Re: Coronavirus
 

Data collection is never 100% perfect Old Boy. But excess deaths is acknowledged as the best international comparator. But if it paints Johnson in a bad light, I am sure you will do your best to undermine it.

Re: Coronavirus
 

He’ll want to wait for the report, or 2035, whichever is later…

Re: Coronavirus
 

That's exactly why excess deaths is the best way to measure it. Those people would not have died it if were not for Covid. So even if they didn't have Covid, it caused their death.

It is a big problem, because there is a huge grey area. For example, if you have a chronic illness such as COPD, catch Covid, get hospitalised and die, have you died of Covid, or just with it? There is no clear answer.

Re: Coronavirus
 

My sister works in a solicitor's office, and working from home did initially have IT issues, but all staff have been given a Laptop, Scanner/Printer and mobile etc.


They are now set to carry on working in the office 2 days a week (on set days), it has gone so good that their bonus will be at least £2,000.


It has saved her nearly £1,500 a year on diesel, plus she can do the washing as well in between work

Re: Coronavirus
 

Yep, that's pretty much how the WHO worked. Smallpox eradication worked because of;

• No asymptomatic carriers
• People REALLY didn't want to get Smallpox to vaccination take up was close to 100% when needed
• There are no animal carriers and the virus dies quickly when not inside a person
• The vaccine was easy to administer (no injections)
• The virus is pretty stable genetically so no new exciting variants popped up over time
• A global effort was in place with vaccines being manufactured by local suppliers

Polio hopefully is going the same way for the same reasons. There were only 5 wild cases noted globally last year

Re: Coronavirus
 

:rofl::rofl:

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

Deary me, the conspiracy theorists are out in force.:rolleyes:

Re: Coronavirus
 

That is not a satisfactory answer. People cite these statistics as evidence, but they are only an indicator because they are not very accurate.

And when you then take inaccurate figures and then compare with non-compatible foreign data, those figures become extremely misleading.

Still, Andrew, I suppose that as long as it supports your take on things, that's OK as far as you are concerned.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Yes it's unthinkable that Bojo would put his well being before that of the country, it's not like he has form for self serving behaviour. :rolleyes:

Re: Coronavirus
 

The Covid report will be written this year. Another inaccurate calculation on your part.....:D

---------- Post added at 18:09 ---------- Previous post was at 18:08 ----------

If people have died because they couldn't get an operation due to attention of hospitals being diverted elsewhere, it is not a Covid death. Excess deaths include many deaths which are not due to Covid, so again, this is at best an indicator.

---------- Post added at 18:20 ---------- Previous post was at 18:09 ----------

Yes, the conspiracy theorists choose to ignore the fact that the review was due to take place anyway. Beware Hugh's biassed fact checker service! :D

Re: Coronavirus
 

You seem to have completely missed the point.

The precise number of people who actually died directly due to a covid infection is interesting for all sorts of reasons but the nature of our society means it may well not be the most vital information.

In an advanced industrial society with a universal healthcare system, the overall effect on the system by a novel infection is of great importance. Excess deaths is certainly a far better indicator of the magnitude of the crisis and the measures we might need to put in place to improve resilience, precisely because it allows us to account - for example - for cancers that went undetected because someone couldn’t get to their GP soon enough.

Calling excess deaths “at best an indicator” is a word salad that doesn’t make you look as clever as you seem to think it does.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I'm afraid you're demonstrating your lack of subject knowledge. As I said, data collection is never 100% perfect. That's not unique to this particular data set. So not being 100% perfect is not a good reason to ignore it nor to not use it to make international comparisons, providing we understand how different data collection methods might impact different data sets.
Dismissing this information as "not very accurate" is simply wrong. To do so for obvious party political reasons is disappointing.

---------- Post added at 18:33 ---------- Previous post was at 18:29 ----------

Re: Coronavirus
 

I am not arguing that ‘excess deaths’ doesn’t indicate a measure of the crisis, of course it does.

But it does not measure deaths that are directly connected to Covid infection. That was my point.

---------- Post added at 19:21 ---------- Previous post was at 19:13 ----------

Come on, Andrew, you are the one interpreting information to suit your argument.

Comparison of Covid deaths between countries when every country includes different criteria for producing the statistics is clearly inaccurate. And these are not small inaccuracies. If one country only records Hospital Covid deaths and another records all deaths including deaths in the community and in care homes, that’s a pretty big difference.

Similarly, if excess deaths includes people who are not having their health conditions monitored and those whose operations have been put back, this does reflect the scale of the problem, but what that figure is not showing is the number of Covid deaths.

I would have thought that all the pedants we encounter on this forum would recognise that immediately. But not when it doesn’t suit your argument, it seems.

Re: Coronavirus
 

In the interests of completeness, here are the deaths purely from COVID. About 17,000 in England & Wales.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/trans...ingcauses?s=09