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?

I'm not a sheep, but clearly I understand risk better than you do.

I'm not being facetious @Jaxhog - but I understand there is minimal risks to me. I understand there is more of a risk to those who have underlying conditions and those of a certain age. Its not to say I dont follow the guidelines/wear masks or so on

@Uhoh2020

More young people are becoming infected by coronavirus

No they were always infected/infectious but as its mostly mild symptoms or no symptoms at all they would never have been tested early on

SPOT ON!

More testing. More people are being confirmed as having the virus, that doesn’t mean more people have it. All it proves to me is that we have it under control and current restrictions are not necessary

Just a quick very rough calculation of hospitalised Covid against Covid positive tests at the moment suggests that around 4% of all positive tested individuals are hospitalised

I think it's even less than that. In the past 7 days, Scotland has had 331 new cases detected and only about 6 hospital admissions for the whole of August.

The Scottish government are very tricksy with how they report on this - they report on the 200 odd people who are "in hospital with covid" but that isn't the same as "in hospital as a consequence of covid". A large proportion of those 200 would have been in hospital anyway, because of underlying conditions.

Treatments, lower viral loads as there's less community spread + masks & social distancing. Care homes have and are using PPE correctly.

It’s because the real fatality rate is much lower than what was first thought - particularly for those below 60. The virus is not dangerous for the under 40s but dangerous for the elderly.

In March, 25,000 elderly people were moved from hospitals to care homes without being tested for the virus. This spread the virus throughout care homes and is why the fatality rate was so high. 90% of deaths are in the over 70s. Now they are not being infected so the death rate is much much lower.

Are you disappointed or something? ,😂

Also viruses tend to mutate and become less virulent, although I don't think they know that this has happened with Covid 19.

It's not a good survival tactic to kill your potential hosts too quickly or easily.

Another reason I read is that last winter's flu strain was quite mild, so many more of the weakest people who would have been carried off by flu in the winter survived, only to fall victim to this in the spring.

Agree also that the fatality rate was heavily skewed early on. I know a family of 5 who had it in March. All the classic symptoms. But they were never tested as weren't ill enough for hospital.

There must be thousands like them who couldn't get tested, who had it mildly and made a full recovery.

Only those admitted to hospital used to be tested. Now you so much as sneeze with hayfever you're sent for testing so loads of people who are asymptomatic or have it very mildly are getting positive results. My dad is tested weekly due to his job, whereas throughout lockdown he was on furlough.

As far as I know the 2 local hospitals to me have no cases left admitted.

People can take weeks to die, I would expect deaths in a few weeks.

More vulnerable and elderly people are staying in, or at least being cautious, so they are not catching it.

There have been developments in how to treat covid, eg ventilators have been found to have an adverse effect in a lot of cases. In Italy it turned out that ventilation could blow older people's lungs.

People can take weeks to die, I would expect deaths in a few weeks.

We've been hearing that all the way through though. People were saying there would be a spike in cases and deaths after VE Day but as far as I'm aware there wasn't

Better hygiene procedures, social distancing . testing especially in
acute areas are helping to reduce infection rate. This has been going
on for a while now and with fewer infections so lower death rate.
Also NHS better looked after now so hopefully all in all fewer cases
among them which in turn makes their colleagues and patients safer.
The main problem remains in multi-generational homes where people
bring it in from outside and pass to family who then spread it outside again.
Until we can have a vaccine all we can do is slow the spread.
Nothing can really stop you getting it .
In the meantime remember the large number of seasonal flu cases

I suspect even if there's not an increase in deaths over the Autumn and Winter, much like how things are now, they will still keep us living this restricted life until next Spring at least. They have to see this through now.

The numbers of infected people in late March was far higher, but we weren't testing unless you were in icu. I've had covid but won't appear on the statistics nor will my partner. The numbers reported now includes people without symptoms, so probably close to the true number whereas the number on the first April may have been 19, possibly 20 or more times the reported number. Despite having a local lockdown numbers in hospital in Leicester are low

@loobyloo1234
My point is that your actions may not risk YOUR health, but your actions DO impact (raise) the risk to others in the community. You can't consider risk in isolation, as so many appear to do.

It is good to know you are still following the guidelines anyway.

I will also add, that the current figures are generally cause for optimism. But it will only stay that way if we remain vigilant and keep following the guidance.

More testing, more known cases, including asymptotic ones. So the denominator is bigger than it would otherwise have been. The death rate is probably more accurate now. Compare us with countries where they did more testing, their death rates are lower too. So it’s just maths I believe.

For the whole of North East and Yorkshire hospitals there was 1 new Covid patient admitted from the data on the 8th August

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/Covid-Publication-13-08-2020.xlsx

More testing happening so more cases being picked up, including some with no symptoms
Better and quicker treatment due to knowing more about the virus
Younger people catching it but with less devastating results

The long term consequences of having Covid will be the next interesting information I guess.

It is more testing. You couldn't get a test at the beginning. My toddler had a temperature for one day just before lockdown started, I was 38 weeks pregnant and my DH is a front line police officer. We weren't allowed a test. We would be now.

Most people are still being very careful - masks, distancing, hand-disinfecting/washing. Up here many people are still working from home, people leave gaps on streets, public transport is quiet still, as are town centres. GPs and dentists are still almost closed.
We went to the local cinema last week there were 6 of us in the cinema - all wearing masks. DH and me together and the other 4 separate and an empty row between us all.
We are nowhere near normal.
I was barked at this morning by staff in a garden centre giving me instructions about not standing near the entrance. There was no one else there.
Schools are closed because of holidays, Unis closed and will donline teaching in Sept- Christmas.
It should be very low rates oftransmission at the moment.

@Jaxhog

I’ve not taken any risks. I’m just of the opinion that the media and Government would do well to print the positive side of less hospitalisations, less deaths, etc, It’s not the automatic killer virus they’ve made out previously. Hence mine and many others posts about being seething that we are being misled

Putting people on ventilators is not the "wrong" treatment, it is what any country that had ventilators was doing and it is still, unfortunately, necessary for some people. The NHS realised rapidly that Covid-19 was causing a far wider range of problems, it wasnt just a respiratory disease. So they started to treat it differently, while researching other possible treatments in a far more vigorous way than other countries. There are still people you have to ventilate.

The government's headline figures now exclude anyone who dies of Covid-19 after 28 days - so they understate Covid-19 deaths quite a bit. It's in line with other countries but it's still understated.

And there is not actual evidence that sending people out of hospital led to lots of deaths in care homes. When you have a pandemic and a wave of infection it gets into nursing homes from staff and admissions from the community too. It will take a much more thorough inquiry to prove what happened.

There will be an ongoing small number of deaths, it will go up rapidly again if it starts to spread again among the elderly or other vulnerable people.

@Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow
Beyond seething and realising how thick so many people are who can't see this for what it is - literally a disaster. And yet still people are wailing about schools opening and still wanting to be locked down.