Why are UK numbers so high?

[howdidwegetheremary]

Sorry if this has been asked on other threads.

The numbers of infections and deaths in the U.K., US, Italy, France, and Spain are far higher than anywhere else in the world and this really bothers me.

I know the U.K. was slower to lockdown, didn’t close borders, and is heavily populated but I can’t see how this adds up?

Don’t get me wrong I’m relieved that lots more places are not as heavily affected but how is this?

We are constantly told that the virus thrives through close contact but there are many other countries that are far more heavily populated and live in closer contact than the U.K., US, etc.

Any clue?

Belgium definitely includes care homes and also suspected covid deaths (as does Ireland and France) so, yes, definitely can’t easily compare UK with these.
So hard to know about the discrepancies between counties, but yes, the UK was very slow to ban large gatherings. Six nations and football matches with Madrid (after that city had locked down!), Cheltenham, crufts... I was watching in disbelief. Wasn’t there a football match in N Italy as well that a lot of people say contributed to the spread there?

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html
This is an interesting article comparing excess deaths in different European countries. Belgium and Sweden’s reported Covid deaths align with the number of excess deaths, whereas for several others, notably Spain and the UK, excess deaths are much greater than the reported covid deaths.

Sorry Ecuador and France too. For many countries this data won’t be available yet.

Think maybe some of the asian countries have learned lessons from SARS.

@Rebelwithallthecause i personally did not track that too closely ( i did track it but along with many other indicators) i thought that other indicators would be more accurate and with a shorter time frame to see movements. ( sorry i cant explain more clearly). This was a personal choice and not really based on anything other than maybe deaths being the last thing to move

Thanks for the link @Bedroomdilemma - interesting article.

Hospital deaths and new infections still very high today

Doesn't seem to me like people are pointing out enough that UK & Italy both have high % of elderly. (approx) 50% of the population in Iran is under 32, but 50% of the population in UK is age 40+.

howdidwegetheremary
The new infections are in reading because as they move from "only hospitalised people and NHS workers showing symptoms will be tested" to "any key worker can be tested" they are bound to pick up more, less severe, cases. This is a positive sign that they are coping and moving into a slightly more proactive phase rather than a "hunker down" reactive phase.

The death rate is really misleading and it's annoying me now, the way it is being done. Basically a high proportion of deaths being reported today happened several weeks ago. So at the moment our "daily deaths" are over reported as we seem to be sweeping up the reporting on deaths from late March and early April; perhaps ones that required a coroner report. The actual number of deaths is dropping steadily, but not amazingly fast, as you would expect given that this disease rarely kills quickly. You can see this info if you go onto the daily graphs and stats thread on this board where barracker and others have graphs that are updated by day of death retrospectively and show that we are now past the peak.

I don't know why the government doesn't make it clearer that of the 800 deaths they are reporting, only 100 odd were from yesterday and another 100 happened the tail end of March etc. Maybe to keep people lockdown compliant?

"in reading" should be "increasing"...