Am I missing something? One in ten covid deaths in the UK?

[StealthPolarBear]

I realise there will bee differences in the way other countries are classifying and reporting deaths, and some won't be reporting at all. But with figures as they stand, one in ten worldwide deaths are in the UK - that is a huge proportion surely.

Well we have made a monumental cock up of it.

Is it because of population density? We are one of the most densely populated countries?

Yes we cocked up (and still are). But that figure will change. The virus is now really getting going in central and south America, in India and in parts of Africa. It wont be one in ten deaths here for long.

Yes that's true, sadly as ours decline others will increase.
Is the UK really that densely populated? I know compared to the US and Australia we are and probably France and Spain, but the rest of Europe?

It’s impossible to judge at this stage as everyone is recording deaths differently. Spain have just completely overhauled their reporting system. Some countries are still only recording hospital deaths. There is no way some of the figures from eg Brazil are accurate. We’ve been told a number of times that the most comparable way to tell is by looking at excess deaths in a year or so.
That’s not to say we are doing well, we clearly are not. But it’s not nearly as straightforward as just looking at the existing figures that are out there.

I get that, but even if we triple the deaths elsewhere we're still accounting for 3% of the world's deaths!

UK is what % of the global population age 60+?

What I don’t understand is how countries with a majority BAME population have the lowest death rates.

Those are officially recorded statistics, OP. If you think every country in the world is accurately reporting their death rates (either through practical reasons or the wish to conceal) then I have a bridge to sell you.

A lot of those countries have very young population pyramids, and relatively few people living with chronic health conditions. The unwell older adults in those countries usually die rather than have a health service that sustains them for years. The demographics matter a lot.

I also suspect that climate or temperature or something will turn out to matter in a small way to spread or severity, but that's a very speculative hunch.

If it’s true that’s just an interim figure. No one will know which countries do better/worse in the Covid scenario until some time to come.

biglittlemedium people love trotting that out, but the UK is the 49th most densly populated country in the world. Fourty nineth, noth fourth...

@feelingverylazytoday

Those are officially recorded statistics, OP. If you think every country in the world is accurately reporting their death rates (either through practical reasons or the wish to conceal) then I have a bridge to sell you.

^ This^

I'm not suggesting there haven't been cock-ups, but, for example, Brazil's President has just decided not to publish deaths to prevent people criticising him (like that's going to happen); and in India official figures don't include the millions of poor people who die every day so nobody knows (or, often, cares) what they die of.

It’s not massively surprising really. There were people here whose lips were turning blue and only then were they permitted to call an ambulance. In the country I’m in, you are taken to either a hotel or hospital once diagnosed, to be kept safe, prevent spread of the virus and to isolate you. They have been contact tracing from the get-go, so people are being tested proactively and caught early. We have also been using the plasma treatment from the start, whereas they only started trials for this (tried and tested) process relatively recently in England. We are also all wearing masks all the time (even outdoors and when in the car with more than one person) which has cut our transmission rates down hugely.

I’ve been watching agog from overseas. Literally couldn’t have been handled any worse in Britain.

Sorry, I meant to say there were people ON here (ie Mumsnet) whose lips were turning blue...

The lips turning blue poster was actually shown to be a troll.

The median age in the UK is 40.5, which again is way down the list - France, Spain, Italy, Japan and Germany, Austria, Croatia, the Netherlands, Canada, South Korea amoung many, many other countries all have older populations on average. Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands are both more densly populated and have an older population.

The United States is neither densly populated nor does it have a particularly elderly population.

Both the UK and the US have "populist" leaders who are only interested in advancing themselves and not in the wellbeing of their populations though...

It is ridiculous

Watching in horror from Spain. I've been out of work and my kids off school in a real lockdown (as in, no leaving the house at all, no garden, an actual police presence and 500€ minimum fines etc) and finally just coming out of it and hoping to get the the uk so I can see my family again (dd has forgotten her grandma) and your ridiculous govt decide to let their own infected advisors jolly about the country unchecked but put a quarantine on foreign arrivals, from ppl who actually stood up and got their shit together at great personal expense. We have had one death today, but by all means blame the foreigners, that's the only thing BJ is good at.

I just want to see my mum after 6 months. So angry.

People discuss these figure like we're at the end. UK was one of the first countries to have cases, due to London being such an international hub. Even if it is coming to an end here, it's only just getting started in many other places, especially developing nations where there is less international travel.

I swing continuously between, let's get back to normal and my god there's so much worse to come.

Good point about age breakdown.
I've already acknowledged that some countries aren't reporting.

StealthPolarBear The UK does not have a particularly elderly population, nor is it the world's most trustworthy statistics publisher, over and above every other country in Europe. The USA is not better at reporting than Canada or Australia either...

Was it Trump or Boris who tried to spin the numbers saying it was great to have the most weekly Covid deaths because that meant his government was best at counting?

@FlamingoAndJohn

What I don’t understand is how countries with a majority BAME population have the lowest death rates.

Young populations (low life expectancy), climate differences, knowing how to deal with pandemics due to Ebola, better Vitamin D levels and far fewer overweight people will be factors.

US and UK in particular have just been completely clueless how to respond. Italy and then Spain were caught cold by it earlier but took the actions to get a grip on it.

I heard an interesting argument the other day which, although it sounds like heartless excuse making, actually makes a lot of sense to me:

The UK's death toll is horrendous but is actually a reflection of our good healthcare system, good standard of living and general success in keeping people alive.

Countries which have very large numbers of cases but very few deaths (India, Peru, Iran, Chile) cannot be compared to us because the majority of people in the UK who have died of coronavirus would already have been dead if they were living in these other countries. Unless you are rich, you don't survive chronic health conditions into very old age in the same way that people do in the UK.

This could even explain why our death toll is so much worse than the US - how many poor, disabled and sick people die in the US through lack of insurance for medication to keep them alive.

If many of the chronically ill, disabled and elderly aren't alive to catch Covid in poorer countries then their death rates for Covid look an awful lot better than ours.

The biggest issues I can see with this argument are Germany and Canada. But maybe these countries are just so much better than us that they manage to have both the good healthcare system and to work well to contain Covid-19.

We have done a bad job in the pandemic but the tragic result is so devastating because we had previously been saving people who would not have been saved in many other countries.

@FlamingoAndJohn those countries tend to have young demographics and relatively low rates of lifestyle diseases. The biggest risk factor is still being old and fat.

According to the list on Wikipedia, the UK is ranked 61st in the World for median age, which does put significantly above average and well above most with majority BAME populations.