid positive, and died without ever being covid negative, and the top end being anyone that dies within a 'reasonable' timeframe after contracting covid OR excess mortality rate, whichever is higher.
 
Matt said:
I'm not sure how you can say that deaths aren't going up with cases?

This shows the 7 day average of cases, clearly trending up. The reason there are many more cases compared to spring is somewhat proportional to the fact we are doing a lot more testing in general at the moment and as such picking up a lot more cases, including significantly more of the asymptomatic cases which we missed before (and we know are a significant number).

There is a conclusion somewhere (I don't have a handy link, sorry) that a realistic number of daily cases for March/April etc... peaked at around 100k a day. the ZOE Covid Data puts current actual cases at around 36k a day, which means we aren't at the same levels as back in March in terms of numbers of infections (roughly a 3rd of the total), hence why deaths aren't so high.

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This is the 7 day average of deaths, also clearly trending up albeit not as fast, which I think you could expect considering a lot more people will be taking precautions compared to back in March.

But deaths are doubling somewhere between every 10-14 days according to that graph, and the thing with exponential growth is that it very quickly gets out of hand. In 2 weeks, as it stands, we'll be close to 500 deaths a day, which is starting to feel a lot like spring.

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At the moment, there is no real end-game apart from a successful vaccine. It sounds like we have something that works - we're just now waiting on safety and efficacy results and then to see how this shower of a government handle a rollout. Beyond that, I don't see a realistic way of returning to "normal" any time soon.

I still think lockdown is inevitable, but only a stop gap.
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I think the argument is that the number of deaths has not tracked the number of confirmed cases to the extent that it did during the first wave. There are 3 possible explanations that spring immediately to mind:

1. We've learned better how to treat confirmed cases. During the first wave the benefits of drugs such as dexamethasone had not been identified; now it is known, the death rate amongst confirmed cases is lower.

2. During the second wave, the infection rate has mostly been in a younger, less vulnerable demographic. Infection has therefore led to death in fewer cases.

3. The actual number of infections was actually much higher than recognised during the first wave. Due to a alack of testing, only the most serious cases were actually tested and, as a result, a higher proportion appeared to die.

In reality, the lower proportional death rate is probably a combination of all 3, and probably some other factors. The reason for caution comes from answer 2; cases amongst school children and university students will eventually find their way to an older population, and I think the recent upturn in death rate probably reflects this.
 
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BoroMart said:
The reality is that every single pandemic ever and other world events that cause large numbers of deaths cannot accurately state the numbers. There are no accurate death numbers for polio, for WW2 or for african famine. There are ranges. We can give a range of values for COVID on the UK the bottom end being where a patient was covid positive, and died without ever being covid negative, and the top end being anyone that dies within a 'reasonable' timeframe after contracting covid OR excess mortality rate, whichever is higher.
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Agree, but has a situation arisen whereby some deaths are being attributed to covid when they clearly shouldn’t be. Is there a manipulation of the figures occurring to some degree? (For why, I do not know.)
If a person is involved in a car crash and comes in with heavy internal bleeding and broken limbs, and tests positive for covid, then subsequently dies as a result of their injuries, are they classed as a covid death or a road traffic accident death? Granted it’s possibly a small number like this, but how blurred are the lines getting?
For a long time during the first wave I wrongly took the covid death figure as meaning these people had died because of covid, when that clearly isn’t always the case. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in that and possibly the majority of the public read it that way. It sensationalises the number and adds to a narrative of fear as well as, most importantly, clouding the discussion about what exactly is happening, in my opinion.
That said I know it’s a very difficult thing to establish what is and is not directly attributable to covid so perhaps this is just the best we can do at the moment.

There are just a lot of uncomfortable questions to be asked around the whole issue.
 
FabioPorkpie said:
If a person is involved in a car crash and comes in with heavy internal bleeding and broken limbs, and tests positive for covid, then subsequently dies as a result of their injuries, are they classed as a covid death or a road traffic accident death? Granted it’s possibly a small number like this, but how blurred are the lines getting?
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I would say it is more likely that people die from complications caused by having had and recovered from covid or beyond 28 days that in some figures are being rejected as not covid deaths.
 
Fabio, the "car crash" analogy is one I'd like to know more about as well. Presumably we must know which existing conditions are exacerbated by Covid now, and should only be making valid links on death certificates?

Worryingly (and this is only my take) there seems to be an incessant focus on the numbers with very little focus on understanding the conditions behind them (the "why") and as such, our response feels arbitrary at best. Appreciate that the data isn't perfect (far from it) but we must be able to make some robust hypotheses as to the steps we can take to limit the spread.
 
changingman said:
Fabio, the "car crash" analogy is one I'd like to know more about as well. Presumably we must know which existing conditions are exacerbated by Covid now, and should only be making valid links on death certificates?

Worryingly (and this is only my take) there seems to be an incessant focus on the numbers with very little focus on understanding the conditions behind them (the "why") and as such, our response feels arbitrary at best. Appreciate that the data isn't perfect (far from it) but we must be able to make some robust hypotheses as to the steps we can take to limit the spread.
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ONS wouldn't count car crash victims. Approximately 90% of covid-19 positive deaths had that on their death certificate. Not all <28 day positives are included in death certificates (about 95%).
 
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