Coronavirus

Originally Posted by jfman

There’s no evidence of Covid killing anyone in significant numbers in the UK according to some

In 2020, it was only just the top killer in England at 69,000.
Even the Flu/Pneumonia came in at 6th, killing almost 19,000.

The population of England was about 56.5 million in mid 2020, making covid deaths about 0.12%.

2020

COVID-19 = 69,101
Dementia and Alzheimers disease = 66,060
Ischaemic heart diseases = 51,979
Cerebrovascular diseases = 27,681
Chronic lower respiratory diseases = 26,917
Malignant neoplasm of trachea, bronchus and lung = 26,571
Influenza and pneumonia = 18,656

https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/trans...ntia2016to2020

There are no final figures for 2021, but given the total covid deaths is about 172,000, that makes 103,000 in 2021.
That matches quite well with 2020, since the 69,000 were mostly from mid March 2020 onwards, i.e. about 9.5 months.

The majority of 2021 deaths were also in the first 3 months.

[mrmistoffelees]

Originally Posted by Chris

You do realise that we’re now 32 days on from the first identified omicron case in the uk? Passing off the falling death rate as a red herring is rapidly losing credibility. It’s been pretty obvious for about a week now that the death rate is being played down as a matter of public health policy because of the potential risk to the booster campaign. That doesn’t mean we can’t deal frankly with the data here though. There is simply no evidence of omicron killing anyone in any significant numbers in the UK, and the experience in South Africa, where the omicron wave is weeks ahead of ours, suggests that such evidence will not be forthcoming.

Suggest you go back and listen to your Tory chums when they spoke at the start of the pandemic regarding the lag to people dying

The only reason its losing credibility is because it doesn’t fit your narrative.

Comparing South Africas wave to ours is like comparing apples to oranges Due to demographics, of course you already knew that.

Let’s see where deaths are in 3-4 weeks, if they haven’t significantly increased I’ll apologise

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by mrmistoffelees

Let’s see where deaths are in 3-4 weeks, if they haven’t significantly increased I’ll apologise

Ooh, i’ll bookmark that baby!

Are deaths usually 7-8 weeks behind the infection curve? I don’t know, but it looks like we’ll find out by the end of Jan.

Originally Posted by mrmistoffelees

Suggest you go back and listen to your Tory chums when they spoke at the start of the pandemic regarding the lag to people dying

The only reason its losing credibility is because it doesn’t fit your narrative.

Comparing South Africas wave to ours is like comparing apples to oranges Due to demographics, of course you already knew that.

Let’s see where deaths are in 3-4 weeks, if they haven’t significantly increased I’ll apologise

Don’t apologise to me by any means if you turn out to be incorrect. I’m interested in ideas, information and how we interpret and act on it. If I’m incorrect, so be it, but being incorrect isn’t offensive.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by mrmistoffelees

significantly

There’s that word again.

Watch out in the absence of a definition they’ve got the easy win if deaths don’t rise in proportion with infections. As you could reasonably expect “if nothing changes”. A delta week to week comparison, or month to month comparison, before the booster campaign was fairly easy.

There’s two reasons this won’t happen - the collapse in vaccine efficacy against infection isn’t replicated effectiveness against hospitalisations. More people who wouldn’t have caught Delta in the first place will get Omicron but there’s still protection against hospitalisation and death by comparison to an unvaccinated population.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2119270

The second reason being the low hanging fruit of previous waves have already expired.

What the new cases/hospitalisations/deaths ratio lands at isn’t yet clear. School closures will have reduced the R number, plus delays in reporting data, lack of availability of testing, etc make this a rocky period for like for like comparisons to be made.

What we can say is, for the last full week we have figures for, that daily hospitalisations have increased by 30%…

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

[pip08456]

Patients on venilation beds is pretty steady and has been for a while. In fact it's dropping slightly.

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Hugh

What we can say is, for the last full week we have figures for, that daily hospitalisations have increased by 30%…

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

Think I heard the national medical director say the nhs is on a war footing earlier

[OLD BOY]

So the NHS is now weaponised....

[jfman]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

So the NHS is now weaponised....

It’s all a conspiracy, OB. People are just admitting themselves to hospital because they are bored.

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

So the NHS is now weaponised....

That statement says so much about your views - much more than you realise.

It’s basic risk management to put in place contingency for a potential increase in demand, not "weaponising the NHS*".

*did you get that phrase from the Telegraph or the Spectator?

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Hugh

That statement says so much about your views - much more than you realise.

It’s basic risk management to put in place contingency for a potential increase in demand, not "weaponising the NHS*".

*did you get that phrase from the Telegraph or the Spectator?

Only 52% of NHS staff in 2020 were professionally qualified clinical staff.

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-info...tics/july-2020

The bureaucratic cost thus consumes a very high percentage of the budget that could have been used years ago to recruit and train additional medical staff. "Saving the NHS" is saving the bureaucracy as much as anything else. Once again, poor government has put us into this situation. This started in Blair's days when his lot became obsessed with internal markets and all the administrative bagged brought in with that.

[Mr K]

Let's hope Boris and the 'right' will own the decision to ignore the scientific advice and let the country party on.

Or will he try to blame anyone else? The NHS are to blame for a start, obviously...

[nffc]

Though it's clearly an issue internally, I'm not totally convinced that NHS staffing levels due to sickness absence etc (or maybe just unable to fill vacancies) should ever be used to decide whether to lock the country down. Even though patients need to be treated it would be like closing the country down because Tesco couldn't get anyone to deliver stuff to their shops.



Even looking at the numbers of people going to hospital is a bit misleading now in terms of severity of illness, given that in relation to those having more lengthy stays (which is an issue) those having covid but going in for other things (which is an isolation issue, but not primarily them needing covid care) or needing minimal, short treatment seem to be much more commonplace. I think the stats are still showing those in critical care or on ventilators are not increasing or are actually going down which is more of an indicator of the severity in the hospitals than the numbers of those going into hospital with a positive test for covid.

[Itshim]

Now know 3 people with COVID , none of whom thought they had it. All were sure it was flu , think it's a case that if you look hard enough you'll find it. In years gone by it was have not been recorded