How many lives are we actually saving

[Baaaahhhhh]

An interesting read from the BBC, and a question that I have been wondering about since the ONS released figures last week.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

Article talks about the effect of different scenarios on the number of excess deaths ie: over and above what would be expected, and versus other seasonal illnesses like normal flu.

The people off ill in most cases will be off for 2-3 weeks and then not at the same time. This is very different from shutting the country for months on end.

I am in favour of 3-4 week lockdown to slow the spread and ramp up capacity but after this we need to start relaxing controls to avoid creating other problems that cause more ultimate loss of life.

If economic turndown is more than 6.5%, that was said to be the tipping point where austerity will cause more deaths than the virus.
Who thinks the economy is going to contract by less than 6.5%?????

It's a bit like those psychology experiments with train tracks: people are crap at logical reasoning and swayed by emotion, even if it ends up killing more people.

The person who said coronavirus is here now and we can't have a world without it and just carry on is correct. We could stop lockdown, cases will soar, community transmission high, and so staff in NHS/public services will stay home, either sick or to care for other sick family members. Plus consumer confidence is going to be lower anyway, and shopping less tempting, when the risks are higher and the bodies piling on the news.

One of the reasons schools closed when they did wasn't because it was the plan, it was because staff absences made it impossible to keep them open. If you play that out similarly across all other public services, the issue isn't top down policy, it's bottom up high sickness rates (and that's even if you can get over the extreme trauma of working in an overwhelmed NHS system and the deaths that will occur as the system overloads/crashes).

I agree that the counting is important though, and looking at whether death rates are drastically different. One thing to watch is that in both Italy and here there death rates from corona are not properly recorded, so if several people die of corona in an nursing home, as has happened, they may not appear on the stats because they won't be tested. So, community death rates are likely to be important, but it's hard to find info on them. As others have said- looking at rates of deaths due to economic hardship or suicide will also be important- however you have to remember you can't compare this year with a non-corona year really, because corona was here and would be killing quite a reasonable amount of the population even if we didn't do lockdown- so mental health and the economy would have been hit anyway, due to larger amount of deaths, and sizeable sickness in key populations.

More people will die in the long term (non-COVID) than were saved.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191118115241.htm

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-27796628

@zafferana that's not what the article says at all. Many of the dead had an underlying condition, they were not dying of it. You can live with diabetes or high blood pressure for an awfully long time.

@Gin96 well yes and no. I don’t think life will return to normal for a very long time if ever, certainly not economically. Even if a vaccine was approved tomorrow it would take 2 years+ to manufacture and administer. But I agree we have to find new ways to function with this virus in existence.

There had to be an exit plan from lockdown I agree but I haven’t seen much confirming from the government what that will be. I get the impression they’re preparing for further waves and lockdowns. I personally would like to see this done regionally with the support of intensive testing and very strict border controls but we will have to wait and see the details of how they’re planning to balance this economically.

There is an interesting article in the spectator about Sweden which hasn’t locked down but has asked people to maintain distance, wash hands etc. Its conclusion was basically we won’t know for years whose approach was better, but Sweden is the only country not to be running what’s basically an untested theory.
www.spectator.co.uk/article/no-lockdown-please-w-re-swedish

@Cornettoninja with or without an exit plan or vaccine lockdown will have to end as you can’t live like this long term, especially when lockdown is only protecting about 10% of the population.

what should be mentioned is the number of people who went in to hospital for relatively straightforward ops & contracted coronavirus & subsequently died. Even though the most vulnerable are trying to isolate (& with major difficulty in getting deliveries) the number of people who are getting is high & death rate in the last 2 day is over 1000 - if we didn't have self isolation the number of people would be doubling every 4 days or so as would the death rate following after a couple of weeks - until some form of effective treatment or preventative limits the spread & mortality ...

& lets not forget by focusing on death rate we are probably ignoring the number of people who will have long term (permanent?) disabling side effects -

Well let’s watch how the US fairs as Trump is most definitely prioritising the economy over deaths right now. History in the making and only hindsight is going to say who got it right.

But it’s a bigger picture than just protecting 10% of the population. If that 10% are all affected as predicted in a short timescale the the repercussions for everyone else are just as bad if not worse. Scale that up globally and you’re basically destroying any semblance of society as we know it for the sake of relatively short term measures.

It comes back to balance. We have to find a way to function that manages the numbers and that more than likely means ‘normal’ is a pipe dream. Accepting that globally we will all be poorer and a widespread depression is waiting to be acknowledged makes containment measures (strict and relaxed) now appear logical because otherwise we’re making a bad situation much worse.

The current state isn’t one that can be maintained indefinitely, but I don’t see how we can return to anyone’s previous definition of ‘normal’. The government have tried to shore up a number of jobs but they will have had to accept that a significant number of them won’t make it despite their efforts. They’ve given us a fighting chance but it’s far from guaranteed and also dependent on other countries recoveries.

What I find hard to swallow is the way the government could have acted decisively with individual households much earlier and spared us the worst health and economic 3ffects of Covid19.

If the whole household of travellers returning from hotspots had been required to quarantine for 21 days, even with generous financial support from the government the spread would presumably have been drastically slowed.

Also, a longer quarantine for individuals.

As for testing, it's easy and inexpensive.

Equipping hospitals and health professionals would also have saved money in the long run I would think. The cost of HPs becoming infected, having to take time off work and spreading the virus must be huge.

IMO the government is managing to wreck the economy AND cost thousands of extra lives.

@zafferana that's not what the article says at all. Many of the dead had an underlying condition, they were not dying of it. You can live with diabetes or high blood pressure for an awfully long time.

If you're young, then yes I agree with you @Porcupineinwaiting, but most of the dead are over 75 years old. Not many people who are already over 75 have 'an awfully long time' left. If you're already elderly AND afflicted by one or more serious conditions your life expectancy is not particularly good - sooner or later something is going to get you! Maybe it'll be the flu, maybe a chest infection that turns into pneumonia, maybe one of your underlying conditions. But I see a huge number of relatively young, healthy people panicking when they just need to take the necessary precautions. The government advice is sufficient to keep the vast majority of us safe and well and even if we get Covid-19, chances are we'll be unwell for 7-14 days and then we'll recover. Look at Matt Hancock, look at Prince Charles - they're the norm.

And although the virus may 'only' slightly shorten the lives of its elderly victims it's horrible to think of their loved ones unable to say goodbye or have a normal funeral.

Underlying conditions can often be lived with for decades.

Also, the herd immunity strategy would cause a greater mortality of younger, healthier people as their viral load is likely to be greater.

@Cornettoninja we will have to wait and see what the numbers are but the current situation isn’t sustainable long term. At the moment the numbers dying from coronvirus worldwide are very small, 55,000 since November, considering nearly 300,000 people in the uk died in 6 monther in 2018 without Coronavirus.

Wholeheartedly agree @rogueantimatter

I wonder if some posters opinion would be different when their children were much more likely to suffer from this virus instead of the elderly? Would they risk the lives of their (healthy) children to soften the impact on the economy? Or is it just the older and health- compromised ppl that they are willing to condemn to a lonely death, kept apart from their family/friends with a swift burial service (if at all) afterwards?
Also, the lockdown is not only meant to slow the viral spread but to lower the viral load, too! People seem to forget this... but by now it’s safe to say that the viral load has a big impact on the recovery from Covid-19.

The numbers of deaths so far is just over 53,000, to put this into prospective nearly 600,000 died in the UK alone on 2018

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Deaths worldwide I meant to say.

I agree that lockdown cannot be maintained indefinitely but the government has already said that the plan is to have periods of higher control and periods of relaxed control alternating so the NHS is not swamped. It's basically the herd immunity policy, but spread over a period of time. The plan is still for most of us to get it, barring a medical breakthrough or a super speedy vaccine.

FWIW my view is that had they not had lockdown then at the point at which the news showed hospitals were treating people in car parks, bodies were piled up and medical staff were either dying or deserting in droves, the inevitable result would be massive riots and civil unrest. We have already seen how selfish and panicky people are.

I don't believe it was a choice, I believe lockdown is essential to keep our society ticking over, even if at a lower ebb.

The psychological, social and economic effects of the lockdown worries me also but I just can't get on board with people who can so clinically trade human life off against economic gain. They must somehow imagine themselves or those they love to be invulnerable to this virus!

I want to live, I want my husband to live, my parents are in their 60's with health issues but could easily live for another 20 years and so it is for most people, so I support us doing all we can to limit the death toll of this virus.

The thing is, we will never know really. Even if the statistics show ( looking back over several years) that there were not many more deaths than usual this year, we won't know what would have happened if we hadn't down a lockdown.

I think comparing excess mortality rates in different countries In a year's time might give an indication of what measures were more effective. If Sweden doesn't lockdown we could.compare with them, though there will be other factors affecting it as well.