UK Covid death toll

[Spandaubaggie]

I've kept a watching brief on this thread. It's a very interesting conversation and shows another polarisation of people in how things should be dealt with.

For me the concept that we can't discuss the longer term impacts shutting the country down again or enforcing many of these local lockdowns because of the the short term potential impact on life of Covid is for me a bit of a nonsense.

Whole areas of the West Midlands and North East are being shut down slowly because of, on average, a spike of 20-30 Covid positive tests against a background now of 83000 people tested a day. The concept that the graph in April is one that we compare against today is facile. Only those at death's door were being tested then and thus the spike in April is so undercooked it's untrue. Saying we're heading for a second spike is a nonsense.

Look at the graph of patients admitted to hospital due to Covid. 205 in the whole of England on 18 Sep. There were 13 tragic deaths, there were more than that on 3 Aug.

We are comparing apples with oranges, we are killing a far greater number of people through the decimation of our economy, mental livelihood, the education of our kids etc. We had the lockdown we halted the virus at enormous cost. Can we now please learn to live with the virus and get on with the rebuilding of the country that will in all honesty probably wipe out the next 10 years of our kid's lives.

I think many who saw what the health chiefs just had to say will realise what a huge balancing act we have. The knock on effects  virus can't be let out of control or it will screw everything up in every shape and form- NHS goes under, economy goes under, thousands die due to preventable cancers etc.
We have to try to comply with what's stated. 
It seems promising that vaccines look on the way- get over this winter, do what we can and realise this is an incredibly complex issue without black and white answers.

[Ted Maul]

Some interesting stuff in this presser from Vallance and Whitty.

If cases continue to rise as they are, we could have almost 50,000 cases on 13th October.

Cases going up in all age groups, not just the 'young'.

Four ways to stop the increase... reducing individual risk, ensuring people are self-isolating, break unnecessary links between households (whatever that is) and development of a vaccine.

50,000 people with the virus doesn't mean 50,000 cases. It means 50,000 people have the virus not that they are ill or need treatment.

Yer man Whitty said cases 

I dunno. Seems like a winter without pubs and restaurants is on the cards.

[billybassett]

Some interesting stuff in this presser from Vallance and Whitty.

If cases continue to rise as they are, we could have almost 50,000 cases on 13th October.

Cases going up in all age groups, not just the 'young'.

Four ways to stop the increase... reducing individual risk, ensuring people are self-isolating, break unnecessary links between households (whatever that is) and development of a vaccine.

50,000 people with the virus doesn't mean 50,000 cases. It means 50,000 people have the virus not that they are ill or need treatment.

Yer man Whitty said cases 

I dunno. Seems like a winter without pubs and restaurants is on the cards.

Sorry yes - my point was 50000 people with it doesn't mean 50000 need treatment. As he says today 70000 are reckoned to have the virus, with 6000 catching it daily (obviously testing means we're only certain about a portion) but there's only 205 in hospital.

"We've got to protect the NHS at all costs is the mantra". I think come the end of it and if there's another lockdown we will all be living in a room inside an NHS hospital because it will be the only thing left standing

[baggy1]

There are only 205 in hospital (in England) as at the 18th September so that data is a bit behind but the problem comes with the speed at which it spreads. Unfortunately we don't have the early data to compare but on the 19th March we had 586 in hospital in England (is that still an only?), but by the 26th it was 1,639 and by the 1st April it was 3,099. This is what they are battling against now and if those numbers start to increase at the same speed then they will lock down because they know where it goes. If it doesn't carry on like that they won't, unfortunately there is very little time to make decisions and the they do the country could do without people arguing and just get on with it.

Sorry those are the admission figures not number of people in hospital - but the sentiment is still the same. When it goes, if it goes, we need to be ready.

1541 in hospital on the 20th March - we are a week off that figure if the current admissions stays on the same track.

[Derek Hardballs]

Arf says the Tory activist who has supported cuts to schools, youth services and other services set-up to support the most disadvantaged young people for at least a decade! Got to love these libertarians and their new found concern for people losing their jobs, the disadvantaged. Pull the other one not everyone has short term memory loss with regards the to the last decade.

Would that be the decade where employment has risen year on year? The decade when more disadvantaged kids have gone to university than at any point in our history?

That decade? Or another decade Dekka?

It's not me with the memory loss Dear.

And let me be quite frank - if you support these restrictions and any extension of them, then you're complicit.

I expect you know more about this subject than the experts as well...

• By 2011/12, 13 million people in the UK were living in poverty. For the first time more than half of these people lived in a working family. (Joseph Rowntree Foundation 2013).
  
  
• The proportion of children that are living in poverty in the UK has risen from 24% in 2008 to 27% in 2012/3. However, this proportion will increase. According to the Child Poverty Action Group the 3.5 million children living in poverty in 2012/13 will be joined by another 600,000 by 2016, with the total rising to 4.7 million by 2020 (CPAG 2014). UNICEF has reported a strong relationship between the impact of the ‘Great Recession’ on national economies and a decline in children’s well-being since 2008. Children are suffering most, and will bear the consequences longest, in countries where the recession has hit hardest. The poorest and most vulnerable children have suffered disproportionately (UNICEF 2014).
  
  
• The gap between rich and poor is, at the time of writing, at its highest level in 30 years in most OECD countries. In the UK this rising inequality reduced growth. The economy grew by around 40% during the 1990s and 2000s but this would have been almost 50% had inequality not risen. (OECD 2014).
  
  
• In England, local government spending (excluding police, schools, housing benefit) was set to fall by nearly 30 per cent in real terms between 2008 and 2015; an equivalent figure for Scotland is 24 per cent. As funding covers some new service burdens, the underlying cut in funding for existing services is even higher. Cuts in spending power and budgeted spend have been systematically greater in more deprived local authorities than in more affluent ones… in both England and Scotland; cuts are also generally greater in the North and Midlands than in the south of England, and in the west rather than the east of Scotland (Hastings et. al. 2013).
  

Please stop pretending that you’ve suddenly decided that disadvantaged young people and their families are a priority for you. This is all about you seeing the world based on a rigid ideology where your liberty is more important than other people’s freedom to live as safely as possible.

[strawman]

Some interesting stuff in this presser from Vallance and Whitty.

If cases continue to rise as they are, we could have almost 50,000 cases on 13th October.

Cases going up in all age groups, not just the 'young'.

Four ways to stop the increase... reducing individual risk, ensuring people are self-isolating, break unnecessary links between households (whatever that is) and development of a vaccine.

Not sure how you can break that link - if you have a child in school then you have a link, even if it is by a roundabout way, to every household that also has a child in the the same class, if not the entire school. Schools round here seem to have no plan for separating parents at school gates, and there are already classes and schools being closed down, and yet we cannot deny the young generation the right to an education.

Tough choices to be made

[JOK]

Some interesting stuff in this presser from Vallance and Whitty.

If cases continue to rise as they are, we could have almost 50,000 cases on 13th October.

Cases going up in all age groups, not just the 'young'.

Four ways to stop the increase... reducing individual risk, ensuring people are self-isolating, break unnecessary links between households (whatever that is) and development of a vaccine.

Not sure how you can break that link - if you have a child in school then you have a link, even if it is by a roundabout way, to every household that also has a child in the the same class, if not the entire school. Schools round here seem to have no plan for separating parents at school gates, and there are already classes and schools being closed down, and yet we cannot deny the young generation the right to an education.

Tough choices to be made

Don’t know where you’re area is but around me all the schools, Primary and Secondary, have staggered start and finish times. At the primaries the parents are asked to wait over the road from the school gates so they can see their child coming out and then go and meet them. Rather than have them mingling in a near crush waiting for their child. The pavements, certainly at the two primaries nearest me, have the pavements marked out with 2m cones to encourage distancing.
At the Secondary I am associated with, all forms are retained in their form rooms for every lesson and the subject teachers go to them lugging trolleys full of resources behind them. This also means no ‘setting’ at present which makes lesson planning and differentiation difficult. The site is completely all one way with copious sanitising stations dotted around and inside every entrance and masks must be worn in all corridors. I don’t think the schools around here can do much more. 
I am due to go in Wednesday to interact with year 13s. My other half is a bit apprehensive. Good job I haven’t told her one of them tested positive last week but only his small ‘bubble’ have been kept away. 
There are some tough choices to be made but sounds as though schools will stay open whatever.

[Ted Maul]

Some interesting stuff in this presser from Vallance and Whitty.

If cases continue to rise as they are, we could have almost 50,000 cases on 13th October.

Cases going up in all age groups, not just the 'young'.

Four ways to stop the increase... reducing individual risk, ensuring people are self-isolating, break unnecessary links between households (whatever that is) and development of a vaccine.

Not sure how you can break that link - if you have a child in school then you have a link, even if it is by a roundabout way, to every household that also has a child in the the same class, if not the entire school. Schools round here seem to have no plan for separating parents at school gates, and there are already classes and schools being closed down, and yet we cannot deny the young generation the right to an education.

Tough choices to be made

Don’t know where you’re area is but around me all the schools, Primary and Secondary, have staggered start and finish times. At the primaries the parents are asked to wait over the road from the school gates so they can see their child coming out and then go and meet them. Rather than have them mingling in a near crush waiting for their child. The pavements, certainly at the two primaries nearest me, have the pavements marked out with 2m cones to encourage distancing.
At the Secondary I am associated with, all forms are retained in their form rooms for every lesson and the subject teachers go to them lugging trolleys full of resources behind them. This also means no ‘setting’ at present which makes lesson planning and differentiation difficult. The site is completely all one way with copious sanitising stations dotted around and inside every entrance and masks must be worn in all corridors. I don’t think the schools around here can do much more. 
I am due to go in Wednesday to interact with year 13s. My other half is a bit apprehensive. Good job I haven’t told her one of them tested positive last week but only his small ‘bubble’ have been kept away. 
There are some tough choices to be made but sounds as though schools will stay open whatever.

I would have thought any potential second lockdown would be pubs/restaurants only.

[Derek Hardballs]

I've kept a watching brief on this thread. It's a very interesting conversation and shows another polarisation of people in how things should be dealt with.

For me the concept that we can't discuss the longer term impacts shutting the country down again or enforcing many of these local lockdowns because of the the short term potential impact on life of Covid is for me a bit of a nonsense.

Whole areas of the West Midlands and North East are being shut down slowly because of, on average, a spike of 20-30 Covid positive tests against a background now of 83000 people tested a day. The concept that the graph in April is one that we compare against today is facile. Only those at death's door were being tested then and thus the spike in April is so undercooked it's untrue. Saying we're heading for a second spike is a nonsense.

Look at the graph of patients admitted to hospital due to Covid. 205 in the whole of England on 18 Sep. There were 13 tragic deaths, there were more than that on 3 Aug.

We are comparing apples with oranges, we are killing a far greater number of people through the decimation of our economy, mental livelihood, the education of our kids etc. We had the lockdown we halted the virus at enormous cost. Can we now please learn to live with the virus and get on with the rebuilding of the country that will in all honesty probably wipe out the next 10 years of our kid's lives.

Currently you are allowed to go to the pub, school, work (the majority) etc and all that is asked of those who do is to wear a fecking mask and keep socially distanced. It’s not hard for anyone above school age and yet people are having toddler tantrums about it and dressing it up with nonsense about their liberties, their inconvenience, their rights or disingenuously pretending in many right wing circles that they suddenly care about the most vulnerable children in society for example. I’m ignoring the idiots with conspiracy theories because the oxygen of publicity is unhelpful. 

There is absolutely no thought or voice for those who are really vulnerable because it’s inconvenient for those that want to do anything they want and pretty much think fuck-em! How do you think their bank balances, education and mental health are coping? Are they to live under house arrest because a grown man or woman can’t cope with wearing a mask, not having a house party and having to keep their distance? 

Let’s just be sensible nobody wants the economy screwed or Cancer patients not seen but it’s not a question of health or wealth they go hand in hand. At the moment though there is a sizeable proportion of selfish individuals who cannot see beyond their own demands for freedom and as ever their freedoms are more important than others.

[billybassett]

There are only 205 in hospital (in England) as at the 18th September so that data is a bit behind but the problem comes with the speed at which it spreads. Unfortunately we don't have the early data to compare but on the 19th March we had 586 in hospital in England (is that still an only?), but by the 26th it was 1,639 and by the 1st April it was 3,099. This is what they are battling against now and if those numbers start to increase at the same speed then they will lock down because they know where it goes. If it doesn't carry on like that they won't, unfortunately there is very little time to make decisions and the they do the country could do without people arguing and just get on with it.

Sorry those are the admission figures not number of people in hospital - but the sentiment is still the same. When it goes, if it goes, we need to be ready.

1541 in hospital on the 20th March - we are a week off that figure if the current admissions stays on the same track.

We have the same number of cases now as we did on 11 May.

On 11 May there were over 1000 hospital cases - we have 205 and that is against a backdrop of many more thousands of people being tested.

Unless I'm mis-reading what's going on this is not the same type of wave as that in Apr May. It's different and it needs to be handled differently.