Are people dying of Covid, or with Covid?

[lightand]

As they are different things.

Does anyone actually know?

There will always be people dying with Covid, as the elderly, especially, die, and some of them, like the rest of us, will always die whilst having Covid.

So could 180 per day per winter be an average number going forward, forever now? [and the NHS should well be into the process of gearing up for that?]

@SprayedWithDettol

How bloody insensitive. I lost my father not that long ago, should I just shrug and say well he had to die eventually. No. Because I am a decent person who doesn’t view people as statics and I see each death as someone’s heart ache.

I also lost my father recently to covid. He had other health problems that made him weak, but the covid killed him 8 days after testing positive.

And yes, there are plenty of 'unpleasant deaths' but with most illnesses, those who are dying and scared get to be surrounded by family and friends. Not alone.

Yes, it would be nice - but this isn't the thread for it, is it.

My dear friend died at 65. Is that elderly? He had covid, ended up in hospital. 4 weeks later he got pneumonia and then his kidneys and liver failed? He had no underlying health issues as was double jabbed.
There were a number of reasons on his death certificate, but all were caused by covid even though he had temporarily recovered from covid in hospital.

*and was double jabbed

@milkyaqua

Yes, it would be nice - but this isn't the thread for it, is it.

No.

I did try to answer the OP’s question, in the hopes that she really did want an answer purely on how we record deaths, but…

@Needtostopfretting

It's just weird though, all this cowering from death. People getting all offended because the deaths of elderly people are being discussed?My Dad is almost 90, I accept he will probably die in the not too distant future which makes me very sad but it's hardly unexpected. Of course I could drop dead of a heart attack this afternoon ahead of him but generally it will go chronologically. Why do people get so faux offended as though you're being personally insulted ?

I agree. Calling someone 'an insensitive cow' for acknowledging that old people die? People on here can be so fucking self absorbed. And I say this as someone whose own parent is unlikely to see 60.

Those with covid in hospital die alone. This isn’t what we want for our elderly or anyone else for that matter.

Hospitals are over run during winter with more people ill and staff shortages/off with illnesses, or taking care of their own families who are ill.

The NHS needs to expand and we need to pay more for that to happen, and keep and retain staff, entice more people to train as nurses/doctors etc -

My dad died aged 65 last month. The cause of death on his certificate is multiple organ failure. On the contributing factors section he had covid pneumonia. He wouldn’t have had multiple organ failure without having covid. But a couple of now ex-friends have tried to argue the toss that he died with covid and not of covid. Covid caused his death.

Ah ok. I didn't see a denial that covid was killing people, but a desire to know the "of" vs "with", but am happy to admit I may have missed something. I think it would be useful if this information was more readily reported, along with average length of Covid hospital stays, rates of discharge, and age of those dying of/with. And not because I'm heartless and wish to deny Covid exists, but because I think it would be useful.

www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n352

Mistruths and misunderstandings about covid-19 death numbers

“People are not dying from, but with, covid-19.”

Let’s see, shall we?

We sometimes certify deaths in patients who died from covid-19 or its complications well beyond 28 days. A study from Leicester University followed over 40 000 people with covid-19 discharged from hospital for 140 days and found a readmission rate of 31% (23% within 60 days), with 9% dying on readmission.11 Obviously not all those deaths were from covid complications, but it seems clear that many were accelerated by them.

Meanwhile, data are emerging that give the lie to the notion that covid-19 is no worse than or different to seasonal flu. The ONS reported in January 2021 that England and Wales had seen the highest increase in excess mortality in 2020 in any year since 1940.12 And a paper in The BMJ comparing 4000 patients with influenza and 12 000 with covid-19 in Wuhan, China, showed much greater severity of symptoms and much higher morbidity and mortality among those with covid-19.13

Doctors treating patients with covid-19 over the past 12 months recognise a very different clinical syndrome in the sickest patients and a tide of cases of a kind, severity, and clinical course that we have not seen before. We don’t diagnose cases solely on the basis of PCR tests. Furthermore, PCR false positive rates are very low in people with symptoms and high pretest probability.714

Every time we see or hear such mistruths we need to combat them and call them out. They are used to play down the seriousness and consequences of covid-19 and undermine health protection efforts.

Dying ‘with covid’ obviously means there’s a very good chance that having covid has sped up their death,..

Does it though?

Covid is little more than a cold for some people, and some are asyptomatic.

The other question is how many caught covid IN hospital? I'm still hearing of friends/relatives who went into hospital for, say, tests or an operation, and caught it IN hospital. I know of far more people who've caught it in hospital than anywhere else. You'd have thought they'd have sorted the infection control in hospitals by now, after 18 months!

I agree we need to call mistruths out with data, but not with "You're very insensitive, my uncle died last week" posts which then cause the person asking (if they are bona fide rather than simply shit stirring) to feel bad for wanting to know.

I'm not talking about this thread necessarily.

Covid is little more than a cold for some people, and some are asyptomatic

Then those aren’t the hospital admissions or those dying of/with covid

@HesterShaw1

Ah ok. I didn't see a denial that covid was killing people, but a desire to know the "of" vs "with", but am happy to admit I may have missed something. I think it would be useful if this information was more readily reported, along with average length of Covid hospital stays, rates of discharge, and age of those dying of/with. And not because I'm heartless and wish to deny Covid exists, but because I think it would be useful.

Yes. Quite.

If you’ve got this far into the pandemic and still either don’t comprehend or willingly rejecting what covid does to the human body then there’s little point in anyone engaging with you tbh.

Just to say that the paragraph below was all quotation from the BMJ article, which also has some more information about the died with/ died of covid confusion.

@BluebellsGreenbells

Covid is little more than a cold for some people, and some are asyptomatic

Then those aren’t the hospital admissions or those dying of/with covid

But it is if someone dies of something, such as well anything really, and are presumably tested, and found to have covid?

That is precisely the sort of thing I am talking about. They go into the 180 stats..

This thread is living proof why there will never be a rational discussion about Covid on MN.

Was just thinking exactly the same thing.

Did the OP ask "What does Covid do to the human body" though?

I had Covid. It made me feel poorly for a while, but then I got better and I feel as before.

This is what I mean about trying to shame and belittle people who genuinely want to find stuff out. Again not necessarily talking about this thread.

I agree we need to call mistruths out with data, but not with "You're very insensitive, my uncle died last week" posts which then cause the person asking (if they are bona fide rather than simply shit stirring) to feel bad for wanting to know.

Given the 'person wanting to know' in this instance has posted around 1,000 times on this topic, one would think they really ought to know the basics by now.

Ugh what’s the point if responding to an OP like this. If the OP really wanted an answer to that question, google exists.

This is just the kind of ‘don’t fear covid’ nonsense that has made the pandemic so much worse in Britain than in the rest if the world.

@milkyaqua

I agree we need to call mistruths out with data, but not with "You're very insensitive, my uncle died last week" posts which then cause the person asking (if they are bona fide rather than simply shit stirring) to feel bad for wanting to know.

Given the 'person wanting to know' in this instance has posted around 1,000 times on this topic, one would think they really ought to know the basics by now.

I did say I wasn't necessarily talking about this thread.

And if it is a goady post, then it might as well turn into a useful discussion 🤷‍♀️

@herecomesthsun
Thanks for the BMJ stuff. Does this mean that if you get Covid-19 then get run over by a bus a few weeks later that it is not considered a Covid death in the government numbers. I’m not sure it’s clear but that might be because I’m revising and can barely concentrate on new info. So sorry if it’s obvious.