Coronavirus

[Orange Cola]

[mention]NotoriousREV[/mention] I’m happy to let those who think hospitals are shut for ‘normal business’ to keep thinking that for as long as possible, may be we should never declare the crisis is over to certain news outlets because it’s doing a massive favour to society. It may even be the secret weapon in reversing the Brexit vote.

[NotoriousREV]

[mention]Orange Cola[/mention] Agreed.

[Nefarious]

I did try to look at the ONS figures to see if there was any inferences to be drawn on non-COVID deaths but there's limitations to the data they're supplying.

They have broken out deaths that mention COVID on the death certificate and deaths from respiratory illnesses but there's no comparison with the average so you can't easily see whether there's a rise of respiratory illnesses and remove those from the data, plus, they're double-counting i.e. if a death certificate has COVID and a respiratory illness mentioned, it gets counted in both sets of figures (but only once in the total).

This may help:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/d ... index.html

Notes state that where both Covid and pneumonia are mentioned on the death certificate, the cause has been recorded as Covid

The year to date figures are:
COVID-19 19112
Influenza or Pneumonia 34830
All deaths 207301
5-year average 185216

[Beany]

Because I'm a sweetheart:

Screenshot_2020-04-28_14-05-21.png (51.21 KiB) Viewed 2238 times

[NotoriousREV]

I did try to look at the ONS figures to see if there was any inferences to be drawn on non-COVID deaths but there's limitations to the data they're supplying.

They have broken out deaths that mention COVID on the death certificate and deaths from respiratory illnesses but there's no comparison with the average so you can't easily see whether there's a rise of respiratory illnesses and remove those from the data, plus, they're double-counting i.e. if a death certificate has COVID and a respiratory illness mentioned, it gets counted in both sets of figures (but only once in the total).

This may help:
<iframe height="418px" width="100%" src ... ></iframe>

Notes state that where both Covid and pneumonia are mentioned on the death certificate, the cause has been recorded as Covid

The year to date figures are:
COVID-19 19112
Influenza or Pneumonia 34830
All deaths 207301
5-year average 185216

The numbers in that are the same as their spreadsheet, which says:
"Note: Deaths could possibly be counted in both causes presented. If a death had an underlying respiratory cause and a mention of COVID-19 then it would appear in both counts."

That graph does suggest that respiratory deaths are as expected, which implies there's something like 1.5% higher number of deaths not directly due to COVID. That is more than I would have expected, when you take into account what I would expect to be fewer activity related deaths.

[Nefarious]

Thanks beany

As I was saying,
The year to date figures are:
COVID-19 19112
Influenza or Pneumonia 34830
All deaths 207301
5-year average 185216

So there have been 22,085 "excess" deaths compared to the 5 years average, of which 19112 are attributable to Covid, leaving 2,973 unexplained.

Looking at the above graph, it looks like the number of influenza and pneumonia deaths are down on the average, which may be down to the impact of lockdown on the spread of flu, or may be down to some deaths being recorded as possible Covid when they were actually just flu.

Also worth considering that the figure of 2,973 "excess" (assumed) non-covid deaths needs to be set against an assumed background of fewer accidental deaths due to reduced activity for the past 6 weeks of the year-to-date period.

So either there's been an under-reporting of covid as a cause of death, or more people are dying from "other" causes as a result of the lockdown situation

[Nefarious]

Dave - looks like ours posts overlapped.

The quote I've got on notes to the weekly figures is " A death can be registered with both COVID-19 and Influenza and Pneumonia mentioned on the death certificate. Because pneumonia may be a consequence of COVID-19, deaths where both were mentioned have been counted only in the COVID-19 category."

There is no corresponding note on the year to date figure spreadsheet, but I'm assuming its done on the same basis.

[NotoriousREV]

Finally a well-constructed, internally consistent, logical argument backed up with evidence from a credible source. It'll never catch on

[Nefarious]

Just to add weight to my assumption above -
The weekly figures show a total of 8758 for week 16 for Covid, and 1,931 where flu ONLY is mentioned (as shown on the posted graph). The number of deaths that mentioned both “Influenza and Pneumonia” and COVID-19 on the death certificate was 3,220 deaths in Week 16.

That 8758 figure is the same one as appears in the year to date spreadsheet for week 16, and the weekly totals appear to very nearly sum to the year-to-date total (there is a note to say they may not sum due to revisions and updates).

[Foz]

BA making 1/3rd of their staff redundant on the news there.

[Orange Cola]

Aaaaand so the economic impact starts.

Before someone pipes up the air tour operators are predicting demand will be low for several years, Boris won't be extending the furlough period for that long. I wonder how many BA staff will end up at another airline, then they'll get rid of their low performers and so on until it's the budget air lines which are worst hit?

[NotoriousREV]

I thought this was appropriate today.

3E93106D-E6FD-48E8-BB35-D856BBA44134.jpeg (144.9 KiB) Viewed 2127 times

[Orange Cola]

[Zonda_]

Purely out of curiosity, how many people do you know personally who have died directly from it? I know 3 and I live in a very small town. Population 3k approx

[jamcg]

Zero who’ve died, and only personally know 2 people who’ve definitely had it.

“There are 328 confirmed cases in Stockton-on-Tees, out of a local population of 197,213” according to bbc postcode checker thingy, so there’s a fair few had it in the town, given those are just hospital cases and a few from the various chemical plants that have been arranging their own testing

Postcode checker is here if anyone’s interested

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274? ... 6VjeciRqm4

[jamcg]

What’s the age demographic in saltburn zonda? Is it biased towards an aging population?

[NotoriousREV]

I personally know 3 confirmed cases but don’t know anyone that died from it.

[Foz]

Don’t know anyone personally.

[drcarlos]

1 died, 1 recovered definite case and a Few possibles.

[Ascender]

I don’t know anybody personally who has had it. My wife knows one person who has had it and recovered.