Is the British government now actively trying to suppress the figures?

[Cam77]

internewscast.com/nhs-doctors-told-they-dont-need-to-list-covid-19-on-death-certificates-of-coronavirus-patients/
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8227035/NHS-doctors-told-DONT-need-list-Covid-19-death-certificates-coronavirus-patients.html

The guidance, which is titled ‘guidance for death certification of proven Covid-19 patients during the current pandemic’, says proven coronavirus deaths must be reported to the hospital site manager.

But under the header ‘general principles’ it adds: ‘There is no requirement to write Covid-19 as part of the medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD).’

The Good Law Project say the guidance suggests doctors are being ‘gently discouraged’ from reporting deaths as COVID-19. That would mean “we have no way of knowing if the government figures on deaths from coronavirus – the daily in hospital figures as well as the weekly ONS figures – are accurate,” the group said in an email to supporters.

The leaked guidance from an NHS Hospital Trust says: “Doctors are asked to use the standard MCCD (Medical Certificate of Cause of Death) form to certify death. ‘Pneumonia ‘or ‘community acquired pneumonia’ are acceptable at 1(a) on the MCCD.

Sure sounds like it

Never believe anything you read in the daily mail.

It’s been widely reported.

One newspaper reports a deaths are being reported as covid 19 another says they are being asked NOT to report them as covid 19

They are not testing everyone who dies they are not testing everyone with symptoms the figures are skewed regardless

ALL not a deaths 😖

Also, on a similar note: the Financial Times reports today that the toll in UK care homes from coronavirus may already be 6,000 - but only a few recorded as Covid-related on death certificate.

To put it simply, I wouldn’t trust the serial liar at the head of the British government anymore than I’d trust reports coming out from China. If they think they might be able to get away with lying, they will lie.

Quite a few experts have said we're likely overreacting and that the reporting is misleading, with the impact 6-12 months later possibly not being a whole lot more significant than other years.

Of particular mention was the fact that this is the first situation where there's been this level of media coverage, and also the fact that many of the dead were not expected to survive much longer either way. The implied concern is that we're creating long term problems for future generations.

Some have suggested that we'd have been better to just quarantine the vulnerable and that destroying the economy is the biggest long term threat here and will result in the most suffering.

Who knows! 🤷‍♀️

It's hard to tell what this means in practice. If someone dies of a burst appendix or in a car accident for example and happen to also have covid-19 but it wasn't a contributing factor then I can see it would make sense not to list it on the death certificate. So that wouldn't concern me. If there's actual pressure to omit covid-19 from the death certificate when it was a factor that obviously is completely different.

@CurrentBun1981

The issue isn't just (or even mainly) people dying it's the overwhelming of the healthcare system. Which we know from experience will happen. Lots of the actual deaths will be very frail people whose deaths will have been expediated by covid-19 these people tend to die within a week of entering hospital (or you simply refuse to give them ventilators in the first place) and the only issue is that we can't bury the bodies fast enough. The real problem are the vast numbers of young and healthy who need medical help. They won't die quickly but will stick around using up enormous resources for a long time - mean while many more will be waiting for the ventilator and all the while their lungs and other organs will be getting damaged through lack of oxygen. Since they are likely to eventually survive they'll also need physio and treatment to recover from their illness especially if they've spent time in ICU. You also will have diverted enormous amounts of resources away from other departments to deal with all these people so there will be way more preventable deaths from cancer, heart attacks, sepsis, childbirth etc.

This is the idea of "flattening the curve" you don't necessary prevent people from getting infected and then either surviving or dying you prevent the healthcare system becoming overwhelmed.

My relative passes away 2 wks ago in a care home. They had dementia & were in the final stages. They had no symptoms & the test was negative but the certificate has probable corona related. We were surprised by this but apparently it's because the tests aren't 100% & corona can't be ruled out as they have had a confirmed case in the home. Relative definitely wouldn't have lived much longer anyway.

Wouldn't they want to hype up the death count to show that the onerous lockdown conditions are required? Seems very counter-productive to do otherwise - if "they" were out to manipulate the reporting.

Most doctors will put what they believe to be the 'cause' of death on the certificate and the will also add any known, relevant, comorbidities. There is certainly no benefit to hide a CV related death.

When we look back on this time the total death rate will be looked at in relation to average rates, It will only be looking back that we will no the effect of this. Also if, again looking back, fewer death occur in the x number of years following this threat, this will also be taken into account. Individual death are always important, especially to those close to them but only looking back from some future date will give anyone a clear picture - for us and every other country.

There may be a country which locked down early and has very few deaths but in the years to come it MAY happen they have a higher death rate than everyone else. I'm not saying this will happen, but it might.

And the daily boring bashing continues...

The issue isn't just (or even mainly) people dying it's the overwhelming of the healthcare system. Which we know from experience will happen.

What experience do you refer to?

Our hospitals aren't overwhelmed at the moment and we don't really know how many people would've needed hospitalised if they were allowed to go to work with strict social distancing when possible - far cry from going to the gym/pub/restaurant etc. 91% of deaths have been from those with 2.7 conditions on average, so this doesn't reflect the impact on healthy people.

Many people forget that lots of the vulnerable people dying/needing urgent care were exposed before lockdown. With the vulnerable shielded and people maintaining distancing it might be manageable. This is what several experts have said anyway.

@CurrentBun1981

Literally every region which didn't lock down (or otherwise control the spread) fast enough - Lombardy, France, New York, regions of Spain, Wuhan. The healthcare system in each case became completely overwhelmed.

No they aren’t. YABU.

@CurrentBun1981

So you think the plataue in new infections was just a coincidence after lockdown in literally every country which implimented a lockdown? This is completely daft! There was exponential growth - it was modeled by people with experience in pandemics and the projections were awful - what on earth do you think would have happened in NY and lombardy etc if there was no lockdown? People would have miraculously stopped needing to be hospitilised?

I do find it very, very strange that on the Ireland, Scotland and Wales BBC News pages, the number of daily deaths is the main headline or a sub heading, but doesn't get a mention anywhere in the England news section.

@CurrentBun1981
Literally no expert has said that - that's why we have a lockdown. There are many young and healthy in hospitals - the majority survive which is great but they need medical care which they can't get in an overwhelmed healthcare system. Many of those who are vulnerable cannot be shielded because they require care - cancer patients on chemo, kidney patients on dialysis or simply because they have kids etc.

@YeOldeTrout
We're probably going to have the worst death rates in Europe so I can imagine they'd not want to play down the numbers as much as possible (also to maintain a degree of calm which will encourage investors and boost the economy).

Because not everyone dies of Covid 19 it can’t be put down as the cause of death, but pneumonia can kill hence the disparity.

"And the daily boring bashing continues..."

Can you explain what you mean by that, CendrillonSings ?

Current Bun1971 Most people at higher risk, certainly in the West, live normal lives with near normal life expectancy. The conditions with the highest mortality rates to Covid, diabetes, cardiovascular, and hypertension, are not on our government's shielding list. Perhaps because to genuinely protect all the vulnerable we'd be shielding nearly 50% of the population.

Yes we're predicted to have the worse death rates in Europe. I absolutely believe what OP read. Our government's been trying to downplay everything from the start.

I read an interesting comment on an online news article. Someone living in Iceland pointed out all the other countries that will contain this better than us won't want to trade with or visit us. Aside from the infection risk to them, failing to limit the number of deaths doesn't paint us in a good light.

Cendrillionsings turns up like clockwork on any thread even remotely critical of government policies, brexit, boris johnson etc to defend them, yawn or whatever

Completely agree toffee
Looks like
Mad dogs and englishmen go out...
We cant manage nhs
We dont care about the people in care homes
Cant plan anything
Crazy not to join ppe scheme
Nhs ppe being made at home by children
Dont accept offer from companies in uk to test etc
Cant manage testing
Lie to us to say we dont need masks.

It doesnt look like errors. This looks intentional.
But also useless as in uk at least death rate is higher than the 1% they claim.

Literally no expert has said that - that's why we have a lockdown.

Literally no expert....aside from the ex-NHS expert that did.

Dr Lee also believes that current evidence suggests coronavirus isn’t much worse than seasonal flu.

'The key point I’m trying to make is that it’s very difficult to interpret any numbers without context for those numbers,’ Dr Lee told Sky News.

'The numbers we’ve been hearing of deaths do indeed sound very alarming and we’ve all been seeing very alarming pictures from around the world, but the question is we can’t understand those numbers without knowing how they relate to other numbers related to deaths and disease.'

'My point is the way we compare diseases is by comparing death rates, the number of people who die of a disease compared to the number of people who got the disease.'

‘In this case we really have no idea at the moment how many people have actually had the disease because we haven’t been testing widely enough to actually understand those numbers.'

‘We don’t know yet but certainly there’s a growing body of informed opinion that feels the severity of this disease has been overestimated.'

‘Whenever you look at the severity of the disease early in an epidemic it tends to overestimate it because you see the tip of the iceberg. What you don’t see is all the people with no symptoms or very mild symptoms.'

‘So there is evidence that this disease isn’t necessarily much worse than a seasonal flu.'

‘But what we are seeing is a synchronisation of cases, so health services are being put under great pressure, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that when we look back on this disease in six months or a year’s time it would’ve turned out to be particularly exceptional or very exceptional.'

‘Actions have been taken only looking at one thing. The advice from the Government has been based only on the Covid figures, we haven’t had any assessment whatsoever of the harms being caused by this really remarkable action that’s been taken.'

‘Of course, countries around the world tend to copy each other. The question is what’s proportionate action? And proportionate action is quite possibly less than what’s being taken at the moment.'

UK has ‘overreacted’ to coronavirus outbreak and lockdown could be ‘less dramatic’, claims ex-NHS consultant