Can someone explain the numbers?

[FarAwayIsland]

I’ve been reading that worldometer has listed an increase of 556 deaths today but the briefing said a little over 100 why is this?

Ha was coming her to ask the same. If you click on the uk and then click on the bar graph for 1st June it says 111, very confusing!

From David Paton on Twitter (he crunches numbers): "Additional deaths, identified from Pillar 2 testing in England, have been added to the data over the last week. In total 445 deaths have been added, with dates of death back to 26 April 2020."

The source button takes you to this which also says 111 (and that’s across all settings)

The govt has come up with some half arsed explanation about them being from 24 April - 31 May and being to do with additional testing or some such
twitter.com/_jamesmeek/status/1267492421325201409?s=21

Although that’s the official explanation rather than his - he’s just quoting it

Pillar 2 testing is the commercial testing.

So essentially commercial partners have now reported another 445 positive COVID tests from deaths reported from end April-end May, so they need to be added into the overall total (which is what Worldometer have). The govt decided to just add them in to the total.

The 111 reported today is from the normal sources reported every day. This also comprises deaths that actually happened over a number of days.

@RoosterPie when you say 'half arsed explanation' do you mean an explanation which you couldn't be bothered to read, let alone understand?

[quote RoosterPie]The govt has come up with some half arsed explanation about them being from 24 April - 31 May and being to do with additional testing or some such
twitter.com/_jamesmeek/status/1267492421325201409?s=21[/quote]
That is the explanation, why do you say it's half-arsed?

That's sneaky. We've always known that the daily deaths number isn't actually the number of people who died yesterday but the number reported yesterday.

They should absolutely have said that they had 556 reported yesterday not 111. They've massaged it to make it seem like the numbers are reducing daily.

I kind of understand the reasons for the difference in numbers. Also on 29th there was another 121 deaths just added the total and not announced as such. That’s over 650 deaths not being reported as daily figures or even mentioned. This isn’t being transparent imo, it’s sneaky as we aren’t being told about them and the fact that the daily numbers are higher than we are being told. That’s hundreds of people who are loved ones not just numbers

OK, so the government produces daily counts of reported deaths in addition to the standard official statistics on death registrations and points out differences between these two sources, and reasons for later adjustments to cumulative figures, and publishes these on the web for anyone to look at, but you need the narrative to be that they're massaging the figures. If it makes you happy I guess.

We've always known that the daily deaths number isn't actually the number of people who died yesterday but the number reported yesterday.

That has always been the case for hospital deaths. The historic deaths in the community and care homes were added to hospital numbers retrospectively several weeks ago.

Hospital death reporting continues to follow the established process and be based on the difference between daily cumulative totals. The difference of 445 does appear to relate to community and care homes so restating historic numbers due to methodology changes is not inconsistent with the previous practice.

So why not say in the briefing "there have been 111 deaths, we have also added in 445 deaths that occurred mid April to end of May. These were tests that were completed via a different testing stream" rather than just skipping over it.

They told us when they added in the care home deaths.

@TorysSuckRevokeArticle50 I agree with you. If there is a reasonable explanation the I accept that. What I don’t accept is those being added without a mention and expecting us to just shrug our shoulders and say ‘never mind’. We also need it pointing out to us that the figures aren’t what we thought they were, so the daily deaths for the last 10days are actually over 600 short, which is actually quite a lot more than we thought from the daily amounts. I suspect they know this which is why they didn’t mention it

"So why not say in the briefing "there have been 111 deaths, we have also added in 445 deaths that occurred mid April to end of May."
I agree that they should do this.

Because the daily briefings are a party campaign presentation, not an attempt to keep us informed.

They are upfront about the cumulative totals and the daily figure, they explain the anomalies in the published slides and they explain that the ONS measure is higher than the short-term indicator they present at the briefings. No doubt, if they went through the statistical details and caveats at each briefing you'd be complaining that they were hiding the figures by making it too complicated.