Diabetes which group shielding or vulnerable? Stay in or not?

[Cherryghost]

I'm a bit confused as to whether people with diabetes should be in the shielded group or not as it's mentioned as a high risk of deaths with corona.
If people with diabetes are not in the shielded group are they still supposed to stay in and not go out?

That suggests type 1 is less at risk? Which is what we’d been assuming from the start. Am I missing something?

Yes. It’s not just that 300 people compared with 2000 have died, it’s what proportion of people with the condition they represent. There are less type 1s than type 2s. Age is still the biggest protective factor - the younger you are, the less likely you are to die. There was also evidence that too tight control is as bad as poor control.

If you look for Partha Kar on Facebook, he took part in the data crunch and there are links there to the full study.

I'm an overweight T2 in her 60s on various DB medications, so I'm shielding as far as I can (as is my DH). Even though I have no other underlying conditions and my HbA1C is reasonably well controlled. Fortunately, I'm getting online grocery deliveries and neighbourhood support. I also just retired this year, so I don't have to worry about working thank goodness.

I think the only reason diabetics are not on the shielding list is that there are too many of us. Bit shit really.

They could shield type 1s there's way less of us

I have 2 close family members who are type 1 diabetics. Official figures have been released and extracted below:

"The new data shows us that of the 23,804 deaths recorded in the study, 7,466 (31.3%) who died from coronavirus had type 2 diabetes, 365 (1.5%) had type 1 diabetes and 69 (0.3%) had other types. The majority of people (66%) didn’t have diabetes. "

Type 2 is mostly linked with obesity and other health conditions so is is lot more high risk. I understand most of those who are shielding have type 2 and other health conditions or are obese.

Both my family members who are type 1 are healthy, normal weight and no other health conditions. Again, i understand that most type 1's who have serious problems also have other underlying health conditions. Both my family members have a very small chance of anything serious coming from this and as such have been told by their diabetes consultants they do NOT need to shield, just to take precautions.

I wonder how many of those admitted with type one survived and how many admitted with type two survived. Is that in the data? That would be better than looking at the simple figures because, as has already been said, there are way more type two diabetics than type one so of course the number of fatalities will be higher.

@WreckTangled the data of 3.5 times more likely to die if type 1 has come from a data crunch undertaken by a team of experts. Seen here:

www.england.nhs.uk/publication/type-1-and-type-2-diabetes-and-covid-19-related-mortality-in-england/

Yes I have seen that but I don't understand half of it

"There was also evidence that too tight control is as bad as poor control"

Please can you tell me where this info came from? I have been desperately trying to keep tight control ( type 2, non- insulin) and have succeeded. I rarely go above 5.8 after meals, down from around 11.0! But perhaps this is not very helpful?

I can’t remember where I saw that I’m sorry @bailey999. I read a lot of Partha Kar’s stuff so have a look at him (easily found on Facebook). I suspect I saw it in relation to type 1 because that’s my concern. The conditions are very different despite having the same name.

Ok thank you!

I think it works out that 0.14% of those admitted with t1 died and 0.26% of those admitted with t2 died. But please don't take that as gospel

I read somewhere that covid does strange things to diabetics. So many were in DKA when they got to hospital. I'll see if I can find the article.

DKA was my first though, especially regarding the tight control. There's regularly people on the diabetes groups with levels in the high teens and even twenties. I would assume that I would go into DKA much quicker than someone who frequently experiences those levels.

Yes dka is definitely a massive risk. I've had infections in the past (urinary tract and ear) that have sent my blood sugar spiralling and ended up in hospital with dka. This combined with severe covid symptoms would not be good news.
It's a bit of a lottery how it will affect each individual with diabetes I guess. I have found that even quite minor illnesses can lead to very high blood sugar levels and bad ones can barely touch them.

Dka would be a major issue. My son had corona virus and the hypers were worse than the cough.

We changed basal from 10 to 17u, correction factor from 1u-6mmol to 1u-3mmol. Food was being bolused on the menstrual +30% health setting as the illness 20% wasn't enough.

And we were still doing corrections every 2 hours round the clock. Me and dh had alternating alarms set. For 2 weeks we didn't drop below 10mmol.

(our latest Hba1c is awful)