Are we being tricked into thinking deaths are being wrongly recorded as corona?

[Cherryghost]

Feel like there has been a shift from that deaths have been underestimated at the start and for about 7 weeks into lockdown and most people assumed there were a lot more deaths than stated.

This turned out to be true down to the figures not counting care home deaths.

Now the consensus seems to be that the deaths /cases are over stated and there is to be a enquiry as to how the deaths are recorded by Tory govt.
I can't be the only one thinking the Tories are spinning this for 2 reasons.

1. get people out spending thinking it's safe the numbers were over estimated.

2. damage limitation so they don't appear accountable for the high death rate and handled it the worst in Europe.

Well we know what the excess deaths are, so the rest doesn't really matter does it?

Absolutely, and there is no evidence that a substantial portion of these weren’t Covid-related.

I think an over inflation of figures counteracted by those who potentially died of COVID in care homes ot being recorded as such.
www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/deaths-in-care-homes-what-do-the-numbers-tell-us

Across the whole course of the epidemic the PHE numbers are understated. But since around June the “once a COVID case always a COVID case” approach has started to mean that PHE Covid death figures are noticeably overstated.

That’s worth correcting because you want your live data to be as accurate as possible, to drive appropriate decision-making about releasing lockdown but it absolutely doesn’t mean that the entire epidemic was not as big a deal as we were led to believe. I think Hancock could and should be doing a better job in distinguishing those two facts. Some people who are dedicated to thinking it’s a coverup in one direction or another won’t trust him either way but he should at least try to communicate better.

The deaths are inflated due to the way they record the deaths.
I know someone who died of a drug overdose and their cause of death was listed as Covid.
Most of the people that died " of Covid" died with it. And don't even get me started on the fact that doctors could have it listed as cause of death without even a test.
As far as I'm concerned, they have yet to prove that anyone has directly died OF Covid.

My husband is a funeral director and he had several deaths during lockdown classed as covid by doctors who hadn't actually seen or tested the person to confirm.

But during April particularly he was on his knees with the workload. He actually came home one day distressed at the volume of bodies coming in (this is a man who deals with death every day and has done for years) so whichever way you look at it an excessive amount of people were dying

A subtle but significant difference, and why the UK stats look so bad

I know the Govt is incompetent but surely they would have questioned the PHE stats?
For months they have been having daily briefings, telling us all the numbers who have died, defending our death rate etc and yet apparently had no idea what these numbers were based on?

Excess deaths would indicate that if anything, the UK numbers are on the low side.

This latest by the Govt is similar to Johnsons "Blame the care homes" it muddies the waters and shifts blame.

As pp said, uk has been counting deaths with covid not of covid.

If you have ever tested positive, and then die (regardless of actual cause of death) it has gone down as a covid death.

The head of the Office for National Statistics gave an interview a couple of days ago in which he said that his organisation's figures were the most reliable and are about 48000 coronavirus deaths.

Well we know what the excess deaths are, so the rest doesn’t really matter does it?

At the moment deaths are at a 5 year low, there are no excess, there are reductions in some areas up to 12% so how do you record that? The last 4 weeks have been the same in all but one region of England, do you minus the deaths that ‘should’ have happened from the figures? How do you account for the positives from this method of recording? Were the people who died at the beginning of the outbreak some of the people who would have died now due to other causes/old age?

I’m think PHE do need to change which deaths to include as Covid as including anyone who has ever had Covid then dies in the future from any cause will mean no one ever recovers which is ridiculous. Records won’t give a true picture of how Covid is really affecting the country, accuracy is needed to target government spending. With new treatments developed that showed no deaths from Covid in hospitalised patients would you want these patients recorded as Covid deaths when they do die in future? Seems disingenuous.

www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/coronavirus-death-toll-higher-ons-stats-a4504191.html

Only on PHE figures not ONS figures lazypuppy - ONS goes on death certificates.

And as for the poster who thinks there’s no proof that anyone’s ever died of Covid - if the X-rays, the huge spike in elderly deaths, the testimony of ICU staff, the work of researchers worldwide doesn’t convince you that this disease can kill (mostly the old and vulnerable, but still people with years of life left to live) then nothing we can say will make a difference - so take your tinfoil hat and sod off. How many millions of people would need to be involved in a conspiracy of this nature? And why?

I suspect that for every death wrongly attributed to covid, another one that was covid-related has been attributed to something else and it all comes out in the wash. A lot of people were not tested in the early days.

Other countries , like Germany, counted only those people who died “of” the virus

I don't know why people are still making this claim about Germany - the RKI made clear this was not the case as early as late March. Their basis for recording covid deaths was the same as ours.

Deaths week on week are below average now, that maybe because people have died early than they would have due to CV-19.

Excess deaths are calculated on who have died up to a year early than expected.

Have PHE said they have been recording anyone who once had CV and then say died in a traffic accident as a Covid -19 death?

As i said early, its beyond belief that the Govt accepted the PHE figures without question.

It was all too coincidental that the government started kicking up a fuss about death count - it was a stick to beat Public Health England with.

They’re casting around for the villains here when actually they need to look in the mirror.

Also, let’s be clear, PHE is part of the department of health - which is part of the government.

There was an interesting graph which showed that actually this is background noise.

Anyone who's had a relative die knows quite how careful the coroners are in their reports - with a close relative a few years back, the coroner rang to explain their report, in a case of a very simple massive heart attack in someone with a history of heart problems. The coroner went through it all in detail.

Plus this disease is something that can go on for months, or leave organ damage or blood clots which might take a while to then cause a death.

Unless there are unscrupulous coroners out there with shares in masks or something, I don't believe for an instant that they're marking down anything that isn't based on the evidence they have.
No matter how you measure the figures, this government has handled the crisis incredibly badly compared with most other countries, and now they're trying to blame coroners, nursing care staff, and the general public for their own lack of guidance and leadership.

"Deaths week on week are below average now, that maybe because people have died early than they would have due to CV-19."
That's true. Also there's been far less traffic on the roads, which means fewer traffic accidents and fewer asthma/breathing related problems. Plus presumably social distancing has calmed knife crime a bit, too.

Very few deaths go through coroners office.
My view is that excess deaths are likely to be the result of the NHS being closed to all but Covid related cases. So the elderly who would have been admitted for a few days for fluids and antibiotics for UTI, which could potentially kill them with brittle health, would have died a few months sooner than anticipated. Many care home residents rotate between care home and hospital during their last few years.
Effectively Covid has contributed but not caused many end of life scenarios. Morally a decision has to be made who is prioritised. I would hope that my life ( have dependant child, still working and potentially have several decades of healthy life) would be prioritised above a 90 yr old with dementia and brittle health. I know if I was the 90 yr old I wouldn’t expect to be at the front of the queue for ICU.

Oh okay, I didn't realise that. Looks like 41% go through the coroner. It was my first close family death, so I assumed that's what happened with everyone, getting detailed reports. It was probably because they died suddenly, alone at home rather than in hospital or a care setting, so they had to investigate.

There’s a load of crap spouted about how most Covid deaths are “with Covid” not “of Covid” with this usually based on some anecdote of an individual case that’s extrapolated without justification, with the implication that Covid has been wildly exaggerated.

I’ve extracted a quote from the ONS to give the actual position (unless you believe that the ONS is on Bill Gates’ lizard overlord 5G plot to deceive humanity):

“Between 1 March and 30 June 2020, there were 218,837 deaths that occurred in England and Wales and that were registered by 4 July 2020. Over a fifth of these deaths (23.0%) involved the coronavirus (COVID-19) (50,335 deaths). The doctor certifying a death can list all causes in the chain of events that led to the death and pre-existing conditions that may have contributed to the death. Using this information, we determine an underlying cause of death. More information on this process can be found in our user guide. In the majority of cases (46,736 deaths, 92.8%) where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, it was found to be the underlying cause of death.”

Deaths week on week are below average now, that maybe because people have died early than they would have due to CV-19.

Deaths were lower in January and February too, so unless the reduction is significant, you can’t read too much into it. The reduction is nothing like as pronounced as the spike though.