The tragic news of this Omicron death

[User135644]

Very sad news that someone has now died of Omicron. Are the media going over the top though? I always thought a death was likely at some point. Sadly they may not he the last either.

Is it just the old adage of one death a tragedy, many deaths a statistic?

@VanillaAndOrange

The figures could easily be a lot, lot lower as some of those people will have died of other conditions or even accidents.

They could be but they're not:

To quote from the link below:

Between week ending 3 January 2020 (Week 01 2020) to week ending 4 June 2021 (Week 22 2021), there were 123,774 deaths due to COVID-19 and 138,465 deaths involving COVID-19.

www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathcertificatesandcovid192020to2021

@VanillaAndOrange

The person who died had omicron at the time of death. We don't know if it was the cause of death.

That is true of all Covid death statistics though, isn't it? The figures could easily be a lot, lot lower as some of those people will have died of other conditions or even accidents. I'm not saying that means there's no need to be cautious (I'm probably more cautious than average about this, not because I'm frightened but because it feels like common sense), but the figures, including this death, may not be quite as worrying as people think.

Of course. Conversely, many people die directly due to Covid-19 but after 28 days. It’s not easy to understand the stats for the average lay person.

I think it would be helpful if stays were published on the number of revue Res cases of Covid that have ongoing organ damage and/or long Covid.

Might make the 'it's just a cold' brigade actually stop and think that they are not invincible.

Death is not the only negative outcome of contracting Covid.

@Warhertisuff

WITH omicron. Not OF omicron.

If I got hit with a hammer and subsequently died a week or so later, it would be correct to say that I died after being hit WITH a hammer. My death could have been caused directly by the hammer or by something else that occurred later that week.

Whether the primary cause of death was the hammer or not, it doesn't change the fact that I died after being hit WITH a hammer.

People are reading far too much into the use of words here to infer that this death was incidental.

I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing here. If you died after being hit with a hammer, or died of a blow to the head, is relevant.

Did the hammer blow kill you or did you die of something else and the hammer was incidental? Should the person who hit you with a hammer be convicted of murder or would you have died of that other thing anyway? It matters.

Did covid kill you or did you die of something else and the covid was incidental? Should covid be blamed for the death and cause increased restrictions, or would you have died of that other thing anyway. It matters!

Those who are still frothing about 'with' compared to 'of', how do you account for the level of excess deaths in the pandemic period??

From the ONS website:
"Between 13 March 2020 and 3 December 2021, there have been 130,042 excess deaths above the five-year average in England and Wales; of these, 124,586 were in England, and 6,708 were in Wales."

130k excess deaths in the last year.

(People died in ICU long before covid existed and will continue to do so long after covid stops being headline news*

Yes people kinda romanticise things alot don't they.

Imagining frail, old old old people dying in their sleep surrounded by their loved ones. It's very often not like that and it's pretty low to use a standard circumstance of dying as a point scoring exercise.

No one should be devaluing elderly people. They are the entire reason most if us are even here and we have what we have.

Its an.ancient proverb isn't it... he who saves a life is responsible for it. This is where the real disrespect for the old people comes in. We "protect them" allegedly, we save their lives but then what do we do. Besides shipping them.off to a nursing home where with the best will in the world that care isn't great . Staff shortages and funding shortages see to that. Dying if covid is obviously awful. But let's not virtue signal about the life we subject them too when they are living.

The time to care is then surely? Go visit them..have then.round fir Xmas.

Anyone who's ever visited anyone in a home knows that u visit one u visit them all. I wonder if the same people adamant we are writing off a 94 yr old as done and being disrespectful are the same ones who visit just once a yr.

Cornettoninja I agree with most of your excellent and nuanced post, but I suspect one of the drivers here is that so many don't accept mortality or appreciate the contribution of other illnesses. As with what happens on here when anyone mentions the huge contribution of obesity, there seems rather a lot that some just don't want to acknowledge

As you're probably aware I'm not one of the posters who denies there's a problem or feels the whole thing's made up, but what is being made up - or perhaps more accurately used to advantage - is some of the narrative around this, which is why I believe accurate information and therefore context is so important

For me the same applies to a PPs question: "What do you do with the elderly/vulnerable patients with Covid? Deny them treatment in ICU?", which rather skirts around the issue that those at the end of life are often "denied" ICU treatment already - not because someone wants to kill them off, but simply because it's not considered a good use of precious resources

Off for my afternoon volunteering spot now, so if I don't seem to reply to anyone for a while, please don't think I'm being rude ...

@BrocolliFloret

Yesterday there were 4,700 positive cases of omicron.

The human mortality rate is 9.5/1000 each year, which means approx 1 person in every 5,000 of us dies each week.

So the statistic of 1 in 4,700 people dying yesterday is encouraging, given that’s the same rate that humans die generally.

A bit crazy that it’s front page news, but I guess the government can’t afford to be optimistic and want everyone to get boosted as even a tiny increase in hospitalisations will still crash the nhs.

That's preposterously misleading analysis... and assumes that none of those who have currently tested positive will die...something that you can't possibly know.

I'm cautiously optimistic that Omicron won't be too severe and there are positive signs coming out of South Africa... I'm by no means a Covid catastrophist as my posts elsewhere would show, but this kind of sloppy and utterly false analysis is maddening!

@Yellow85

Also the UK HSA tweeted yesterday to say that the person who died was only diagnosed with covid after being admitted. Presumably that tells us they were in for something else.

Not necessarily.

I was admitted to hospital with non typical covid symptoms.
It was only after a routine covid test that covid was diagnosed. However, the symptoms I had were being caused by covid infection, as were the ongoing health issues I have over a year ago and will have going forward.

& something people tend to forget (& other pp have mentioned) is it is NOT just deaths the previous stats showed about 3 times that amount (or more??) are hospitalised.
many people have been left with serious life impacting side effects many long lasting - the actual stats for this are difficult to uncover.
The more people who get covid the more the NHS is under severe stress which will mean people with other conditions will not get treated because wither its unsafe for them to be in hospital or there is not the staff or support needed.
Hence the need to be cautious & to be concerned & to take precautions until we know better
& again as pp have said - dying with a covid probably means that person would not have died at that time unless they caught it - & sweeping comments about covid deaths are overestimated is wrong. Its far more likely that deaths CAUSED by covid is far higher than is recognised. People have died months later & there are stats (mentioned on news in the past) about research on people who have left hospital after being in intensive care from covid who die within a short period (6 months I think was mentioned) or who have to be readmitted & they are very high numbers/proportions. people also die in hospital from covid (or its side effects/damaged) after many months not 28 days.
Again -precautions are essential until we know what effect it can have

@Yellow85 they might have been admitted with a stroke or a heart attack caused by blood clots caused by covid (& there are many other conditions that covid causes)

I was just stating that nothing can be concluded from the one death in 4,700.

I don’t want to mislead anyone but find the statistics and the media coverage interesting.

You are right that there probably wouldn’t have been enough time yet for anyone to die ‘of’ Omicron and the numbers will go up as this starts to happen.

[quote mumwon]@Yellow85 they might have been admitted with a stroke or a heart attack caused by blood clots caused by covid (& there are many other conditions that covid causes)[/quote]
Or they might have been admitted for pain and vomiting caused by end stage cancer and nothing to do with covid!

@DockOTheBay

Did the hammer blow kill you or did you die of something else and the hammer was incidental? Should the person who hit you with a hammer be convicted of murder or would you have died of that other thing anyway? It matters.

What I was trying to debunk (perhaps not very clearly) was this ridiculous notion that because you say someone died "with" something, it therefore necessarily means they didn't die "of" it.

How many people would respond to the sentence "she died after being hit with a hammer" by saying "well, at least she didn't die as a result of the hammer!"? No one in their right mind would say that, that would be ridiculous.... And yet people bizarrely jump through mental hoops to make such a false dichotomy with Covid deaths!

I think the obsession with covid deaths is wrong.

Firstly it is almost impossible to understand how much covid has curtailed someone's natural lifespan, especially if they were old or unwell. Viruses such as D&V and the common cold have hastened the death of some of my relatives but the reality is that this probably did not rob them of years of happy, healthy life. I'm not sure what has been recorded as the official cause of death but I would argue that they ultimately died of the cancer that ravaged their body long before the viruses took hold.

I also think that death isn't always tragic, even if the moment of death is incredibly unpleasant. I was so shocked to see how quality of life can plummet when you're in poor health and the pursuit of prolonging life absolutely isn't in everyone's best interest. Death shouldn't always be feared or delayed for as long as possible.

I think it's much better to focus on providing appropriate care for those with covid and making sure we have capacity on the health service to do this. This might look like making sure people have a dignified and comfortable death from covid if that is the sensible and kind thing to do We equally must also make sure the health service is able to effectively treat patients with other illnesses and ailments. Hospitalisation stats are our best indicator of this and should be the most important indicator as to whether we need further restrictions or not.

@Bumpitybumper so you are OK with the 130k excess deaths in the last year?

It's a death with omicron not from omicron . This is where lines get blurred and people panic and start acting stupid. Dying with something is entirely different to dying of something . We all really need to accept the fact that covid is not going anywhere and people will die from it regardless. We need to move on with our lives and stop accepting scaremongering from the media.

@Inthesameboatatmo

It's a death with omicron not from omicron . This is where lines get blurred and people panic and start acting stupid. Dying with something is entirely different to dying of something . We all really need to accept the fact that covid is not going anywhere and people will die from it regardless. We need to move on with our lives and stop accepting scaremongering from the media.

And how do you know they died with and not of Omicron.

Unless anyone seriously believes that Omicron will cause zero deaths... whether a single person died "with" or "of" is not of any relevance unless you've got a Covid agenda - either minimising or maximising it.

[quote Warhertisuff]@DockOTheBay

Did the hammer blow kill you or did you die of something else and the hammer was incidental? Should the person who hit you with a hammer be convicted of murder or would you have died of that other thing anyway? It matters.

What I was trying to debunk (perhaps not very clearly) was this ridiculous notion that because you say someone died "with" something, it therefore necessarily means they didn't die "of" it.

How many people would respond to the sentence "she died after being hit with a hammer" by saying "well, at least she didn't die as a result of the hammer!"? No one in their right mind would say that, that would be ridiculous.... And yet people bizarrely jump through mental hoops to make such a false dichotomy with Covid deaths![/quote]
If someone died 3 weeks after a hammer blow they probably would question it! Or if they went to hospital for something else and were subsequently found to have been hit by a hammer. I don't think your example works at all.

Also you would usually say died of a blow to the head not died with a blow to the head. The use if the worth "with" doesn't mean the same thing in your context of "with a hammer"

How many people would respond to the sentence "she died after being hit with a hammer" by saying "well, at least she didn't die as a result of the hammer!"? No one in their right mind would say that, that would be ridiculous....

I think your use of the word 'with' doesn't quite work here.

We're trying to differentiate between the cause of death and an accompanying condition that happened to exist but didn't cause the death.

Was the person's death caused by the hammer blow? Was it caused by Covid?

Or did they die of another cause (a stroke or a car crash) and also happened to be (lightly) hit by a hammer or test positive for covid?

She went to the hospital where she was hit with a hammer might provoke yet another response from a listener.

whether a single person died "with" or "of" is not of any relevance

I think it's of huge relevance, as we're trying to understand how dangerous Omicron really is.

@ChequerBoard
so you are OK with the 130k excess deaths in the last year?
Not all of these excess deaths were directly due to covid, however if the ones that were due to covid pass the 'sensible and kind' test then ultimately I think we have to be OK with it. Why should we artificially prolong life when it isn't a sensible or kind to do so?

If the deaths do not pass the 'sensible and kind' test then we have to look at the reasons why. If it was because of the health system being overwhelmed and unable to administer appropriate levels of care then I again would suggest that hospitalisations are the key statistics we need to look at and admissions to ICU.

[quote Bumpitybumper]@ChequerBoard
so you are OK with the 130k excess deaths in the last year?
Not all of these excess deaths were directly due to covid, however if the ones that were due to covid pass the 'sensible and kind' test then ultimately I think we have to be OK with it. Why should we artificially prolong life when it isn't a sensible or kind to do so?

If the deaths do not pass the 'sensible and kind' test then we have to look at the reasons why. If it was because of the health system being overwhelmed and unable to administer appropriate levels of care then I again would suggest that hospitalisations are the key statistics we need to look at and admissions to ICU.[/quote]

So you don't understand what 'excess dealths' actually means then?

. It’s not easy to understand the stats for the average lay person.

Do you not mean @Mickarooni It's not easy for the average layperson to understand the stats

Which is very different to what you wrote. If you are pointing out that the average person is a bit dim.