Is this true?

[1981m]

When I reported to my family who live in the US that there were 100 people died yesterday on our WhatsApp group, my mum replied (in the UK) that the morality rate needed to be taken with a pinch of salt as it also includes deaths from other things. Is this right? I was under the impression that the morality rates being published were ONLY for people who had died due to the Coronavirus! If that's the case then the figures are misleading.

You mean mortality rates. And your mum is wrong, it is only people dying who are infected with Coronavirus. They might have other illnesses as well but they are infected with CV

Your right, its only deaths for people with cv. A majority do have other conditions, but the point is they died with a postive result of cv

It also turns out that it may not be all of the people who die from CV as those who pass in the community are not being included. This may be because of a delay in testing post mortem or it may be an effort to keep figures down, who knows. Either way the released figures are definitely CV related deaths only.

I sort of know what she means - some of the people included would have been very ill and even a very mild illness might have caused their death; it just happens that it was this virus. Other deaths can be attributed almost solely to CV.

On average, just under 1500 people die in the UK each day. The figures released are just those that have died with a positivity cv diagnosis. Of course some of these may have died anyway, but it is in no way all who have passed away

Positive, not positivity. Silly auto correct.

On radio 4 they said yesterday's figure was 36 hours worth, which is why it appears a lot higher than the day before.

The coronavirus mortality rates are made up of people who died from coronavirus. She may be getting mixed up with this; if someone has, say heart disease, if they also catch coronavirus and it affects their heart and they die, then they will have still died from coronavirus. Yes, they may have been more susceptible to coronavirus due to their underlying condition. But they still died from coronavirus.

That's not true @yellowm00n they changed the timings of the recordings, the lower figures the day before were only 8 hours worth. Yesterday's were the new timing band 5pm-5pm so a full 24 hours worth. Previously it had been 9am-9am

My dad reckons 30,000 people in the UK die of respiratory disease every year normally so these figures are misleading. They aren't showing those who would have died anyway.

Well how do you know who would have died anyway?

Just because someone has a respiratory disease it doesn't mean they would necessarily die. So how do you work out who would have died at this time anyway? The medics aren't psychic, they can't just turn around and say oh I reckon they were due to due anyway so don't count them!

But isn't that the same for everywhere? Or are other countries not counting people who have underlying conditions?

We will only know the true effect in a years time when we can see if there is a massive increase in deaths in 2020, or whether cv has just taken deaths that may have occurred anyway. There's probably little doubt that less travel means less car accidents, one of the biggest killers of young people. So deaths from them will be down, however suicides and domestic abuse murders will go out and balance the stats out. We have no idea. But every death, whether from covid-19 or car accident, old or young, healthy or ill, is tragic and devastating to the family. Even if they had a respiratory condition and could have died from something else anyway, that is still someones mother/father/son/daughter/brother/sister. And more devastating is that people are being denied the usual mourning/grief process, often being in isolation themselves, and from a mental health perspective, those affects will be much longer lasting than this virus

It's for deaths of patients who tested positive for coronavirus.

The tests are only done in hospitals.

The actual infection and death rates could be far higher.

medium.com/@amwren/forget-about-the-death-rate-this-is-why-you-should-be-worried-about-the-coronavirus-890fbf9c4de6

Ah apologies, the day's are starting to merge into one @FatimaLovesBread!!

I know that feeling well @yellowm00n