Whitty says 50000 cases a day will lead to 200 deaths a day. So 0.4% fatality rate.

[Treesofwood]

Or have I misunderstood? I thought it was much higher than that?

There's every chance it could be like 1918.

Well there was very little testing going on in the spring so God knows what the mortality rate has been throughout.

I would assume the outcome has improved for many after the steroid breakthrough.

Case fatality rate is not infection fatality rate - cases are just the infections we know about (via PCR tests, which have their own problems)

There isn't a single infection fatality rate because it depends on who is getting infected - 50,000 infections in nursing homes would be very serious - 50,000 infections in people in their 20s and you'd hardly notice

[quote Redolent]@Timekeepspassing

In the peak of things here, there were numerous people asserting that this what they’d been told. Now some families are calling for an inquiry into the role of 111 in the pandemic, for precisely this reason:

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/21/covid-bereaved-call-for-inquiry-into-nhs-111-handling-of-crisis[/quote]
It is much more complex then simply saying that to be admitted to hospital your lips had to be blue. I’m not denying that there were issues with 11. From reading that article the question regarding your lips turning blue is one question in an assessment, which was inappropriate for BAME. But it was not a deciding factor in someone being admitted to hospital. There is a big difference to saying there is an issue with 111 and their triage/ability to handle the number of calls and saying ‘we’ll be told once to again by 111 that we need to stay at home until we have blue lips.’

Germany had really widespread testing early on and a seemingly lower fatality rate than the UK. I think there's a lot of adjustment on the death rate going on, and more testing means we pick up more of the mild cases.

Hopefully we won't get back to the 1000 deaths a day point again, but I suppose it's possible if we don't keep some mitigation measures in place.

But you do have to balance that against the downstream effects not a recession and possibly more austerity measures.that kills people too. It's very tough to know what's the right thing to do right now.

"At what point did 111 ever tell people they couldn’t go to hospital unless they have blue lips? I’ve seen this stated numerous times but no actual evidence this was true. Healthcare professionals use objective criteria including clinical examination and observations such as your pulse and oxygen saturations."

@Timekeepspassing
"Blue lips" was an issue in London and possibly other areas of the country, but policy was changed over Easter.

The policy was particularly unsuitable for COVID because early results from e.g. Germany showed the importance of giving Oxygen early on for low blood O2.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52317781

"Some seriously-ill Covid-19 patients in London may not have been taken to hospital by ambulance because of a system temporarily used to assess people, a BBC investigation suggests.
....
Medical professionals use a scoring system, called 'NEWS2', as one way of identifying patients at risk of deteriorating, a check normally used for sepsis patients.

Under normal circumstances, ambulance teams would blue-light anyone with a score of five or above to hospital.

But on March 18, LAS workers were told to apply the NEWS2 check to suspected Covid patients -
and that many of those with a score up to seven could be "suitable for community care", even if there were issues with breathing rate, oxygen supply and consciousness.
.....
Over the Easter weekend, the LAS changed its guidance to say suspected coronavirus patients with a wider range of symptoms

and a much lower NEWS2 score of three to five should be taken to A&E for assessment.

We dont know the infection rate because its still new we had to assume covid then test for covid with unreliable tests and fucking guess for the most part

When the Coronavirus was "Novel" Back in March, doctors knew little about how to treat it

I would have been pretty shocked & disappointed if the Fatality Rate hadn't improved considerably after 6 months experience of doctors treating it, scientists studying it, human trials of treatments etc

Germany found very early on that treating early with O2 helped reduce the number of patients deteriorating further;
The UK found that 2 existing steroids reduced death rate in certain types of serious ill patients

The fatality rate may indeed be 0.4% now, but also have been up to 1% back in March

In the UK, from ICNARC reports, 54% of Covid patients are now discharged alive from ICU
Back in March-April it was only 33%
That illustrates the improvement in treatment, the knowledge gained

@RockieRoadie

There's every chance it could be like 1918.

There's also every chance it could be totally different. Given than in 1918 they had no idea about viruses, had far worse medical care, had a population of malnourished and under educated people and didnt have measures such as social distancing in place. I dont see the point in trying to scare people by claiming there will be a huge second wave based on evidence from a completely different pandemic over 100 years ago. Wouldnt it make more sense to compare to more recent pandemics e.g. swine flu or SARS or, indeed, not to compare at all because they are all totally different.

@BigChocFrenzy

"At what point did 111 ever tell people they couldn’t go to hospital unless they have blue lips? I’ve seen this stated numerous times but no actual evidence this was true. Healthcare professionals use objective criteria including clinical examination and observations such as your pulse and oxygen saturations."

@Timekeepspassing
"Blue lips" was an issue in London and possibly other areas of the country, but policy was changed over Easter.

The policy was particularly unsuitable for COVID because early results from e.g. Germany showed the importance of giving Oxygen early on for low blood O2.

[[https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52317781]]

"Some seriously-ill Covid-19 patients in London may not have been taken to hospital by ambulance because of a system temporarily used to assess people, a BBC investigation suggests.
....
Medical professionals use a scoring system, called 'NEWS2', as one way of identifying patients at risk of deteriorating, a check normally used for sepsis patients.

Under normal circumstances, ambulance teams would blue-light anyone with a score of five or above to hospital.

But on March 18, LAS workers were told to apply the NEWS2 check to suspected Covid patients -
and that many of those with a score up to seven could be "suitable for community care", even if there were issues with breathing rate, oxygen supply and consciousness.
.....
Over the Easter weekend, the LAS changed its guidance to say suspected coronavirus patients with a wider range of symptoms

and a much lower NEWS2 score of three to five should be taken to A&E for assessment.

Thank you for this information. I agree there were issues with how it was managed initially, there were obviously some people who needed hospital assessment who didn’t get it but that was not 111 saying that you could only be admitted to hospital if your lips were blue as people keep saying was happening.

It's not 0.4% for you. It's 0.4% of those infected. For those under 20, say, it will be more like 0.01%, or maybe lower. For those over 80 it will be much higher.

A lower rate might reflect that older/sick people are isolating themselves. Anyone old/morbidly obese/sick will have a much higher risk than 0.4%. Conversely, if you are none of those things, the risk will be lower.

FWIW, the annual risk of death for teenagers is around 0.01%, and for 40 year olds around 0.1%.

@HalfPastThree

Case fatality rate is not infection fatality rate - cases are just the infections we know about (via PCR tests, which have their own problems)

There isn't a single infection fatality rate because it depends on who is getting infected - 50,000 infections in nursing homes would be very serious - 50,000 infections in people in their 20s and you'd hardly notice

Makes sense

No it wouldn't. The mortality rate doesn't change depending on how virtuous you are. Why would it? I guess you could say if hospitals were completely overwhelmed then it would increase but we're nowhere near that are we?

@RockieRoadie

Remember it's 0.4% with measures...with no one pulling their weight it'd be sky high.

Sorry meant to quote this in my last post.

@MrsGradyOldLady yes that was the point I was trying to make.

It’s because the virus has already killed off a lot of the most vulnerable (and therefore most likely to die).

With 2.2 million of the most vulnerable having shielded from the virus since March, and 70% of care homes not having outbreaks, there are a huge number of very vulnerable around.