Excess Deaths Latest

BoroMart said:
some element of truth....and some of that was based around the shambles of PPE, the government made hospitals a complete death trap. They also made care homes a complete death trap in that period too by not assisting the private operators of care homes with PPE provision, but that's ultimately a result of privatisation of this sector.
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Agreed, the magic money tree could have been used to pay care home workers massive bonuses to bubble up for 6 weeks at a time in the care homes for instance.

It would have been good on two fronts, 1. Those people deserve better pay 2. It would have helped the people staying in those care homes to have more interactions with the staff.
 
Alvez_48 said:
Agreed, the magic money tree could have been used to pay care home workers massive bonuses to bubble up for 6 weeks at a time in the care homes for instance.

It would have been good on two fronts, 1. Those people deserve better pay 2. It would have helped the people staying in those care homes to have more interactions with the staff.
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Whilst I do agree with both points, what proportion of the care workers have young families at home to look after, and how many of those families have only one parent?
 
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 think that as the covid-deaths are still "relatively" low, and people are staying at home more (e.g. working from home, not socialising as much, etc...) which leads to less deaths they are effectively cancelling each other out. Simplistic to put it like that, but I assume it's something along those lines. Until the last week or so, the number of Covid deaths each day was probably a statistical blip that could be equivalent to a bad month for car accidents in any other year so I'd say it was quite likely that we'd be on or around the average mark for deaths (compared to previous years).

You are right that if this was any other year, with this death rate, a lockdown wouldn't even be a remote consideration. But this is not any other year - there is a new virus, that we know is very infectious (i.e. it can spread very quickly) and the more people it infects the more people it kills, albeit a very small proportion of those that it does infect. We know this is going to get worse if left unchecked which leads to a bad situation both health wise and economically. The current only action we have against this is to distance, take precautions, and ultimately lockdown to prevent spread when it gets too bad. Again, not saying that it is a good solution, but I think probably the only viable option other than the chaos of a not locked down NHS.

You might say, if this was a particularly bad year for the flu and more people were dieing than normal, why wouldn't we lockdown then if we are considering locking down now? I'm not a scientist or a doctor but I think the answer is that we have some level of preventative measures for the flu (a yearly vaccine), it is not as contagious as covid (This blog from a doctor at James Cook suggests a natural R rate of 1.25 for flu versus between 2-2.5 for covid), and the consensus seems to be that flu is not as deadly as covid (don't have anything handy to back that up). In short, there's not much more we can do about the flu and as we all know life has to go on. We have capacity to deal with it, and we will deal with it and carry on.

At the present time, that is not the case for covid. If left unchecked it will devastate the NHS and then the economy and then society as a whole. We don't have a solution for it at the moment apart from, ultimately, kicking the can down the road via a lockdown until a vaccine becomes available and rolled out. What happens if that doesn't work? I don't think anyone really knows and can't honestly answer that at the moment - for now the plan is to just keep the wolf from the door as long as possible until a vaccine appears.
 
Corcaigh_the_Cat said:
Whilst I do agree with both points, what proportion of the care workers have young families at home to look after, and how many of those families have only one parent?
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This was my wife's argument. She was offered extra money to 'live in' the assisted care home complex she was working in in May. Turned it down as we have two young children.
 
RandySavage said:
You mean these flu figures?

View attachment 7774
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Doing a quick ONS data search for deaths 2017/ 18/ 19/ 20 (Jan- October each year) due to underlying respiratory disease (presume this is combining flu and pneumonia.

Deaths:
2017 = 57959
2018= 62531
2019 = 55903
2020 = 51685 (this may include covid patients where respiratory disease is also a cause of death).

So on this premise we have equivalence year on year but then an excess death number of 54,453 (for the year 2020 to WC October 9th.

This would suggest the deaths perhaps haven't been disappeared, but actually 54,453 extra have very much appeared this year.


Data taken from: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...nalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales
 
Corcaigh_the_Cat said:
Whilst I do agree with both points, what proportion of the care workers have young families at home to look after, and how many of those families have only one parent?
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Ye it's a fair point, it would have to be a sizeable sum of money to start with, in saying like £7k each worker and those unable to would possibly have been able to work in functions not interacting with guests / interacting with guests at low risk.

I don't have all the answers you could well be right and the option was impossible as everything seems to be.
 
Corcaigh_the_Cat said:
At least Matt has a decent understanding of how to read graphs.

The current trend us obviously up, though measures taken to combat Covid19 have caused a drop in other causes of death bringing death totals below the average. This was first reported in the southern hemisphere during their winter.

The high number of excess deaths not due to Covid19 are the ones that need explanation.
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‘Measures taken have caused a drop’
There speaks a government minister.
 
Got an additional bit of ONS data. Jan 1st - Aug 31st 2020

5 year Average flu and pneumonia deaths = 19614
2020 = 14013

So there are 5601 less deaths in 2020 due to flu and pneumonia according to the figures. Of note though approx 40% of these are Jan and Feb suggesting a lower than average flu season.
 
Matt said:
I think that as the covid-deaths are still "relatively" low, and people are staying at home more (e.g. working from home, not socialising as much, etc...) which leads to less deaths they are effectively cancelling each other out. Simplistic to put it like that, but I assume it's something along those lines. Until the last week or so, the number of Covid deaths each day was probably a statistical blip that could be equivalent to a bad month for car accidents in any other year so I'd say it was quite likely that we'd be on or around the average mark for deaths (compared to previous years).

You are right that if this was any other year, with this death rate, a lockdown wouldn't even be a remote consideration. But this is not any other year - there is a new virus, that we know is very infectious (i.e. it can spread very quickly) and the more people it infects the more people it kills, albeit a very small proportion of those that it does infect. We know this is going to get worse if left unchecked which leads to a bad situation both health wise and economically. The current only action we have against this is to distance, take precautions, and ultimately lockdown to prevent spread when it gets too bad. Again, not saying that it is a good solution, but I think probably the only viable option other than the chaos of a not locked down NHS.

You might say, if this was a particularly bad year for the flu and more people were dieing than normal, why wouldn't we lockdown then if we are considering locking down now? I'm not a scientist or a doctor but I think the answer is that we have some level of preventative measures for the flu (a yearly vaccine), it is not as contagious as covid (This blog from a doctor at James Cook suggests a natural R rate of 1.25 for flu versus between 2-2.5 for covid), and the consensus seems to be that flu is not as deadly as covid (don't have anything handy to back that up). In short, there's not much more we can do about the flu and as we all know life has to go on. We have capacity to deal with it, and we will deal with it and carry on.

At the present time, that is not the case for covid. If left unchecked it will devastate the NHS and then the economy and then society as a whole. We don't have a solution for it at the moment apart from, ultimately, kicking the can down the road via a lockdown until a vaccine becomes available and rolled out. What happens if that doesn't work? I don't think anyone really knows and can't honestly answer that at the moment - for now the plan is to just keep the wolf from the door as long as possible until a vaccine appears.
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All good stuff to discuss(y)
There are contra views of course. Will it get worse? Quite possibly but then there is the question of degree?
Ivor Cummins produced data showing it would probably tick up in this quarter. This quarter last year was a good flu season for us (in that less than normal died).
I’m taking the ‘devastate the NHS stuff’ as conjecture - it might happen, might not.
Lots of noise of ‘Covid beds fulll’ which when investigated have just shown it is busy in ICUs and, in some instance (Manchester as an example) not as bad as this time last year.
Flu in 2018 devastated the NHS and it always creaks at this time of year.

The key is we don’t know and we are scared that it will be something like earlier this year.
Place your bets
 
1finny said:
All good stuff to discuss(y)
There are contra views of course. Will it get worse? Quite possibly but then there is the question of degree?
Ivor Cummins produced data showing it would probably tick up in this quarter. This quarter last year was a good flu season for us (in that less than normal died).
I’m taking the ‘devastate the NHS stuff’ as conjecture - it might happen, might not.
Lots of noise of ‘Covid beds fulll’ which when investigated have just shown it is busy in ICUs and, in some instance (Manchester as an example) not as bad as this time last year.
Flu in 2018 devastated the NHS and it always creaks at this time of year.

The key is we don’t know and we are scared that it will be something like earlier this year.
Place your bets
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Indeed, although we have some prior evidence that shows how fast this can get out of hand. Admittedly it's not much to go on, but with it being all we have then we have to use it as a reference point.

The question as always is how bad will it get, and how bad is too bad? And when do you step in to do something about it? How do you even quantify that? 200 deaths a day? 300? 500? It's a very delicate balancing act that I wouldn't want to try and manage.

The longer we leave it the longer the effects will be if things do get worse, and probably the longer restrictions will need to be in place for to see some kind of significant reduction. I think everything is pointing towards the fact that this will get worse if nothing serious is done about it which is why I think their hand will be forced and a lockdown brought in. Everyone across Europe is seemingly trying to fight that at the moment, but I think as soon as one of them breaks the inevitability of it will set in. I know Wales and N. Ireland are locking down right now - but with all respect to them, that is more equivalent to a local lockdown of Manchester than a full-scale national lockdown. I wonder if Boris will decide to go full on local lockdown before a national lockdown.

My prediction is a lockdown sometime in November to try and save Christmas. He will rightfully (in my opinion) be derided for waiting too long (again) to do anything, costing lives, jobs and sanity in the process.

Along the lines of "devastate the NHS"... I don't think it will because I believe we will go back into lockdown which will stem the tide somewhat (although how much people will co-operate I'm not sure), but I think that an unrestricted (or at least, restricted in the way it is now) covid will be equivalent to many times the worst flu season in recent to mid memory. All the evidence points that way in my opinion, even if some of it is anecdotal and conjecture... it's all we have at the moment and I would be interested to see anyone provide a sensible argument as to why it wouldn't given what we've seen so far with this virus.

Glad that this conversation has stayed civil so far!
 
Matt said:
Indeed, although we have some prior evidence that shows how fast this can get out of hand. Admittedly it's not much to go on, but with it being all we have then we have to use it as a reference point.

The question as always is how bad will it get, and how bad is too bad? And when do you step in to do something about it? How do you even quantify that? 200 deaths a day? 300? 500? It's a very delicate balancing act that I wouldn't want to try and manage.

The longer we leave it the longer the effects will be if things do get worse, and probably the longer restrictions will need to be in place for to see some kind of significant reduction. I think everything is pointing towards the fact that this will get worse if nothing serious is done about it which is why I think their hand will be forced and a lockdown brought in. Everyone across Europe is seemingly trying to fight that at the moment, but I think as soon as one of them breaks the inevitability of it will set in. I know Wales and N. Ireland are locking down right now - but with all respect to them, that is more equivalent to a local lockdown of Manchester than a full-scale national lockdown. I wonder if Boris will decide to go full on local lockdown before a national lockdown.

My prediction is a lockdown sometime in November to try and save Christmas. He will rightfully (in my opinion) be derided for waiting too long (again) to do anything, costing lives, jobs and sanity in the process.

Along the lines of "devastate the NHS"... I don't think it will because I believe we will go back into lockdown which will stem the tide somewhat (although how much people will co-operate I'm not sure), but I think that an unrestricted (or at least, restricted in the way it is now) covid will be equivalent to many times the worst flu season in recent to mid memory. All the evidence points that way in my opinion, even if some of it is anecdotal and conjecture... it's all we have at the moment and I would be interested to see anyone provide a sensible argument as to why it wouldn't given what we've seen so far with this virus.

Glad that this conversation has stayed civil so far!
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I do think he will find a reason to go for a lockdown. Will need to ‘frame’ it properly so it is seen to come from his government.
Always try and keep things civil (don’t always succeed) and, to be fair it is sometimes hard. My preference is to have a conversation - people on here have lots to offer.
The difficulty I have in general is people thinking in ‘absolute terms’. Particularly frustrating on this issue given the varying scientific opinion. I recognise that difficulty is my problem tho.
 
1finny said:
You should know by now ;)
’There is nothing to see here’

Deaths broadly trending in line with 5 year average
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Two words: Time lag.

The most up-to-date ONS data are for week ending 9th October, almost two weeks ago. In the intervening period, daily Covid deaths have increased from just over 50 per day to nearly 150 per day, just shy of a 200% increase.

As deaths have been slightly above the 5-year average for the past few weeks anyway, I would expect the subsequent ONS releases to show a much more noticeable increase in excess deaths. We also know from previous experience that Covid deaths do not appear to come down as quickly as they go up.
 
Cambsred said:
Doing a quick ONS data search for deaths 2017/ 18/ 19/ 20 (Jan- October each year) due to underlying respiratory disease (presume this is combining flu and pneumonia.

Deaths:
2017 = 57959
2018= 62531
2019 = 55903
2020 = 51685 (this may include covid patients where respiratory disease is also a cause of death).

So on this premise we have equivalence year on year but then an excess death number of 54,453 (for the year 2020 to WC October 9th.

This would suggest the deaths perhaps haven't been disappeared, but actually 54,453 extra have very much appeared this year.


Data taken from: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...nalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales
Click to expand...
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.
 
Billy Horner said:
Two words: Time lag.

The most up-to-date ONS data are for week ending 9th October, almost two weeks ago. In the intervening period, daily Covid deaths have increased from just over 50 per day to nearly 150 per day, just shy of a 200% increase.

As deaths have been slightly above the 5-year average for the past few weeks anyway, I would expect the subsequent ONS releases to show a much more noticeable increase in excess deaths. We also know from previous experience that Covid deaths do not appear to come down as quickly as they go up.
Click to expand...

Yes, next two weeks ought to give us a lot more insight.
I’m in the optimistic camp - but still worried.
 
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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The ONS use death certificate information so a death after 28 days may be recorded as covid-19. Also, only 95% of <28 days are recorded as Covid-19 by the ONS.

For 'rough' daily figures the 28 days makes sense. Ultimately, at the end of the year, death certificates will be more accurate. It will be interesting how the extra excess deaths are allocated.
 
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