Do people actually realise how few are dying from coronavirus now?

[Mrschickpeabody]

It’s all still doom and gloom on the news as normal regarding coronavirus. Loads about cases going up, local lockdowns, negativity regarding schools going back but nothing about the fact that hardly anyone is actually dying from coronavirus or being admitted to hospital. Can we not hear about positive things for once?

[Letseatgrandma]

@Dannn

Would be interested in the stats of those who die after 28 days.

If you get covid, get admitted to ICU and spend 29 days on a ventilator before dying then you have still died of covid. Most people do not catch it and die within a short period, there are still patient on ventilators from March/April although admittedly if they were to die now it would likely be of another complication.

I wonder if there are figures for this?

I would like to know this as well. Is it recorded anywhere or would it only show up on charts showing excess deaths?

[Dannn]

Would be interested in the stats of those who die after 28 days.

If you get covid, get admitted to ICU and spend 29 days on a ventilator before dying then you have still died of covid. Most people do not catch it and die within a short period, there are still patient on ventilators from March/April although admittedly if they were to die now it would likely be of another complication.

I wonder if there are figures for this?

[JS87]

@Deez65

I would still like to see a full breakdown of deaths by
ethnicity
gender
age
underlying illness
if they have the normal flu jab
and finally the area/county in which they live
There are some 600'ish per day, surely this is not too much to ask

I’m sure I’ve seen death by age in some of the graphs from the government or ONS.
However a large proportion of U.K. population have underlying health conditions or get the flu jab. That doesn’t mean those deaths are therefore expendable and that they were about to die anyway.

[JS87]

Covid is now the number one cause of death in the US so I think things have changed a bit since this post was created. Not sure where it lies In the top causes of death in the U.K. but I imagine it’s fairly high I think what’s happening in the US shows what can happen.

[Deez65]

I would still like to see a full breakdown of deaths by
ethnicity
gender
age
underlying illness
if they have the normal flu jab
and finally the area/county in which they live
There are some 600'ish per day, surely this is not too much to ask

[m0therofdragons]

People get covid and need a hospital stay. They’re more likely to survive now, this is true, however hospitals cannot quickly discharge them. They are in hospitals for weeks recovering and needed acute care then rehab. This means less beds for planned operations so then the wait goes up. You can’t put someone who is struggling to breathe on a waiting list. If all the beds are full if covid patients, operations get cancelled and those people die. This isn’t all about dying of covid.

[BlueBlancmange]

@WindChimeTinkle

Which is really more likely, that ReadThe Data has partly fabricated their post, or that you just don't like the sound of what they have said, so are trying to shut it down?

[herecomesthsun]

So we are in for quite a tough winter ahead.

We are not even into the flu season proper and the hospitals are already on the verge of being overwhelmed. If hospitals cannot manage the numbers then the % that die will rise.

If you read what Chris Whitty says in the link below, health and the economy are linked, and the countries that are faring best are those that have the lowest infection numbers.

Sadly, there is increasing evidence to suggest that immunity is probably not long lasting, and Chris Whitty does not support the idea of letting the virus rip in the vain hope of creating "herd immunity". This does not seem to work with other infectious diseases (without a vaccine) and there isn't any reason to think it will work with this one.

If we do get a vaccine then the wise plan will appear to have been avoidance of widespread infection in the early stages of the pandemic.

Maybe we should mothball this thread again, maybe for a year and then resurrect it, and see how these various comments have withstood the test of time?

[Homemadesoupmmmmm]

If a plane crashed every day killing 400 or so passengers would you see the deaths of people differently ?

[righttothepoint]

my wife works with rehab of covid patients and is concerned with the number of long covid cases she is dealing with
mainly women aged 35-45 more so than the deaths. There's also been a significant number of strokes across that age group that wouldn't have been expected. they of course won't show up on the death toll but I'd certainly not want to risk having one.

[WindChimeTinkle]

@ReadtheData

Nobody is counting Long Covid, the figures are all very rough guesses. A recent conservative guess puts the figure at around half a million but there will be many many more.

My GP says around a third of his patients are now long covid. The only denominating factors he seem has been is it's mostly people aged between 35 to 45, and healthy non-smokers. He said it goes against everything they know.

Even the people that had it mild are showing organ damage. How many people are walking around thinking they got off lightly when they have no idea what damage has been done because nobody is monitoring them? Years down the line people will be dying early from organ failure...

Until we quantify these people, we can only guess at the damage that is being done to our health.

As an example, I'm a woman in my 30s with no underlying health issues. I caught covid in March and this thing has nearly killed me so many times. I've had to battle and fight that every shred of medical care. At the moment I am struggling with lung and heart damage and my eyesight is failing too. I've had to pay privately for that diagnosis as the NHS don't have any referral appointments for months. I have no idea if I'm now disabled for life, but I can't drive and I can't work and I can't look after my young children.

There is so much more to this thing than the death toll.

Think you might be exaggerating

[Dowser]

111 actually died in my 94,000 town since March
Yet we are tier 3
A look through the obituaries and the majority are well over 70.

We’ve been conned.

[herecomesthsun]

@AlecTrevelyan006

numbers of deaths from coronavirus remains very low

in 2019 in England & Wales 530,841 people died - an average of 1,454 each day

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregistrationsummarytables/2019

why do we continue to disrupt society because of a virus that kills so few people and is now simply following the same trajectory as every other virus?

www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4235

This explains the situation well.

www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4235

"BMJ interviewer: Recent data published by the Financial Times show that countries that have done worse in terms of covid deaths have also done worse economically, with the UK scoring badly on both counts. This suggests that it’s a false dichotomy to talk about health versus wealth and that we have to control the virus to restore our economy. Is that how you see things?

CW: That is absolutely how I see things."

[Jenasaurus]

@Vinoonasunnyday

Op sadly some people just won’t see what’s in front of them because they’re so scared

Now absolutely is an acceptable level of deaths for society to go on

More people this week died of other diseases (compared to this time last year last year) - at some point other diseases matter and people can’t just sit on cancer waiting lists for two years for the back log to clear

Do you still think this is an acceptable level of detahs for society to go on? Do you not think we should have acted sooner?

[ReadtheData]

@BooseysMom the trouble is, the symptoms of the virus go far beyond the three that the government keep peddling out.

My ds 5 had a sore throat and a stomach ache, my dd 7 had wheeziness and a runny nose, my DH had sneezing and wheezing, and my first symptoms were a sore throat, chest pressure and breathlessness. No cough, fever or loss of smell and taste for us?!

And those three official symptoms don't actually line up with the data coming in either. The testing criteria is much too narrow. We need much more regular routine testing. The current system does not go far enough.

[ReadtheData]

Nobody is counting Long Covid, the figures are all very rough guesses. A recent conservative guess puts the figure at around half a million but there will be many many more.

My GP says around a third of his patients are now long covid. The only denominating factors he seem has been is it's mostly people aged between 35 to 45, and healthy non-smokers. He said it goes against everything they know.

Even the people that had it mild are showing organ damage. How many people are walking around thinking they got off lightly when they have no idea what damage has been done because nobody is monitoring them? Years down the line people will be dying early from organ failure...

Until we quantify these people, we can only guess at the damage that is being done to our health.

As an example, I'm a woman in my 30s with no underlying health issues. I caught covid in March and this thing has nearly killed me so many times. I've had to battle and fight that every shred of medical care. At the moment I am struggling with lung and heart damage and my eyesight is failing too. I've had to pay privately for that diagnosis as the NHS don't have any referral appointments for months. I have no idea if I'm now disabled for life, but I can't drive and I can't work and I can't look after my young children.

There is so much more to this thing than the death toll.

[AlecTrevelyan006]

numbers of deaths from coronavirus remains very low

in 2019 in England & Wales 530,841 people died - an average of 1,454 each day

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregistrationsummarytables/2019

why do we continue to disrupt society because of a virus that kills so few people and is now simply following the same trajectory as every other virus?

[BooseysMom]

Yes my sentiments exactly. Someone was on local radio (Midlands) earlier saying the website said they would have to drive to Wales to get a test. They just had a cold and tickly cough. I have the same thing and when i checked the website to book a test all the questions didn't apply to me as i had none of the symptoms listed and my local authority hadn't asked me to get a test so I didn't bother. Why use up test spaces unnecessarily?.. This is going to be a common theme all winter.

[Oblomov20]

I've been to the pub garden twice, no one had been near me!

Loads of posters on another thread wanting a Driving test and not being out to get a covid test for weeks, nothing in the post !

also another thread with loads of people with sick kids after being at school with maybe a cold but wanting a covid test, and not being out to get one at all, either driving 200 miles, or nothing in the post, none available.

so, the whole thing is just a disaster!

[Alex50]

@mac12 did you mean 60,000 instead of 600,000?

www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/08/60000-may-have-long-covid-for-more-than-three-months-uk-study

[Alex50]

Ok thanks

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

No, I don't think the daily data goes into that much detail. You may need to wait for the monthly NHS data for that.

Might be a wild stab in the dark, but if you could find a regional breakdown by age of current COVID cases it would probably point you in the direction of where to start looking.

[Alex50]

Do you have any data where in England it is?

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare

It isn't a massive surprise, It's what's happened in Spain France & Italy. At the moment it's a small rise. It doesn't seem likely to stay that way for long given what we know about what has been happening in Europe recently.

The question really is do we want people to start acting responsibly now, or wait for the deaths to start rising too, by which point there's likely to be considerable spread in the community and it may be much harder to deal with and may need stronger measures.

[Alex50]

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay please can I have a link as I can only find data from the 8th August?

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