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Why does the UK have more daily deaths from Covid than all the EU 27 countries have added together??

135 replies

noostrich · 04/06/2020 15:17

The UK currently has 359 daily deaths - ALL of the other EU 27 states ADDED TOGETHER have only 314.

twitter.com/WritesBright/status/1268313583579885569/photo/1

Why on earth is the UK doing so badly?

How can people be so complacent about how badly the UK government has mishandled the crisis? Sad

OP posts:
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8
AnotherEmma · 04/06/2020 20:34

Some of the excess deaths will have been caused by lockdown and not Covid.

Reduction in health care for example. People too afraid to go to A&E. Cancelled cancer treatment. Failure to diagnose life threatening conditions on time because patients haven't been seen in person. Extra suicides because of the toll on mental health.

These are not actual Covid deaths, they are indirect consequences of Covid - well, consequences of the response to Covid.

Greysparkles · 04/06/2020 20:38

Basically as soon as the government eased the lockdown, the death figures stopped going down

Well this statement makes me question your intelligence tbh.

Egghead68 · 04/06/2020 20:41

We didn’t quarantine or track, trace and isolate early on. We locked down far too late. We didn’t admit people to hospital until their breathing difficulties became very severe. We seeded outbreaks in care homes buy sending infected people back to them.

AgeLikeWine · 04/06/2020 20:42

We locked down at least 10 days too late.
We didn’t lock down care homes until at least a month too late.
We didn’t have the capacity to test & trace even a small fraction of the numbers needed, so we stopped even trying.

These are the three biggest reasons for the UK’s overwhelmingly bad performance, but there are many others.

We didn’t have the capacity to manufacture the PPE we needed, at scale.
Our political decision making is far too centralised in Westminster, so when several key decision makes were knocked out of the game by covid, there was a vacuum.
Boris Johnson is a social libertarian who hates the idea of curtailing people’s personal freedoms. This is a very, very good attribute to have in a PM in normal times, but in a pandemic it’s exactly the wrong approach.

Laniakea · 04/06/2020 20:49

Basically as soon as the government eased the lockdown, the death figures stopped going down

Well this statement makes me question your intelligence tbh.

^ amazing isn’t it! Relaxing lockdown also gave us the ability to go back in time 23.5 days to infect extra people so they could die now & stop the number of deaths falling as much as the might have otherwise done Hmm

CoachBombay · 04/06/2020 20:51

The issue with the excess deaths and this is going to sound very very harsh but I don't really know how to articulate it, so I will apologise in advance.

Covid is increasingly more fatal to the elderly and those with underlying health conditions.

The UK is exceptionally good at keeping the eldelry and those with chronic health conditions alive for longer, thanks to the NHS.

We basically have higher numbers of the population in that demographic compared to countries with privatised health care or poor health care.

If you have a greater population of 70+ with chronic health conditions, you will end up with more excess deaths.

Clavinova · 04/06/2020 21:03

the best measure is "excess mortality"

Even Germany's estimated "excess mortality" is not going to be accurate because only 2 out of 16 federal states are included in the FT data - Berlin (198 deaths) and Hesse (480 deaths) - however, Bavaria have 2,456 deaths and Baden-Württemberg have 1,758 deaths etc.

The cumulative incidence (cases per 100,000) of COVID-19 is currently highest in Bavaria (360), Baden-Wuerttemberg (314), Hamburg (277) and Saarland (276)

www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-06-02-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

What anomalies do other countries have with their data collecting, particularly those countries with a much higher number of deaths than Germany?

ChateauMargaux · 04/06/2020 21:12

@Clavinova. Thanks for that clarification on the data for Germany included in Euromomo.

wintertravel1980 · 04/06/2020 21:29

It is disingenuous to assume that most other countries are is reporting their data.

The excess death data on Euromomo gives a picture that is independent of CV19 classification.

Euromomo (or FT graphs which I find more user friendly) will not show that UK has got more daily COVID deaths than all the EU 27 countries combined. The OP chose to put a sensationalist headline in her post and I answered her direct question. The daily numbers between UK and many of the EU27 countries are not comparable. It does not mean UK death count is low. Of course, it is high but comparing daily numbers is... hmmm... utterly pointless.

iwantmysay · 04/06/2020 21:30

What anomalies do other countries have with their data collecting, particularly those countries with a much higher number of deaths than Germany?

Agree, would be interesting to know the UK's (with its far higher death toll) actual figures.

iwantmysay · 04/06/2020 21:33

@xxyzz

However, Sweden has only had the highest death rate over the past week, with Belgium, Spain, Italy, the UK and France, still ahead over the entire course of the pandemic

Casino218 · 04/06/2020 21:35

Because we have higher rates of obesity. ( and a shitter government).

xxyzz · 04/06/2020 21:43

iwantmysay - that related to a different thread and a previous week (I posted the link on the wrong thread - have now added it to the right one).

Not relevant to this thread which is about current figures and daily death rates not weekly excess death rates per capita.

Sweden has never had a higher number of daily deaths than the UK, not by a very long way.

xxyzz · 04/06/2020 21:44

Though that said, Sweden's figures have been terrible too.

As like the UK, it has been pursuing a policy of herd immunity instead of a tight lockdown and a thorough track and trace policy.

JassyRadlett · 04/06/2020 21:51

What anomalies do other countries have with their data collecting, particularly those countries with a much higher number of deaths than Germany?

Spain has shifted to hide the true death rate from the daily figures. Every time it’s said it has no deaths in a day has been factually incorrect.

noostrich · 04/06/2020 21:55

Do you have any evidence for that claim about Spain?

OP posts:
venetianblue · 04/06/2020 22:09

I don’t know any European country that told citizens it was fine to go round shaking hands; that like something from 19th cen told the ill with the virus not to go to a doctor, not to get treated, but to stay sick at home and take paracetomol (when there was none to be found), to stay home but there were no supermarket delivery slots, actively said not to wear masks and in fact had no masks to provide; that said all could be solved by hand washing ; that said you were fine unless you had symptoms (we know days 1-5 are generally symptomless and v contagious), that did not seem to raise its eyes and look beyond it’s borders; that stopped private sector care; that put most off going to nhs by emptying hospitals; that still now had all the land’s MPs lined up in a park without masks Hmm; that has chief advisors doing the opposite to what public were told (stay in your room and go nowhere if virus) then defend him to the hilt, the list goes on and on.

wintertravel1980 · 04/06/2020 22:09

Do you have any evidence for that claim about Spain?

OP - you might have missed it but this "claim" has already been discussed on this thread.

Here is one of the links:

twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1268450749614358528

PatriciaHolm · 04/06/2020 22:10

From the FT, on the Spanish data -

www.ft.com/content/77eb7a13-cd26-41dd-9642-616708b43673?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6

wintertravel1980 · 04/06/2020 22:11

And here is the FT article on Spain reporting:

www.ft.com/content/77eb7a13-cd26-41dd-9642-616708b43673

JassyRadlett · 04/06/2020 22:16

Thanks all on Spain! It’s fairly shameless...

m00rfarm · 04/06/2020 22:22

If you don’t catch it, you can’t die from it. If you live in a country where people have plenty of space around them and not squashed into cities with excellent road and public transport links, then you’re less likely to catch it. And much less likely to die from it.

iwantmysay · 04/06/2020 22:29

Those FT articles are behind pay walls.

But as i said earlier, given how the UK has fiddled almost everything to paint itslef in a good light, i doubt they have been entirely accurate on deaths either.

Uhoh2020 · 04/06/2020 22:30

Many reasons ....... we are weeks behind a lot if Europe in the transmission of cases..... we are a vastly higher densely populated country compared to other countries so infection will inevitably spread quicker.......the way deaths are reported vary in different countries......I'm sure there will be many other reasons too

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