UK Death toll. Is it really declining?

[pontypridd]

Government keeps saying it is. But that’s not how it looks to me.

Over time it is declining but it is a slow process

The death rate in hospitals is definitely falling. It's much harder to compile figures for the wider community, especially with any great speed.

What do you mean by how it looks to you? Genuinely not sure what you mean - are you seeing more people dying than you think their admitting to or are you interpreting the numbers differently?

What statistics are you looking at that means it doesnt look like its declining to you? The only ones I've seen are on the BBC website and show a clear decline in the 5 day average.

Obviously the total death toll goes up each day but the daily death toll is decreasing somewhat.

The issue is the way in which they are collated, so today's figures include deaths from previous day's too (they haven't been counted before though). So when they release the figures for the day before, it doesn't mean that many actually dies the day before, it means that covid has been confirmed to have been present ie through the autopsy. So it's hard to tell really from those figures alone, it's a combination of that, hospital admissions, I would say confirmed cases, but as hardly anyone is getting tested that makes no odds at all.

It is but the way the newspapers report it makes it seem like it isn’t.
A lot of people will just look at the headline and not read any further when it explains that the large number in the headline is a total from a number of different days and months and not from just the last 24 hours.

It will be lovely to hear that no poor person has died of this virus but I don’t think this will ever happen

Yes it is. I've just done a thread on it

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/

And then click "Covid all deaths 25th April" data. These will show the day by day figures. Clearly coming down since the 8th.
The daily figures released by the govt include a lot of backdated deaths

The total death toll is going up, but the death rate is going down.

So instead of ~900 people dying every day, there are ~600 dying every day. What they mean is that while there will be more deaths, the number dying each day is getting lower and lower.

Sorry,click "COVID 19 total announced deaths 25 April 2020"

How long does it take for figures to catch up? If someone dies, untested, in a care home their death won't be recorded in daily stats until it's confirmed that coronavirus was present in their body at the time of death, ie after post mortem completed. How long does it take before that death reaches the stats, and is it included on the day they died or the day it was recorded? Does anyone know?