UK Covid death toll

[Tom Joad]

Depressing figures, Baggy1, but thanks for the update. I don't agree with your comment denouncing "recording flu deaths as Covid". I have personal experience (plus 2nd hand knowledge) that deaths of other causes can be recorded as Covid. That said, the one fact that is unarguable is the excess deaths figure. I can only presume we'll have the full lockdown again by Jan/Feb. It's going to be a long dark month I'm afraid.

[baggy1]

You're right Tom and I didn't word that correctly, I have no doubt that the recording of Covid when it is something else is happening, what I meant was on the scale that it would make Covid something that isn't happening and this is a normal flu year. Jan and Feb are traditionally our worst months for deaths so I can only imagine that they will put us back into some form of lockdown until they have rolled out the vaccine (to enough, mainly vulnerable, people) and got the hospital figures down again.

[Tom Joad]

You're right Tom and I didn't word that correctly, I have no doubt that the recording of Covid when it is something else is happening, what I meant was on the scale that it would make Covid something that isn't happening and this is a normal flu year. Jan and Feb are traditionally our worst months for deaths so I can only imagine that they will put us back into some form of lockdown until they have rolled out the vaccine (to enough, mainly vulnerable, people) and got the hospital figures down again.

Agree, I'm sure we are heading for another lockdown as it is the only plan to keep the hospital figures from exploding.

[PeakBaggie]

You're right Tom and I didn't word that correctly, I have no doubt that the recording of Covid when it is something else is happening, what I meant was on the scale that it would make Covid something that isn't happening and this is a normal flu year. Jan and Feb are traditionally our worst months for deaths so I can only imagine that they will put us back into some form of lockdown until they have rolled out the vaccine (to enough, mainly vulnerable, people) and got the hospital figures down again.

Do you trust this lot to manage the roll out of the vaccine to plan or with speed? not so sure that I do.  It was
headlined that by Christmas 1 million doses would be in the arms of those selected, it looks like that is going
to be just over 1/2 million. Given that it takes 2 doses and 2 weeks after the 2nd dose to reach immunity, then
we could be in February before the first couple of million that have been given the vaccine are deemed safe.

[baggy1]

You're right Tom and I didn't word that correctly, I have no doubt that the recording of Covid when it is something else is happening, what I meant was on the scale that it would make Covid something that isn't happening and this is a normal flu year. Jan and Feb are traditionally our worst months for deaths so I can only imagine that they will put us back into some form of lockdown until they have rolled out the vaccine (to enough, mainly vulnerable, people) and got the hospital figures down again.

Do you trust this lot to manage the roll out of the vaccine to plan or with speed? not so sure that I do.  It was
headlined that by Christmas 1 million doses would be in the arms of those selected, it looks like that is going
to be just over 1/2 million. Given that it takes 2 doses and 2 weeks after the 2nd dose to reach immunity, then
we could be in February before the first couple of million that have been given the vaccine are deemed safe.

It does appear a bit haphazard and there are 12M over 65s in the UK so I'm hoping that they can shift it quicker than half a mill a week. Hopefully they'll get up to speed pretty quickly but it's not as if these muppets haven't overpromised and under-delivered on much so far 

[Ossian]

It did occur to me yesterday, when Boris was preening himself over the half a million, that it amounts to less than 1% of the population half vaccinated. Then I felt a bit churlish because the speed with which the vaccine has been developed is one of the few success stories of this whole pandemic; not that any credit for that is due to either Johnson or Hancock.

[baggy1]

The whole thing is a massive undertaking and will take a few weeks to get up to speed but I'm pretty confident that even this bunch of clowns can organise that. If they've learned anything this last 9 months it will be to hand it over to PHE and let them get on with it whilst making sure enough doses are available.

There was another stat that is worth mentioning and that is the impact on the NHS this time, I've focussed on the numbers in hospital but the period of this 2nd wave will be taking its toll. If you take a random number to show when the work has to step up, I've taken 10k in hospital as that number, and you look at the number of days that occupied beds are over that number that was 42 days in the spring (it went above 10k in England on the 30th March and went back below that number on the 10th May). Compare that with now and England has seen over 10k in hospital for 53 days and it is still rising. That will be taking a real toll on staff.

[Ted Maul]

I see Piers Morgan's son is on twitter posting sourceless stats...

Total number of Covid deaths below 60 with no pre-existing condition: 367 (1,911 in total).

[baggiebuckster]

Ted Maul pid='256461' dateline='1608664318']I see Piers Morgan's son is on twitter posting sourceless stats...

Total number of Covid deaths below 60 with no pre-existing condition: 367 (1,911 in total).

They are not sourceless - they are directly from the NHS.

[baggy1]

I see Piers Morgan's son is on twitter posting sourceless stats...

Total number of Covid deaths below 60 with no pre-existing condition: 367 (1,911 in total).

They are not sourceless - they are directly from the NHS.

I think we can all agree that the vast majority of people impacted by this are the over 60s and those with pre-existing conditions, but the problem is (and has been asked many times) what we do with that knowledge.

There are 16m over 60s in the UK, that is quarter of the population, the majority of those rely on the under 60s for care where needed, or even live with families, and even (shock / horror) make a decent contribution to society through working until they want these days. It would be impossible to say just lock yourself away until you get vaccinated whilst we get on with the world.

And one small point, many covid deniers, anti lockdowners, anti vaxxers (not saying you fall into this btw) use this stat from the NHS a lot I've seen, but they seem to deny any other stat from that source, like the 70M that have died from this. It's being a bit selective and doesn't take into account non-NHS settings so it isn't complete.