Highest number of daily deaths today, beating the previous record from yesterday

[StealthPolarBear]

I suppose we knew this was coming but it is incredibly worrying and depressing

@StealthPolarBear

Yes so do I, as I understand it. Decent amount of preotection for twice as many people vs even better protection for half If it's more complicated than that I am willing to learn more.

I agree. I accept that I’m not an expert but this particular gamble makes me very uncomfortable. I hope I’m wrong and it pays off I really do.

How many thousands of Covid deaths will be caused just by the government's dithering and head in the sand approach in December?

@luckylavendar... that confirms it, I am indeed time fuddled. I'm out by a week.

Self employed, sat here with the dog, DH working away. I've obviously lost the plot a bit!

I could be wrong but isn't this the peak from Christmas socialising?

I think it probably is lucie. We're just under a month past Christmas now.

Cases are falling - see pic.
The dreadfully high number of deaths are following the really high case numbers we had a week or two ago

I wonder if the reason the rates are still increasing exponentially is that we've run out of ventilators, ICU beds etc, so patients who might have got treatment at earlier points in the pandemic have been left waiting too long. We've reached that 'overwhelmed' point that everyone's been talking about since the start of the pandemic. Our local authority sent everyone on the electoral role an email today begging us to follow the rules because local hospitals were all at capacity.

@SellFridges where is that chart from, please? I can't find on the gov.uk site is it on PHE's site?

@ThornAmongstRoses

We have more knowledge about the virus than we did last year. We wear masks, we socially distance, we follow lockdowns and bubbles guidances, we have better hospital treatments YET we are still seeing such horrific death rates even worse than last year.

It’s terrifying.

Not everyone wears a mask and so many don’t bother SD. Likewise not everyone adheres to lockdown and bubbles aren’t for safety just allowed mixing. So many bubbles allowed now.

Add on Christmas, new year, schools going back for a day to mix freely then huge numbers still in school and people still socialising in shops or nipping for non essentials it’s obviously going to affect cases, hospital admissions etc.

What were people actually doing on Christmas Day? I went round to my parents (80s) for one hour, sat 2 metres away from them-threw their gifts at them and left and felt a bit worried doing that.

@tinselearedcow It’s a guy on Twitter who uses the data from the data every day to make some cool charts. I also like his updates on the hotspots by MSOA and the ones that show where various areas measure up by the initial tier announcements.

He’s great - @RP131

I found out about him via the data threads on here.

@SellFridges - does it matter really? They're all deaths, it's the same number.

@CuriousaboutSamphire - I have trouble remembering what day it is!

@CuriousaboutSamphire

Yes, this should be the peak, this time. Next week should see a levelling off... or am I a whole week out?

I'm time fuddled, I think!

But these are deaths from 20 dec, we haven't seen the deaths from Christmas yet, have we?

@Tiggerdig

This is the result of Christmas mixing.

Christmas wasn't even a month ago. What's the lag between a positive case, and death?

So many things contributed to the horribly high death figures we're seeing today... families mixing over Christmas and New Year, the virus mutating to become more transmissible, lack of ventilation in homes, shops and other workplaces due to the cold weather... many factors combined to create a perfect storm of calamity. Also, the NHS is stretched to capacity and in some places there are 4 ventilated patients being cared for by just 1 UTU nurse - there are bound to be consequences.

I think the high death numbers will continue for a few more days, before reducing down fairly quickly, as the benefits of the lockdown and vaccination start to take effect. It's very hard but I think it's good that the news is keeping everyone informed of the grim figures, as maybe that will encourage people to take the utmost care.

@luckylavender I think the way it’s being reported does matter actually. The data is readily available and headlines like those we are seeing repeated here are misleading. They prevent us addressing the real issues - underfunding of the NHS, incorrect government policy (border closures) and encourage us to point fingers “oh, it was the Christmas mixing that caused it”.

There's nothing we can do about the underfunding of the NHS in the immediate. But the same amount of people have still died, we have one of the worse records in the world and I think it does shine a light.

And if it was the Christmas mixing that caused some of it, we should reflect on the appalling mixed and late messages that brought us there.

Wasn't Boris going to let everyone mix for a whole week before he scrapped that and said just Christmas Day though?

@Sparklingbrook

Wasn't Boris going to let everyone mix for a whole week before he scrapped that and said just Christmas Day though?

Things changed, as they do in pandemics. When Boris said a week, it was at a time when infection rates were a lot lower and before the appearance of the new more infectious covid. If infection rates hadn't soared, then the full week of mixing would have been "allowed". Surely you realise that we're in a dynamic situation, things are changing almost daily sometimes.

Thanks SellFridges will have a look!

@Kazzyhoward of course I realise, no need to be patronising. My point was imagine if it was more than Christmas Day that mixing was allowed that's all. Blimey.

The models I have seen predict the peak (for deaths) to be early February.

The BBC news today said 18000 deaths for any reason, not just Covid?