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

[noostrich]

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?

Are they for you? How odd, I can access it and I'm not a subscriber.

Some paras -

"The Spanish government has stopped explicitly listing how many deaths have been reported in the last 24 hours, switching to a contentious measure of how many people have died in the past seven days. Nor is it updating the overall tally of deaths as frequently or completely as before.Breaking with its past practice, the ministry’s new policy adds new deaths to the running total only if they occur in the 24 hours before each daily bulletin. All other deaths are only added once a week, when the figures are revised. After the changes were introduced in May, the death rates recorded by the health ministry plummeted. Its cumulative tally of deaths since the beginning of the outbreak also fell by almost 2,000."

"In the latest confusion, on Wednesday the ministry of health figures increased the tally of people who had died over the past seven days from 34 to 63. But at the same time the cumulative total they gave for all those who had died since the outbreak only went up by just one, to 27,128.The problems with the figures are all the more serious since they come as the country is phasing out its lockdown measures. “To come out and say there are zero deaths when deaths are taking place can create a lot of misunderstanding,” said Rafael Bengoa, a former Basque region minister for health and director at the World Health Organization. “We are improvising at a moment when the population needs clear information"

"But Spanish data has been more volatile than that of any other rich country. Just a week ago, the country increased its overall tally of people dying from all causes during the pandemic to 43,000 — up by 12,000.The overnight change — due to revisions rather than a sudden surge in deaths — briefly gave the country the world’s highest excess mortality rate, the measure most widely used to compare the pandemic’s toll across countries."

To be fair we know we are weeks behind the rest of Europe so why don’t we compare in two weeks time??

@iwantmysay given how you misrepresent other things I doubt you've been entirely honest in your post either.

We are not two weeks behind France, Spain, Belgium or Sweden. Italy yes, but not most of Europe.

We do not have a health service that us better at keeping old people alive than the rest of Europe. Italy has a more aging population than the UK.

I live in Spain and even though in the area where I live has had very very few cases and deaths, everyone is very respectful of social distancing and EVERYONE wears a mask. The lockdown was so strict here, no one want to return to that. The Spanish PM is very firm and everyone knows what to do and what is expected. I'm shocked by the figures that are coming out of the UK and am sad that my family may not be able to visit when the borders re open in July, because the UK has been so reckless with social distancing.

Is it that we have been reckless with social distancing though? I think we’ve established that outdoors the risk of spread is low.

I think our late lockdown and other factors contribute not the fact some people are a bit closer than 2m from time to time. Plus I don’t agree that children were kept inside for 6 weeks and nobody could exercise outdoors in Spain. We know those things are low risk and hugely beneficial for health.

Maybe we had more people breaking the lockdown rules. But I think other factors are at play.

We are behind most of Europe by a couple of weeks. I was talking about their lockdowns while having lunch at a leisure centre with my extended family, having all been swimming. We took ourselves into social distancing a week later because of vulnerable grandparents.

We have also managed it extremely badly. Seeding of care homes a key issue.

The number of weeks 'behind' we are is driven by the date we locked down compared to other nations, not the transmission rate or anything else. Its the lockdown that causes the peak and then decline. So yes, we are at least 2 weeks behind, more than that behind Italy - though I'm not sure of exact time frame of various lockdowns.

The peak and decline is a manufactured thing driven by the policy to lockdown. If we hadnt locked down it would have either continued to increase exponentially or reached a natural peak and decline - all eyes on Brazil to see what actually happens.

It’s very sad to look at the UK stats :(

We’re still not reporting all deaths.

So countries are reporting different but yet people still wont accept that we cannot compare our status to other countries because we aren't comparing like for like

So people bang on aboutnhownhigh our numbers are in whole of europe or whatever and just ignore the way states are being recorded

The UK sadly is the most affected country in Europe. The exact recording and counting methods unfortunately don't make that much of a difference. Let's hope lessons can be learned.

@cyclingmad - I hear you and it’s frustrating but on the whole people don’t question for themselves what they’ve read or heard. Especially in this scenario it’s very hard to unpick what is fact, opinion, sound theory or simply propaganda to further a particular agenda so it’s understandable that people cling onto a report or headline that has captured their attention without further investigation.

If there’s one thing I’ve taken from this whole thing is to teach my dd critical thinking skills. It’s as important to make sure you are as informed about facts that fit your bias as the ones that don’t and that it’s okay to change your mind as you become more informed.

@Plbrookes

What have i misrepresented?

This govt told us 2 weeks ago, antibody testing would begin that week on NHS staff, its now in the coming weeks! they said they put a protective arm around care homes but clearly didn't.
They have completely misrepresented the testing figures, including posted tests, throat and nasal swabs on the same person as 2 tests.
The 4000 bed nightingale was infact equipped for 500 beds and even then didn't have the staff, so treated 30 ?
The track and trace app won't be up and running until the end of the month and even then wont be working correctly until October!!!

We have reported 40k deaths, yet excess deaths are well over 60k ? 20k deaths unaccounted for.

I am sure all counties don't report deaths accurately but this narrative that the UK isn't among the worst countries for how its handling CV is astonishing.
Try comparing us to the best performing countries?

However, latest ONS figures show a drop in daily infections, down from 8000 to 5000 per day, so atm we are heading in the right direction.

Try comparing us to the best performing countries

I’m not being argumentative but I’m interested to know your thinking behind this comment. I’ve been watching other countries with interest and an element of frustration at times that as a country we’re seemingly reluctant to take lessons available on board.

My stance is that this was initially a complete balls up and whilst our total figures speak for themselves I’m trying to remain optimistic we can get a grip moving forward (to a point we already have).

@iwantmysay, Actually scrub that, I’ve reread your comment and I agree with you

UK has a higher population than the likes of spain and Italy all crammed onto an island a fraction of the size stands to reason the virus will spread quicker between more people in a smaller space

Just for info, the population of Italy is similar to the U.K.. In millions:
Spain 46.94
Italy 60.63
U.K. 66.65

stands to reason the virus will spread quicker between more people in a smaller space

Actually,the reason for the high numbers in Italy is because the outbreak was largely confined to one particular region (a densely populated one). Other regions of Italy were much less badly affected. In the UK, the virus has spread fairly uniformly across the country, with localised hotspots, which will probably make it harder to contain than a regional outbreak.

I'll give you lots of reasons.

-10 years of austerity and underfunding for the NHS, social care and the police.
-High rates of poverty / BAME
-Dense population / mobile population
-Unhealthy life styles: obesity, smoking and binge drinking.
-Herd immunity but then not herd immunity.
-Too late to close boarders or have checks.
-Too late to stop mass gatherings.
-Too late to close schools and lock down, even then it was too soft.
-Piss poor policing.
-Poor testing system, abandoning track and trace only to have to start it up again.
-PPE shortage - propaganda to convince people masks not effective - now they are?
-Poor guidance and response throughout: stay at home, but follow your instincts, stay alert! Dominic Cummings.
-Discharging thousands of elderly patients to care homes without testing them, causing the situation we currently see.

The ONS reports we've had over 62,000 excess deaths which is more than the amount of English civilians who died in WWII.

It's been an absolute fucking disgrace

More Populations..
Russia 149
Germany 84
France 65
Ukraine 44
Poland 37
And then seeing as the numbers seem to ignore Portugal, Greece, Austria and any country who was formerly behind the iron curtain, I will just add...
Netherland 17
Belgium 11
Sweden 10
Denmark 5.8
Finland 5.5
Norway 5.4

And population density... UK is less densely populated than the Netherlands and Belgium but only slightly more densely populated than Gernany while Belgium has more deaths per million inhabitants than the UK, both the Netherlands and Germany have significantly less.

So its not a simple relationship between death rates and population density.

www.worldometers.info/population/countries-in-europe-by-population/

Many of these deaths happened days, weeks or even months ago (some deaths reported on this day actually happened in March).

Different countries record their deaths in completely different ways. Spain's system artificially reduces their number.

We're 2/3 weeks behind most of these countries.

It's lazy misrepresentation of data - lots of experts agree.

@ChateauMargaux.

As far as a small island nation goes for comparison japan has almost double our population with areas of incredibly dense population and their figures currently stand at approximately 17k cases and 900 deaths. They also have the same kind of inverse pyramid aged population we do (roughly).

The causes of the U.K.’s particularly high death toll are going to be varied. It won’t be down to any one factor but a mix of bad policy and population characteristics alongside how we have measured our data.

I dont see how we are 2/3 weeks behind most other countries

Did we not find out about the virus at the same time?

We were 2 weeks behind italy. Maybe spain. But originally we were pretty neck and neck with france. Especially considering a lot of deaths in march took weeks to publish.

Even if its down to british people not following rules, why is it other countries can and we cant?

I think theres lots and lots of reasons why. We locked dowm too late, we had a softer lockdown than other countries, densely populated country, elderly population, high levels of obesity, lack of clear leadership, waffling from our government, lack of trust in our government, years of neglecting the NHS and yes possibly different collecting of data

Few deaths reported in the daily numbers occurred months or even weeks ago, why would they? PM's are not, in the vast majority of cases, being done and deaths by law need to be registered within a few days.
That is why its best to look at the trend on numbers and its still 100s of deaths and 1000s of infections each and every day and the R rate is still v close to 1.

Boris apologists need to try harder with their excuses.