Official death toll in UK now over 40,000.

[ssd]

At last it includes care home deaths, not just hospital deaths.

What an utterly awful figure.

@MsHeffaPiglet

"Does it make you feel better OP in thinking we are the worst country in Europe? Do you like us being first?"

Did you really just say that?

Are you for real??

Those figures BigChocFrenzy posted indicate we're the most crowded country in Europe. France and Germany are much larger space wide. We have more people than France yet they're bigger. And Russia's massive.

The crowding is a big reason why our deaths are so high. Easier to spread.

Oh @Sadie789 ...

Between 21st march and 1st may there were 27510 official deaths, yet 57139 more total deaths than the 5 year average.

A portion of these are an indirect consequence of lockdown (not seeking medical help for other illnesses in time, suicides etc) but the numbers are clear.

Without a vaccine I'm still trusting Prof Witty that 80% will get it and 1% of those will die. So either way we can expect 550,000 in total.

No, we can drive that number down with better treatment as we know more about the way the virus works. Germany has it to about half a percent already with aggressive testing and early intervention.

If we got the numbers low enough we could contact trace and hold it at bay until a vaccine was ready, but people won't stomach that kind of lockdown.

The crowding is a big reason why our deaths are so high. Easier to spread

Dh and I live in an average 3 bed/2 bathroom/double garage house in Australia. And by average it's actually probably considered small for here (the Aussies like a McMansion ) and we just commented yesterday that the width of our property (in suburban Melbourne) would have three 3 bed terraces or about five 2 up/2 down terraces in this space in the UK.

I have to say to people saying ah only 3k under 45 dying, but it will be much more as we only have 5% immunity. It doesn't necessarily change the chance of dying but when we are deciding what to do we have to realise it may be a total of 3k x 12 or more.
We are locking down for all the under 70s really as so many need hospital even if they are unlikely to die.
Even the 20+ adds up to a lot when you scale it up. This is i suspect why you wont get any data from uk gov for the teachers unions. They will not give projections of the deaths of teenage students or teachers

@donquixotedelamancha is absolutely right.

We've heard infection rates have increased again in countries easing their lockdowns like Germany. But have their death rates also gone up? I wonder. Germany has been very proactive including with early treatment.

And China. A while back I read they were mass producing remdesivir. Whether that's true and whether remdesivir is as successful as initial reports suggested I don't know.

I agree about overcrowding.
We have a 3 bed semi. 2 kids 2 adults. So when we caught something a few weeks ago literally no other room for the other adult to sleep in. Plus the size of rooms and amount of air in would make you more likely to inhale someone cough or sneeze.
Same with uk schools really.
30 to a class schools primary with up to 3 classes a year. Making them sit on carpets close to each other.
It's no wonder they constantly have nits and worms etc.
Some schools here have doubled in size over the last 7y.

The UK's figures are the highest in Europe and second worst in the world.

a lot of people seem to like to make this comment but it's untrue, If you look at the data per 1m of population we are fourth highest in Europe and therefore cannot be second highest in the wold. Belgium, Spain and Italy are 1, 2 and 3.

@Deblou43

Densest is a difficult thing to compare. As a country the density is quite high, but as a country we are spread out. Even the cities are spread out. London is only the 15th densest city in Europe.

Japan has a higher population figure and density sety. Many other countries too.

I know Spain are including care home deaths.

Many Italian regions are including care homes and non tested deaths. Not all but many. I know this from family who live there.

It’s hard to compare yes definitely ... but that can’t be used as an excuse to simply shrug off the figures.

Some of same people (not you but many) who moan about these comparisons are happy to say we should adopt Denmark’s school policy when their population densety and infection rate is massively different,

@RainMustFall that only uses the govs figure of those tested positive. Not the figure of all Covid deaths.

Crowding may be a reason why our deaths are so high. But don’t forget that two months ago people edge saying that Spain and Italy edge far more crowded that is with their inter generational households and we would never see as many deaths as them.

Were not edge!!!

Night

Having seen the pictures of people flocking to the Lake District, Cornwall and Snowdonia, it is apparent to me that the UK does have the most dense population in Europe.

At a World level, I believe the US passed the U.K. in terms of density around November 2016.

ToffeeYoghurt
South Korea is more crowded, plus they didn't have the advance notice we had.

The reason is it's so bad here is because our government is shit. The main criteria for being in Johnson's government, being a senior adviser to his government and even providing support services (referring to the clear out of the civil service) to his government is that you have to think a shit idea, according to the vast majority of experts, (Brexit) is a great idea. Anyone else, who dares speak thruth to power, is out. That doesn't sound like the most competent base to fight a pandemic or even run a country in normal times. And far from delighting in being proven right, evidenced by our high death rate, I am absolutely fucking furious about it.

With every country counting deaths in a different way, it's impossible to know true figures. Some doctors are writing death certificates for care home residents without even seeing them and without an actual test. Just going on symptoms and likelihood. According to a community nurse I know.

This stuff about the UK being affected worse because it's overcrowded is rubbish.

If overcrowding was the main factor, then places like Hong Kong or Taiwan, which are much more overcrowded than us, would be doing far worse.

But they've kept the numbers of deaths low.

The fault lies with our appalling government failure to either lockdown early enough or trace and isolate, or both.

myangelalex - that's irrelevant. The FT figures are based on excess deaths, so what is written on the death certificate in an individual case makes no difference.

The overall trend is clear and easy to compare across countries.

Sky news reporting Mexico City has 5 times the reported cases, despite the government saying their curve has flattened. At least the U.K. government are counting every possible case to get a more realistic take on the epidemic.

@effingterrified Hardly irrelevant!

@KenDodd South Korea had pandemic planning in place because of the sars and mers infections. They were pandemic ready, with apps, tracing, and PPE. Also a very compliant population who followed government advice to the letter and didn't go to beaches or race festivals. S Korea was on top of their game when it came to expecting a pandemic. Most other countries were not.

@myangelalex it is irrelevant. When you see across five weeks (and the ONS are two weeks behind) our total death rate is double the five year average, that's all you need to know. From a statistical perspective, it really doesn't matter what is put on the death certificate. One way or another, Covid-19 has caused these 57,000 excess deaths up until 1st May, even if it's as an indirect consequence of lockdown.

Rumours circulating about the fiddling of how deaths are recorded are pointless. People die, they can only die once, that death is always recorded. (Excess deaths) - (the five year average) = deaths caused directly or indirectly by Covid-19. It's not difficult.

@myangelalex we could have been too, but this government ignored planning for an epidemic
www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2020/03/government-documents-show-no-planning-ventilators-event-pandemic

@effingterrified the fact you think that what’s written on a death certificate (and separately what the cause of death actually was, which can only determined by a post mortem) when looking at excess deaths quite frankly kills any argument you have here stone dead. Excuse the pun.

Hysterical ignorance abounds.

*is irrelevant when looking at excess deaths