Uk coronavirus deaths predicted to be 66,000 the worst in Europe, 2nd worse in world.

[HerstoryInTheMaking]

Why does this not surprise me. We were appalling slow to allow lockdown. Govt u-turn on herd immunity. Allowing Cheltenham and other events to go ahead. Those in charge need to be held accountable when this is over.

metro.co.uk/2020/04/07/uk-set-66000-coronavirus-deaths-becoming-worst-hit-europe-12521377/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

The estimates I have seen seem to suggest that 1 in 10 cases are diagnosed. On that basis we can currently estimate that 600,000 people in the uk have had it so far or around 1% of the population. This gives a UK death rate of 1.1% given our deaths are currently 7000.

Even if these numbers are out two fold and the death rate is 0.6% this would only mean a 2% infection rate for the population. Quite a long way from the herd immunity required.

Not at all wishful thinking - lots of uni research teams are exploring this. Chris whitty said MOST people will be asymptomatic. As 600k people die each year, more in winter than summer, anyone who died of pneumonia this jan/Feb might have had it. We will never know.

Crazy - those figs will be based on people who felt ill. We won’t know how many had it and felt ok.

@newgirls No they are based on total population and include asymptomatic. Based on data from the diamond princess cruise ship which was a closed population allowing everyone to be tested:
5 in 10 are asymptomatic
4 in 10 have mild symptoms
1 in 10 have severe symptoms (i.e. those that are currently being tested in the uk)

Here is the cruise ship research
www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-outbreak-diamond-princess-cruise-ship-death-rate
634 had the virus of which 328 were asymptomatic

Tbh if 80% of us are expected to get this in the UK at some point and if the mortality rate is 2% this points to over one million UK deaths.

Ah i see what you mean. But 5/10 is 50%? Having it but being asymptomatic?

I am going by my city where lots of intelligent pals are saying they’ve had it with some since Feb half term. It’s not particularly built up or near Cheltenham? Most in 40s, slim, healthy etc? I’m in no rush to ‘unlock’ but round here there seems to be far more than 1% - at a guess possibly 15-20%?!

5 in 10 are asymptomatic
4 in 10 have mild symptoms
1 in 10 have severe symptoms

Do we know if that 5 in 10 remained asymptomatic and the 4 in 10 remained only mildly affected, or if those were just the status at the time of testing?

If 80% get it at some point and we don't have a huge increase in the numbers of nurses and we don't expect the nurses to work at current levels of intensity for years then we will have to control the rate at which people get this to a very low level

In which case a back of envelope sum suggests it would need to take at least 10 , possibly 20, years to work through the uk population

I for one am expecting treament or vaccine way before then!

Not at all wishful thinking - lots of uni research teams are exploring this.

How do you explain the fact that prior to mid-March, hospitalisations from COVID-19 were a tiny fraction of current numbers and only 11 deaths in total (as at 13 March), when less than 4 weeks later we’re running at nearly 1,000 deaths per day! Even if most people are asymptomatic (which I accept they might be) it would require the overwhelming majority of people contracting the disease in January and February to have had no symptoms, but for this to have suddenly changed dramatically in the past month. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) is a world-respected research institute in the field of global health statistics and impact evaluation at the Uni of Washinton in Seattle.

I don't know why their UK figures would be so much less accurate than for other European countries
If it were some sinister US medical prejudice against the "socialised" NHS, then they'd be biased against those other countries too

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom

IHME used the same methodology for all countries which is obviously approximation :

taking the published capacity figures and assuming non-COVID occupancy remained at the same level

There are similar large under-estimates of hospital capacity for France and Germany, which have over the last 2 months massively increased ICU etc like most countries,
but deaths there look very reasonable, maybe even under-estimates

They have projected lines for ICU useage, deaths etc plus a corridor for statistical variation,
all very standard practice when estimating future events

@annunmellemhaye. No the paper I read did no look at that. I am not sure if there has been any more recent research done. If more turned out to be infected this however would reduce the prevailance in the population even further to less than 1% as there would be less asymptomatic cases.

They weren’t tested derby. Hospitals were still full. Watford was full in Feb. People died of pneumonia and there were no tests for covid.

@bigchocfrenzy

Large understimates in capacity will however make more of a difference to the death rate in places where capacity is borderline e.g UK than in say Germany where capacity will far exceed what is required.

A cruise ship will have older inhabitants than the general population and be a Petri dish so 50% of them having it is is very high - doesn’t that upset the 1% theory? What am I missing? It doesn’t seem massively helpful?

@newgirls. 50% of those on the cruise ship did not have it. There were 3711 passengers of which 634 tested positive. Of this 634 approx 50% 328 were asymptomatic.

BCF if you look at Ireland they say under 500 deaths by August and they have lots of extra capacity yet the UK is 60000 deaths and a massive shortage of beds.

It doesn't make sense.

They may be well respected but this research seems highly questionable.

I am not saying it will be better in the UK that what they say, but its then big differences with every other country that makes me question it.

In all countries, those likely to die anyway within a couple of years would be in care homes

• and would normally die there, not in hospital

Very few countries have yet included care home deaths from CV in their death numbers

• Except for France, where it has seriously distorted recent death numbers and made comparisons difficult

So the numbers we see are more likely to be those that would not normally have died for some years

It's very inaccurate to take aaverage age of death in normal times and then subtract 80 years to get lost life expectancy
Once someone reaches even age 80 in the West, they have on average a significant chance of living several more years

And of course young or middle-aged people with asthma, T2, BMI 40+ etc normally live decades longer

I thought it said 4/10 had mild symptoms and 1/10 severe? That’s 5/10?

Or 1/6? That’s still a lot more than 1%?

Has there been any testing on our superspreader kids? I think that would be far more revealing of spread than a cruise ship

There may well be some specific oddities about the UK - and / or its published data - which make predictions particularly difficult and inaccurate

However, noone should wonder if it is some intentional bias against the NHS or the UK,
which has been implied on at least some posts on other threads

"Has there been any testing on our superspreader kids?"

Unfortunately, no spare capacity in the UK atm to test kids without symptoms for CV
There isn't enough testing capacity for NHS personnel or non-critical patients

If you mean antibody tests, then it will be probably 3-4 weeks before there is a sufficiently reliable test

• the current antibody tests give false positives for some other Coronaviruses

@newgirls All the cruise ship data tells us if that around 50% of those with covid19 are asymptomatic. The severity of symptons comes from other mainly chinese studies - of the 50% who have it and have symptoms around 80% are mild and 20% severe.

Taken together with the % asymptomatic from the cruise ship data this means that overall in the population we can estimate
5 in 10 are asymptomatic
4 in 10 have mild symptoms
1 in 10 have severe symptoms (i.e. those that are diagnosed in the uk)

Studying a cruise ship has the advantage that is was a nearly closed environment,
so can more accurately observe & assess the spread and infection rate

The comparatively low infection rate of the Diamond Princess - 700 passengers infected but 3,000 not - is interesting
Although they imposed quarantine measures, that was some days after the first case and people without symptoms would have been spreading it for days

@Newgirls

So you’re saying that hospitals were full of COVID-19 sufferers in February - they just weren’t being tested. Ok, if we assume that’s true - and it’s interesting that no hospital is saying that’s the case (and my brother who’s a doctor has been lying to me!) - it implies we’ve been running at 1,000 deaths per day for months, but we’re only just now picking up on it.... Indeed, by your logic we were still apparently only picking up a small fraction even a couple of weeks back!