Problems with COVID figures

[Northernsoulgirl45]

So the Govt are unable to provide figures for COVID infections today . A cynical person would think it is because the figures are bad.
Thoughts appreciated

@AnaadiNitya So you think PHE keep checking if anyone who tested positive has died of a traffic accident.... riiiiiight!!!

Sorry but all you are repeating is what is alleged to have happened, there is ZERO evidence that this was the case.... so unless you have some, You are just spreading gossip, why not wait for Hancocks non existent inquiry lol!

These is also the normalised death rates which haven't fallen until very recently nor do your beliefs explain excess deaths and if someone had terminal ovarian cancer which is expected to kill them within 12 months but dies with CV inside a month because they couldn't breath, it might just be a CV death? but not according to you!

www.cebm.net/covid-19/why-no-one-can-ever-recover-from-covid-19-in-england-a-statistical-anomaly

Here you go jasjas no need to be a dick about it.

What no come back jasjas ? did an article from the U.K. no.1 leading research organisation in Oxford University satisfy your need for proof that I wasn’t just listening to ‘gossip’?

Did you have a good look round the site? Interesting isn’t it?

Maybe you should change your approach when talking to other posters, you make quite a habit of it tbh

The thing is, the ONS’ list of Covid deaths is still way higher than PHE’s. So even if PHE got it wrong on a few occasions, the true death figure won’t be far out.

PHE list all deaths that tested positive (including those who seemingly recovered). Some I agree will have been mistakenly added but many will be relevant because of the blood clots, heart attacks and strokes Covid causes)

The ONS shows all deaths with Covid marked on a death certificate by a doctor after consideration (rather than phe workers looking at a database).

The ONS deaths total is much higher than PHE’s.

So it’s hard to suggest PHE’s is far out.

The PHE cumulative total will not be significantly overstated, but as time goes on and the number of people with a positive test on their file builds up and the number of actual Covid deaths diminishes, they could be significantly overstated for each new day.

It’s a real issue when it comes to the current live figures, bearing in mind that there are zero or negative excess deaths at the moment, but it’s also been used by conspiracy theorists with an axe to grind about the overall death toll - so you need to be quite clear about what it does and doesn’t affect in order not to encourage the Trumpists or to be mistaken for one of them.

The ONS deaths total is much higher than PHE’s

Am I reading this map wrong? The red line is the PHE?

Apologies not a very clear picture this may be better. This is from Carl Heneghan one of the directors and scientists at CEMB which is the UK top medicine research based at Oxford Uni.

Ah Carl H, the well know denier of Covid and twister of facts. I know who he is too well. I’ve seen him many times on tv and he’s the only scientist I have no faith in (i trust others who have differing views!)

To 31 July

49,000 Ons

PHE’s was 45,000

The issue is not the total number of deaths recorded, these are unlikely to alter significantly. The issue is that as time goes by the PHE reporting method skews the daily figure. As things stand someone who tested positive in March this year will still count as a Covid related death if they die in 5 years of something completely unrelated.

This is not about "denying" Covid, it's about getting accurate statistics. However you look at it it cannot be true that 60% of Covid deaths are taking place in hospital (according to ONS data) and yet apparently today around 100 out of 106 deaths took place in the community. It is very clear that the data just doesn't add up. This has been acknowledged. I would honestly re moment the stats thread for a detailed analysis.

The size of the difference ONS / PHE depends on what month you start the graph from !

The recent over-counting must be corrected asasp,
but it is still far less than the earlier under-counting:

The ONS compare deaths to the historical average for the time of year

ONS total deaths from all causes to 31 July show:

A huge peak of COVID deaths March - May, which their figures - which include death certificate data - show is currently considerably above the official 45,000 dead

However, the week ending 31 July ^was the 11th consecutive week with non-COVID deaths below the 5-year average
Effects still of lockdown and SD

Also the 7th consecutive week with Total deaths below the 5-year average,

• which they were in late Jan to start of March^

2020 without COVID would have been expected to be a year of below-average death

The issue is not the total number of deaths recorded, these are unlikely to alter significantly. The issue is that as time goes by the PHE reporting method skews the daily figure. As things stand someone who tested positive in March this year will still count as a Covid related death if they die in 5 years of something completely unrelated.

Sunshinegirl82, given we are really only 6 months or so into this pandemic, how can you reasonably say what will occur in 6 years' time - particularly as it isn't even occurring now?

My brother has late-stage blood cancer, a type that causes blood clots throughout his body (among a range of other things). If he were to fall ill with COVID - which also causes micro-clotting everywhere - I don't see how he could survive it. COVID and cancer would kill him.

@TheClaws

You are misunderstanding the point. As things stand, if I were to contract Covid today and recover from it and then in 5 years time contract meningitis and die from it my death would be counted as a Covid death (despite the fact it was nothing to do with it) because as some point I had received a positive test.

If in 5 years time a person contracts Covid and dies as a result (whether that is contributed to by an underlying condition or not) then of course it should be counted as a Covid death. That would be accurate.

The current daily figures are not accurate and so do not tell us very much. That is unhelpful and needs to be corrected.

I work in a north west hospital trust where last week every member of staff had to have a mandatory COVID test. That's around 3k people.

I know of at least one other local trust that did the same with an even larger workforce. So there are more tests being done. Hence more cases.

Interestingly, also in our trust, we currently have 4 patients with COVID. Not in intensive care and not even hospitalised due to COVID they just happen to have it. This is in a local lockdown area.

Super to find a group who are monitoring the stats! I thought it was only me! I got fed up of the media coverage and I started my own coronavirus data service .

One thing that is buried in the governments data is the cases at local authority level. Which I wanted to know because I felt we were sending our little girl back to school with no knowledge of the local coronavirus risk. And I definitely don't want to wait until the government decides to lock down my area to find out because that seems to happen WAY too late.
Anyway I digress.

To answer @Sunshinegirl82 about the prevalennce of positive test results in given areas, here is some data:

10 local councils (out of 316 in total in England) accounted for 30% of positive test results in the last 7 days.
They are: Bradford, Leicester, Birmingham, Oldham, Manchester, Kirklees, Blackburn with Darwen, Leeds, Swindon, Calderdale.

Only 16 councils in England have recorded 0 new positive cases at all in the last 7 days.

8 councils have had more than 100 cases in the last 7 days.

24 councils have had more than 50 cases in the last 7 days.

Sunshinegirl82, I'm not misunderstanding anything. If you contracted COVID now, recovered, and die in six years time from, say, cancer, that won't be counted as a COVID death. Why would it? If you died from respiratory problems as a result of having COVID, that is something different. I don't think you understand how co-morbidity works and how this is recorded.

If anyone wants the stats for their local authority area I aggregate the government daily data release into an email and send them out every morning - one for each local council.

You can sign up for your council's email at www.covidmessenger.com.

I was going to charge people £1/month to pay for the server costs etc but the thought that someone who wanted the information but couldn't afford it felt so horribly wrong to me.

So i'm doing it for free; I'm paying for the server costs myself and hoping to get local companies to sponsor us to keep it going.

Anyway if anyone wants to know the positive test results in their council they can register here www.covidmessenger.com.

It has been sooo much work, I'm totally shattered, but I'm really proud of it and i feel its really worthwhile.

This is an example if the daily email

www.covidmessenger.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Hackney_iphone_medium.png

@TheClaws that's the point. If they don't change the system it would be. Anyone who has ever had a positive test regardless of when that positive test occurred or their cause of death currently counts towards Covid related death stats under the current system.

@AnaadiNitya

Linked to this article further up the thread

www.cebm.net/covid-19/why-no-one-can-ever-recover-from-covid-19-in-england-a-statistical-anomaly

@littleowl1

That seems to suggest the majority of cases are concentrated in a relatively small number of areas which is consistent with known hotspots testing heavily.

If anything the government has been too open, if it can be attributed to Covid it is. Even when it shouldn’t be.

Cases are not relevant at a macro level as folks said, it’s about hospital admissions. That’s where you need to focus.

so we shouldnt be worried about more cases, and yet we should be concerned about more cases in Spain and Greece?

It doesn't help though that cases were also understated so much in March as they weren't tested. On TV last night they interviewed some Long COVID sufferes who clearly had COVID but without a positive test they do not qualify for planned COVID rehab. I am sure the COVID1984 lot will say they didn't have COVID.
Also all those excess care home patients and community deaths at the start not counted. I read that early on there were many excess dementia deaths which potentially could be COVID.

I agree that it us impossible to trust the data but even though deaths are now falling I still believe excess death this year will be high with or without further spikes. They are only low now as many who would have fied later this year died already.
It strikes me that the new case figures are being downplayed as everyone wants schools open. I am sure i also read in an article that GOVT wanted new cases below 1000. Do that is two days now where they are above.

@AnaadiNitya

New infections mean absolutely nothing. More testing than ever is being done do it she’s sense that more new infections are being ‘found’

The only thing that’s matters are hospital admissions are they lowest they have been and the ONS is saying there are less than 20 deaths a day.

The PHE figures are fucked. There are over estimating deaths and the process they go through to get the figures is astonishing.

I don’t think the government are hiding anything, they are just so incompetent they have no fucking clue what they are doing

Absolutely this

I also struggle to see how people don't understand the irony of how they are testing random people who have NO symptoms and using that to whip up fear now - the deaths are just too low to scare alot of people now, so let's instead try and terrify people with new infections .

The flu has killed more people per day for the last 7 weeks. No one cares about that! Only covid matters