Truly shocking stats from the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

[ZuzusPetaIs]

Have a look at this graph, published recently by the ONS - an official government body would no incentive to lie

Basically there are working class people out clapping for people paid more than them and with a lower risk from covid-19 than them.

The death risk will be informed by individual perceived risk and also PPE.

I.e. if you work as a nurse or doctor you will be very conscious that your work could kill you and you will have a lot of PPE provided and take all possible steps to reduce risk.

Whereas factory workers likely won't be as aware that their co-workers are likely to infect them, and if they are older, then there is a significant possibility that could kill them.

"f you work as a nurse or doctor you will be very conscious that your work could kill you and you will have a lot of PPE provided"

Do you not watch the news?

... and being told they must be grateful for a service they fund which lets them down so comprehensively.

Do you not watch the news

I try not to. I don't really trust journalists. They have a story they want to sell and they push whichever sources fit their narrative. It's quite deceitful, but once you learn to spot it the world makes a lot more sense.

@ ShootsFruitAndLeaves‘ post is so good and articulates my views so much better than I can, I am reposting . I have for so long been applauding our bus drivers, our construction workers and our unsung minimum wage public facing heroes (including care workers) - no free pizza for them or other freebies - that I thought I was in my own private echo chamber

I'm surprised that anyone is trying to deny that taxi drivers are at extremely high risk BECAUSE of their work, and instead imply that they are at fat and lazy.^

We knew months and months ago that people spending significant time together in confined spaces were very likely to spread the virus - from a single group dinner the majority of attendees were infected. Taxis are PERFECT conditions to spread covid-19.

In addition while the 🐑 have been outside clapping for the NHS and we've rejected hundreds of tons of PPE for medical workers because it wasn't quite right, and we've had inquiries into single deaths, people working in these kind of jobs have got the square root of fuck all.

Same with care workers. Low paid, likely to have poor English, lower educational attainment, less attention paid to and awareness of infection control

There are multiple components to the risk equation, which are not only exposure, which is very obviously present with taxi drivers when you consider that there is 100% absolute certainty that they will carry an infected person within a few days of work, but also attempts at risk mitigation, which were very high with the NHS, moderate with care workers , and essentially nil with private hire drivers

Basically there are working class people out clapping for people paid more than them and with a lower risk from covid-19 than them.

Yes - let the photogenic doctors and nurses clap for the minimum wage cleaners that their hospitals, the bus drivers and taxi drivers that take them to work (for free), the delivery drivers, factory workers, agricultural workers, delivery and retail staff that put food in their stomachs,

Round London Bridge we h e giant hoardings thanking the ordinary key workers )in high vis jackets etc) and saying we clap for them!

The hospitality risk i understand.We are very hygienic and had great personal hygiene however the risk comes from busy cramped kitchen s interacting with front of house who serve customers not to mention plates and cutlery that has been used by someone.Social distancing is very hard to imagine when working at speed.😥

It's interesting to look at the raw numbers for men. In particular 78 taxi drivers/chauffeurs died of other causes, and 76 of covid-19.

Other large numbers of male deaths were security guards, where 83 died of other causes, and 63 of covid-19, and bus drivers where it was 47 other causes and 29 covid-19.

There wasn't anything remotely comparable (covid-19 doubling the underlying death rate) for women.

The number of dead taxi drivers is almost EIGHT TIMES the number of dead doctors (note that for all groups this excludes those aged 65+, which is a significant % of the dead doctors, though of course we don't know if taxi drviers also died in large number over 65)

I'm no healthcare worker but the tone on this thread towards them is really distasteful now.

It’s seeking to redress the balance and perspective from the ignored high risk occupations that are casually disregarded in the breathless reporting and clapping which frankly I find both distressing and appalling.

Where is the £60 k for each dead bus driver dying in the line of duty?

PS I am not a bus driver

Is it a surprise that sedentary jobs such as taxi and bus drivers are higher risk of dying when they're likely to be overweight/obese due to lack of exercise?

Likewise most security guards are larger than average - you don't see many stick-thin bouncers.

It's starting to look more and more as if weight is one of the biggest factors re surviving covid or not.

Yeah - fat lazy slobs - they had it coming

Is it a surprise that sedentary jobs such as taxi and bus drivers are higher risk of dying when they're likely to be overweight/obese due to lack of exercise?

Likewise most security guards are larger than average - you don't see many stick-thin bouncers.

It's starting to look more and more as if weight is one of the biggest factors re surviving covid or not.

We know that what you are saying is false since we have large amounts of data already.

There are FAR too many people saying 'the fatties are killing themselves' in respect of covid-19 when it simply is NOT TRUE.

See here

www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Attachments/Download/b8c18e7d-e791-ea11-9125-00505601089b

The proportion of obese people critically ill is 31.0% vs. 28.9% obese in the underlying age and sex-matched population. This is a small difference and does not even BEGIN to support a hypothesis of people dying because they are sedentary. People of normal weight were 25.9% critically ill vs 25.6% in the general population.

There is NOT a significant extra risk associated with being overweight or obese. There IS with being morbidly obese. That's why there is the modifier morbidly there, because it causes excess morbidity.

There were arseholes on Twitter weeks ago falsely claiming that fat people were killing themselves with covid-19 because 2/3 of deaths were fat, when they didn't realise that that's in fact normal for people 40+, which is the at-risk population.

Obesity is a very small risk factor for covid-19.

Age is the risk factor.

Sex is also important.

And of course being exposed to infected people.

Sorry should say that those % are % of the total critically ill, rather than the % of all obese/normal weight people critically ill. I.O.W there's a very small over-representation of obese people. There's also an UNDER-representation of overweight (as distinct from obese) people, which suggests that in general weight (excluding morbid obesity) is NOT a significant issue.

shoots the figures regarding obesity are for patients in critical care. But of those in critical care what % of the obese are recovering, are the figures the same or are more of the obese dying. It will be some time before intricate analysis of data for each age group can be analysed to find specific underlying predisposing conditions for death.

@oralengineer, actually the figures have already been analysed in a number of studies. There is generally reported to be a risk from obesity as opposed to not being obese. However that risk is much smaller than the risk reported from being a taxi driver (3.5x higher) and a security guard (4.5x higher).

Previous studies have found an increased incidence of heart problems in taxi, lorry drivers, but that would be something like 20-40%, not many multiples of base risk.

Still too early for definitive analysis at this stage. Hypertension has now been removed from comorbidities risk list. Diabetes has been elevated. Both are associated with metabolic syndromes seen in Northern European gene pools. Body fat distribution probably has some roll, it has always been the pay off for adaptation to living in temperate climates.
I have been more compelled by the VitD and latitude position analysis. I suspect there will be a number of different underlying predisposing factors according to age group, sex and ethnicity.
The patterns emerging globally suggest that a unified approach will not result in a unified result.

ShootsFruitAndLeaves just wanted to say thank you for your posts here, really fascinating and well explained. Do you work in communications or education? You’ve got a real gift for it imo.

@CoachBombay it is shocking, though, isn’t it? Shocking that we, as an apparently developed “first world” society, seem not to be protesting against this more loudly. To be clear, I’m not shocked at the results, just shocked that we seem to tolerate them.

"I try not to. I don't really trust journalists. They have a story they want to sell and they push whichever sources fit their narrative. It's quite deceitful, but once you learn to spot it the world makes a lot more sense."

You need to get information from somewhere though. Maybe try to find a source you trust or visit different websites until you get close to the truth. Medical professionals in the UK do NOT have adequate PPE. It's possibly more of a problem for people on other wards than the ones with the confirmed cases, but it's definitely a problem and you should be aware of this.

@Gwenhwyfar I think you are missing the point I was making, which is that very clearly doctors have more and much better PPE than taxi drivers, regardless of whether it is adequate.

It might be that we could reduce the death rate of doctors further (though clearly not to zero) but given that doctors have only an average occupational risk of death from covid-19, but are exposed to people who are dying from covid-19, the data suggest that doctors' PPE are in fact 'adequate', in that doctors have no greater risk of dying than the wider population.

There is a massive confirmation bias in that we see nurses and doctors treating people dying of covid-19 and are likely to see each single individual death (out of thousands of total deaths) as validating the idea that medical professionals are at risk. As we go forward and schools reopen, it's likely that the media will seek to highlight stories of teachers dying. Clearly the plural of anecdote can never be data.

Doctors' PPE might still be less than adequate but it seems that when we are dealing with risks of whatever kind we should focus on the largest ones, e.g., driving to the airport, not the following plane ride, and the point in this case that 'key workers' doing routine jobs are one or more or all of:

• insufficiently aware of the risk they take in meeting others who may be asymptomatic for covid-19
• insufficiently aware of the risk their specific working environment has (confined spaces, for example)
• making insufficient use of PPE

Very clearly PPE does work, otherwise doctors and nurses would be dying in vast numbers, which in fact they are not.

Ok Shoots, what you're saying is that some PPE is obviously better than none.

My point was that we should make more fuss about the deaths of factory workers, taxi drivers etc. than we are about whatever deficiencies there are in medical PPE. Both can be true, but the former is a bigger issue.

Still too early for definitive analysis at this stage.

I completely agree with this. There are so many factors interacting that I think it's impossible to draw any conclusions yet. And we need to add in the fact that research has shown that men are more likely to ignore lockdown conditions. I pass two lots of roadworks on my way to do shopping and literally none of the (all male) workers are standing 2m apart or wearing masks.