20,000 deaths

[unhappyclap]

I have heard on the news that if 20,000 people die from Coronavirus then they would have essentially done a "good job"...What I am confused about is, who do they expect these 20,000 to be? Will these people be those who are not currently social distancing? Those who are key workers and are still working?

20,000 deaths to me sounds horrific, we are already at over a 1000 which is far too many.

If everyone is at home, following the rules then who are the people getting the virus?

So Sweden has no lockdown and 104 deaths, we have lockdown and over 1000 deaths. Yes we have 6x the population but Sweden still has a lower death rate.

In the flu season 17/18 20,000 people died of it in the U.K. Of course this happens without any fanfare. I wondered realistically how many of those flu sufferers the nhs even attempted to treat, because they were certainly massively underfunded and overstretched that year. I would say if we can keep deaths down to that for an entirely new virus it would be an incredible achievement of the government, nhs and medical research. And of course the public following social distancing sensibly.

I'm really sorry. I didn't think.

@Peapod29 those didn’t require makeshift hospital to be built though did they? This is not just flu as the medics keep saying. @GrumpyHoonMain is spot on, most of those health conditions would not kill you this year. Even some of the higher risk illnesses like CF are well controlled and managed. Maybe the elderly would have died any way m, but possibly not. Remember that many of the deaths in a normal year will have been accidents at work and on the roads, of which there will be less over this period as people are at home far more so covid 19 deaths will replace those too

People will still die during lockdown because even without making exceptions to the rules, everyone at some point will need to go out for groceries or medical supplies, and lots of people do still need to work. The sheer volume of essential jobs to keep the country operating means thousands of people still going to work.

So Sweden has no lockdown and 104 deaths, we have lockdown and over 1000 deaths. Yes we have 6x the population but Sweden still has a lower death rate.

I think Sweden are still a bit behind but culturally they are quite different. I think I read half of homes are only home to 1 person. The elderly have been told to self isolate I believe.

@Babyroobs this is off topic but on the odd occasion I’ve had an infection on a finger or hand, I add lots and lots of salt to a glass of water. Stir it all up and let it dissolve. You can sit there and let your finger/hand soak in it for a while. Repeat as necessary but usually after one or two sessions the problem will be fixed.

It does depend how the numbers are reported in each country, the uk death rate looks high compared to cases but I think there is a lot more cases than we know about. Germany death rate looks very low but they were not testing everyone who died and have put another reason for deaths. I’m not sure how Sweden record the numbers. It’s a shame each country don’t record the numbers the same but that will never happen.

Just to put it into perspective:

Heart and circulatory diseases cause more than a quarter (27 per cent) of all deaths in the UK;

that's nearly 170,000 deaths each year - an average of 460 people each day or one death every three minutes.

Around 44,000 people under the age of 75 in the UK die from heart and circulatory diseases each year.

I'm still terrified for my family, one has heart and breathing problems.

Is Sweden as densely populated as the U.K? I don’t just mean actual population figures but how does their population live? Is Gothenburg as crammed as London? Do they have other big cities comparable in living conditions/closeness of contact to Birmingham, Manchester, etc?

I think countries where the population are more naturally spaced out will fair better. But agree that Sweden is probably just behind us. See where they are in a couple of weeks.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregistrationsummarytables/2018#leading-causes-of-death

You can see the main categories for death here

Swedish society is very very digitized (they are virtually cash free, for example) and I suspect that the elderly in Sweden are better able to cope with technology, making it easy to cocoon them (online orders, Skype et al). It's worth thinking about for the future.

In this country, it would have been cheaper to have just paid and bribed everyone elderly and medical vulnerable to stay at home for a bit (with lots of nice services, perks, full salary paid for those of working age who cannot work from home), rather than shutting all of society down and chucking the economy down the toilet. But I don't know if anything short of a full lockdown could have persuaded the British elderly to all stay inside!

In general, the Northern European countries seem to be far better at this stuff. Better treatments and more hospital equipment/beds, I suspect.

Remember that many of the deaths in a normal year will have been accidents at work and on the roads

Casualties are high but deaths are quite low (as a %) 1784 in 2018. As a comparison there were 6507 suicides.

To put the 20,000 projection into context, 541,000 people die annually of all causes in England and Wales, which is 10,000 a week!
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregistrationsummarytables/2018

If this has a 1% death rate, and 1000 people have died, that means when they were first infected (at least 2 weeks ago), there were about 100,000 cases in the UK. On a 3 day doubling time, 2 weeks is 4 and 2/3 doublings. 100,0002=200k. 200k2= 400k, 400k2= 800k, 800k2=1.6m ,(4 doublings) plus a bit for the 2/3 and you've got over 2M cases likely currently.

2M cases at a 1% death rate is 20,000 deaths.

So I think 20k deaths is the figure where few new infections occur after lock down.

In reality people dying will have been infected more than 2 weeks ago, likely closer to 3, but the doubling time may be more than 3 days. It all evens out closely enough not to be issue for these back of an envelope calculations.

We need total lockdown as that would deal with most of those scenarios and I suspect (hope) that those measures are stepped up soon for all our sakes

I am pretty sure a lot more people will be dead if we don't have functioning security, roads, food delivery, food distribution, power services, etc. etc. etc. etc.......

The most successful containment of the virus is arguably in places like South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which have never had more than semi lockdown and where normal life is "mostly" in progress.

A LOT of people are going to die as a result of a deep recession and austerity measures in years to come if there is no money to pay for anything anymore (healthcare, respite, essential services).

A lot of factors have got to be balanced here. It's not helpful for us all to get into a sort of conversational dynamic where everyone's competing to demand the MOST HARDCORE MEASURES!!! as a way of showing that they are the most caring person in the room.

It's the townships there that came to my mind first. They are very vulnerable and I just can't imagine there would be much significant support. I hope I am wrong.

I was horrified thinking about the refugee camps outside Syria. As if those poor people have not suffered enough. It doesnt bare thinking about. 😢😢😢

I know of someone in their 40s who died from cv. I believe they had asthma but last time I saw them (maybe a month ago) they were full of life, and certainly would not have "died anyway". Unbelievably sad.

Lockdown will have it’s own death rate. The government have an idea of these numbers, we won’t know what they are until 2022. Like another thread lockdown has it’s own problems, it won’t solve this crisis it just slows it down. Lockdown for 3 weeks is doable, lockdown for 6 months society will start to break down. To be honest I’m more frightened of society breaking down than the coronavirus, even though my husband is high risk.

I agree with @Kokeshi123

@gin96 Society is not going to break down. I don't know if you are over anxious or scare mongering, but society will continue.

I hope not. Looking at Italy it looks quite worrying and they have only been in lockdown for 3 weeks.
news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-italy-becoming-impatient-with-lockdown-and-social-unrest-is-brewing-11965122

3 weeks from catching it for people to die, so yes there are still lots of people who got it before lockdown.

Then the people who still have to go out for work, shopping will pick it up from surfaces. When lockdown is lifted over summer there will be more people again. This is over a long period alone.

Also this could be on top of normal deaths, for those thinking it'll just replace the normal ones.

The most successful containment of the virus is arguably in places like South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which have never had more than semi lockdown and where normal life is "mostly" in progress.

Of course the issue there is they carefully tracked the outbreak from the beginning, so they knew where every car was and could isolate those cases and stop them transmitting. Whereas our community testing was always patchy, and then totally abandoned. And now there are far too many cases to just pick it up and start again

If they manage to reduce the number of cases to a reasonable number through lockdown o guess it will become more reasonable to try tracking cases again.

It's difficult to compare the UK to other countries like Sweden because we aren't testing and they are. The NICE guidelines are that currently only people admitted overnight to hospital are tested - not vulnerable people with pneumonia in the community, not a&e respiratory admissions, not people dying in care homes. Just critical care patients, inpatients who catch it in hospital and - apparently - politicians. We are grossly under testing. NHS workers are only just getting tests rolled out for them!
Because we are under testing people who are unwell we are also going to have a skewed death rate, as no postmortem tests are done. This means anyone dying at home, in an ambulance, in a&e before admission or in care homes is not being counted in the covid deaths. The 1000+ death rate we already have is a vast underestimation.