Do you think a lot of deaths are being classed as 'COVID?'

[RUNFAST11]

Is it true that say if someone got COVID and died within 28 days with non COVID reasons e.g. accident, cancer, heart attack etc they still get classed as COVID death?

publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2020/08/12/behind-the-headlines-counting-covid-19-deaths/
"PHE has been counting all deaths in people who have laboratory-confirmed infection – this is technically robust because it does not require a judgement to be made about cause of death. ONS reports deaths where a doctor suspects COVID-19 as a cause – these data include a clinical assessment as recommended by WHO but are subject to variation in clinical judgement as to the cause of death."

Honestly, what’s the percentage of people who have COVID and then get knocked down by a bus? I’m so sick of seeing this bandied around .

It's amazing how many people who know someone who got covid, recovered and got run over by a bus less than 28 days later. We really need to take a good look at buses, they've gone fekking feral by all accounts.

@FourTeaFallOut

It's amazing how many people who know someone who got covid, recovered and got run over by a bus less than 28 days later. We really need to take a good look at buses, they've gone fekking feral by all accounts.

possibly the pithiest best response to this argument I've ever seen

Honestly, what’s the percentage of people who have COVID and then get knocked down by a bus? I’m so sick of seeing this bandied around .

True, but there are plenty of people who have other illnesses such as cancer who may have had covid in hospital, recovered then died of the cancer. They would be down as a covid death.

I know 1 person who had terminal cancer. Went in for end of life care. Got covid in hospital and death as recorded as covid. That was in April though. The family tried to get it changed but lost.

Covid attacks lungs, but it also can attack other organs, like the heart, kidneys etc. So if someone gets Covid and does of a heart attack, they might not have done without Covid weakening them.

As well as loss of taste and smell, it obviously also causes a sense for buses to disappear too.
But medical professionals aren’t randomly diagnosing that as a cause of death for a laugh.

Between 1 March and 30 June 2020, there were 218,837 deaths that occurred in England and Wales and that were registered by 4 July 2020. Over a fifth of these deaths (23.0%) involved the coronavirus (COVID-19) (50,335 deaths). The doctor certifying a death can list all causes in the chain of events that led to the death and pre-existing conditions that may have contributed to the death. Using this information, we determine an underlying cause of death. More information on this process can be found in our user guide. In the majority of cases (46,736 deaths, 92.8%) where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, it was found to be the underlying cause of death.
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19englandandwales/deathsoccurringinjune2020

@RUNFAST11

Is it true that say if someone got COVID and died within 28 days with non COVID reasons e.g. accident, cancer, heart attack etc they still get classed as COVID death?

Not sure about now but they weren't doing in May/June time afaik.

My nana died. She had covid - tested positive twice in hospital - picked up in there. She died a week or so later, but not from covid itself.

Her death certificate makes no mention of Covid. Just said she died of old age.

DH is a probate solicitor and he has had a number of death certificates come through the don't mention Covid, although he knows they had tested positive with a month of their death. Just their death was caused by something else.

I don't know if death certificate reasons are the same though. I suspect there are different records re the 28 day thing.

Mind you - a death from heart attack could also be covid related. Covid can cause dangerously high blood pressure; in turn this can then cause a heart attack or stroke, which could lead to death. If that person didn't already have blood pressure issues than covid could still be a genuine reason behind it.

I think you will find that buses do not and never have run people over. This is a vicious claim by anybody who has gone out not wearing clean underwear and says they were run over by a bus.

No.
It did not happen and will never happen and even if it did the bus would strongly deny it.

On behalf of all buses, and Persil

Yes, people who have gone into hospital because they are old and would die anyway are catching Covid in hospital and dying, not because they have Covid but because they are old and unwell and would have died anyway.

@FourTeaFallOut

It's amazing how many people who know someone who got covid, recovered and got run over by a bus less than 28 days later. We really need to take a good look at buses, they've gone fekking feral by all accounts.

It’s also amazing how so many people seem to know some who died of Covid despite previously being a super fit marathon runner in their early 30s with no underlying health conditions

Covid may has hastened their death, even though they were end of life and going to die anyway that doesn't mean that the actual cause of death wasn't covid (or that if they didn't have the terminal cancer that they couldn't have fought off the covid)

Many death certificates will have more than one cause - the condition/insult that actually caused the death and then underlying factors which influenced the death
So some will have i) pneumonia ii) lung cancer - the pneumonia killed them, but the lung cancer weakened their body to enable pneumonia to kill them - this isn't unique to covid

This question insinuates that there is a conspiracy to inflate the COVID figures. I don’t believe this. If someone dies within 28 days of a positive test, the likelihood is that COVID contributed to their death.

@Totp

Honestly, what’s the percentage of people who have COVID and then get knocked down by a bus? I’m so sick of seeing this bandied around .

Not many but plenty of people die from non-covid related reasons within 28 days of a test. Especially as many tests take place in hospital so someone may be hospitalise with say, a heart attack, broken leg, an aneurysm, cancer etc. While there they get tested for covid for which they were asymptomatic or mild. They then die from complications of the heart attack or whatever and be classed as covid death.

Bus is just an easy example because it's so obviously unrelated. If you use heart attack as an example people will start saying that the asymptomatic covid contributed to the heart attack.

Mire likely COVID deaths are understated in those figures as it can take longer than 28 days to kill you.
More accurate ONS Figures

If anything the 28 days requirement underestimates Covid-19 deaths as statistically the number of people who die of an unrelated cause during that short time period is likely to be a far smaller percentage than the number of Covid-19 deaths that occur after 28 days. Hence the numbers using the 28 days method are lower than those using the death certificate method which in turn are lower than excess deaths.

One of the reasons the 28 days method is used is to have a reasonable estimate number in the short term.

However, with many more patients in hospital now for non Covid reasons compared to April, the more recent 28 day figures need to be taken with the caveat that that a minority but still significant number of people are either being tested positive on admittance for a reason other than Covid or are non Covid patients picking up a Covid infection while in hospital.
www.hsj.co.uk/acute-care/exclusive-hospitals-70-more-full-than-april/7028742.article

I think a lot of deaths are probably not being counted as over 28 days since point of infection. Say someone has a heart attack and dies 40 days after infection but it was the COVID that weakened their heart in he first place.

Can it be listed as a secondary cause of death?

^Totp:
This question insinuates that there is a conspiracy to inflate the COVID figures. I don’t believe this. If someone dies within 28 days of a positive test, the likelihood is that COVID contributed to their death.^

It is indeed likely and I don't think there is a conspiracy. BUT inflating Covid death figures for any reason is unacceptable because we do not have accurate figures for cases, and cannot unless everyone is tested. Therefore the death rate is always going to be artificially high and this is unhelpful.

@FourTeaFallOut

It's amazing how many people who know someone who got covid, recovered and got run over by a bus less than 28 days later. We really need to take a good look at buses, they've gone fekking feral by all accounts.

Yep, clearly all running amock!

Bloody shame they're not hitting people starting goady threads!!

However, the most recent ONS figures (week ending 23 October 2020 (Week 43)
still show that for the vast majority of deaths involving Covid-19, this was the underlying cause of death.

Of the 978 deaths that involved COVID-19, 874 had this recorded as the underlying cause of death (89.4%)
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/latest?hootPostID=deb79e6799b3e70d0a73f4b841a7786d

@yearinyearout

Honestly, what’s the percentage of people who have COVID and then get knocked down by a bus? I’m so sick of seeing this bandied around .

True, but there are plenty of people who have other illnesses such as cancer who may have had covid in hospital, recovered then died of the cancer. They would be down as a covid death.

& just how many people do you think had Covid & went home & then died of cancer within a couple of weeks?

?? seriously.

So, around 10% of people who had Covid on their death certificates died from a different main cause, although Covid may still have contributed. According to the ONS, who are actual statisticians who understand data (and know to look both ways and listen for buses before crossing the road).

Do we know how many people died of Covid-related things more than 28 days after catching it?

Excess deaths is still the easiest thing to look at, isn’t it? If you can stomach it.

In my line of work we deal a lot with death certificates, and I've not had one with covid as cause of death as yet.

My brother also works in probate, and has said he is amazed at how little he has seen cause of death to be covid, being as this is what kept popping up in media etc and people claiming that people are wrongly having it as cause of death.

I think a doctor would only put covid if they believed that it played a part in that persons death.

BUT inflating Covid death figures for any reason is unacceptable because we do not have accurate figures for cases, and cannot unless everyone is tested. Therefore the death rate is always going to be artificially high and this is unhelpful.

But by what measure are they "artificially high"? We do know roughly the number of infections due to the weekly ONS random population sampling testing.

If you are talking about the CFR being higher than the IFR, obviously it will be because CFR is the number of deaths as a percentage of the number of confirmed cases (positive tests). But the IFR (number of deaths as a percentage of all infections) can still be calculated using ONS, REACT2 and other surveys.