Why are things ' kicking off ' in Europe ?

[genuinequestion21]

Please excuse my ignorance. But why is Germany for example stressing so much about covid right now ?

I think we have more cases per 100 k than them and have been having high cases for months and we are still open and not ' that much ' talk about lockdown etc. It seems we are kind of just about ' OK '. Well at least we aren't going to plan B yet.

However in Germany there have been few cases and cases are now exploding and there's talk of lock downs etc.

Hospitals also seem to be full again. Whereas in the UK, they don't seem to be on the brink.

Why these differences ? Germany and UK have a very similar proportion of the population vaccinated. Is it because cases are seeming to go up very rapidly, whereas ours have been high but flat for ages ?

Why are their hospitals full again and ours are not ?

Please correct any factual information which is incorrect.

@Frazzled2207

199 deaths were reported today. I don’t think we’re ok at all. There’s just a collective decision not to do anything about it other than half heartedly offer boosters and hope for the best.

BUT these remember are deaths within 28 days of testing positive for Covid- they're not all Covid deaths really are they- these are people who are mostly seriously ill anyway or end up involved in an accident and die regardless of Covid. For example, a friends elderly (99 years old) mother died last week, she'd had Covid a couple of weeks ago but was perfectly well and testing negative again (was in a nursing home so regularly tested). BUT because she died within 28 days of a positive Covid test it went down on her death certificate that she died due to that. The friend knew perfectly well that that wasn't the cause of death and managed to get it changed to Alzheimer's which was essentially why she died- combined with the fact that she was 99 years old, bedridden and on end of life care! The figures we get 'given' are totally skewed and here's a perfect example to show how skewed they are! Here's my friend's post Diane Walker Really fed up of the news programme tonight....saying a total of 143,716 people "have now died of Covid"...totally wrong! That number of people have died within 28 days of a positive Covid test, but it includes the local man who had recovered from Covid and got knocked down taking his dog for a walk and died instantly, it just happened to be within 28 days of his Covid!...and many more similar deaths which were not related to Covid.....totally false figures! Diane Walker I know it has been inaccurate since the beginning, but always in the past they say 'deaths of people who were Covid 19 positive within 28 days" but tonight it was a definite "people who have died of Covid". They put Covid as the primary cause of death on mum's medical certificate that the GP sent to the registrar. When I found out I was furious! Mum had recovered from Covid a week before. Temperature back down, no more wheezing and she had eaten all her breakfast. A test was negative. I told them I was not accepting it and was prepared to go to court to fight it. I owed it to mum. She was a fighter all her life and even fought off two bouts of pneumonia and several chest infections since her stroke and as far as the family were concerned, she fought off Covid too! Anyway in the end the family won and the registrar accepted a replacement medical certificate from the GP with Alzheimers as the primary cause of death. Never give up, fight for what you know is right! xxx

1000 deaths a week completely normalised in UK.

Kikko- that’s right but it’s more that the UK prevented people from getting vaccinated until as many vulnerable people as possible were protected. Right down to targeting individuals within localities and persuading them. It was massively impressive and really disciplined (boosters not so much tbh) but I think hasn’t been fully understood. The Uk Vax rate is ‘better’ than it looks if you are trying to stop people going into hospital etc Obv it’s the same as everyone else’s if you wanted to stop cases, which is why we have so much covid around.

@KristaK

Kikko- that’s right but it’s more that the UK prevented people from getting vaccinated until as many vulnerable people as possible were protected. Right down to targeting individuals within localities and persuading them. It was massively impressive and really disciplined (boosters not so much tbh) but I think hasn’t been fully understood. The Uk Vax rate is ‘better’ than it looks if you are trying to stop people going into hospital etc Obv it’s the same as everyone else’s if you wanted to stop cases, which is why we have so much covid around.

Thank you for explaining!

No problem Kikko - I was just think that actually the UK vaccine policy will produce more cases but (in theory) fewer hospitalisations because younger more mobile people are less vaccinated and older and / or vulnerable people are protected so it’s not really comparing apples with apples if that makes sense at all?! Obv pre-vaccines we were a total shitshow (in my opinion!)

@IndigoC How do you know immunity doesn’t last from having had it?

@HarrietPierce

1000 deaths a week completely normalised in UK.

Over 10,000 people die each week in the U.K. year in year out.

Sadly it is normal for thousands of people to die every week from variety of causes. I’m not entirely sure why the 1,000 from Covid are not ok but we don’t blink at the rest. Bizarre really.

"Over 10,000 people die each week in the U.K. year in year out."

That's ok then. Let's add another senseless 1,000. Or more. Let's not try anything preventative and see how much higher we can get figures up for all other deaths too. Great outlook.

Are their records of what hospitalisations are like in Europe?
I’m a bit confused about all this talk about vaccinating the eldest first - that’s what we did in Ireland and we’re one of the most vaccinated populations in the world (more than the UK) but it’s not enough 😬 I honestly think there’s just much more acceptance of death in the UK.

Ireland did the same as the uk and is massively vaccinated but it was later and the boosters haven’t properly started yet :-)

Yes the truth is we will be looking at adding Covid deaths in to the annual death toll from now on. Because NOTHING will stop this. Unless you want to lockdown permanently. Or continue to hammer the economy.

It will be added in to pneumonia deaths and flu deaths and cancer deaths and and the rest. Where we don’t destroy livelihoods and the economy to prevent a certain amount of deaths. People need to accept this now. This is where we are.

I do think this year won’t be so good. Then the deaths will settle down as more of us develop some immunity. It will not be a novel virus anymore.

It won’t be an issue for our children really. They will be exposed multiple times. I currently have an asymptomatic child at home. I don’t think Covid will be an issue for him in the future.

Cancer, heart disease, dementia maybe. But not Covid.

@Puppalicious

Are their records of what hospitalisations are like in Europe? I’m a bit confused about all this talk about vaccinating the eldest first - that’s what we did in Ireland and we’re one of the most vaccinated populations in the world (more than the UK) but it’s not enough 😬 I honestly think there’s just much more acceptance of death in the UK.

With the difference in population sizes the UK's 150 deaths today would be around 11 in Ireland (by my calculations - happy to be corrected!)

What sort of numbers are Ireland seeing day to day?

You cannot compare raw death numbers (this a lovely conversation )
Countries all count covid deaths differently so it's excess deaths as percentage of population that count.
And then this has to be adjusted for age/demographics of population. Countries with younger populations, or more rural populations with less people living packed into cities should fare better in a pandemic

amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/storm-clouds-over-europe-but-uk-covid-rates-remain-higher

It might be kicking off in Europe but still the UK still in the lead. Boris is trying to blindside you. Don’t fall for it. Using words like ‘washing up on our shores’ is a terrible way to describe it and reminiscent of David Cameron’s ‘swarms’ when talking about immigrants. Britain has repeatedly been late to deal with their waves and has put themselves at risk and other countries. Last Christmas the UK allowed the delta variant to get out of hand by being too late to lockdown and during the summer, as soon as Britain lifted their quarantine rules and all the Brits went on holiday Europe’s number started climbing.

It's Austria's plans for their population that scare me - wtaf road is humanity going down? Covid and it's ever changing strains are here to stay so why don't we just get over it now and concentrate or making all of our population healthy to begin with. Obesity is the biggest killer if you catch covid.

I’m not sure what Austria are hoping to achieve. It’s all pretty scary.

Whatamess582

"It might be kicking off in Europe but still the UK still in the lead. Boris is trying to blindside you."

And the rhetoric he is using is having the desired effect.

@beentoldcomputersaysno

"Over 10,000 people die each week in the U.K. year in year out."

That's ok then. Let's add another senseless 1,000. Or more. Let's not try anything preventative and see how much higher we can get figures up for all other deaths too. Great outlook.

You realise the world is massively over populated right. There is a reason we don't throw unlimited amount of money at preventing All other deaths. It would be a logistical nightmare if every person lived to 90-100 years old

"It would be a logistical nightmare if every person lived to 90-100 years old"

We killed them off in the Care Homes last year.

You realise the world is massively over populated right. There is a reason we don't throw unlimited amount of money at preventing All other deaths. It would be a logistical nightmare if every person lived to 90-100 years old

@Tuba437, is that you, Boris?

Killing off and few additional thousand per week is reducing the pension bills and the cost of care homes, so?

"Let the bodies pile high "

As a society, we do have to accept that people die. As simple as that.

We all rail against the virus that took our grandparents and parents from us too soon at the moment. But as a PP a few posts back said, the world is massively over-populated. With a couple of billion fewer, the climate crisis wouldn't race ahead quite so fast. It's just that everyone in the world thinks it should be THEIR family that survives to breed.

I mean are people in other countries like this? It's not a few people either, there are Instagram accounts vocally against the vaccine and declaring homeopathy works for cancer and people need a heavy metal detox with 30,000 followers confused

I imagine there are people like this in much of the world. Certainly there are in NZ, and unfortunately some people I know hold these views.

@Gofg, of course there are. Stupidity isn't restricted by nationality or location.