Jump to content
Fuzzar

Corona Virus main thread

Recommended Posts

8 minutes ago, Aggy said:

If you’re admitted to hospital, you’ll be retested on admission. So if you’re in your 80s and admitted to hospital with it, my guess is that the majority die within 21 days of hospital admission. 

We cap it at 28 don’t we, so in terms of our figures vs European figures, I doubt there’s much difference as a result of the seven day difference (especially given that the number of daily deaths are so low - we’re perhaps talking 2 or 3 deaths a day additionally if you were capping at 28 days instead of 21 I would guess).

Flip side is also that earlier in the year before the change in time cap, there were plenty of people being recorded as having died “from” covid when they’d had it weeks, sometimes months, earlier and it was other things that ultimately killed them. We’ve been under the five year average for weekly deaths now for ages - that rather suggests a not insignificant number who died from it previously were probably likely to die of something else in the following months - did they actually die “from” covid?

 

Edit: id also add that hospital admission figures aren’t changing either, which weakens an argument that capping at 21 or 28 days is somehow fiddling the numbers. 

I agree that if deaths of covid are rare after 3 weeks then its not really fiddling the numbers and our having a 28 day cut off would not really change the comparison.

Its an instinctive thing for me that people tend to linger on a bit more than the cut off .  I might be completely wrong.

 

Fair point about our admissions, question is are admissions in high infection areas such as France and spain also low?   That would be the better test I guess

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, ricardo said:

Time will tell.

Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, w/e 14 Aug 2020, England & Wales show that only 139 deaths ‘with COVID’ were recorded in the last week, compared to 9,392 deaths from all causes, Ricardo.

Figures for deaths ‘with COVID’ have been overstated by the authorities and even without adjusting for these errors by the health establishment, the so-called pandemic is now effectively over in the UK.

Case numbers are almost irrelevant given that testing has increased dramatically, together with the fact that most people are asymptomatic or only mildly inconvenienced even if they have the virus -- The ‘R’ number is at best a guess by the so-called ‘experts’.

It is hospitalisations and deaths which should determine policy, and these are now so small as to be insignificant from a policy-making perspective.

The supposed ‘science’ which has led to the extreme Coronavirus measures has bordered on the ridiculous. There have been continuous revisions, corrections, and about-turns, from the now-discredited ‘half-a-million deaths’ mathematical modelling of Lefty Professor Ferguson and friends which started the lockdown, to the necessity of wearing face masks, to the grossly exaggerated morbidity rate for the virus -- Few of these were reported properly, objectively, and critically in the MSM --- Almost every facet of the measurable aspects of this virus has been changed as the weeks have gone by.

Like I stated a couple of weeks back, it’s time to resume normality and do away with the mass hysteria and rolling doom from the MSM.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Clearly Some  people think over 50000 excess deaths is a price worth paying for a Brexit government but not something any decent human being would agree with   

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, Barbe bleu said:

I agree that if deaths of covid are rare after 3 weeks then its not really fiddling the numbers and our having a 28 day cut off would not really change the comparison.

Its an instinctive thing for me that people tend to linger on a bit more than the cut off .  I might be completely wrong.

 

Fair point about our admissions, question is are admissions in high infection areas such as France and spain also low?   That would be the better test I guess

 

 

What was instructive to me is not 21 , 28 or as it used to be a year and a day but the fact thst some seem to think its 'fiddling' - for petty nationalistic issues. Wrong priorities. Nobody sensible would think that.

The only fiddling that comes to mind was Hancocks 100,000 tests.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
37 minutes ago, T said:

Clearly Some  people think over 50000 excess deaths is a price worth paying for a Brexit government but not something any decent human being would agree with   

Except it isn't 50,000 it's 41,477 and as I clearly stated in my previous post that you clearly didn't bother to read, the numbers of deaths ‘WITH COVID’ have been overstated by the authorities -- To what extent we don't yet know...

In 2014, 46,000 people died of flu, btw --- The majority of them had underlying health problems --- Does that make you think? No! Okay, how about this: In 1969, 80,000 people in the UK died from flu -- The country wasn't shutdown. 

Has a decent human being like yourself considered the deaths caused by the lockdown? No! I have, and I can tell you it's killing more people than the virus.

Decency? You Lefties don't know the meaning of the word.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

41477 in the space of a couple of months Jools. We accept that people will die of flu and pneumonia etc, people that are on the edge already. But not all at once. The virulence of this virus meant that it would have taken out thousands more people if it hadn't been slowed by people's actions. This is easy to understand. Or should be. 

 

Edited by Herman

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
9 hours ago, How I Wrote Elastic Man said:

Lockdown for Norfolk?

Or the Mail being alarmist?

Norfolk lockdown

It’s over 80 positives now. Any lockdown will depend on how well the outbreak can be contained both within the one establishment and within the community.  Nothing like a Countywide lockdown as yet but clearly testing and track and trace needs to be effective and those involved need to follow the rules, like the rest of us.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

 

2 hours ago, Herman said:

41477 in the space of a couple of months Jools. We accept that people will die of flu and pneumonia etc, people that are on the edge already. But not all at once. The virulence of this virus meant that it would have taken out thousands more people if it hadn't been slowed by people's actions. This is easy to understand. Or should be. 

 

In fairness, ONS suggests winter flu season 14/15 (not the whole of 2014 as Jools’ post suggests) there were 44,000 excess deaths from flu. That’s December 2014 to March 2015. In the same winter period of 4 months in 99/00, there were 48,000 excess deaths from flu. Covid has been around since January to August - so through virtually all of flu season and longer (albeit in warmer weather during the “longer” period).

The argument against Jools’ point isn’t that more people have died from covid than have ever died from flu in the same period of time, because as above, more people have died from flu in a shorter period of time.

The argument against is that, if lockdown hadn’t occurred when it did to get things back under control, there would have been far more deaths than the c.41k. 
 

Interestingly the article below refers to higher flu deaths in the fifties and sixties. There’s a chart you can download which suggests the fifteen year average winter flu season flu deaths between 50/51 to 65/66 was 62,180 a year. 66/67 - 81/82, 43,510 a year. Dropped to just under 29k average from 98/99 to 13/14 when it jumped back up again significantly.
 

I’m sure there might be some on this message board who can remember 50,000 people or more dying from flu every flu season if the ONS is correct.
 

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/highestnumberofexcesswinterdeathssince19992000/2015-11-25

 

https://static.ons.gov.uk/visual/2015/11/figure3.csv

Edited by Aggy
  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Good point Aggy, if we hadn't locked down, it's pretty clear we'd have had massively more Covid deaths, so it's different from flu where no real measures to prevent transmission have ever been taken.

 

I read one article that there was a really bad flu season in the late 70s with an unusually high number of teenagers dieing from it (obviously still a small number in absolute terms but unusually high).  I was in my late teens then and I don't remember it ever being mentioned.  I think because flu wasn't news.  Society has become a lot safer since then (just look at road accident deaths which are now much lower than they were in the 70s - equally I'm sure things were a lot safer in the 70s compared to the 20s) and as a result, anything that causes people to die "early" nowadays gets a lot more attention

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks for that aggy.  A couple of things stood out to me.   Firstly how variable flu season is.  Its a bigger killer than perhaps anyone realises but some years it is twice as bad as others. What this means for the reliability of excess death figures I'll leave to the statisticians.

Secondly, just how Important public health is.   We all think as health as something that is done in hospitals by the NHS but the ONS is suggesting that loft insulation and central heating saves around 30,000 lives a year.  

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
15 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

Secondly, just how Important public health is.   We all think as health as something that is done in hospitals by the NHS but the ONS is suggesting that loft insulation and central heating saves around 30,000 lives a year

This. Excellent point Barbe bleu. Your example is one of the salient reasons why the health outcomes of disadvantaged communities is so much worse. Check out the Marmot Review (recently updated). His long term research shows the influence of poor housing on our health, amongst many other things (skills, education etc). Without straying into politics too deeply, it's why Johnson knows that government has to "level up". Except it is arguably just talk and the policies of this administration will always help the better off.

In any event, who would have guessed that Covid would have affected the worse off? (irony here). 

Edited by sonyc
  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
54 minutes ago, It's Character Forming said:

Good point Aggy, if we hadn't locked down, it's pretty clear we'd have had massively more Covid deaths, so it's different from flu where no real measures to prevent transmission have ever been taken.

 

Is it though? Sweden didn't  lockdown, nor close schools but merely practiced sensible social distancing rules and appears to have had the same epidemic curve and decline as most other nations.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
13 minutes ago, Herman said:

It still had the same economic hit as its next door neighbours.

Which is another question entirely.

What is relevant here is to what effect the different severities of lockdown have had on the figures and whether the models predicting 500k deaths had any basis in reality. From looking at the Worldometer graphs I would suggest the the jury is still out.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, Herman said:

41477 in the space of a couple of months Jools. We accept that people will die of flu and pneumonia etc, people that are on the edge already. But not all at once. The virulence of this virus meant that it would have taken out thousands more people if it hadn't been slowed by people's actions. This is easy to understand. Or should be. 

 

Simply not true. Sweden shows an alternative to lockdown and those who died were mainly in their 80s and 90s who would probably died by now anyway. As Jools pointed out the flu epidemics killed far more people than covid and all lockdown has acheived is to prolong the life of a few geriatrics for afew months at the cost of wrecking the economy 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

What I am saying is that all the evidence shows that covid would not have been like a normal flu season. It is more contagious, more potent and would have killed more than just the very old and infirm. 

And Sweden is a different style of country to Britain and not a good comparison. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, ricardo said:

Is it though? Sweden didn't  lockdown, nor close schools but merely practiced sensible social distancing rules and appears to have had the same epidemic curve and decline as most other nations.

I've not looked at this information for a while, but I thought the level of deaths in Sweden was much higher than in Norway which had a full lockdown ?  Also I think Sweden has benefited from being a country with a high level of social distancing in its normal lifestyle e.g. the stat quoted I think was over half of Swedes live on their own.

 

I'd agree it may have been possible to get through it with less of a lockdown than we implemented.  But if we hadn't done something pretty drastic, I think it's pretty clear the infection numbers would have been much higher.

  • Like 4

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Interesting theory I heard recently to try and explain the absence of hospitalisations despite increased infection rates in Europe. In addition to the usual stuff about the age of the recently infected population etc etc there was a theory that because of the public health measures we now have, particularly hand hygiene and most importantly mask wearing, there is basically less virus around in the environment and when people do become infected the viral load is lower leading to a less severe set of symptoms. Sounds logical and another argument in favour of the simple hygiene measures we are following.

Edited by Van wink
  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
15 minutes ago, Van wink said:

Interesting theory I heard recently to try and explain the absence of hospitalisations despite increased infection rates in Europe. In addition to the usual stuff about the age of the recently infected population etc etc there was a theory that because of the public health measures we now have, particularly hand hygiene and most importantly mask wearing, there is basically less virus around in the environment and when people do become infected the viral load is lower leading to a less severe set of symptoms. Sounds logical and another argument in favour of the simple hygiene measures we are following.

Or maybe the overwhelming majority of us may well contract it but will not show symptoms which is good and bad. Bad because the infection rate will increase but good because there will be no need to use the NHS but merely isolating.

But I agree we are a nation, despite the odd ******, who do as we are told or asked. Sanitising, distancing and isolating have all pretty well been adhered to.

This Government have relied on that and nothing they have done except financially has been proactive and I was annoyed that Hancock prattled on about his tan yesterday. And Johnson thinks he is stoking up morale by employing a personal trainer. I think if he resigned the morale would increase exponentially.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, Rock The Boat said:

Simply not true. Sweden shows an alternative to lockdown and those who died were mainly in their 80s and 90s who would probably died by now anyway. As Jools pointed out the flu epidemics killed far more people than covid and all lockdown has acheived is to prolong the life of a few geriatrics for afew months at the cost of wrecking the economy 

Surprise, surprise. The Minister of Misinformation agrees with the Minister of Denial

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, Van wink said:

Interesting theory I heard recently to try and explain the absence of hospitalisations despite increased infection rates in Europe. In addition to the usual stuff about the age of the recently infected population etc etc there was a theory that because of the public health measures we now have, particularly hand hygiene and most importantly mask wearing, there is basically less virus around in the environment and when people do become infected the viral load is lower leading to a less severe set of symptoms. Sounds logical and another argument in favour of the simple hygiene measures we are following.

I read about the amount of viral load too as a theory. It is logical.

It explains why younger and fitter younger people died who worked in the NHS (and London public transport, to give another example)...they perhaps had a more serious  viral infection.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, It's Character Forming said:

I've not looked at this information for a while, but I thought the level of deaths in Sweden was much higher than in Norway which had a full lockdown ?  Also I think Sweden has benefited from being a country with a high level of social distancing in its normal lifestyle e.g. the stat quoted I think was over half of Swedes live on their own.

 

I'd agree it may have been possible to get through it with less of a lockdown than we implemented.  But if we hadn't done something pretty drastic, I think it's pretty clear the infection numbers would have been much higher.

That also is evidenced by Denmark's approach (the opposite). Whilst the virus may re-occur in higher instances in weeks and months to come, the worst outcomes of the infection may have passed ...in that now people are now following better hygiene guidelines and hospitals are better informed on treatments.

Denmark's hard lockdown was a brave decision at the time and I recall the fella in charge (yet cannot remember his name) saying he may have got the approach wrong, but he would rather err on the side of caution and then be wrong. He stated he didn't know but had to make a call. I felt that it was very responsible and honest at the time and an example of good open communication with citizens.

The UK has had a bit of a double whammy with excess deaths overall as well as hit to the economy. There was a great graph comparing all countries recently (think the FT).

  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, sonyc said:

I read about the amount of viral load too as a theory. It is logical.

It explains why younger and fitter younger people died who worked in the NHS (and London public transport, to give another example)...they perhaps had a more serious  viral infection.

 Yes it would explain quite a lot, as a theory I like it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
39 minutes ago, Van wink said:

 Yes it would explain quite a lot, as a theory I like it.

I'm a little suspicious of that theory for all but the most extreme cases - I favour more that its the demographic now most exposed - the younger, fitter and healthier that are catching it with more effective quicker acting immune systems. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, It's Character Forming said:

I've not looked at this information for a while, but I thought the level of deaths in Sweden was much higher than in Norway which had a full lockdown ?  Also I think Sweden has benefited from being a country with a high level of social distancing in its normal lifestyle e.g. the stat quoted I think was over half of Swedes live on their own.

I'd agree it may have been possible to get through it with less of a lockdown than we implemented.  But if we hadn't done something pretty drastic, I think it's pretty clear the infection numbers would have been much higher.

I also think that we might have succeeded with a less onerous lockdown but only if we had done it sooner - it was the indecision and incompetence of the government that has landed us with the worst of all possible worlds - a very delayed fairly strict lockdown which was much longer that would have been necessary if started earlier, followed by a shambolic unlock which started too early (by the Government's own criteria which were simply abandoned) and already we've seen very extensive 'local' lockdowns re-imposed.

There is a reason why we have both the worst excess deaths figure and the worst economic impact - the idea that we have to choose whether to screw the economy to save peoples' lives or take risks with people's health in order to revive the economy is fundamentally misguided, but that appears to be the thought process of the idiot Johnson and of course his mentor the even more idiotic Trump.

 

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I totally agree on the lockdown - a weaker but effective lockdown say 3 or 4 weeks earlier would of been quite successful in at least slowing the disease, buying time - although some of this is seen with hindsight. What is true is that it was all but totally out of control when the strict lockdown came in - 2 weeks too late. Not hindsight just competence required at the time.

All  but top for excess covid deaths, bottom for economic performance. Sack the manager. 

Edited by Yellow Fever
Missed CM quote
  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hindsight just isn't an excuse. As soon as the tanks were rolling down the road in Italy, that should have sufficed as a stark warning that lockdown was then needed, 2 weeks before it actually was brought in. By all means I can forgive things before it exploded in Italy but their dallying has cost us heavily and I personally won't ever forget that.

  • Like 3

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, Yellow Fever said:

I totally agree on the lockdown - a weaker but effective lockdown say 3 or 4 weeks earlier would of been quite successful in at least slowing the disease, buying time - although some of this is seen with hindsight. What is true is that it was all but totally out of control when the strict lockdown came in - 2 weeks too late. Not hindsight just competence required at the time.

All  but top for excess covid deaths, bottom for economic performance. Sack the manager. 

If excess deaths is your measure of choice th the FT had some very clear graphs

https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1282713316423602177/photo/1

I'm not sure why they have stopped updating them and some data is very old but general trends can be seen.

Basically, don't go to a major city anywhere in the Americas...

  • Haha 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...