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.

Currently many of the people dying may well have died within the next year , perhaps as many as half even. Impossible to judge until after the event really

Although try telling a cancer patient that the drug to give them an extra year of life is too expensive and see how they feel about that!

Left to run out of control , with the nhs overwhelmed most of the people dying would have lived many more years, and many of them would not be dying from the virus but from other illnesses that an overwhelmed nhs would be unable to fix

The thing is, the lives that are saved by these measures don’t get reported.

Comparing how many people usually die at this time of year with how many are dying just now tells you the figure of how many lives HAVE NOT been saved by the measures.

It doesn’t tell you the number of lives that have been saved. Those people didn’t die so their deaths cannot be reported.

Belllesausage if you can't grasp the significance of locking down entire populations, then you're really quite dense and will never understand any of the debate surrounding covid19.

The overwhelming majority of people who contract covid19 will have mild symptoms (to say nothing of the asymptomatic ones) so your catastrophising about blackouts and shortages is just that. Stop reading the Daily Mail.

@marginalgain - define "mild"

How many people become ill enough to require hospital admission - not just ITU but hospital care.

Now what do those figures look like without a lockdown? The NHS couldn't cope with all of those people requiring hospital care at the same time.

How many deaths would you then have from heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms, acute abdomens, fractured hips and pelvises, traffic accidents, falls, illnesses in children? All of the day to day life threatening conditions that the NHS treats would still be happening but while it was overwhelmed by Covid patients.

How would other services cope if large numbers of workers were off sick at the same time so infrastructure collapses? Currently that's being protected by slowing the spread so by engineers are still maintaining phone lines and broadband, electricity and gas supplies are maintained, food is still available. Imagine dealing with this without access to a phone, no power and no food?

But yeah, great idea to let it run wild.

This disease kills people who are already likely to die within a year. To destroy civilisation to give them a couple more months will likely be judged bonkers when the dust settles.

I couldn't agree more. It's beyond bonkers IMO.

I think a month max is reasonable to flatten the curve. After that, life should go on.

I also believe this opens up more conversation in that I think as a society we need to become more comfortable with the idea of dying.

We are so scared/against it and do everything conceivably possible (even when someone's health is at a point where they are severely impaired and probably prefer not to be alive) to keep people going.

We need to become more comfortable with discussions and the idea of death, as it's to happen to everyone at some point.

And my views aren't because I think I'm invincible from corona, if I was an 80 year old in I'll health I'd feel exactly the same.

My suggestion to those of you who think that the UK will collapse post-lockdown is just to do a bit of googling, read some articles, step outside of the BBC zone. See what various different people are saying about death rates, hospitalisation rates, and so on.

Look into what's happening with economies around the world, the rising debt, the threat of default, the unprecedented unemployment, and do a thought experiment on what the future of healthcare, of air quality, or food supplies, education, etc looks like if this goes in indefinitely.

I continue to be surprised that people have no sense of proportion.

@MarginalGain

😂😂🤣🤣🤣

This disease kills people who are already likely to die within a year. To destroy civilisation to give them a couple more months will likely be judged bonkers when the dust settles.

It certainly seems to kill those people, but it is also clear it kills many, many people besides. Many of those who would have died anyway aren’t in the figures as people in nursing homes are generally just being allowed to die in place it seems (see France’s numbers who have recently started recording these or the death stats from towns in the Lombardy region - excess deaths far exceed CV deaths for instance).

If we just let it rip through the models are that it would kill 500,000+.. A very significant number of those wouldn’t have died in the coming year.

Sweden seems to be a good control model... we’ll be able to judge who was right in a few months.

I think a month max is reasonable to flatten the curve

And you’re basing that on... ?

After that, life should go on

Of course it will, why wouldn’t it? The plan at the moment is to let our curve pass and then resume economically but with different restrictions to allow both life to carry on and manage the spread.

We could have done that at the start but apparently it takes a few thousand people to die before society accepts they shouldn’t be going to the pub or flying around on holiday for a few months. It’s not just us, globally attitudes need to change if we don’t want a repeat of this lockdown.

Soph7777

I'm 50. I'm shielded because of drugs I take for an auto immune condition - do you think I've got less than a year to live? Or the hundreds of people like me?

I know a 22 year old on the same drugs - do you think he's only got a year to live?

How about all of the people with diabetes? Have they only got a year to live? So, people like Steve Redgrave - he only had a year to live after being diagnosed with diabetes did he?

Care to share your research that shows this then?

Care to explain how after a month you think the government will be able to manage all the people getting ill? Based on latest figures it looks like only about one million people have had it, out of a population of over sixty million. So, many more people still to get it when you lift lockdown in two weeks time. Do share how you're going to manage it.

@MarginalGain I agree, I think people on mumsnet want us to be in lockdown for at least a year 🙄

The people who are being told to shield are basically being told to save their own lives, because the government cannot take responsibility for saving the lives of those at most risk. So stay shielded, if you want to stay alive! The lock down isn't to save you - you have to do that yourselves.

So those of you who want lockdown to end quickly please explain how you plan to stop the number infected from over whelming the NHS.
How do you plan to stop many people taking time off work, simultaneously.

Do explain how you see this working going forward.

zafferana

But the shielded are a fairly small number about 1.5 million.

The at risk group is huge - all over 70s, anyone with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, any lung disease including asthma, anyone with cancer, anyone with a neurological condition, pregnant women, a BMI over 40, high blood pressure - all of those people. What do you propose? Shielding them too or do you reckon all of those only have a year to live too?

The sad thing is this pandemic can absolutely be managed within a structure of relative normalcy most of the time (and could have been in the past if we’d taken it seriously sooner) but it does need people to accept that this is happening and things have changed.

The ‘normal’ of three months ago isn’t an option if you want an economy of any description to survive and be able to rebuild. In fact ‘normal’ isn’t an option whichever strategy, economical, societal or health, you favour. Accept that.

Things changed after 9/11 for those who remember and it was fine, we coped and the new way became the normal way.

The thing is I don't think people will accept the measures that will be needed to control this outside of a lockdown.

So many people cite Sth Korea as a good example but they are using location tracking apps to do contact tracing and I've seen outcry on here at the mere suggestion of it being used in the UK. So, don't use it but then don't expect outcomes like in South Korea.

Will people accept movement and travel restrictions? I doubt it.

Will people accept movement and travel restrictions? I doubt it

Internationally they may have to. I can’t see any country coming out of this happy to resume international travel free of any restrictions or requirements to enter. It’s cost to much economically (and in human suffering) dealing with their own peaks/curves to risk it.

Internally within the U.K. it will just mean that if people can’t self restrict they just won’t have the option so public gatherings will remain banned and the police will carry on enforcing measures. its draconian but what other options are there?

So those of you who want lockdown to end quickly please explain how you plan to stop the number infected from over whelming the NHS.
How do you plan to stop many people taking time off work, simultaneously.

So your solution is that business just shouldn't be permitted to open because you're worried they'll have too many absences?

Let them manage it as they see fit. At a certain point, the effects of lifting a lockdown are irrelevant because (obviously) you cannot keep human beings on lockdown indefinitely. It was never going to be anything but a short-term solution.

The shielding group is just going to have to shield themselves. Let us get back to work so there's an infrascturure to support them.

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras is not that I want lockdown to end quickly, I love being at home, I could easily manage lockdown for longer but the government can’t afford to keep paying furlough, it ends on the 31st May and then they will review it, in the first 3 months it has cost £10billion, how is that sustainable?

@BuffaloCauliflower I’m in two at risk groups, I have type 1 diabetes and I don’t have a spleen. I’m a very fit and healthy 32 year old rugby player.

Yet you think people like us expect to die in the next 12 months anyway

@SimonJT no, and I haven’t said that. My DH is T1 so I’m not flippant about these risks. I’m also pregnant and asthmatic. So no need for a ‘people like us’, we are people like us. But you, and I, and my DH, are still much less likely to die from it than others, even being in the at risk group. And quite clearly - saying most would die anyway in the next year (which is true) doesn’t mean ONLY those who die are those who would have died anyway, because that’s obviously not the case and no one is saying that. Flattening the curve likely won’t save many of the older people who get this, the ones who likely would have died in the next year, but will save those younger and generally healthier people (but who are still at greater risk) by conserving resources like be ventilators. But with only about 50% of those who make it onto ventilators surviving, there’s clearly more at play in who dies from this than just access to treatment. Right now we’re no overloaded, there’s no lack of resources or ventilators, and people are still dying. So flattening the curve clearly isn’t going save all.

What everyone one ignores and the farmers keep telling us is that we will have food issues as we have no crop pickers as British people won't do it and we are locked down to the normal Europeans that do it.
This will happen what ever we do now,whoever is right or wrong.

@Holdingmybreath really, I would quite happily pick fruit voluntarily while on furlough, I would think most people would to feed the nation. I think running out of money will happen first if furlough ends.

All the farms around us are advertising for school leavers, students etc. In ten years of living here, that’s the first time I’ve seen jobs advertised. So I think crops will be picked.

@BuffaloCauliflower It’s exactly what you said. As someone without a functioning spleen I will very likely die if I get it, just as I would likely die if I contracted flu.

they likely would have died from something else within a year anyway.