General Chat

Interesting 'dashboard' compiled by D Mail for last month of the numbers of deaths.

Dementia and Alzeimers 1,171
Cancer 1,156
Heart disease 1084
Stroke 575
Flu/pneumonia 308
Covid 250


so why are we bombarded with Covid figures all the time OK Covid deaths are going up but I am sure that in many cases, there is an underlying other reason for death and the patient may well have died without covid.

Isn't it time they stopped trying to frighten' us into taking all precautions?

Hmmm, Ann I wonder if ages were included ,in those figures the significance might be different?

I don't think they usually include ages do they? But yes it would surely make a difference

Apart from flu - and the number of deaths has gone down, due, they reckon, to people wearing masks - nothing else on the list can be caught.

The Covid death numbers are twisted, and deaths are much higher than we are told. Only deaths up to 28 days after a positive test are registered as a Covid death.
This doesn't happen with any other disease.

Deaths from Cancer caused by the pandemic - there has been an 80% drop in diagnositic referrals at doctor's surgeries - won't be known for 5 years, according to 'The Lancet'.

There's also the 'cross-over.
How many of those who went into hospital with something other than Covid died after catching Covid?.
If they went in with a stroke, and died after the magic 28 days of Covid, their death would be attributed to a stroke, even though that didn't kill them.

Here are the official (yet still probably an undersetimated) figures (28/08/21) for deaths from Covid:

Deaths within 28 days of positive test
Daily
133.
Deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate
Weekly
652

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

So the Daily Mail's figures don't appear too accurate, :-(

I think the DM's figures were for last month specifically.

Yes but the covid deaths as far as I am concerned are skewed by the 28 day rule. Tony had lung cancer, plus an enlarged prostate causing a severe UTI. He caught covid in hospital, was not affected by it, had no symptoms. died within the 28 days, just wasted away, not eating or drinking, weakend by lung cancer. His death cert stated Covid as the main reason with lung cancer second. so he will have been counted in the covid deaths.

Incidentally I was always taught you can prove anything with 'statistics'. :-)

Just read in the Guardian:
"Coronavirus infections in England are now 26 times the levels that were experienced this time last year, according to the.Office for National Statistics. Scientists described the figures as “sobering”."

It's not just deaths we should think about - it's the long term effects of those with 'Long Covid'

yes I agree.

Yes, we must remember those with Long Covid and also long term effects on families who have been bereaved.

However I do wonder if a number of deaths have been double counted. Like AnnG’s OH my brother caught Covid in hospital but he was already on end of life care. His death certificate gave both cancer and Covid as causes of death, so is he a “statistic” in both categories?

Ah so is T then Vera, yes I see what you mean.

But then there are those who died after the 28 day 'cut off'.

I usually look at a BBC site which gives figures from Public Health Scotland, updated daily.

*******************************************

There are three ways to count deaths from Covid-19.

The Scottish government's daily announcement counts deaths within 28 days of a positive test for Covid-19, whereas the National Records of Scotland (NRS) counts all death certificates that mention Covid-19, even if the person has not been tested for the virus.

The NRS also publishes monthly data on excess deaths, compared with a five-year average.

Excess deaths from most causes rose significantly last year - the exception was deaths from respiratory diseases, where the number was much lower than average.

Within 28 days of a positive test 8,111

Where the death cert. mentions Covid 10,505

Total excess deaths from all causes since 16/3/2020 9,676

*****************************************

You are right in your OP Ann that some may have died anyway, even without covid. Others that had covid may have got better had it not been for underlying illnesses too. So that is another way the figures are inflated and don't actually show deaths that are from covid alone.

Vera the first thing listed on a death cert is what finally killed you, under that are the main contributing factors and the bottom of the list is the underlying cause leading to the rest. eg a) pneumonia, b) covid, c) diabetes. For covid statistics purposes your brother would count, as covid is mentioned, for cancer statistics I expect he would count again for those as you say. How confusing!

I think the difference between other causes of death and covid is that there is still not enough known about it and it could 'take off' and outstrip the other causes of death. The increasing abandonment of masks, social distancing and big events with mixing will have effects we will only see in a few weeks time. The surge in local cases to me has been put down in part to children's exam parties. Now it is suggested that shops are urged to remove their protective plastic barriers as well, but I wouldn't want to do it as a shopkeeper because of protecting my staff and keeping them at work. Vaccine strength wanes with time, is less effective for some and we don't know if that is ourselves and there is still a hardcore refusing them.

Annx Something that is more confusing with the ability to skew the figures. When T died, they knew that a scan had shown, lung cancer (i.e. it showed a lesion. However he was too frail for a biopsy to be undertaken. they knew he had tested positive for Covid, albeit he had no symptoms and needed no Covid related treatment (Oxygen etc) He still had the UTI (and probably enlarged prostate) and back pain/headaches kept mainly under control with painkillers (Patches). In normal circumstances when he died there would have been a Post Mortem to ascertain the true cause of death. With Covid these were not being undertaken. Therefore the 'cause of death' is a 'best guess' by the doctor in charge situation.
We will never know if the cancer had metastasized and he died from something else.
So the cause of death when covid is mentioned is 'Best guess' really.

On that list, only flu/pneumonia and covid are transmissable.

And pneumonia is often mentioned as the cause of death secondary to another disease.