Why are deaths still so high?

[likeamillpond]

Deaths are averaging 400 a day.

What happened to the
"We have better treatments now.
We give people steroids and the ventilation methods we use are better"
Because of this, people have a better chance of surviving covid than they did during the first wave"

This is the story we were sold. Right? (I didn't imagine it

And yet, the death rates are high.

Covid is a really nasty virus that gets into every organ in the body. It kills people not just through lung damage but through blood clots causing heart attacks and strokes and other organ damage. It takes time to find treatments that work and so far they dont do a lot for the most severely ill.

It's not surprising that we still have a lot of deaths. The fatality rate is nowhere near as high as, say, SARS or MERS but a lot more people have had the disease. Lots of people are still catching it and some of them will go on to die of it.

@likeamillpond

Deaths are averaging 400 a day.

What happened to the
"We have better treatments now.
We give people steroids and the ventilation methods we use are better"
Because of this, people have a better chance of surviving covid than they did during the first wave"

This is the story we were sold. Right? (I didn't imagine it

And yet, the death rates are high.

Because it's a really nasty disease that's spreading like wildfire through the elderly and vulnerable.

Yes, treatments are better. Yes, we do know a lot more. But when someone has a really nasty illness, for which we have no specific cure, and so treatments are basically aimed at keeping alive til they heal, then a certain percentage won't make it.

Gosh, I think 400/day is really low! Considering how many cases there are, how elderly is the population. Understanding of effective treatment has improved so much. USA has 5x as many people but 6x as many daily deaths. for instance, and not as high % of their population is elderly.

Death rates are spiking high in Mexico or Belgium and soaring in places like Czechia. UK is not that bad in league tables.

I was amazed to read early on in all this that around 450 people die of cancer every day in the UK on average, despite all the progress we've made in treatments & diagnosis. I'm not saying that Covid isn't shit & genuinely dangerous for certain demographies, just that we don't talk or think much about death as a culture, so we're a bit oblivious to quite how many people pass away every day, of things much more familiar than Covid. And there's lots of Covid around (ONS stats suggest that testing is only picking up a minority of cases) plus the UK like other developed countries as quite a significant population of frail elderly people who are extra vulnerable

@lljkk

Gosh, I think 400/day is really low! Considering how many cases there are, how elderly is the population. Understanding of effective treatment has improved so much. USA has 5x as many people but 6x as many daily deaths. for instance, and not as high % of their population is elderly.

Death rates are spiking high in Mexico or Belgium and soaring in places like Czechia. UK is not that bad in league tables.

I can't understand that perspective at all, in excess of 2800 people a week are dying because of this virus. Yes the raw numbers are not as bad as they are in America or Mexico but all that means is that they have even less of a grip on this thing than we do.

It's the equivalent of an entire secondary school full of people dying a week. How is that low??

It is the same disease it was in March - it kills and not just the elderly.
The government would like to downplay this because they want to keep us all spending. Our country is unlike most I have seen in that the media has consistently not focused on those who die, but those whose livelihoods are affected.

@fatgirlshrinking you do realise that people dying with covid means people who die in a car accident, but had a positive test in the last 28 days. It also means someone who has terminal cancer, has a few days left to live, tests positive for covid, and then dies of their cancer.

There is a big difference between dying with covid and dying of covid, and this difference isn't reported.

Please remember that number of daily deaths reported each day are for people who died for any reason within 28 days of a Covid test. Not just people who died because of covid. Many might have been admitted to hospital for, say, heart condition or cancer, been tested (as every inpatient is) and then died of their cancer/heart attack.

@SpnBaby1967

I cant believe this still needs explaining.

It's not 400 people died TODAY its 400 were notified as having died today. For example in my town we just had 2 deaths logged for today, but they also confirmed one died on 28th November and one died on 7th december.

Its the reporting delays that skew the figures which is why they do the 7 day rolling total.

Can I ask where you get the figures for your town please?

@Lazypuppy

The death rates are of people who died within 28 days of testing positive for covid, doesn't mean they died of covid.

Do you know how many people normally die every day?

It also doesn't mean people aren't dying of covid after the 28 days.

We never get to see flu figures for the winter months

The Goverment publishes a weekly flu report, here are last season's:

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-national-flu-reports-2019-to-2020-season

and then a round up report for the whole season

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/annual-flu-reports

This year they are doing combined weekly reports on all respiratory diseases including flu and covid

www.gov.uk/government/news/weekly-national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports-published

If you want to compare British covid death rates to other European countries, rates per 100,000 on a 14 day rolling basis, this is a useful page. We are middling (17th of 31)

www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/cases-2019-ncov-eueea

@SpnBaby1967

I cant believe this still needs explaining.

It's not 400 people died TODAY its 400 were notified as having died today. For example in my town we just had 2 deaths logged for today, but they also confirmed one died on 28th November and one died on 7th december.

Its the reporting delays that skew the figures which is why they do the 7 day rolling total.

Yes, but when the figures consistently stay the same or climb, it still gives the overall picture and the death rates are high.

You need to look at the excess deaths to understand what effect Covid is having on normal death rates. Excess deaths nationally in November were not as bad as they were in the summer. Still much higher than it should be.

iInteresting to see how regional differences skew the average. London in November had a pretty normal death rate, north less so.

www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4500

Although given how things are going in London presently, it's not clear how long that will last.

I still don't understand how heartless can be about this. Yes, people die all the time. Doesn't mean we should sit back and let them die of Covid in droves.

[quote Lazypuppy]**@fatgirlshrinking you do realise that people dying with covid means people who die in a car accident, but had a positive test in the last 28 days. It also means someone who has terminal cancer, has a few days left to live, tests positive for covid, and then dies of their cancer.

There is a big difference between dying with covid and dying of covid, and this difference isn't reported.[/quote]

95% of those who die within 28 days of a positive Covid test have Covid listed as a cause of death on the death certificate, this is because where the cause of death is car accident Covid is not listed, those deaths make up 5% or 20 out of the 400 daily figure.

So yes there are some deaths where the cause of death within 28 days of a positive test is not Covid and is being inaccurately reported in the daily stats but not many.

Please bear in mind that those who die with Covid and with cancer have not necessarily died OF cancer, they may have been able to live for months or years longer if Covid had not caused massive multi system damage to an already weakened system.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/916035/RAATechnicalSummaryy-PHEEDataSeriessCOVID199Deaths20200812.pdf

Section 5.2 for reference.

News earlier said it was 141 today..which sounded 'good' to me. I expect deaths from respiratory issues are usually higher this time of year? So this is not that concerning. Especially when you think Imperial (I think it was?) was touting 4000 deaths a day by december..

And yes absolutely right @Staffy1

"The proportion of deaths that mention COVID-19 on the death certificate decreases with a longer interval between the first positive specimen and date of death: 73.4% for those with an interval of 29-42 days and 48.1% for those with an interval of 43-60 days (Table 1)"

So the deaths 29 - 60 days after a Covid positive test are currently not reported at all, but that doesn't mean they aren't happening, just that they aren't being reported.

In spring it was nearly 1000 per day. We are in winter and it is average of 400. It should be worse now than it was then. But it isn’t. Something is working. They were never going to save everyone...

There is a under reporting going on. People can be intubated in ICU for longer than 28 days after having covid and they won't be included in the statistics. The true figure of people who died from covid can be found from ONS looking at covid listed as cause of death in the death certificate.

@BogRollBOGOF

UK death rates are lowest in the summer months and rise through the autumn towards a peak in January and decrease as the weather warms up. Respiritory illness is always a significant cause of death over the winter months. Covid 19 fits within these trends (possibly exaggerating them, but then there is also an offset that "Covid Secure" measures are also reducing "normal" seasonal illnesses too) The demographics most vulverable to dying from Covid 19 are also those that are most vulverable to a winter peak of deaths from respiritory illnesses.

400 deaths a day in December is less alarming than 400 deaths a day would be in June.

Yep

And some people seem surprised that deaths have been across pretty much all of Northern Europe

Increasing

You only have to look at the excess deaths figures to see what is going on. It resolves all these partially plausible alternative explanations.

Yes, please stop the with/of Covid minimising of it all. ONS stats make clear how many have died of Covid ie as a main cause on death certificate, it's over 70,000 (I think over 75 now.) And then excess death numbers are over that, but the vast majority of excess deaths can be seen in the covid death figures.

So the fact that a tiny percentage of deaths within 28 days are noted as Covid when that's not a cause is balanced and then overbalanced by those who die after 28 days of it. I think that if they were still using the measures they'd used in April daily figures would be higher still.

It's 'only' 141 today because it's a Sunday and Sunday and Mondays figures are always artificially low, sadly.

Op I do think they have better treatment and lockdowns, test and trace, social distancing and masks have all contributed to lower numbers with the helpful side effect that flu numbers are also lower. But we might see covid numbers go higher in January though I desperately hope not.

When does the Covid death rate reset?

For regular flu they count deaths by winters. As the Covid deaths seem to have continued all year then are they going to reset on 1st Jan or are they going to keep them adding on endlessly?

I expect they'll stop reporting deaths daily when they stop being high figures. Then they'll be reported in ONS reports along with other causes of death.

Because the entire thing has been badly handled by the government. They didn't lockdown soon enough, or for long enough initially, so never really got on top of it.

Opening up universities was utterly ridiculous and, in my area at least, led to a huge spike in cases.

Deaths are up again since shopping was allowed. I'm not blaming the public, after all everyone's desperate to get out and about, but the government should be taking more responsibilty for their citizens' health and not allowing us all to go out and mix.

With a vaccination programme started, it shouldn't take too much longer before the most vulnerable are protected and then we could afford to relax a bit. But Christmas is far, far too soon.