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Post by dan1 on Jul 17, 2020 20:10:05 GMT
The gold standard is excess deaths, even our government agree on this To demonstrate why just take a look at the chart below and ask yourself what was the cause of the spike in non-Covid 19 deaths? Could it have anything to do with the farcical testing regime in which only the first five residents in a care home that showed symptoms were tested?
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star dust
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Post by star dust on Jul 17, 2020 20:25:28 GMT
Guardian article states "A Department of Health and Social Care source said: “You could have been tested positive in February, have no symptoms, then be hit by a bus in July and you’d be recorded as a Covid death.”" Isn't this good news, Covid deaths may be lower than recorded, so far I thought everyone seemed to be saying the government are underestimating infections/deaths. As I understand it they want to remove deaths where the person died more than 28 days after a positive Covid test result, and may instead have been "run over by a bus" - A Department of Health and Social Care source (Guardian). As dan1's just intimated what about all those deaths where no one was tested? Could this possibly be anything to do with those international comparators this Government would like to bury? The blame game continues apace, now it's the statistics.
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duck
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Post by duck on Jul 18, 2020 4:10:56 GMT
Governments of all kinds have an appetite to manipulate figures so this possible/probable change comes as no surprise to me. I have a history of challenging 'authority' and I was heavily involved in the opposition to the mass introduction of speed cameras where they were not justified. The requirement at that time was a history of road deaths at the location. Two I remember very well. One in Hampshire where a chap in his 80's had died from a heart attack on a bus and one on the M4 where somebody had committed suicide by jumping from a bridge. Both of these instances were classed as 'road deaths' and therefore were used as justification for a camera. As dan1 has said excess deaths gives the best indication.
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littleoldlady
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Post by littleoldlady on Jul 18, 2020 6:01:35 GMT
As dan1 has said excess deaths gives the best indication. IMO, no it doesn't. We are all going to die, the only question is when. Excess deaths includes a lot, possibly a majority, of people who would have died anyway in the near future. If Covid recedes we will see excess deaths go negative. Will you then say that Covid has saved lives? I think not. The only way of assessing the severity of a threat using morbidity is to measure lifetime lost. So a new born infant would lose, say, 80 years. A seriously ill 80 year old would lose <1.
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Greenwood2
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Post by Greenwood2 on Jul 18, 2020 6:27:16 GMT
As dan1 has said excess deaths gives the best indication. IMO, no it doesn't. We are all going to die, the only question is when. Excess deaths includes a lot, possibly a majority, of people who would have died anyway in the near future. If Covid recedes we will see excess deaths go negative. Will you then say that Covid has saved lives? I think not. The only way of assessing the severity of a threat using morbidity is to measure lifetime lost. So a new born infant would lose, say, 80 years. A seriously ill 80 year old would lose <1. From the graph above it looks like that may be starting to happen, the last couple of points are slightly below last year for the first time since this all began (may all change again though).
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on Jul 18, 2020 7:51:53 GMT
IMO, no it doesn't. We are all going to die, the only question is when. Excess deaths includes a lot, possibly a majority, of people who would have died anyway in the near future. If Covid recedes we will see excess deaths go negative. Will you then say that Covid has saved lives? I think not. The only way of assessing the severity of a threat using morbidity is to measure lifetime lost. So a new born infant would lose, say, 80 years. A seriously ill 80 year old would lose <1. From the graph above it looks like that may be starting to happen, the last couple of points are slightly below last year for the first time since this all began (may all change again though). And interestingly excess deaths are below average while 100 people per day are still dying from/with COVID-19. Also problematic is that if you ever had COVID-19 and then do die then your death is counted as a COVID death even if you have fully recovered and died of something else. i.e. the way the statistics are counted means effectively you can't ever recover from COVID-19. Unless they change something people in several years time will die from a mild COVID-19 infection they had and recovered from years earlier.
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starfished
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Post by starfished on Jul 18, 2020 7:54:34 GMT
IMO, no it doesn't. We are all going to die, the only question is when. Excess deaths includes a lot, possibly a majority, of people who would have died anyway in the near future. If Covid recedes we will see excess deaths go negative. Will you then say that Covid has saved lives? I think not. The only way of assessing the severity of a threat using morbidity is to measure lifetime lost. So a new born infant would lose, say, 80 years. A seriously ill 80 year old would lose <1. From the graph above it looks like that may be starting to happen, the last couple of points are slightly below last year for the first time since this all began (may all change again though). Due to general life improvements, even if Covid did no happen you would expect the 2020 line to be lower than 2019 (ignoring statistical noise). If your excess deaths later in the year was so negative that it offset the earlier spike then yes you could say Covid just accelerated deaths rather than killed a significant extra amount of people. That is a theory that some hold that might prove to be the case.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on Jul 18, 2020 8:13:57 GMT
The gold standard is excess deaths, even our government agree on this To demonstrate why just take a look at the chart below and ask yourself what was the cause of the spike in non-Covid 19 deaths? Could it have anything to do with the farcical testing regime in which only the first five residents in a care home that showed symptoms were tested? Also unclear how many of the non-COVID-19 deaths part of the excess deaths are caused by COVID-19 or caused by the response to COVID-19 - eg stopping basically all other healthcare indefinitely, discharging people to care homes prematurely, psychological adverse effects etc etc.
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agent69
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Post by agent69 on Jul 18, 2020 8:51:39 GMT
Guardian article states "A Department of Health and Social Care source said: “You could have been tested positive in February, have no symptoms, then be hit by a bus in July and you’d be recorded as a Covid death.”" Isn't this good news, Covid deaths may be lower than recorded, so far I thought everyone seemed to be saying the government are underestimating infections/deaths. Good news for most, but not for the few that appear to prefer bad news so they can give the gov a good kicking as often as possible.
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agent69
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Post by agent69 on Jul 18, 2020 9:07:03 GMT
As dan1 has said excess deaths gives the best indication. IMO, no it doesn't. We are all going to die, the only question is when. Excess deaths includes a lot, possibly a majority, of people who would have died anyway in the near future. If Covid recedes we will see excess deaths go negative. Will you then say that Covid has saved lives? I think not. The only way of assessing the severity of a threat using morbidity is to measure lifetime lost. So a new born infant would lose, say, 80 years. A seriously ill 80 year old would lose <1. I think excess deaths is an interesting indicator, but as you suggest it doesn't tell the entire story. I think that somebody in another thread said life expectancy in a car home was about 18 months, so under normal circumstances about 25% of care home residents would have died in the time that covid has been around.
I also wonder if the lessons we are all learning at present (social distancing, masks, hand washing) may benefit people in the long run and result in lives saved in the future.
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registerme
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Post by registerme on Jul 18, 2020 9:08:53 GMT
From the graph above it looks like that may be starting to happen, the last couple of points are slightly below last year for the first time since this all began (may all change again though). Also problematic is that if you ever had COVID-19 and then do die then your death is counted as a COVID death even if you have fully recovered and died of something else. i.e. the way the statistics are counted means effectively you can't ever recover from COVID-19. Unless they change something people in several years time will die from a mild COVID-19 infection they had and recovered from years earlier. I thought that's what Hancock's recent "emergency review of the data" was designed to address? They'll likely bring in something similar to Scotland and Wales "had to die within 28 days of the infection" criteria for it to be counted as COVID-19 related?
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on Jul 18, 2020 9:18:50 GMT
Also problematic is that if you ever had COVID-19 and then do die then your death is counted as a COVID death even if you have fully recovered and died of something else. i.e. the way the statistics are counted means effectively you can't ever recover from COVID-19. Unless they change something people in several years time will die from a mild COVID-19 infection they had and recovered from years earlier. I thought that's what Hancock's recent "emergency review of the data" was designed to address? They'll likely bring in something similar to Scotland and Wales "had to die within 28 days of the infection" criteria for it to be counted as COVID-19 related? Perhaps - would make sense, though calling it an "emergency" seems a bit histrionic. I am in holiday mode now so not following things so closely!
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on Jul 18, 2020 9:26:11 GMT
IMO, no it doesn't. We are all going to die, the only question is when. Excess deaths includes a lot, possibly a majority, of people who would have died anyway in the near future. If Covid recedes we will see excess deaths go negative. Will you then say that Covid has saved lives? I think not. The only way of assessing the severity of a threat using morbidity is to measure lifetime lost. So a new born infant would lose, say, 80 years. A seriously ill 80 year old would lose <1. I think excess deaths is an interesting indicator, but as you suggest it doesn't tell the entire story. I think that somebody in another thread said life expectancy in a car home was about 18 months, so under normal circumstances about 25% of care home residents would have died in the time that covid has been around.
I also wonder if the lessons we are all learning at present (social distancing, masks, hand washing) may benefit people in the long run and result in lives saved in the future.
We will see - but I would be wary of assuming that all those have no side effects. Anything that has beneficial effects can have adverse effects. For example, social isolation is potentially very harmful. Even encouraging handwashing (which along with self-isolating when symptomatic is probably one if the most effective interventions) may have the unwanted effect of increasing rates of OCD which can be very disabling. I suspect the overall balance will be positive but it would depend on the prevalence of the thing(s) one is trying to prevent.
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Post by dan1 on Jul 18, 2020 9:41:03 GMT
Wow! One simple, self-explanatory chart seems to have hit a very raw nerve. What was the cause of all of those "non"-Covid 19 deaths in March, April, May?
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Post by bernythedolt on Jul 18, 2020 9:46:55 GMT
There was an interesting article on Sky news earlier today regarding how PHE calculates Covid related deaths.
Apparently in Scotland, Wales and NI if you recovered from Covid more than 28 days ago and subsequently die it doesn't go in the stats. But in England if you recovered from Covid 2 months ago and die in a car crash tomorrow it gets counted as Covid related. Guardian article states "A Department of Health and Social Care source said: “You could have been tested positive in February, have no symptoms, then be hit by a bus in July and you’d be recorded as a Covid death.”" A cock-up like this was always on the cards once the UK stopped reporting "Recovered" numbers at the end of March, one of only four nations to do so on Worldometers. Instead we insisted on counting everyone as an active case indefinitely, which was obviously absurd. Still, on the bright side, we can not only fiddle the testing numbers upwards, it now allows us to massage the deaths figures downwards to a figure we prefer.
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