Some truth on numbers. But why is it happening?

[Pootle40]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9279767/BEL-MOONEY-dad-died-chronic-illness-hes-officially-Covid-victim.html#socialLinks

Many of us have always suspected this but why is it happening and what benefit does it bring? Are other countries doing this?

I feel this. It's been discussed many times in covid threads. I too am not a conspiracy theorist and do believe covid is a real problem, and people are dying. But the figures? Is every single death related to covid? Bullshit. Some of the deaths, many of the deaths listed under covid, are really other things, some of them just other conditions.

Why then? I just don't get it?

I don't think we'll ever know. I'm a stickler for stuff being right so the distortion of information is frustrating. I know excess deaths (if there are any) will probably show better but even then with all the various cancer treatments cancelled even that will be distorted.......

You can’t be that much of a stickler for stuff being right if you are posting a DM link, OP!

Even within the article, it states he was resident in a care home where an outbreak was taking place.

He had refused a covid test in the days running up to his death, so the diagnosis was made by the staff and HCPs who were in daily contact with him.

I feel for the family, but do not agree that their conclusion is right.

I think there's people included that shouldn't be but did you see the number of people dying months after having CV? I don't think they are being counted in any way?

The numbers have always been reported as does ‘with’ covid. Look up excess deaths. It suggests that if anything we are slightly underreporting. Especially considering the reduction in flu deaths this year.

This is my issue. Deaths are 0.05% of cases and most of these are due to pre-existing conditions. I understand the volume of cases means this is a high number but people are not dying from COVID specifically and the distortion is criminal. Completely understand we need to protect our NHS but there has to be a better way of communicating this and reflecting the impact on services, other than making this disease a killer. Focus on the long term effects and care of the patients

I have thought this for a long time. People argue that if its on the death certificate, it must be true. However, doctors don't do autopsies on every single body and they make assumptions on likely causes of death. If they know someone had a particular illness, they will put that on the death certificate.

This part of the article stood out to me:
^There had been deaths from Covid on the dementia floor . . . so they consider it reasonable to assume . . .

'But Doctor,' I protested, 'an assumption isn't a diagnosis.'^

There hasn't been much flu around this winter, so if a frail old man in a care home with a covid outbreak, goes downhill and dies, it's more likely to have been covid than a random case of flu. The article doesn't say what type of test the care home mentioned, was using. If it's lateral flow, they're less sensitive so more likely to be false negative. We just don't know.

If our elderly loved one contracted Covid during a hospital stay, appeared to rally & went home but never quite recovered, died 3 weeks later and their death certificate didn't mention Covid, wouldn't we think there was a 'cover up' going on?

There's no doubt that real, tested Covid was making people ill, with a recognisable pattern of illness, and filling up our hospitals just a few short weeks ago. A few of the death counts might be flawed around the edges, but it's better than no count at all.

@WishingHopingThinkingPraying

I think there's people included that shouldn't be but did you see the number of people dying months after having CV? I don't think they are being counted in any way?

They're not counted in the daily "deaths within 28 days of a test" but they would be counted if covid is on the death cert.

That was termed wrongly, the disease is a killer obviously. Especially for the vulnerable.

But there are many wider implications that are hidden by the headline figures.

I think this is common knowledge isn't it. That's why people screaming 100,000 died from covid lot are just showing they aren't very bright

This is hardly breaking news - people have been discussing this since the pandemic started.

There is no one size fits all way of determining cause of death so, as PP, stated the language used is always 'with covid', or more specifically, "within 28 days of a positive test".

It’s a sad article certainly and I can see she doesn’t want to believe he died of Covid, but it really does seem perfectly reasonable for his HCP to have come to the conclusion that he did.

It justifies the lockdown. Statistics for deaths without other serious conditions show a very different story.

There are three separate death measures. Deaths within 28 days of a positive test, deaths labelled as Covid on the death certificate in the informed opinion of the attending doctor and excess deaths over the average of previous years.

All three have different imperfections, but they all tell the same story, they’re all above 100,000 for the UK and they are all completely consistent in their timings with a novel disease sweeping through the country in three waves and roughly doubling the annual death risk of anyone who contracts it. I’ve looked at the ONS statistics in particular because I’ve used them at work for years and there’s nothing anywhere which suggests that the official narrative is misleading.

Looking at this, Britain’s excess deaths and COVID deaths are roughly aligned:

www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker

Approx 112k COVID deaths since March 14, 106k excess deaths. The 6k difference could easily be explained by fewer flu deaths this year so doesn’t look like any over counting of COVID deaths to me.

I believe this.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything but I know one person who has died of covid and that person was given 6 months to live a year before they died.

The part above is fact ^. The widower told me she never tested positive and "it was better for insurance". That part may or may not be fact, but that's certainly what he told me.

Deaths are 0.05% of cases
Where are you getting that from? In the UK, 120 thousand deaths out of 4 million known cases is about 3%.

Actual cases are going to be much larger than known cases though Lancelottie. Best estimates for infection fatality rate are somewhere between 0.5% and 1% I think in a country like the UK, though dropping all the time with improved treatments. It’ll be lower in a country with a younger age profile.

This week’s More or Less was talking about covid death numbers. It’s an interesting listen,

Aren't excess deaths based on a 5 year average? I've seen excess deaths reported much lower when the 5 years is extended........

listen to the last few episodes of More or Less on R4. Answers all this stuff.

It's always been like that with death certificates.
Very often it's a combination of things that leads to someone's death. Eg someone with cancer often dies from an underlying infection. It was both the cancer and the infection that killed them so both are on their death certificate. It was the infection that ultimately finished them off but the cancer that made them susceptible to the infection and unable to fight it off.
Same for many other health conditions.

If COVID did not hasten/contribute to death it will not be on their death certificate as a cause if death.

Death certificates usually have 3 lines on for conditions which have caused the persons death.

Any deaths listed as COVID will be caused by COVID as a main or contributing factor (ie if that person did not have COVID they would not have died at that time).

It seems he developed covid symptoms following an outbreak of covid in his care home, and wasn't tested while he had symptoms. His age and underlying conditions put him at more risk and he hadn't had the vaccine, and in the opinion of a doctor, he died from covid.

The headline about "passing" the tests is misleading - it looks like the negative tests were routine ones before he developed symptoms. He refused a test while symptomatic.

Of course it's not 100% certain that he died from covid, but it seems likely that he did. I can understand why the family are upset, if he was a covid denier and would have wanted to have died in his sleep of old age.