Now we're more properly reporting deaths

it’s sad that we are all happy to discuss numbers and need to check ourselves to remember this.

And also that the ONS only relates to England and Wales. Scotland and NI have similar organisations if you need a UK perspective.

 

Absolutely, there’s no question that the spike in deaths is directly and indirectly related to CV19.
But that doesn’t answer the specific question.

@KFC suggests it’s simple to count CV19 deaths from the registrar data and its not that simple.

 

Whatever the number, we are near the top of the tree. Certainly nothing for politicians in England to be bragging about to other countries as a how to do it.

 

Don't you understand the concept of EXCESS deaths?

 

I do - but that’s not something you can hang your hat on on a daily basis.
It works as a weekly view (as it’s being reported) or in a more historical context. But as a daily statistic reporting it as CV19 deaths would be at best questionable.

 

Another aspect of the reporting of deaths is that someone died 'with' corona virus, 'not because'.

 

That’s a minefield.

All I’ll say is that due to the small number of tests, it’s highly unlikely that someone who dies having tested positive is dying of something unrelated.

 

I think we're misunderstanding one another.

I absolutely agree that there's a lot more to understanding the death rate and the contribution C-19 makes to that rate, than the counting of deaths and their causes by the registrars.

But we started with the question of whether C-19-related deaths which occurred outside hospital had consciously been excluded from reported statistics. You argued that there was no way they could possibly be included.I replied that registrars do hold this information - albeit with caveats of being delayed in reporting and only attributable to C-19 where the doctor can identify that as a cause - but those numbers has been deliberately excluded from the figures from the start.

Which is proved to be true by the fact that when the government included those figures for care homes yesterday, the number of deaths jumped by 4000. My point is simply that there's never been any complexity to including those numbers, it was a conscious choice. It still is for those outside hospitals and care homes, though that is a very small number.

 

Everyone in hospital is tested. Whatever they're in for. They have to be, so NHS staff know whether to wear PPE or not when treating them and they don't spread it to other people on the ward. It really isn't highly unlikely, It's very likely. I'm really not trying to underplay the seriousness of all this, but if we're talking about getting the figures right this has to be taken into account. It's not an insignificant number.

 

Irrespective of government decisions, you also have to factor in the general health of the population before we even started with COVID 19.
I believe the UK is the most obese country in Europe, and the USA of course is worse.
With obesity comes a whole range of 'underlying health conditions'. The sicker the country, the more deaths there are likely to be.
Since the 70s there's been a culture of eating low-fat foods and food manufacturers have tried to make low fat foods more appealing by adding sugar. We've become more sugar-addicted, and the general population has become fatter and more sick because of it despite the fact we are eating less fat. The Times mentioned that the reason Boris struggled to shake off COVID and Matt Hancock was mainly untouched by it, was due to Boris being overweight.Similarly with COVID disproportionately affecting ethnic minorities in this country (but not say black people in Africa) has theoretically been partially attributed to weight and diabetes. On a number of occasions people wheel out the phrase 'It's a disease that doesn't discriminate' - not in terms of who it infects, but in terms of who it kills it does discriminate.

 

Ever since I saw a report about how fat was cast as the devil by sugar companies and how bad for you sugar is in comparison, I have always consciously chosen the higher fat, lower sugar option. That doesn’t mean I eat the fattiest food I can (although I don’t avoid them particularly either), I just mean that if there are 2 products on the shelf and one is billed as ‘low fat’ and one isn’t, I always buy the one that isn’t. When you compare the values, the ‘low fat’ one has barely any less fat and about twice the sugar content. Look at a Muller yoghurt and compare the sugar values to a Muller Light. In fact, sometimes the ‘low fat’ version actually has more fat! If ever you’re in Morrisons, compare the ‘low fat’ cottage cheese with their normal one, it’ll blow your mind! Same with things that claim to be ‘high in protein’, it often has far less than other similar products.

 

My line manager's partner is an NHS manager so I'm hearing more than is reported in the news.The virus certainly does discriminate, not in terms of who it infects, but in terms of severity and death rate. Everyone knows that age is a major factor, what's publicised less, but is still out there, is that men are almost twice as likely to die than women, and the news is now picking up on the BAME population being more at risk. What is receiving very little coverage is that obesity is a huge factor. It is has serious implications on whether you survive it or not.

 

One trust has started pulling Bame staff off the front line....

 

Many people equate the 'fat' in food with 'being fat' or overweight. But the two words are homonyms, they don't mean the same thing.
If you eat good fats, you'll feel satiated, your blood sugar levels won't go up and down, you'll feel less moody. If you eat sugar, you'll have insulin spikes, be hungry an hour after you last ate, eat more than you need to and enter into a vicious circle. The older you get, the more likely you are to be insulin resistant. Your body can only use a small amount of sugar to burn energy - the rest is stored away as fat for a later date. How many people in this country are diabetic or pre-diabetic versus 30 years ago? Despite the fact people are exercising far, far more.
I used to go to my local parkrun on a Saturday and it was full of people with latest gear and Nike trainers who could barely get round the course.

 

There's more than a few factors at play and I don't want to over-simplify it. But the press do seem to be suggesting that because we are on course to be the worst affected country in Europe therefore the government's response must be to blame versus say South Korea or Germany. Maybe that's partly true, I really don't know about that: but if you start off as the 'sick man of Europe' it seems more likely to me that you're not going to come out of it well in terms of death rates.

 

My mam’s type 1 diabetic (nothing to do with her weight as it’s a different thing to type 2 that mostly gets talked about, she’s underweight if anything) so we didn’t have many sugary things in the house growing up. Fat wasn’t something we particularly paid much attention to as our portion sizes were all good anyway. It’s why there’s no food type I avoid but I’m still slim. Other people see me eating a packet of crisps with my lunch at work every day for example and/or a couple of biscuits at break and comment on how I’m not fat but no one ever got fat off of 2 biscuits and a multipack packet of crisps with their lunch (have you seen how many crisps are in a bag of Walkers?) Everyone else seems to avoid anything remotely ‘bad for you’ at work and then must eat none stop for the rest of the day. It’s the only explanation I can think of.

 

I think we come from the same place - but I’ve a slightly more realistic view of gathering information.

The care home figures are still ‘tested’ figures, so given the lack of testing, we can assume that’s already underreported, whilst some care home residents will have been in hospital and tested, not all will.

Once you get to counting home deaths, the number of ‘tested positive’ falls through the floor. So now you’re looking at cases that may or may not mention a respiratory disease - so No it’s not purposely under reported, it’s simply impossible to simply count them.

I’ve been here before - my dad died of a ‘heart attack’ according to his death certificate (in hospital).

The heart attack was caused by the fact his lungs were completely knackered due to pulmonary fibrosis - caused by the inhalation of coal dust.

We got that info from the autopsy, but all that evidence is off the table in this world.

So now we’re back to counting ‘tested positive’ which we’re doing daily (via PHE stats) and also pointing out the actual massive increase in deaths from all causes (which the ONS do weekly).

if you want to find something hidden, look at the PPE reports, the fact people are put into palliative care so as not to overrun the NHS and the pathetic attitude to testing / tracing/ controlling this horrific disease. Not to mention the government waiting till it was clearly too late this to do anything at all.