UK Covid death toll

[Derek Hardballs]

Over 350 deaths announced today.

It’s been over twenty days now since vulnerable under 12s were recommended to need and have the jab and yet there is still no protocol in England which means they still can’t receive the vaccine. Truly appalling.

Anyway I’m off to a do at N10, just going to the off licence to pick up some booze! Got to get my priorities right.

[baggy1]

Describing it as normalisation isn't correct Dekka, this is a disease and will kill people, we have to accept that we will not ever get rid of it especially at this time of year where the best we can do is measure it against other similar diseases, of which they are giving similar numbers at the moment.

As for your 2nd point, I agree entirely but the answer won't be in restricting everyone to resolve the issue. An example is my M-I-L who has COPD, she has been shielding and we have protected her strictly, but over the Christmas period and her birthday (yesterday) she has started to venture out. She has been provided with a pcr test to take if she exhibits symptoms and there are programs and oral medicines available now in the case of her contracting it. I would definitely be expecting as much help as possible for the vulnerable children through vaccination and medicines, and i can't speak for anyone else but I would be surprised if people 'didn't give a shit'.

[Kit Kat Chunky]

Thanks for that Rich, in the background I have been collating that sort of data and have seen the points he has made as they appear. One of the points that may be inaccurate in there, and underplaying the figures, is the 'adjusted for population growth' figures (which I get btw, they are a reasonable measure). The problem comes from our assumption that there has been population growth and with brexit and the extra numbers of deaths there may be a case that population has fallen or at least stagnated - if so that will mean the adjustment underestimates the excess death numbers.

All in all it has been a shit couple of years and gets frustrating when it gets so binary, for example (not having a go chunk) but KKCs comment above about 'professor lockdown' indicating that lockdowns are a waste of time (probably not exactly what was being said btw) when they are a tool in the toolbox and were needed at the time as there were no alternatives (vaccines), and they definitely kept the illness and deaths down, but are now being painted as a waste of time.

Only just picked this back up. The first 2 lockdowns were absolutely needed, but since then these experts have got as much wrong as right. Anyone remember the prediction of 75K deaths from Omicron?

The Government has listened too much to science at times, rather than make rational balanced decisions.

[baggy1]

The press picked up on a worse case scenario prediction and ran with it and not the full picture when they were talking about 75k, the experts put together models that show potential outcomes and based on what we knew from other variants it was one of the possibilities. They didn't run into the room shouting 'we're all dooooomed', there were other scenarios and the politicians took the choice in the round.

[richbaggie]

One thing that doesn't really tally at the moment is the much higher number of deaths past few days versus what we are seeing in icu.

[baggy1]

One thing that doesn't really tally at the moment is the much higher number of deaths past few days versus what we are seeing in icu.

It's a lot to do with the time of year Rich, last week of the year (latest published) show 347 with flu as the underlying cause and 454 with covid as the underlying cause. If you widen that to deaths involving each of those you get 1,498 (flu) and 582 (covid). I would imagine we are going to get these sort of figures every year going forward. Week 1's figures come out next tuesday and I'll have a look.

[Kit Kat Chunky]

The press picked up on a worse case scenario prediction and ran with it and not the full picture when they were talking about 75k, the experts put together models that show potential outcomes and based on what we knew from other variants it was one of the possibilities. They didn't run into the room shouting 'we're all dooooomed', there were other scenarios and the politicians took the choice in the round.

These numbers were also being peddled by experts and SAGE members in interviews. When pressed they admitted the modelling was based on Delta not Omicron.

Sturgeon and Drakeford are looking like fools, and BJ would have been the same if left to him.

[baggy1]

The press picked up on a worse case scenario prediction and ran with it and not the full picture when they were talking about 75k, the experts put together models that show potential outcomes and based on what we knew from other variants it was one of the possibilities. They didn't run into the room shouting 'we're all dooooomed', there were other scenarios and the politicians took the choice in the round.

These numbers were also being peddled by experts and SAGE members in interviews. When pressed they admitted the modelling was based on Delta not Omicron.

Sturgeon and Drakeford are looking like fools, and BJ would have been the same if left to him.

I'd hardly say they are looking like fools, being cautious throughout this pandemic should have been the default setting and the mild restrictions that Wales and Scotland put in place only really impacted large crowds and were supported by the majority of the population. I'm going up to Edinburgh for a weekend in February and checked with our Sales rep up there before booking and he said that you wouldn't notice the difference on a day to day basis.

And Johnson not looking like a fool is a stretch in any circumstance.

[JOK]

Ref. the number of daily deaths recorded.,
 
I notice that BBC news graphics now say “  deaths from whatever cause within 28 days of a positive Covid test”
 
And this from its ‘How many cases…’ web page; “ most of the recent increase in Covid deaths could be down to, "coincidental" Covid - people whose death may have had nothing to do with coronavirus.

“because of the rising cases we've seen over the past month, that figure is catching a growing number of coincidental Covid cases.”
“Figures for doctors registering a death and recording what caused it will increasingly become our best picture of the pandemic's death toll - but take longer to be published.”
 
Still, we have to instantly jump on the, almost, scaremongering, presentation of figures and the, very often, flawed modelling predictions.  

[baggy1]

I think the key statistic is excess deaths compared with pre-pandemic levels and that is still up, I am concerned when we play it down because it is still causing problems and when we focus on 'flawed modelling predictions' it shows a lack of understanding of the process. Modelling is by it's nature a guess and very rarely actually matches the actual events that follow, part of this may be because of measures put in place as a result of the model therefore making the model itself obsolete, part of it may be because the model being presented (by the press) is only one of a range of models presented.

Overall I think we have done well in adapting to changing scenarios during this crisis and have found ourselves in a good place to move forward. I've tended to ignore the press articles because they are clickbait and do my own research. We're not clear yet but we are getting towards normality thankfully.