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?

I wondered how long it would take before the foul comments about "well they were old anyway" would start. On a thread where people are grieving for their relatives. Some of you are utterly shameless.

There are numerous threads on here too about anxiety attacks having been recognised as one of the symptoms of Covid. By doctors and scientists.

Alreadytaken- quite. And the funny thing is I recognise some of the names of those who advocate just that as the ones unwilling to send Junior back to school because it's not safe.

Truly Schroedinger's virus.

What alreadytaken said. No doubt some wrong decisions were made: the NHS have been chronically underfunded for years and were clearly ill prepared for a pandemic. But a sharp increase in people in need of ICU and more doctors and nurses off sick is not a situation where more people would get their cancer treated.

@corythatwas

What alreadytaken said. No doubt some wrong decisions were made: the NHS have been chronically underfunded for years and were clearly ill prepared for a pandemic. But a sharp increase in people in need of ICU and more doctors and nurses off sick is not a situation where more people would get their cancer treated.

And not even people needing ICU care, as relatively few (in % terms) do need that. However a significant number do need hospital care, for monitoring, oxygen and even potentially now, dexamethasone. That puts huge pressure on bed availability and will affect all other admissions and even outpatient appointments

Yesterday the figure reported was 10 deaths using revised metric. The actual figure was 116 using previous metric. Luckily much lower than the peak but it’s still making over a hundred families a day very sad.

Hidden deaths and we’ve still the highest excess death rate in Europe.

@alreadytaken - that is simply not true. Friends I have that work in the NHS, have said that they have never been so quiet.

Literally sitting around doing nothing, radiography is now just opening up. Friend has told me that he is finding cancer in scans that could have been found months ago.

The emergency hospitals were set up to deal with Covid and remained empty, whilst people were denied the scans they needed to treat their cancer with speed.

Sadly, he thinks many will die

@fromdownwest

If you’re from the West Country as your username suggests, you have a point. Given the cases in your part of the world, the response does seem disproportionate.... though that’s easy to say with hindsight. I’m not sure anyone could reasonably been expected to make that judgment in mid-March.

However; the flip side of that is that the West Country is largely virgin territory for Covid - it will have built up hardly any population immunity compared to London (which is still a way from complete herd immunity I believe), so a complete return to normal could reasonably be expected to lead to faster growth here if allowed to run unchecked.

I don’t understand why people are still talking as though we’re in lockdown - we’re not.

Precisely, but those arguing in this way only seem to be able to think in absolutes. We’re either in total lockdown, or we have total freedom. Their minds are seemingly blown by nuance, complexity and compromise.

[quote fromdownwest]@alreadytaken - that is simply not true. Friends I have that work in the NHS, have said that they have never been so quiet.

Literally sitting around doing nothing, radiography is now just opening up. Friend has told me that he is finding cancer in scans that could have been found months ago.

The emergency hospitals were set up to deal with Covid and remained empty, whilst people were denied the scans they needed to treat their cancer with speed.

Sadly, he thinks many will die[/quote]
I just find this so hard to believe, unless you're talking about a small hospital in a remote part of the country.

I'm in London and I remember having a telephone consultation with my hospital consultant on 20th March and he was telling me the number of patients they currently had in with it (only about 20 or so) and the numbers they were expecting to have in by the end of the weekend (over 100). Clearly over time it went much higher.

That's going from one ward of Covid patients to 3 wards in just a few days. It obviously went much further than that at the peak, coupled with the expansion of ITU beds too. No doubt some areas of the hospital, usually treating routine or outpatients, probably were very quiet but that doesn't mean that hospitals were quiet.

I seriously doubt the motives of any "HCP" who are trying to minimise this.

the covid situation in london hospitals was very, very busy for a short period of time but it has been very quiet for many weeks

i posted this on another thread on here on 20 May

A high up London based doctor I know working in London says the virus virtually disappeared overnight a week or so ago. Says it’s really weird. Almost as if it never happened and said that he and other colleagues are actually slightly freaked out about it.

Make of that what you will.

I’m just a random bloke on the internet.

What do you think 'their' motivation would be for scaremongering if there wasn't a real problem OP? Do you think the government would risk smashing the economy, severely disrupting education, massive unemployment for nothing?

I'm genuinely interested to know what you think their motivation is for doing this if the risk isn't real.

A high up London based doctor I know working in London says the virus virtually disappeared overnight a week or so ago. Says it’s really weird. Almost as if it never happened and said that he and other colleagues are actually slightly freaked out about it.

Lockdown worked

@AlecTrevelyan006

i posted this on another thread on here on 20 May

A high up London based doctor I know working in London says the virus virtually disappeared overnight a week or so ago. Says it’s really weird. Almost as if it never happened and said that he and other colleagues are actually slightly freaked out about it.

Make of that what you will.

I’m just a random bloke on the internet.

Well that's clearly not true if you look at the number of positive tests in the London area. I'm not saying those people are going into hospital, and the reasons for that warrant studying, but it clearly hasn't disappeared.

Looking across the pond we can see the situation in the States also shows it hasn't disappeared.

Of course the NHS needed to cancel everything else back in March to reorganise for Covid. But they should have opened up again a lot sooner once they'd reorganised it. 2-3 weeks, maybe a month at the start of lockdown to change things around, but then reverse that as the bed needs decreased over the following months. They've been far too slow to start re-opening services again.

Project fear has people running for the hills. Would these people not get in a car if we had annual car crash fatalities published?

Do we disclose the number of daily deaths due to hear attacks, cancer, strokes with such vigor?

I think it is time we accept that it is not the indiscriminate killer that we were led to believe.

Annual car crash fatalities, heart attacks, cancer and strokes ARE published.

If the number of deaths from car crashes suddenly increased, we might expect additional safety measures to be introduced like speed limits and seatbelts. If the number of heart attacks or strokes increased we might expect information on likely risk groups and ways we could reduce that risk. If cancer increased we might expect increased screening and testing.

Oh wait...

[quote Derbygerbil]@fromdownwest

If you’re from the West Country as your username suggests, you have a point. Given the cases in your part of the world, the response does seem disproportionate.... though that’s easy to say with hindsight. I’m not sure anyone could reasonably been expected to make that judgment in mid-March.

However; the flip side of that is that the West Country is largely virgin territory for Covid - it will have built up hardly any population immunity compared to London (which is still a way from complete herd immunity I believe), so a complete return to normal could reasonably be expected to lead to faster growth here if allowed to run unchecked.[/quote]
There are far fewer people in the south west, so the stats will be lower. Less people to infect.

I hadn’t realised how low til I checked yesterday! I don’t feel this is being adequately reported at all

Whilst that is sad lots of people die in their 80's all of the time (more than 12) and sepsis which her grandfather had would have weakened him considerably prior to covid coming along. Are we to stop everything for all the people in their 80's who die of all the other causes? We appear to have forgotten as a society that death is natural and spend so much time keeping people alive as long as possible (even when they have advanced dementia etc) that we appear to have forgotten that death is natural.

JulieHere you appear to have forgotten that COVID is incredibly contagious. It is not simply about the deaths of elderly and vulnerable, but how the virus can easily spread among communities. You appear to be saying there is no point to anyone's life after the age of 80. That's abhorrent. I wouldn't wish to be part of a community that thought like that.

@DobbyTheHouseElk

There are far fewer people in the south west, so the stats will be lower. Less people to infect.

The South-west had fewer cases proportionately as well as In absolute terms.

as a slight aside - the population of the South West (approx 5.6 million) is pretty much the same as Scotland (approx 5.4 million)

[quote Derbygerbil]@DobbyTheHouseElk

There are far fewer people in the south west, so the stats will be lower. Less people to infect.

The South-west had fewer cases proportionately as well as In absolute terms.[/quote]
Doom doom.....

I know of several people in the south west who’ve had CV but not tested, but been in contact with known cases. They aren’t in official figures.

But as you were, ring the bell of doom.

@DobbyTheHouseElk

How the hell am I ringing the bell of doom?

All I’m saying is that the south-west was less badly affected than many other parts of the country, and that in hindsight, arguably the NHS overreacted in that region, leading to unnecessary transformation of provision. I’m not blaming the NHS, as it was near impossible to have known how it would pan out in mid-March.

Only small fraction of actual cases were confirmed cases across the country - that’s not news - so I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make there.

From Government antibody test results published early August:

“Previous infection was most common among participants who live in London (10.4%), and least common among those who live in the South-West of England and Scotland (4.4% in both).”

If facts that you don’t like (though don’t know why - surely it’s a good thing the SW weren’t as badly affected as London ) are simply dismissed as doom-mongering then, well, I can’t stop you living in a fantasy where the truth is whatever you would like it to be.