Worried About Coronavirus- thread 35

[TheStarryNight]

New thread

Is that a decrease two days in a row?
Deaths and cases? Or just deaths.

Thanks for new thread

Because many many (?most) people have some sort of underlying illness, particularly after age 50, many fairly irrelevant to COVID-19 (e.g. osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, eczema, hiatus hernia). The term tells us nothing and looks like a convenient “othering” device (so people think “oh that’s all right then - it only affects sick people who would have died anyway”)

My comment was to @Pishposhpashy

Deaths and cases? Or just deaths.

Just deaths. The test numbers have not yet been announced.

The numbers published today cover a 23 hour period (5pm on Sat to 5pm on Sat). Once you normalise for the lost hour, the figureis very close to the day before. However it is not going up - and I personally view it as a very big positive.

And all the things @defthand said too.

It’s guff because clearly younger, healthy people are dying of this now

I thought that the stats in Italy clearly showed that the vast majority of their dead were 70+? Do they not?

Genuine question. And obviously still awful either way.

I've just ordered an oxy monitor. I'm worried that the later we get this, the less care we'll get.

More or less did an interesting statistical thing about compressing a year's worth of risk into two weeks. Yes people are dying before their time, but most of them are dying a little before there time rather than a lot.

I'm more scared about people dying in an undignified, uncomfortable, isolated way rather than about people dying.
My mum is 80. We will probably lose her in the next weeks or years. I'd like it to be while she is surrounded by family, rather than in isolation.

On the worldometer's site, the serious/critical has been blank, stuck at 20 for some weeks and has now been 163 for some days. I noticed it went up in line with a study of the profile of patients in ICU that John Campbell discussed last week.

But the number of deaths reported way exceeds this amount. When the daily deaths is reported this figure (critical) remains the same suggesting that there have been hundreds of deaths in hospitals of people not considered severe or critical.

Does anyone have any explanatory theories?

I wonder if we're seeing the slight improvement as a result of many people taking matters into their own hands, before the official lockdown? Our 'oldies' have been self-isolating for a good couple of weeks, and I know many others who had certainly cut down dramatically on their social interaction before we were asked to do so - ourselves included.

There have been at least 775 ICU cases, we can tell from this study:

www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Attachments/Download/b5f59585-5870-ea11-9124-00505601089b

Most other countries release their ICU stats, but not us.

In Italy, 90% of deaths are in the over 70s. It’s scaremongering to pretend that everyone is equally susceptible, and useful for people to know that they are particularly at risk and so should take more precautions than others.

It is also positive that the UK death rate is flat. This is all pre-lockdown and reflects the earlier social distancing measures.

29defthand: It’s guff because 40% of the population have at least one underlying condition, and most are relatively benign. It’s guff because 95% of people over 70 have some underlying condition. It’s guff because clearly younger, healthy people are dying of this now and they’re having to say things like “except these X number of people with underlying conditions.” It’s guff because 44% of people in the ICU are aged 16-59, according to their own statistics. Many of these people will die, it just takes longer because they’re younger. It’s guff because no other country is trying to pretend this only affects the exceptionally frail. It’s guff because these people are PEOPLE, and this continued way of describing them makes it sound like they don’t effing well count.

Well said. So many people are complaining about lockdown as they believe that those who would die from covid19 are already at deaths door. This is so wrong. That underlying condition could be asthma or well controlled diabetes or hypertension. Things that many working people have. Those with underlying health conditions could still have a normal life expectancy.

@picklemewalnuts I had a similar conversation with my DH last night. We agreed that we will not be able to get an accurate figure of increased deaths until the end of the year. When my DM died almost 7 years ago, she picked up a bacterial infection in hospital. She already had terminal lung cancer and COPD. We don’t actually know what killed her, all we do know is that she was going to die anyway. In the end, we were relieved that she went quickly. It is awful what is happening to people, but some of them were going to die in the coming days, weeks or months, Coronavirus or not. At this moment in time it is not possible to know just how bad this situation is.

Checking in.

@picklemewalnuts you say: Yes people are dying before their time, but most of them are dying a little before there time rather than a lot.

What a load of tosh, you have no way of knowing what the life expectancies were of the people who have died, there are a great many underlying health conditions that have a negligible effect on life expectancy. I have type 2 respiratory failure but my life expectancy is only estimated to be shortened by 5-10 years. I'm currently in my 50's but if I got Covid I would be unlikely to survive. I don't consider having 30 years knocked of my life to be "a little".

The same can be said for a myriad of health conditions and there are many that don't have an impact on life expectancy at all.

@Foobydoo exactly. In a Chinese study I read on Covid-19 deaths, hypertension and diabetes made up the vast bulk of those who passed with an “underlying condition”. These are extremely common and typically not life threatening.

I totally agree, Charlie. There will be people whose lives are cut short dramatically, and that's terrible.

However I said 'most' are dying a little before their time. This was a statistical analysis discussed on More or Less, the R4 statistics Programme. It looked at the rate of deaths in people over 70 and found that a year's worth of risk was compressed into two weeks because of Covid.

So not relevant to your situation at all.

Everything @defthand and @Egghead68 say.

In Italy, 90% of deaths are in the over 70s. Perhaps because they're not ventilating anyone over 60 due to the ventilator shortage.

hypertension and diabetes made up the vast bulk of those who passed with an “underlying condition”. Which makes me wonder why these conditions aren't included in the shielding category.

More than 9,000 people who have tested positive for Covid-19 are currently being treated in hospitals across England, NHS England’s chief executive Sir Simon Stevens has said.

www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2020/mar/30/uk-coronavirus-live-rate-infection-lockdown-covid-19#block-5e82041e8f081e5eda239a42

I think it's an anomaly. It's far too soon

Dominic Cummings has Covid symptoms - couldn't happen to a nicer guy

the numbers in nl are dire, considering it's a tiny county.

Apparently in 2015 they had the worst hand washing rate in Europe. Followed by Italy.

Germany had the best rate.

We were not far behind Germany.

The Netherlands was one of the later countries in Western Europe to start shutting things.

@woodencoffeetable The Netherlands figures are very sad- the deaths per million are very high there (Belgium's are pretty bad too). I think when the Netherlands started testing, it was pretty clear it had been spreading in the community for a while, and I think they had cases found that were already in hospital (similar to Italy).

I know people think we dropped the ball on this in the UK (and to an extent the government has definitely made some bad decisions) but unfortunately there are several European countries that I think have handled things even worse than we have.

That's not some kind of competitiveness/weird patriotism- the fact that some other European countries have handled this badly is a real problem for us. A lot of our imports come via Rotterdam, so if things get very bad in the Netherlands, as well as being a tragedy for them, it will have a direct impact on us (and other European countries, of course).

I hope they are able to get things under control there.

Yuck.

I thought I'd clicked on the wrong thread seeing the "they were going to die anyway so who gives a fuck influx"

Lombardia have just released a projection saying if things continue as they are, 22nd April will be the day there are no new cases there.