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?

There are a number of European countries with higher rates than the UK at the moment. Really there are.

I know it’s pointless saying this, like it is pointless saying that the parts of the UK that have kept masks/WFH have not kept cases low. But it is still true.

@Babamamananarama

The cognitive dissonance on this thread is insane.

Look at this graph. All these European countries have good living standards and are carrying on with normal life AND keeping their covid rates under control. They are not in lockdown.

Why do we tolerate this absolute shit show of a public health crisis?

Good question.

If we invested in ventilation and wore masks indoors we could massively cut the covid burden which would in turn mean more cancer patients (and heart attack, stroke etc) got treated.

But no, that's far too hard.

I think the question should be, would you be willing to wear a mask indoors to save tens of thousands of lives and 100s of thousands from disability? As well as saving the NHS, reducing the pressure on medics, and ensuring education is less disrupted. Because that's really the question.

Apparently the answer is no, it's too big an ask.

@Babamamananarama

The cognitive dissonance on this thread is insane.

Look at this graph. All these European countries have good living standards and are carrying on with normal life AND keeping their covid rates under control. They are not in lockdown.

Why do we tolerate this absolute shit show of a public health crisis?

^this absolutely this!

And the cognitive dissonance (holding conflicting beliefs and denying that conflict) results in anger. People are then getting angry at ridiculous things like wanting to have a bit of thought for the lives of others.

I think any death is too many if avoidable. It's quite scary that we are becoming so numb with numbers. And it's not just death we have to worry about. Any long term issues, even small and mild, will effect people's lives.

And A&E departments are on the brink of collapse, and people are actually dying as a result.

And we're only in October. The NHS can't just absorb more and more pressure.

www.norfolklive.co.uk/news/norfolk-news/james-paget-hospital-ambulance-death-6059236

@Babamamananarama

The cognitive dissonance on this thread is insane.

Look at this graph. All these European countries have good living standards and are carrying on with normal life AND keeping their covid rates under control. They are not in lockdown.

Why do we tolerate this absolute shit show of a public health crisis?

People have to pay for a lateral flow test in Europe.

They are free here.

If you had to pay for a LFT would you? In France apparently they are equivalent to $25

Maybe they're all testing less because of the prohibitive expense hence less infections are being recorded.

People here test themselves all the time just because they can.

@PrincessNutNuts - what's your acceptable figure?

What's your plan to keep to that figure?

I was going to ask what pp meant, if it’s this

And the cognitive dissonance (holding conflicting beliefs and denying that conflict)

I don’t think holds true - not here anyway. I don’t feel conflicted about it. I don’t want restrictions to be reintroduced. But I’m fine if others change behaviour.

@theemperorhasnoclothes

But Scotland did just that and cases still rose very dramatically? They are now falling, likely as a result of immunity levels in the community.

Covid is something we can DO something about and - conveniently - the things we can do to reduce covid also will reduce flu.

Ventilation, masks.

But people seriously don't want to, apparently.

I think the question should be, would you be willing to wear a mask indoors to save tens of thousands of lives and 100s of thousands from disability? As well as saving the NHS, reducing the pressure on medics, and ensuring education is less disrupted. Because that's really the question.

“Why aren’t people willing to get case rates low by wearing masks indoors?”
“But in my part of the UK we are wearing masks indoors, and it’s not getting cases low.”
“It’s such a simple thing and we know it works!”
“It’s not worked, though.”
“It definitely would work if we did it.”
“But we are doing it, and it hasn’t.”
“I don’t know why people won’t accept that this one tiny measure would get covid case rates down.”
“Because we’ve done it and it hasn’t!”
“Must just be selfishness.”

@GoldenOmber

I think the question should be, would you be willing to wear a mask indoors to save tens of thousands of lives and 100s of thousands from disability? As well as saving the NHS, reducing the pressure on medics, and ensuring education is less disrupted. Because that's really the question.

“Why aren’t people willing to get case rates low by wearing masks indoors?”
“But in my part of the UK we are wearing masks indoors, and it’s not getting cases low.”
“It’s such a simple thing and we know it works!”
“It’s not worked, though.”
“It definitely would work if we did it.”
“But we are doing it, and it hasn’t.”
“I don’t know why people won’t accept that this one tiny measure would get covid case rates down.”
“Because we’ve done it and it hasn’t!”
“Must just be selfishness.”

Rates were low when we had restrictions.

Rates and deaths are creeping back up as masks and working from home has stopped.

Mmmm.

You need to introduce measures early - rises in numbers are baked in for at least a few weeks with covid (and probably around 4 weeks in terms of hospitalisations). so you can't just introduce masks or ventilation and expect an immediate drop. Cases will continue to rise for some time.

*affect, not effect

I can only conclude that people so badly want there to be a One Simple Trick that beats covid without causing other harms, they simply don’t want to deal with any evidence to the contrary.

“It works in theory! Stop telling me it doesn’t work in practice, that’s totally irrelevant.”

Rates and deaths are creeping back up as masks and working from home has stopped.

But masks and WFH didn’t stop where I am, and rates climbed much faster than England and got to a much higher level.

@theemperorhasnoclothes

You need to introduce measures early - rises in numbers are baked in for at least a few weeks with covid (and probably around 4 weeks in terms of hospitalisations). so you can't just introduce masks or ventilation and expect an immediate drop. Cases will continue to rise for some time.

I think we’ll follow Scotland

Sharp rise and decrease due to higher immunity - rather than any slowing / flattening due to mitigations

I think any death is too many if avoidable

Any death from covid, or any death?
And what do you mean by avoidable, do you mean if it can be avoided by taking literally any action, no matter how extreme?
We could probably avoid a lot of road traffic deaths if we reduced the speed limit to 30 on every single road - is that the sort of thing you mean?
I’m genuinely asking, because “I think any death is too many if avoidable” is such a blanket statement it is virtually meaningless without clarification on what deaths you’re talking about, and where you’d draw the line in terms of avoidability, because I bet you’d draw it somewhere.

I think the question should be, would you be willing to wear a mask indoors to save tens of thousands of lives and 100s of thousands from disability? As well as saving the NHS, reducing the pressure on medics, and ensuring education is less disrupted. Because that's really the question.

Would you be willing to exercise and do functional fitness four to five times a week? Eat a healthy diet? Give up alcohol? Because that would lengthen thousands of lives (please don’t say ‘save lives’ because we are all going to die one day!). That would reduce pressure on the NHS and prevent long term disability and ill health into old age.

But no, (for most people) that’s far too hard.

Also, I cannot believe the number of idiots saying ‘any death is one too many’. Are you 3 years old and living in la la land?

When my time comes if I had to choose a quick death of pneumonia/ covid complications or being slowly eaten up by cancer, I know what my preference would be.

As someone posted up thread, overall death figures are fairly normal, indicating that deaths from covid are balanced against usual deaths from flu, sepsis, etc.

Ventilation is something that would cost millions of pounds to implement though across the UK, you're talking about either having to buy individual machines per room, per building or having to change the actual fabric of the building. This country just doesnt have the money to throw at that, especially not after throwing it all at furlough.

Masks really dont work, Scotland has been the perfect case study for that.

Europe may be a bit of a misnomer, they are way behind the curve that we are on and their health service is better equipped to manage what they do get. The NHS was a god awful service BEFORE covid hit, and it will be even worse now but we vant pull doctors, nurses and empty beds out of our arses. Look at the Nightingale hospitals that largely went unused because they couldn't be staffed.

I havent seen a single suggestion yet on here, that in the real world, would actually work. I'll be interested to see what happens in Europe over the winter. Maybe they will be fine & dandy, maybe they'll be where we are now. Who knows?

What I do know is we cannot throw non existent money at the problem, and masks are just a band aid for a slashed jugular in the grand scheme of things. They may reduce a bit, but they wont get us down to 0. Again, Scotland demonstrated this.

See my previous post, whereby the surge is driven by secondary school children, but not appearing to infect large swathes of the elderly who are the ones likely to need hospital. It'll likely burn out in teenagers soon.

Oh and, weren't we meant to be at 100k cases by October???

Covid is something we can DO something about and - conveniently - the things we can do to reduce covid also will reduce flu.

We could DO something about all the big killers. Most of those things would impact quality of life/cost a lot/take a lot of effort/disrupt social norms. So we don't. It's not inherently different to covid.

Ultimately all you're really talking about here is masks. I don't think ensuring quality ventilation in the U.K. is an easy or convenient task at all. We've been round the houses on masks time and time again. It's not clear they make much difference if not medical grade. They aren't without costs. The best we can hope is that they kick the fan down the road.

However it would be good to try to get somewhere on the masks point. Actually weight up the benefits costs and the advantages of kicking it down the road. It's a shame this kind of analysis isn't forthcoming from anywhere, though I appreciate it's difficult to do.

Oh and, weren't we meant to be at 100k cases by October???

Pretty sure 100k/day was floated for early August.

@TheKeatingFive

Covid is something we can DO something about and - conveniently - the things we can do to reduce covid also will reduce flu.

We could DO something about all the big killers. Most of those things would impact quality of life/cost a lot/take a lot of effort/disrupt social norms. So we don't. It's not inherently different to covid.

Ultimately all you're really talking about here is masks. I don't think ensuring quality ventilation in the U.K. is an easy or convenient task at all. We've been round the houses on masks time and time again. It's not clear they make much difference if not medical grade. They aren't without costs. The best we can hope is that they kick the fan down the road.

However it would be good to try to get somewhere on the masks point. Actually weight up the benefits costs and the advantages of kicking it down the road. It's a shame this kind of analysis isn't forthcoming from anywhere, though I appreciate it's difficult to do.

What things could we do that we don’t?

@HoardingSamphireSaurus

No sweetie. That's because of an accident of geography, totally different fiscal set up and completely different population density patterns.

Together those, and many more differences, mean New Zealand cannot be compared to the UK.

Pick a better comparator if you want to be taken seriously.

That's the first time I saw such an openly patronising post in 8 years. You are a piece of work.

What are the hospitalisation and death rates like in other countries where cases are lower? If those are lower too then it would suggest their case rates are genuinely lower and it would make sense to look at what they are doing and try doing that too.
I think people have become too complacent and have got used to the numbers of people dying, and that is concerning, as I'm sure it doesn't have to be that way. Treatments are improving so being able to keep cases lower even if still at a steady rate would surely give more people who might die a better chance of a good outcome. And would free up some hospital space so other illnesses can get treated too.
I don't know what the answer is, but I'm sure it's not what we're currently doing.