If we would have heard that 125,000 people would have died in the U.K. of C19, in March 2020, where would our minds be?

[EddyF]

Not sure if my title makes sense as I can’t see it all on my phone. But I was just wondering how hearing the U.K. has lost 125,000 people since the pandemic started and it hardly stirs any emotion in me. The early days in 2020, even the news of 200 people had died used to flood me. I just feel sad that these figures don’t have the same impact on me.

I don’t watch TV much and today I am watching Sky and just heard the current figure.

Does anyone else feel the same? I hate that I am so desensitised.

I distinctly remember the news from italy sometime in February last year and hearing that '50 people a day' were dying. That sounded really horrendous at the time but of course I had no idea what was coming.

Yes I feel the same as you. Totally desensitised to it.

That said, right now the amount of people that are dying is roughly in line with the numbers that die anyway. A lot of people die in the UK every day anyway.

But I agree entirely that it's a huge number and we need to hold our government to account.

It doesn't in me because 125,000 didn't die of Covid. Fact. Because we don't know how many of these people lost their lives because of Covid I am not in the camp that all these people would have been saved.

My mind would have been exactly as it was last year when I was trying to put things into perspective for my 9 year old DS1 by explaining that around 1500 people die every day in the U.K. Hundreds of thousands of people have died from other causes in the past year but hardly anyone seems to be bothered about that. I feel sad for their families.

By the excess deaths measure, the UK has lost over 150k people to covid related issues - that doesn't mean all covid of course e.g. some people will have died because the NHS was unable to give them the care they needed due to the demands from covid patients.

That's a full year assessment, so we're not talking about people losing the odd month of life, but having at least 12 months taken off them.

I'm pretty non-empathetic. Unfortunately, the news of 200 deaths per day did not make me upset. They weren't people I knew. People die every single day and I can't be sad about all of them.
I expect if I had heard the news of 125,000 deaths from covid in 2020, I would have been surprised and wanted to know the demographics and statistics.

Yes of course people die of other things. This number is on top of that. And there’s a lot more to come, both from covid, its associated burden of morbidity and all the cancers, cardiac & other issues that have been missed because of the Covid pressures on the NHS. Longevity in this country has already been impacted.
I am not desensitised. I am mad as fuck. And if you’re not, you haven’t been paying attention.

By the excess deaths measure, the UK has lost over 150k people to covid related issues...

Actually, the number of excess deaths in the UK is lower than the number of official "Covid deaths" (per ONS reporting). We are one of a few exceptions - in most other countries it is the other way round:

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

UK (up until Feb 19):

Covid deaths (based on ONS death certificates) - 140,160
Excess deaths - 124,170
Excess deaths per 100,000 of population - 187

I expect that Mr Johnson hopes you are as desensitised when it comes to voting at the next general election.

Had Mr Gove or Mr Hunt been Prime Minister I think the number would have been at least 10-15,000 fewer.

Prof Witty said at the time 80% of the population would catch it and 2% of those would die so 450,000 deaths.

I'm glad that wasnt the case but I guess it might still be

This is with 3 lockdowns and now a vax.
300k would have been likely.
God knows when it would have stopped too depending on the effect of natural immunity waning

Chris Giles of the FT puts excess deaths for the whole pandemic at 124,400.

The Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI) says 111,200 excess deaths to 26 February, of which 50,400 are in the second wave.

Deaths within 28 days of a positive test is 125,926

Deaths where a doctor put covid on the death certificate is 146,487 up to March 5th.

I know what you mean Op, I feel like the scale of the numbers is easy to be desensitised to it, until you hear the individual stories

The figure of 200k dead was mooted at one point. I thought it was possible we would have large numbers dead. It is awful, but could have been even worse.

There is a lot still to play for.

@HSHorror

This is with 3 lockdowns and now a vax. 300k would have been likely. God knows when it would have stopped too depending on the effect of natural immunity waning

On the 21st February 2020 NERVTAG told the government they could expect deaths of up to 1.3 million...

@herecomesthsun

The figure of 200k dead was mooted at one point. I thought it was possible we would have large numbers dead. It is awful, but could have been even worse.

There is a lot still to play for.

I expect us to reach that mark. There's a lot of year left. Over 50,000 died of covid in January and February.

My friends and family in other countries often say they don't understand why we just seem to accept that thousands of us are going to die of covid, and we're going to have live under redirections, and the economy is trashed, and we can't see our families, and our weddings are cancelled and our businesses are going under etc...

It's not like this everywhere.

(It's not this bad hardly anywhere.)

Remember when the plan was herd immunity?

And a massive death toll? But spread out "squash the sombrero"

www.itv.com/news/2020-03-12/british-government-wants-uk-to-acquire-coronavirus-herd-immunity-writes-robert-peston

We have become desensitised, I think. I teach - when I look at the daily death toll I think about how many people would have disappeared from school that day - a whole school, 2 whole schools, a year group, a class full, half a class full. It has kept me grounded, I think.

Out of interest, we are at a year now. How far over the normal death rate has the covid death toll taken us? I suspect at least in the early days, many people who died were people who would likely have died in the next few days/weeks/months anyway. It would be interesting to see how that has panned out over the longer period of time.

It's hard, on average just under 600,000 people die in the UK a year anyway... obviously this will be higher because of covid and without lockdown etc this could have been much higher.... I think many people hate talking or even thinking about death... whereas in other cultures its widely spoken about and just seen as another step in life ... horrible I know... 120k people is still less than 0.2% of the UK population... again not saying its acceptable having the amount of deaths we have had. Just another way of looking at it.

So the Uk is approaching 125 -50k deaths with coronavirus as a factor. at least.

That is 17-25% of the usual number of deaths. That is a large number.

BMJ article here about the reality of coronavirus as a cause of death here. www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n352

"COVID-19 caused more deaths in 2020 than other infectious diseases caused for over a century" - ONS comment here www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronavirusayearlikenoother/2021-03-15

The thing is, a lot of this death was avoidable.

S Korea (popn about 51 million) has had less than 2,000 deaths without even locking down.

Australia (popn about 25 million) has had 909 deaths.

Germany (popn about 84 million) has had about 74,000 deaths - a very similar country (better healthcare of course and by the sounds of it better test and trace) . That's a LOT less than us.

And that's before you even get to disability / long covid which will be in numbers far exceeding the deaths.

Also the focus on deaths alone I think isn't that helpful. People who've been ventilated in ICU are not going to get up and be right as rain within a week or two.

The long term disability from the failures of our government is going to be a burden this country bears for many years to come.

Comparing deaths from covid to the normal death rate is apples and oranges. The correct comparator is covid death rate in other countries and there we've failed dismally.

Any number of things having been done better would have reduced the number of deaths (and disability) by tens of thousands of people, at least. Look at Germany.

It's really time we held this government to account for how badly they've failed - and it's not through saving money either. Our extremely poor test and trace service has cost about 37 billion I think. Expensive and useless (private sector of course - so someone somewhere is making pots of money and killing people by their failures at the same time).

It's not like there hasn't been time to draft in the experts from S Korea or elsewhere who've managed things so well. It's not like they haven't had ample opportunity to learn from mistakes and yet, they don't.

And 10,000 children die every day from starvation. www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jun/05/nearly-half-of-all-child-deaths-in-africa-stem-from-hunger-study-shows

400,000 people die every year from malaria. www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/malaria-set-kill-people-year-covid-19-sub-saharan-africa-experts/amp/

@ConeHat

Prof Witty said at the time 80% of the population would catch it and 2% of those would die so 450,000 deaths.

I'm glad that wasnt the case but I guess it might still be

Presumably that figure is for if we hadn't taken steps to mitigate it.

There is a lot still to play for

This is absolutely true.