Why isn’t there more deaths atm?

[Mummypig2020]

Just that really. Obviously cases are going up and have been for a few weeks. Surely there would be at least an increase of people in hospitals by now at least? Or in a week or so are we going to suddenly have hundreds of deaths again?

We’ll see what happens when schools go back and the winter months, I will be keeping a close eye on the NHS website.

@Bol87, exactly, I don't care about any long term effects more than I care about the risk of getting chronic fatigue after a normal cold. I'd rather live a normal life than cower in fear over a disease with a 0.1% death rate that doesn't affect my demographic.

And yes, bemused why overweight/unhealthy people have only decided NOW that it's time to lose weight for their health, when in fact obesity has always been a significant risk factor for strokes, diabetes, heart disease and early death. It's like only covid matters.

Your chance of chronic fatigue after a cold is minimal, your chance after other infections may be higher. No-one yet knows what the long term effects of the virus are, therefore anyone sensible will take precautions to avoid catching it. That doesnt mean you cant get on with your life if low risk, but it does mean hand sanitising and mask wearing. Florida is showing that if enough young people are infected some die.

The information that vitamin D is important builds whenever someone looks at it. No concrete proof yet but there is little downside to winter supplementation and maybe we'll all get back to more normal life if we do it. By winter there may be proof anyway.

If you want the economy to recover people need to feel safe to be out buying things and doing things. Denial does not help that, masks and hand sanitising do.

But no one can explain why such low deaths now? 0 people died on the 19th August, 2 on the 20th August in the whole of England’s Hospital’s, why?

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/COVID-19-total-announced-deaths-21-August-2020.xlsx

and mask wearing.
No evidence on the efficacy of masks.
The insistence on wearing them is to try to coax snowflake nervous people back into a semblance of real life /give them a sense of 'security' by letting them believe they have done control.
There are no proven benefits other than that.

indeed

But no one can explain why such low deaths now? 0 people died on the 19th August, 2 on the 20th August in the whole of England’s Hospital’s, why?

Surely it is not that complicated. Infections are now predominantly in younger age demographics and what the average age of cases is less than 40's

Death rates in these ages from covid are very small. It is only if these infections spread to older people / relatives ( who I daresay are still being cautious) then deaths and hospital admissions will stay low.

@walksen if that’s the case, maybe this is what we should’ve done in the first place instead of locking everyone away.

[quote Alex50]@walksen if that’s the case, maybe this is what we should’ve done in the first place instead of locking everyone away.[/quote]
shush... you're not allowed to say stuff like that on MN

Anyone else just heard Sir David King ?

Back at the peak the majority of patients in hospital had covid, it ran rampant like it did in care homes.
Funnily enough most people in hospital happen to be pretty sick anyway so covid finished off alot of people.
Now there is procedures in place to stop that happening again, same with care homes. Ergo, death rates goes down.
BUT that will only continue whilst people remain vigilant, wear their masks and continue to social distance inside and outside of facilities like these.

Wouldn't have worked though because so many people living be with older relatives and early on we had no way of tracking spread or contact tracing capacity.

If you will recall the idea was of an over 50 lockdown was leaked to the papers and backtracked pretty quickly. Much as it is an I rereading idea to allow younger ages to get infected at the start there would have been small number of deaths as a result, accusations of reverse ageism , callousness etc, and unethical behaviour.

The average age of cases at the start was what over 60 but remember that was only people in hospital who got tested. There would have been 4 or 5 times that number of people hospitalised ( in the same age group) stuck at home with symptoms, as many again asymptomatic and God knows how many ages 0 to 40 unaware they were even infected. The small number of cases we have right now are a drop in the ocean by comparison.

@Alex50

That’s what happened in Texas and Florida, but you can’t seal off the under 40 from the older 40s, and infections, over time, spread to the older population, with hundreds dying daily in each states as a result.

That said, letting Covid spread amongst the young whilst limiting its spread amongst the old, may ultimately be necessary if we have no option but to achieve herd immunity if a vaccine isn’t ready by early next year.

So are the low number of deaths down to herd immunity?

@walksen but young people are still
living with older people but still the deaths are low, especially in the south Asian community even where infections are high the deaths and hospital admissions are nearly non existent?

@Alex50

So are the low number of deaths down to herd immunity?

I would love to know this. Love to have antibody testing rolled out, it would change everything.

But it isn't, so could be, who knows

But even if the low death rates are due to immunity, the antibody tests are only a small part of the story. it's quite likely significant numbers of people never even caught the disease despite being exposed and not having had specifically Covid yet.

That's what the Imperial model appears to have got so wrong - it assumed 100% susceptibility.

No - it is down to low mortality of the disease in ages under 40 which is where most of the infections are.

Only 10% of the country have been infected do far on average but the ons wants to expand the survey ( which examines antibodies etc) so we have have more information on how many infected there have been in different age groups and regions.

You see low death rates this in developing countries also who have populations with much lower average ages. There is even an article on Pakistan ( average age 22 circa 45 + for Europe) and covid on the bbc

I have zero proof of the following theory, but ...

I think it's because the cases are coming from workplaces or community spread. The people who are going to work now that lockdown has been lifted and are starting to socialise more are younger, healthier people, so the death rate isnt rising at the same rate as the case rate. Also, as PPs have said, there are more tests available outside of hospitals, compared to say march when all tests were just for hospital admissions, so severe cases.

Surely the USA is a salutary lesson for those who think it’s all over and Covid can spread but somehow it’s now innocuous... A month or so back, Trump was crowing about how US deaths were at record low levels despite infection numbers.... That boast looks a little silly now.

Yes!

So of the majority of people catching it are under 40 now, and the corresponding numbers of hospitalizations and deaths are also incredibly low, then really...isn't that probably a good thing overall?

There have been studies come out of the USA in the last couple of weeks showing even mild cases confer a degree of immunity.

It's incredibly unlikely that an illness that lots of people dont even realise they have is going to cause irreparable heart and lung damage, as some on here are claiming.

And no I'm not talking about letting it RIP THROUGH the population unchecked, with no thought given to the vulnerable and the elderly etc etc.

@HesterShaw1

But even if the low death rates are due to immunity, the antibody tests are only a small part of the story.

That’s what I hoped, but with some hotspots recording antibody levels well above 50%, it seems as though there aren’t swathes of people unfortunately who have been infected but didn’t produce antibodies. U.K. levels are around 7% I believe, double that or more in London, so nowhere near herd immunity levels.

I’m a bit sceptical about India and Pakistan numbers, a lot of sick people die at home and will never be tested. 800 million poor who live on less than £2 a day, a lot of people starve to death before coronvirus would kill them.

Well we have 50% of people under 45 say.

Call it 30million.

10% say have already been infected so that's 27 million left.

Say 1000 infections a day are picked up but the ons estimates there are 3000 a day, because some people don't have tests as they have no symptoms etc.

So it will take 25 years until natural immunity was achieved at this rate!

The problem will be if too many of this demographic get infected as it will be difficult to contact trace and limit spread to parents, and other relatives etc. I saw something about lack of contact tracers in Spain in some regions which might explain why cases exploded after nightclubs opened, and why they are much worse off than France for example.