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UK death rates.

Every death is being attributed to Covid-19 in the UK, and not allowing for underlying medical conditions.


No they're not. According to the latest stats there were 8000 more deaths in April than is "usual" at this time of year with 1/3 of these extra deaths were attributed to the Virus. Deaths from other causes have also increased which they reckon is down to people being reluctant to seek medical advice for existing illnesses because of the fear of going to hospital and becoming infected.
 
No they're not. According to the latest stats there were 8000 more deaths in April than is "usual" at this time of year with 1/3 of these extra deaths were attributed to the Virus. Deaths from other causes have also increased which they reckon is down to people being reluctant to seek medical advice for existing illnesses because of the fear of going to hospital and becoming infected.


Look at the stats, do the math, does that actually add up?

I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat, nor am i denying that the disease is causing deaths. A former client of mine passed away from it last week after spending the best part of a decade in a nursing home with Parkinsons.
 
2. Even those that are hospitalised aren't deemed to have 'recovered' if they walk out the door, only after getting 2 clear tests a certain time apart. There are delays testing and getting results, so someone who's no longer symptomatic obviously isn't a priority, so they become a statistical error.
I'm looking at the stats and they definitely do show that UK has an appallingly bad death rate. I'm thinking about why that is.
A. Is it real?
I have come to the conclusion it can't be really as bad as it appears - our death rate is so extraordinarily far out of line with anywhere else in the world (apparently) there has to be some other explanation. Can there really be only a 2% chance of getting out of hospital alive?
B. Is it the figures? Misleading stats? Statistical errors?
I'm beginning to think this is more likely. Yogi has put his finger on a key point. There certainly will be a higher number of survivors than the stats show if they all need a confirmatory test before being counted and there is a dire shortage of testing kits. Maybe this is part of the answer.
 
Finally, what people seem to be missing is that 'lockdown' is only a delaying measure, its not going to reduce the total number of cases. Even the WHO admit to that much if you read the 'small print'.
Good point. We tend to forget this. There will be the same number of deaths whether we have lockdown or not. Just over a longer period so that the NHS doesn't get overwhelmed. Those diagrams they wheeled out on TV a month ago showing a short sharp peak exceeding hospital capacity and a long low bulge staying within the number of hospital beds - the area under the curve represents the number of cases and this area is the same in both graphs.
 
I know I'm not the only one to have noticed this, but why are the Covid-19 death rates in the UK so bad? It looks like it must be the worst in the world.

Have a look at this website, which takes its numbers from official government releases daily all over the world ...
Coronavirus Update (Live): 2,501,544 Cases and 171,720 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer - [Leaving Land Cruiser Club] then hit F5 to refresh and get latest figures
Scroll down and click on UK to see details of our figures. A couple of weeks ago (unlike all other countries) the UK stopped releasing daily figures for numbers of people who have recovered because the numbers are shockingly low. But it is still possible to derive that number from the daily total of active cases. Just look at the latest numbers for yesterday (20 April).

Total cases: 124,743
Number of active cases, that is people still in hospital: 107,890
Subtract those to get the number of cases where there is a known outcome - people who recovered or died: 16,853
Total deaths: 16,509
Subtract that to get the number who have recovered: 344
So that means of the 16,853 cases where there is a known outcome, the survival rate is only 2%. The death rate is 98%

No wonder the UK stopped publishing that figure. It is still the same horrifying rate it was two weeks ago when they stopped releasing the number of survivors.

What on earth is going on in our hospitals? Survival rates in Germany are 95% (of course). In France and Italy 2/3 of hospital admissions walk out alive. Here only 2% survive.


The difficulty I find with Worldometers is attributing figures to sources. They do attribute sources in some parts of the site but generally cite multiple sources for a single figure making it impossible to trace.

If you look at John Hopkins University figures which are one of the sources for Worldometers (but Worldometers is also cited by JH!) they do describe how figures are calculated. ArcGIS Dashboards - [Leaving Land Cruiser Club]
Recovered cases by this description looks very low value for comparisons.

Confirmed cases include presumptive positive cases.

Death totals in the US include confirmed and probable, in accordance with CDC guidelines as of April 14.

Recovered cases outside China are estimates based on local media reports, and state and local reporting when available, and therefore may be substantially lower than the true number.

Active cases = total confirmed - total recovered - total deaths.

Incidence Rate = confirmed cases per 100,000 persons.

Case-Fatality Ratio (%) = Number recorded deaths / Number confirmed cases.




Public Health England did stop releasing recovered case figures, which I think were hospital discharge figures, but these were regarded as problematic. Perhaps being discharged doesn't medically equate to recovered? Active cases is not just people in hospital, although it may be in the UK because we have tested so few people out of hospital. If you dig into it you find active cases measured very differently elsewhere, eg https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1395
 
Thanks for this input Rob. I have come to the same conclusion that the official figures are suspect, particularly for Active Cases in UK, which in the absence of PHE figures has to be used to derive numbers who recovered. Yogi identified another good reason why the numbers for recovered cases is low and problematic.

I would love to be able to get onto that Johns Hopkins website. Have been trying on and off for a month. All I get is three bars that sit there throbbing all day, the site never loads.
 
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works for me and always has done tbh
 
Result!

Thanks ADD. That link works. I can get on the site. It turns out that what doesn't work (for me, at least) is their global map, which is what I have been trying to view all along. I'll keep trying!
 
Numbers are hard to track, I guess find a source you feel you can trust and stick with that for some level.of consistency. The JHU ones are what I look at.

The other thing is that the death rate seems high in the UK, because we are largely only testing people who are already in a bad enough state to need to visit the hospital. OTOH, they are low since UK is the only country not reporting death in care homes in this stat.

If you normalise this, yes more people are dying in the UK per capita rate than anywhere else in the world.

If you look at only official stats being reported, whatever difference in criteria, Belgium seems to have topped(lost?) that graph. They are at nearly 520deaths per million.

As to why this is, I am not even going to try and guess. I am sure there will be some details and lots of cover ups, and lots of blame and lots of spin and lots of right wing comments like NHS isn't nearly as capable as we might think and all that boo haa haa. We will all need to make up our minds. The ones that make it out on the other side (which will be almost everyone. Make no mistake, this is not the plague )

In the mean time, my friends, keep your head down. Assume everyone already has it and that they are out to give it to you. Be safe. You are not just looking after yourself, but those around you too.
 
In the mean time, my friends, keep your head down. Assume everyone already has it and that they are out to give it to you. Be safe. You are not just looking after yourself, but those around you too.
 
We live in a small crowded little country compared with most other eu countries so comparing our figures with theirs is unrealistic.
Total UK deaths today are probo 22,000 and at a death rate of 1% that means that 2,200,000 will have already had the disease. Long way to go yet.
 
A nieghbour from 4 doors down who's pitbull staff's slobber all over me every time I'm under the truck was due home from cancer treatment yesterday but the virus took her instead , same age as Helen .
 
Thinking about the question that started this thread how can one hospital be better or worse than another when there is no effective treatment anyway ?

Oxygen only reduces the effort needed to get enough air and the ventilator breathes for them giving the body more time to cure itself , what else can be done ?

Perhaps the international figures are misleading because those with greater ability to test hospitalize more who are likely to survive ?
 
Agreed Shayne, but as we know there are other virus lurking in hospitals, that can finish the weak and ill off.
I wonder if any of those cases are lumped in with our current one ?
 
The more I look at this the more our poor results can be put on not doing anywhere near enough testing in this country.
Perhaps the international figures are misleading because those with greater ability to test hospitalize more who are likely to survive ?
I reckon you are right on that, Shayne. And it looks like another problem we have here is we don't have any reliable figures on survivors because they can't be officially classed as recovered until getting a negative test result. There aren't enough test kits to go round. We won't see the light at the end of the tunnel until there are plenty of kits.
 
I watched a piece today about a very normal chap who'd just come out of hospital. He'd been pretty close to the edge and was still recovering. Nothing remarkable at all about his story, no visits from God or miracle cures. Just a bloke who had it bad, made it through and has been released. With all of the medical staff applauding him as he left.

Call me cynical, but if lots of people are surviving this in hospital, why was it a news story?
 
I watched a piece today about a very normal chap who'd just come out of hospital. He'd been pretty close to the edge and was still recovering. Nothing remarkable at all about his story, no visits from God or miracle cures. Just a bloke who had it bad, made it through and has been released. With all of the medical staff applauding him as he left.

Call me cynical, but if lots of people are surviving this in hospital, why was it a news story?
:text-goodpost:
 
It does look like different places are trying different things. Also in navy cases you treat the symptoms as well as the virus. Sort of like the malaria medication - not everyone is using it, those that area using in different doses.
 
I watched a piece today about a very normal chap who'd just come out of hospital. He'd been pretty close to the edge and was still recovering. Nothing remarkable at all about his story, no visits from God or miracle cures. Just a bloke who had it bad, made it through and has been released. With all of the medical staff applauding him as he left.

Call me cynical, but if lots of people are surviving this in hospital, why was it a news story?

Because it lends hope . Daughter in law works in clerical at hospital and her workmate on testing positive for the virus was simply told to go home and self isolate , put in her position its easy to see why such a story has tremendous worth .
 
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