Corona Virus

[z-layrex]

5 minutes ago, Finnaldo said:

So we’re standing at about 17,000 deaths right? 
 

Situation in care homes sounds horrific. I feel for carers, not trained for this situation and why would they be? Must be a living nightmare.

It's going through the care homes like the grim reaper. 

[bmt]

It's a difficult task but with all the news about care home deaths etc. it seems that even 'death count' isn't reliable. Appears that looking back after this is all done we won't be able to learn as much as we would have, as we won't know how many people had it OR how many people died. Shame as it makes it harder to work out which government policy was effective or not, accurately.

[murphy]

29 minutes ago, StanSP said:

 

 

 

I think that SKY made a mistake here.  That is up 50%, not 15%.

[Finnaldo]

2 minutes ago, murphy said:

 

I think that SKY made a mistake here.  That is up 50%, not 15%.

Yep an increase of around 2000 from around 4,000ish wasn't it?

[murphy]

4 minutes ago, bmt said:

It's a difficult task but with all the news about care home deaths etc. it seems that even 'death count' isn't reliable. Appears that looking back after this is all done we won't be able to learn as much as we would have, as we won't know how many people had it OR how many people died. Shame as it makes it harder to work out which government policy was effective or not, accurately.

Each country is required to report deaths in hospitals as we have been doing, so that will be our basis of comparison with other countries I would have thought

[bmt]

Just now, murphy said:

Each country is required to report deaths in hospitals as we have been doing, so that will be our basis of comparison with other countries I would have thought

Yeah there's clearly some (a lot) value in that but it isn't accurate. If, for example, one country had a huge amount of unreported deaths and another didn't (hospital deaths aren't necessarily a perfect proxy for total deaths), it would hide something. Also, not all countries report deaths the same so that makes it difficult.

 

Hopefully not insurmountable, just makes it more difficult to make accurate conclusions.

[Strokes]

5 minutes ago, bmt said:

Yeah there's clearly some (a lot) value in that but it isn't accurate. If, for example, one country had a huge amount of unreported deaths and another didn't (hospital deaths aren't necessarily a perfect proxy for total deaths), it would hide something. Also, not all countries report deaths the same so that makes it difficult.

 

Hopefully not insurmountable, just makes it more difficult to make accurate conclusions.

Which is why it’s best to do our evaluations after the event not during. People who died with corona virus not of corona virus is another aspect yet to be looked.

[murphy]

4 minutes ago, bmt said:

Yeah there's clearly some (a lot) value in that but it isn't accurate. If, for example, one country had a huge amount of unreported deaths and another didn't (hospital deaths aren't necessarily a perfect proxy for total deaths), it would hide something. Also, not all countries report deaths the same so that makes it difficult.

 

Hopefully not insurmountable, just makes it more difficult to make accurate conclusions.

I guess that the reason why hospital deaths are being reported worldwide is because we can be more sure that the death was caused by C19 rather than assumed or contributing factor or not a factor, for deaths in the community and care homes.   ICU staff and doctorswill know exactly why a patient died not assumed post mortem by a GP.

[bmt]

 

3 minutes ago, murphy said:

I guess that the reason why hospital deaths are being reported worldwide is because we can be more sure that the death was caused by C19 rather than assumed or contributing factor or not a factor, for deaths in the community and care homes.   ICU staff and doctorswill know exactly why a patient died not assumed post mortem by a GP.

True, and I guess in some care home deaths cause of death may be quite difficult to work out without a full post-mortem.

 

On a similar note, does anybody know what the situation is in Iran? No news about it really but they have (worryingly) reported deaths around 140 every day for the past month, which suggests they are hugely underreporting how bad the situation is or has been.

[Finnaldo]

5 minutes ago, murphy said:

I guess that the reason why hospital deaths are being reported worldwide is because we can be more sure that the death was caused by C19 rather than assumed or contributing factor or not a factor, for deaths in the community and care homes.   ICU staff and doctorswill know exactly why a patient died not assumed post mortem by a GP.

The bloke from the ONS on the BBC this morning explained as well, obviously once you’re in hospital with C19 you can be put down as a C19 casualty on death. In care homes it takes a post mortem declaration then confirmation from a family member, the process can take up to 5 days. It takes time just to confirm and collate community deaths.

[adam1]

1 hour ago, StanSP said:

 

 

I thought this is over 70% increase? Wasn't it 3605 for uk on 3rd April? Or are counting from the 4th when the figures are updated (4313)? At which its over 40%.

 

 

[Sampson]

1 hour ago, adam1 said:

I thought this is over 70% increase? Wasn't it 3605 for uk on 3rd April? Or are counting from the 4th when the figures are updated (4313)? At which its over 40%.

 

 

What's sadder is the Office of National Statistics have released the "excess deaths" from what you would usually expect in a week on average this time of year.

There were 16,387 deaths durin w/e 03.04.2020, around 6,000 inccrease on what is expected on average this time of year,

The office of national statistics has only reported 3,275 as being due to COVID-19. The other 2,750 or so excess deaths comparable to this time of year are thought the be related to indirect deaths of the lockdown (other illnesses not being ttreated, suicides from the mental health issues of the lockdown etc).

You can see the charts and download their spreadsheet etc here https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending3april2020

[martyn]

So it's probably fair to say that we can add at least 40% onto the reported Covid-19 death figures at this point in time to get a more accurate reflection.

 

Are the country comparison graphs we're seeing reflective of the # of deaths in hospitals only, or are some countries being plotted using cumulative hospital/community/care home figures?

 

If the latter, clearly the UK is tracking worse than we're led to believe.

 

[Lionator]

7 minutes ago, martyn said:

So it's probably fair to say that we can add at least 40% onto the reported Covid-19 death figures at this point in time to get a more accurate reflection.

 

Are the country comparison graphs we're seeing reflective of the # of deaths in hospitals only, or are some countries being plotted using cumulative hospital/community/care home figures?

 

If the latter, clearly the UK is tracking worse than we're led to believe.

 

France are definitely doing it cumulatively. Their 15000 deaths is reflective of ALL deaths.

[Finnaldo]

2 minutes ago, Lionator said:

France are definitely doing it cumulatively. Their 15000 deaths is reflective of ALL deaths.

I recall them adding on all previous care home deaths at one point, have they been adding them alongside hospital deaths day by day since?

[VLC86]

And yet still no mistakes have been made...

[Strokes]

14 minutes ago, Costock_Fox said:

And yet still no mistakes have been made...

We don’t know for sure at this moment, it depends on the precise details of the end game. If we don’t get hit by a second wave because of the volume of infected and are able to get on with rebuilding the economy, those that locked down early may come to regret it. There is more at stake than just lives lost caused by the virus itself, and until the pandemic is over, evaluating errors or congratulating perceived victories will most likely be premature.

Its in the hands of people far more informed than anyone on this board and hopefully they know what they are doing.

[VLC86]

8 minutes ago, Strokes said:

We don’t know for sure at this moment, it depends on the precise details of the end game. If we don’t get hit by a second wave because of the volume of infected and are able to get on with rebuilding the economy, those that locked down early may come to regret it. There is more at stake than just lives lost caused by the virus itself, and until the pandemic is over, evaluating errors or congratulating perceived victories will most likely be premature.

Its in the hands of people far more informed than anyone on this board and hopefully they know what they are doing.

That’s true, and I really hope the last sentence proves to be correct.

[Dahnsouff]

2 hours ago, z-layrex said:

It's going through the care homes like the grim reaper. 

Do we know why? Is it down to lack of PPE or is there something else / also ?

[z-layrex]

Just now, Dahnsouff said:

Do we know why? Is it down to lack of PPE or is there something else / also ?

It's just inevitable sadly, the virus is so highly contagious and deadly for the elderly.

[Dahnsouff]

Just now, z-layrex said:

It's just inevitable sadly, the virus is so highly contagious and deadly for the elderly.

I get that the people in care homes are inevitably more vulnerable, it just seems odd that it would get into quite so many care homes in the first place

[Guesty]

1 minute ago, Dahnsouff said:

Do we know why? Is it down to lack of PPE or is there something else / also ?

I think it's a number of things. One thing that didn't help was apparently a lot of care workers and other staff work in multiple care homes so they could have helped spread it.

 

I read about a care home who forsaw what is happening now and and the staff basically locked themselves in with the residents.

[Jimothy]

11 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

I get that the people in care homes are inevitably more vulnerable, it just seems odd that it would get into quite so many care homes in the first place

People were still visiting before lockdown. The carers have to go home, they have to shop, some will travel on public transport. The care homes will take deliveries of things. Theres numerous ways it could have got in.

[z-layrex]

2 minutes ago, Facecloth said:

People were still visiting before lockdown. The carers have to go home, they have to shop, some will travel on public transport. The care homes will take deliveries of things. Theres numerous ways it could have got in.

Plus over 50% of carriers have zero symptoms. It's just inevitable.

[MattFox]

 

 

Reality is every country is almost certainly massively underestimating the amount of deaths due to this.

 

It’s going to be a year or so before we know the full impact of this once all the numbers of crunched.