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.

*certificate

There's more than one contributory factor but the major one is terrible policy failures. As PP said, excess deaths will be the best way to compare similar countries. The UK's, England's especially, is shocking. At the moment the government have managed to get enough members of the public to swallow the guff about different recording methods (of course the Brits must do it better than all the forriners) but hopefully there will be a public inquiry in due course where questions will be answered. Although the government have to sign off on a public inquiry so we may have to wait a long time, or they could hide the results like with the Russian dossier which they have managed to avoid publishing.

European countries by population density

www.citymetric.com/fabric/these-maps-reveal-truth-about-population-density-across-europe-3625

@feesh
Let's not pretend that Hong Kong and Taiwan didn't have access to a completely different set of data compared to other countries when deciding on what measures to take. The approach taken by the Chinese (including supposed self governing areas) shouldn't be compared to elsewhere as it is almost certain that they had access to more data and were therefore in a better position to determine what would work.

@StealthPolarBear

I was watching the news just now and the said world death toll was 400,000

That was my WTF Moment

How did we ever get to 10% of the world’s total deaths

Yes, I knew we were 2nd highest in absolute terms and per capita (on a per million basis) - but how did this happen?

Covid has been handled appallingly and the number of dead (around the world) is a testament to how incompetent our politicians are and how badly they have failed us. Starting with the local government in China politicians around the world have failed (with a few notable exceptions). We should be very angry about this and demand better. For some reason we're not though and are making lots of excuses for them, I don't understand why.

UK does not make it to the top 10 of having people over 65 by the way in terms of percentage of population anyway - www.prb.org/which-country-has-the-oldest-population/.

We do have a lot of BAME people living here in an area of the world with not enough sunlight so the vit D issue which they would not be lacking in were they in places like India and Africa and we have a lot of older larger men - another risk category, and a massive diabetes and obesity epidemic which puts huge strain on the NHS.

@DippyAvocado
Excess data figures at the current time are next to useless. What matters when it comes to excess deaths is the overall figure over a number of months (or even a couple of years). If most of the people who have died of Corona would have died in the coming months in any case and many who wouldn't have died die in those months due to the social, economic and other medical effects of the lock down it is entirely possible that the countries with the most direct corona deaths will have the least overall excess mortality when considering the whole year.

StatisticalSense- That’s patently nonsense. Even if what you say applied to the “supposedly self-governing” area of Hong Kong, which is a special administrative region of China, that isn’t the situation for Taiwan. Taiwan is not a special administrative region of China, their government certainly wouldn’t have been getting special favours from Beijing. They are an independent country with a totally separate government. China may block the UN from recognising that fact, but it is the political reality.

I think it was the delay in lockdown not the ‘toughness’ that was the problem. Listening to an expert the other day those 9 days of delay really cost us and caused thousands of deaths that could have been avoided.

The government claims to have been guided by the ‘science’ on this. But we didn’t have accurate figures did we? We were only testing in hospitals in March, so where was the science coming from? If we’d have known the true numbers of community spread then they could have pushed through an earlier lockdown. Apparently the peak was actually before lockdown!

We know the virus doesn’t spread outside. It’s inside with close contact. So whilst people in Spain may look at us with horror now. We watched in horror as you kept children indoors for 6 weeks. Just awful and no need for that.

We have messed up monumentally in many areas but I don’t think we could have had a tougher lockdown. We couldn’t have shut people in houses. We are not China.

It was our lack of testing and no idea of the true picture and thus the lack of quick action that was our problem. Not that we were all out exercising a few times a day!!

I love statistics.

From the closest measures I can find, the UK has 1.6% of the world's over 65 population. (11.8 million in UK in 2016; 730 million in world in 2019.) I believe this compares to roughly .8% of the total world population. Comparatively, Germany has 17.88 people over 65, a much larger population, and only 6,000 deaths.

Moreover, the UK does have one of the densest populations in Europe, following only 6 countries (including the Vatican, e.g.). However, those 6 countries also include the Netherlands and Malta, which have respectively 34.7 and a 1.9 deaths per 100,000, compared to the UK's 59.8. The only clear correlation I can see here is Belgium, which is both more dense and has a higher number.

Heathrow is one of the world's busiest airports, and the vast majority of arrivals are international flights rather than domestic ones, so that might have something to do with it.

No two countries are recording in the same way, as the saying goes, comparisons are odious.

I bet most of those deaths are in London. BAME most likely to die also most likely to be fined for breaking lockdown.

More than half of the arrivals at Heathrow go straight back out again.

This letter, printed in the Week is interesting:
To the Financial Times
At last, our opinion leaders have begun to quote death rates (per 100,000) as opposed to simple death totals. This is a much-needed improvement – but is it enough? What other factors are likely to affect the number of people dying in a given country, apart from the size of their population? This is a disease that is directly transmitted from human to human; how physically close people live to each other – and how crowded their public transport systems are – must also have an effect on the rate of transmission, and hence on deaths.
Take a basket of seven European countries and the US. In basic “per 100,000” terms, Belgium fares worst (1) and Germany best (8), with the UK firmly holding the centre ground (4). Adjust this ranking for population density and some aspects change dramatically. The US, previously ranked 7, shoots to the naughty step (1); Belgium sinks to a modest 5, and the UK also drops – from 4 to 6. Germany, however, is the best performer on both measures, always at 8.
This adjusted ranking is not “true”. It is not, in itself, of any direct scientific use; but common sense suggests that it may well be closer to an unknowable “truth” than unadjusted figures. There are a host of other factors which undoubtedly have an effect on death rates: age profile, poverty levels, rate of Bame citizens, Vitamin D levels in relation to geographical latitude, obesity – and perhaps a dozen or so more. The full equation would be hugely complex, and vulnerable to wide margins of error.
As a returning GP working on the NHS 111 Covid-19 Clinical Assessment Service, I call on the journalists and others who use such data to challenge our leaders to demonstrate a better understanding of what is going on: there is nothing in such data to justify the question, “Why have we done so badly?” The only useful question that arises from this exercise is perhaps, “Why has Germany [so far] done so well?”
Dr T.G. Maxwell, East Dean, East Sussex

Worth thinking about when trying to compare countries.

grassy, yes and New York is similar - a travel hub so at one point I think where I live was the London borough worst on the planet for covid 19, hospitals full etc - we have got out of it now but we did worse than inner London as people are older out here, living with more people, less money and near Heathrow too.

Most of Europe (Sweden excepted) has the same sort of measures to deal with Covid. They were not perfect but the UK was undoubtedly worse.

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

In some countries that will be because of lack of reporting or because the disease hasn't really hit yet.

That said the reasons why non-white people are dying disproportionately in the UK are probably mostly not directly related to ethnicity.

Excess deaths in England are off the scale. It is also strange how people say you cant compare to other countries, when the government felt it was ok to do so - oh wait until the comparison was not favourable. Belguim also probably has one of the widest counts for covid deaths and in fact their excess deaths are lower than the covid deaths.
People really want to make excuses for a very poor performance by any count. Yes the country has high density, did the government only just realise this? Maybe an earlier lockdown may have been useful then. The government has made many mistakes.

I do wonder what has gone on in Japan.
They have an older population than the UK by far.
The country is more densly populated.
Tokyo airport is a busier international hub than Hethrow.
They also don't seem to have had a particularly stellar response to the pandemic.

Yet they have vastly fewer cases and deaths than the UK.

Is it cultural? Are Japanese people less likely to claim the rules don't apply to them and everyone secretly or openly believes they are an exception, and eggs others on to also break rules (just go and see your "partner" who doesn't live with you and then go round and give your elderly parents a hug! I can't wear a mask because I have itchy nose syndrome/ don't like the feeling... My kids need to play with my sisters kids because they're missing one another and I want to drink wine with my sister... I need to go shopping every day because reasons etc.). It might not be though becasue Japanese people are not always as conformist and community minded as stereotypes suggest...

Maybe the outliers are just more conspicuous there though because they are outliers, where at least 60% of people in the UK seem to believe they are an exception and a special case...

And for those who argue that someone died of a heart attack but it was recorded as covid, the ONS analysed this and it is not the case.

do we have more BAME here?
and lips turning blue also quoted by Simon Hattenstone, in his long article
www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/06/ive-been-ill-for-months-but-i-still-dont-know-if-it-is-covid-19

@AllIMissNowIsTheSea

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

Not sure where you get that statistic from. According to Wikipedia we are the 32nd most densely populated country. That figure excludes dependencies such as Gibraltar and Hong Kong. A number of the countries ahead of us in population density have very small populations, e.g. Vatican City which has a population of 453. If you limit it to countries with a population of at least 10M, we are the 13th most densely populated country.

On the subject of the thread, comparisons between countries are difficult at this stage. Some are counting everything, some are only counting hospital deaths, some aren't even counting that. And some are deliberately trying to hide their true numbers, e.g. Brazil.

Japan is very mysterious. They did cancel a lot of large events early, but they didn't have a strict lockdown. I've read many theories about Japan, face masks, lack of obesity, lack of talking to each other, good hygeine, the track and trace system. I know someone whose family member got covid in Japan and they were hospitalised despite mild symptoms until they had 2 negative tests. I suspect it may be a combination of factors. I wonder if we will ever know for sure.