How many covid deaths per month is too many?

[PrincessNutNuts]

3000? 4000? 5000? 6000?

At what point would you begin to be uncomfortable with the body count caused by the government policy colloquially known as "living" with covid?

Boris Johnson has been reported as saying that unless 50,000 are going to die he's not changing course.

This number can be expressed as about 238 dead British people every day from September - March inclusive, or 137 deaths per day over a year. Or 416 per day from November - February inclusive.

Is another 50,000 on the covid death toll ok with you?

Or not?

“ Yes because covid has to be listed as cause of death if someone dies within 28 days of having a positive covid test. This is an unprecedented way to record deaths and was only brought in by the WHO at the start of this Pandemic. Death with covid has been classed as death from covid.”

This is not true.

@rrhuth

My best friend's mother has covid listed on her death certificate. She never once tested positive for it.

Yes, and? Huge numbers of people are listed as dying of things without tests. Doctors are able to ascertain from symptoms.

This thread is veering into conspiracy theory territory.

"The daily COVID deaths counts reported on the government's COVID-19 dashboardd_ (produced by PHE) shows deaths within 28 days of a first positive laboratory-confirmed test. ."

This is from the ONS website so a fact not a conspiracy theory. It hard to argue that such a method of listing covid deaths is going to include deaths that were not caused by covid and therefore inflate the actual death figures. The real death count from covid can only be derived from the All Cause mortality comparison rates between 2020/21 and previous years.

[quote beentoldcomputersaysno]Thought this was interesting re: misunderstandings around covid death rates

www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n352[/quote]
Yes I have just read that and it is indeed interesting and gives a more nuanced picture. Fair to say that in the early days there may have been under reporting due to lack of tests etc and I would agree that it's the ONS figure we should be looking at and not PHE dashboard figure.

@theemperorhasnoclothes

Doctors can be struck off for falsifying death certificates. There is no way they'd do it randomly, they're risking their job, their livelihood - why? Why would they do that? It's not like there's a dearth of real covid deaths.

Totally bonkers to think this is happening.

They are not falsifying death certs. They are listing covid on the death cert because they have to do so, it is a notifiable disease by virtue of the Health Protection (Notifications) Regulations 2010, they are required to do so by law.

Read the Gov.Uk website which has all the info on how deaths are to be certified.
In the figures given to the public on the PHE dashboard they include both those who have Covid listed on the death cert (even if it has not directly caused death but is just on the certificate because it is a notifiable disease and the person had tested positive for it) and in addition they are required to put covid on the death cert for anyone who died within 28 days of a positive test, regardless of the circs they died in.

This does NOT mean docs are falsifying death certs, because of course they are not. They are listing covid as cause of death where they deem it to be cause of death but they are listing it in other sections of the cert where it's present as an additional factor or has been in the 28 days prior to death. The issue for me is that the government then counts these recorded deaths as covid deaths and that is misleading afaiac.

Lilifer

"If you die a couple of days after being in a road traffic accident and you test positive in hospital for covid your death cert will state cause of death as covid."

Please stop spreading rumours which are complete lies.

www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/whetherthosewhohavediedfromacaraccidentwithcovid19willbecountedinonsstatistics?:uri=aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/whetherthosewhohavediedfromacaraccidentwithcovid19willbecountedinonsstatistics

"It is extremely unlikely that a coroner would find that someone was involved in a traffic accident, or was the victim of violence, because of having COVID-19 or a positive COVID-19 test -- so they would not mention COVID-19 on the death certificate. This applies to any death caused by an accident, violence, poisoning, or other external causes.
Even if in an unusual case a death certificate mentioned both COVID-19 and a traffic accident (or other external causes), the World Health Organisation (WHO) rules for coding deaths mean that the traffic accident would be identified as the underlying cause of death in our data."

@andyoldlabour

Lilifer

"If you die a couple of days after being in a road traffic accident and you test positive in hospital for covid your death cert will state cause of death as covid."

Please stop spreading rumours which are complete lies.

www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/whetherthosewhohavediedfromacaraccidentwithcovid19willbecountedinonsstatistics?:uri=aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/whetherthosewhohavediedfromacaraccidentwithcovid19willbecountedinonsstatistics

"It is extremely unlikely that a coroner would find that someone was involved in a traffic accident, or was the victim of violence, because of having COVID-19 or a positive COVID-19 test -- so they would not mention COVID-19 on the death certificate. This applies to any death caused by an accident, violence, poisoning, or other external causes.
Even if in an unusual case a death certificate mentioned both COVID-19 and a traffic accident (or other external causes), the World Health Organisation (WHO) rules for coding deaths mean that the traffic accident would be identified as the underlying cause of death in our data."

Yes and if you actually read my post at 9.19am you'll find i am in agreement with you that ONS data is the one to rely on. It is the governments PHE dashboard that I find to be misleading on the figures by not separating the deaths from covid or heavily caused by covid from the deaths in which a patient happened to have covid but it in no way caused or contributed to their death, personally I think that is an important distinction to be made and the latter should not be counted as part of the former.

I was just saying on another thread that I'd not read any threads asking this question and a poster helpfully pointed me in this direction.

It's a good question. It's important to plan ahead and know what you'd do in any given situation. Not having a clear plan contributed heavily to this and it is ridiculous to think that continuing to not plan is a good idea.

Nobody likes thinking about death but covid is here to stay. There is no beating it. People are going to die from it. A lot of people. (I'll probably be one of them if my heart failure and lung disease don't finish me off before I get it) For me I'd say if the daily deaths hit and stay above 200 for more than a few days then there should be a firebreak to try to slow it down for a bit.

For me, the number of deaths from covid that should trigger a full lockdown would be anything over 500 daily deaths. My maths is shit even with a calculator but I think that's less than 0.001% of the population.

I appreciate the hard numbers @IveGotASongThatllGetOnYNerves

We've passed the point of Boris Johnson's 50,000 already and no Plan B so we can't have reached most people's tipping point yet.

Pics from @BristOliver on Twitter.

To address the original question: on average around 42,000 - 50,000 people die every month in the UK. Do you have strong feelings about what proportion died of Covid? Is one in 10 OK? One in 100? One in 1000?

How do you feel about the ones that died of something else? Is it better if most people die of something that isn't Covid? Cancer? TB? Heart disease? Sepsis? 'Flu? Accidents? Homicide? Are these acceptable things to die of? Do you have a list of things that are OK to die from and things that are not?

Around 450 a day d

@amicissimma

To address the original question: on average around 42,000 - 50,000 people die every month in the UK. Do you have strong feelings about what proportion died of Covid? Is one in 10 OK? One in 100? One in 1000?

How do you feel about the ones that died of something else? Is it better if most people die of something that isn't Covid? Cancer? TB? Heart disease? Sepsis? 'Flu? Accidents? Homicide? Are these acceptable things to die of? Do you have a list of things that are OK to die from and things that are not?

That doesn't address the original question.

It's colloquially known as "whataboutery"

Well more people are going to dieof cancer, TB, heart disease, RTC, sepis as well as covid if the numbers continue to be high as hospitals can only treat so many at a given time.

So i would prefer s9me sort of mitigations as needed to keep theNHS functioning so that should me or my family need medical assistance or car for any reason we can access it and not deteriate to critical orworse while waiting for care

Just popping on to add this chart from @BristOliver.

We have passed the point where the current death rate would equal 50,000 covid deaths a year and have moved up to 60,000. (Or three very bad flu years.)

Does anyone know how many people have died of covid (by death certificate) in 2021?

About 80,000 so far? More?

@Covidworries

Well more people are going to dieof cancer, TB, heart disease, RTC, sepis as well as covid if the numbers continue to be high as hospitals can only treat so many at a given time.

So i would prefer s9me sort of mitigations as needed to keep theNHS functioning so that should me or my family need medical assistance or car for any reason we can access it and not deteriate to critical orworse while waiting for care

Yes, more people will die of everything if we keep overloading the health service with covid.

My friend's mum recently waited many hours at home for an ambulance, then the same again in the ambulance outside the hospital, then more hours for an ICU bed to become free so they could operate on her. Whole days passed in pain and suffering. And it's not winter yet.

Other countries have learned to live with covid by adapting to accepting sensible, minimal, protective measures such as masks, social distancing, and widespread provision of sanitising stations. We haven't adapted we've chosen to bury our heads in the sand and sing la la while people die and hospitals creak under the strain for want of a few simple measures.

@youkiddingme

Other countries have learned to live with covid by adapting to accepting sensible, minimal, protective measures such as masks, social distancing, and widespread provision of sanitising stations. We haven't adapted we've chosen to bury our heads in the sand and sing la la while people die and hospitals creak under the strain for want of a few simple measures.

Unsurprising, firmly declaring that "we have to live with covid now" butters no parsnips with a virus.

This is what "living with covid" by doing nothing much other than talking about it in the past tense looks like.

A quarter of a million kids off school every week.

Substitute teachers.

A million off sick from work/school every month.

Thousands going to hospital with covid every week.

Thousands dying of covid every month.

A new Delta variant probably about to become dominant.

Other countries have learned to live with covid by adapting to accepting sensible, minimal, protective measures such as masks, social distancing, and widespread provision of sanitising stations.

The hand sanitizer stations probably do bugger all, since COVID is almost never spread by fomites. The masks probably don't do an awful lot against Delta either, judging by the patterns we've seen in parts of Great Britain that have gamely continued with the masking.

Social distancing will slow spread if it's "distanced" enough, but this isn't a "minimal" measure at all. Human beings want to date, eat out, go to pubs, have weddings and go to events; entire industries will cease to be financially viable if SDing comes back. Children need to be in school.

I love the idea of "simple easy things that would stop COVID spreading," but in practice, the things that are simple and easy to do don't actually seem to do much to check the spread, and the things that do genuinely check the spread aren't really very simple or easy to do, are they?

By the way, haven't hospitalizations and deaths basically flatlined in countries like Denmark and Sweden, which are doing pretty much bugger-all to control the virus now (other than the fact that they've vaccinated almost everyone)?

Social distancing is not a simple measure. It has a human psychological cost and a social economic cost.

@PrincessNutNuts

New Zealand are in negative excess deaths.

New Zealand have a tiny population!! About 18 per km2 compared to about 300 per km2 in the UK. It's extremely difficult to control infections here because we are overcrowded. There's a limit to how long you can expect people to live with severe restrictions on their lives, irrespective of the death rate.

Could use Hong Kong or Taiwan as comparators if you prefer @MidnightMeltdown?

Although populations of both of those seem to prefer covid protection measures to covid time off work, hospitalisations, and deaths.

I'm not sure you can argue that the population of NZ has had to live with severe restrictions on their lives compared to the U.K. which has had some of the longest lockdowns on earth.

in practice, the things that are simple and easy to do don't actually seem to do much to check the spread, and the things that do genuinely check the spread aren't really very simple or easy to do, are they?

Exactly. Very well expressed.

I'm not comfortable with any of course, no one wishes death on doesn't care about decent people but I'm also not comfortable with the 450 a day that die of cancer and always have and probably will be for many years.

Most pandemics have ended but whilst twats are still posting shit on social media, discouraging vaccines etc it will never end.

A Colleague died of covid with other health conditions double vaccinated and 2 people recently died unvaccanated no health conditions. People need boosters etc.

I'm not sure you can argue that the population of NZ has had to live with severe restrictions on their lives compared to the U.K. which has had some of the longest lockdowns on earth.

Yes see my previous point about the population of New Zealand and the therefore the virus being much easier to control.

I'm not saying that the UK has done things right, I don't think they have, but unless the government are prepared to shut down the airports, prevent people from moving around, arriving by dinghy etc, and generally implement very severe and permanent restrictions on our lives, then it is not possible to control the virus.

Since the start of covid till 28th october there has been 100 deaths in children in UK since 29th october there has been 7 more.

This wont include any children who died after 28 days due to complications cause by covid.

Yes number is still low but i worry about how my own children could be impacted by covid and i dont want to see the death toll rising higher in this age bracket or other ages. A police officer also died of covid i believe he was 30

@TheKeatingFive

in practice, the things that are simple and easy to do don't actually seem to do much to check the spread, and the things that do genuinely check the spread aren't really very simple or easy to do, are they?

Exactly. Very well expressed.

Indeed, faffing about with low level measures will make little/no impact. If you want to make a difference to case numbers with restrictions you need to do the big, difficult things.