UK's daily death rate is now the highest in the world

[effingterrified]

"The UK now has the highest rate of confirmed deaths from Covid-19 worldwide, averaging close to 5 in every million people per day.

Figures from the last seven days show that the average death rate in the UK is now more than that of France and Italy combined."

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-uk-death-toll-rate-world-map-tracked-a9532286.html

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I wish we had either

A) locked down earlier, harder and faster then released fortnightly

B) just “done a Sweden” by trusting the population to try and distance stay home for themselves whilst accepting that if you’re going for herd immunity without paralysing the health service this is your only way - the Swedes have some the highest levels of trust in public institutions AND one another in the world so might explain why they’re doing ok

As @LillianGish says we reap the worst of both worlds by having what now appears to have been too slow a reaction as Boris was going for herd immunity before SAGE and the WHO piped up and he did a complete U turn.

Even if the UK turns out not to have the highest rate, I hope some people on here aren’t wilfully denying that the UK will be amongst the worse rates and it’s no mystery why, poor testing, lock down too late, lack of sufficient PPE.

And as for some saying on here we need to come out of lockdown immoderately, athough the numbers are v thankfully coming down many epidemiologists say they need to come down a bit more for the test, trace and isolate system they are currently (hopefully, not much about it yesterday from govt) setting up to be effective and keep numbers down until therapeutics or a vaccine is developed. I realise a vaccine is not guaranteed, I have my hopes more on therapeutics that will stop the disease becoming severe in some.

The alternative to test, trace and track once the case numbers are low enough to be effective at keeping numbers reasonably low is letting the virus spread significantly until therapeutics are found/developed which will mean probably at least the same number of deaths as now which is appalling.

Much poorer countries, Vietnam, India etc with large dense populations in urban areas, worse healthcare have kept their numbers and deaths lower and the common denominator is they locked down much sooner along the curve than the UK. Our govt have made huge mistakes and I hope enough of the population understand and recognise this voting them out in the next general election a long, long 4.5 years away.

Typo,, ha, not immoderately, but immediately

This is interesting:

"Excess mortality for the 15-64 age group: the English outlier
More disturbing is the comparative story for the 15-64 age group, where England’s relative record in
excess mortality in the Covid-19 era is particularly poor. At its peak (i.e. in the week with the highest
excess mortality) , it is 2.7 times worse than the weekly peak in next worst country, Spain, almost 4
times worse than France and Belgium, and almost 5 times worse than Italy’s peak weekly excess
deaths in the age group.
9 The death rate from Covid is strongly age-related and is always far lower for
the 15-64 age group than for those aged 65 and over. Within the UK, peak excess deaths for Wales
look only slightly above what EuroMOMO call the ‘substantial’ level of Z=4, marked as the red line in
the charts, while those in Scotland and Northern Ireland are below that level, see Figure 2. However,
for England, the excess death rate for the 15-64 age group, though lower than for those aged over 65,
is strikingly higher than in other countries or regions in Europe. The 15-64 age group includes the mass
of the working age population. Moreover, England appears to be the only country in Europe and the
rest of the UK, for which deaths had not fallen back below the level Z=2 by week 17 (i.e. the week
ending April 26), but was still 24.1. This is concerning and baffling."

"Are there useful comparative lessons from other countries?
Germany’s better comparative record gives some clues to explain the far worse performance of
England and some other countries. Important were the early large-scale testing and contact tracing,
trust in the government’s social distancing guidelines and the fact that many of the initially infected,
returning from skiing holidays were young and fit.10 Germany developed the first coronavirus test in
mid-January11 and ensured that capacity to manufacture large quantities of the test kits was rapidly
rolled out. Germany has more than three times as many hospital beds and intensive care beds than
the UK, and many more ventilators. Patients were admitted into hospitals at a much earlier stage if
they were unable to shake off the symptoms within the course of a week. Many cities introduced
‘coronavirus taxis’, enabling medical staff to visit patients at home and take a test. If positive, the GP
would then be in touch every other day to enquire about the development of the disease. If someone
experienced breathing problems, they were sent straight to hospital where beds and, if need be, ntilators, were available. It seems that Germany built up stocks of personal protective equipment
(PPE) for health workers earlier than other countries."

Reference here

Oh that is interesting @ lacerb, i am very bemused as to why England is so much ahead of wales in terms of excess deaths - data source being the same.

Get places open again and shield over 70's/vulnerable.

You do realise that there are millions, maybe tens of millions who are vulnerable, don't you?

There are GPs, teachers, nurses, hospital consultants, who are "vulnerable" - you can't just take them out of society and lock them behind closed doors for months, maybe a year or two, and hope things will be OK. Who will do their work?

One of our neighbours is a clinical lead senior consultant at the local hospital. He's currently shielding and doing what he can at home, which isn't much as his specialism is very "hands on", so just doing basic paperwork really well below his pay grade. He says his team is really struggling as one of his registrars is also off work shielding.

Shielding people also have families to look after - elderly relatives, young children, etc.

People shielding aren't all old and unproductive, just sitting around waiting to die in care homes like some people clearly think!

@ToffeeYoghurt

Threads on Mumsnet don't change anything. How many people on here have contacted their MP about this?

Don't presume because I've made a comment on the massive duplication of threads and people's inability to understand comparing apples with apples data that I think testing and PPE provision have been acceptable as I don't.

The number of threads on Mumsnet complaining about lockdown, flouting lockdown as it doesn't apply to them, saying they wouldn't sign up to track and trace, not doing the random swab test as it will be uncomfortable and body autonomy is more important etc. Whilst I hold them accountable, this is not just a govt problem. It's a societal problem.

We're also not considering the massive death rate from a trashed economy pushing people into poverty. So yes, yawn, at another thread looking at data from a single point in time and not any of the broader issues.

The UK just performed really badly in so many fronts and it's an embarrassment! PPE, late lockdown, NHS on its knees which meant inadequate treatment guidelines, not enough testing...

It's sad, unnecessary and it cost thousands of lives. But we have what we deserve, what we voted for. It was predictable and is hardly surprising with a grossly incompetent self-serving money focussed government.

just “done a Sweden” by trusting the population to try and distance stay home for themselves

Did Swedes go to Anfield and Cheltenham despite having symptoms?

Did Swedes go on holiday to inflected countries the day before lockdown?

Did Swedes fill the pubs on the Friday before lockdown literally minutes after the pubs were told to close?

Did Swedes continue to not wash their hands despite being told to in the weeks leading up to lockdown?

Perhaps the Swedes had more common sense and actually did what they were told to do?

Many have contacted their mps yesterday and many mps did a u turn over the dc affair. It did appear to have made a difference.

Until we get to the point where we are having to choose which life we save because of a lack of ventilators, I don’t think anyone can say we have been in as bad a position as Italy was.

I was also looking at the excess deaths for England and whilst it has come down a lot it has not come down to near or near normal range. Wales, scotland and northern ireland have and are much lower. I dont have any explanation for this.

@Kazzyhoward I think I fudged my point... should have been

BUT the Swedes have some the highest levels of trust in public institutions AND one another in the world so might explain why they’re doing ok

Whether people like it or not numbers are falling. There was never that VE second spike or bank holiday second spike.

www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/weston-hospital-closed-coronavirus-cummings-4164063

Lots of elderly people in seaside towns now at risk due to stupidity and government failure.

@OverTheRainbowLiesOz apparently this is old news and happened a while ago

Sweden's not doing well.
They've now got one of the highest death rates in Europe.

Apparently Swedes are alarmed. As are true immediate neighbours in Scandinavia.

Its definitely happening NOW in my area. I know old people who are scared to go out now.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/just-7-per-cent-of-stockholm-had-covid-19-antibodies-by-end-of-april-study-sweden-coronavirus

From the article
Finland warned it would be risky to welcome Swedish tourists after figures suggested the country’s death rate per capita was the highest in Europe over the seven days to 19 May.

@LaCerbiatta
Very interesting.
So younger people in England are at more risk from Covid than elsewhere in Europe.

How do you "count differently?" Its one two three universally isnt it?

@SweetLikeChocolateBoy The closure of the Somerset hospital was yesterday. That, given the bank holiday, isn't old news. So the new cases have been infected most probably in the last two weeks.

some countries have blatantly lied about their figures Like we were when we were pretending the deaths in care homes were nothing to do with Covid?