chessman

3 hours ago, Forza2002 said:

Anybody managed to get 90 day approved online today? I have been at pending status since 10am this morning. Normally when I check the status it's approved with a couple of hours.. 

I also did it this morning at 10ish and am still pending. The first few times I applied online I was approved on the same day, the last time I did it (in January) it took 3 days. Am not worried yet...

I have just applied and my application is pending. Will report back when and if I am approved!

10 hours ago, rabas said:

Those numbers are total deaths for the entire pandemic, not per day as stated in your first post.

You misunderstand me, I used the term ‘day-to-day’, which is not synonymous with ‘per day. Maybe a more exact phrase would be ‘reported at the time’. I wanted to show the contrast between the two sets of mortality figures and how analysis on all-cause mortality done after pandemics always increases the death toll.
 

25 minutes ago, rabas said:

This is not correct, numbers for the 2009 swine flu are way off.  (did you slip a decimal?)

From the website you linked to... ‘lab confirmed deaths as reported to the WHO was 18,449. But estimates of deaths ranged from 150,000 to 575,000... so roughly 10-30 times higher. 
 

the point is that under-reporting deaths during pandemics is the norm... seems very likely that in countries without that much testing this will happen with Covid too.

If you look at previous pandemics (2009 swine flu is a good example but not the only one), the number of dead reported day-to-day is fairly low compared to what researchers find when they analyse all-cause mortality data a few years later. So with the swine flu, the day-to-day number was just over 18,000 dead worldwide but researcher believe the real number was 10-30 times higher than that. A similar pattern can be seen with the ‘Honk Kong’ flu and the ‘Spanish’ flu.

With Covid, it is clear that some countries have been tracking and testing for it much more closely and thus the day-to-day mortality data is fairly accurate (deaths in the UK are definitely not 10 times the reported 125,000). But in countries like Thailand, that are not testing that much, it’s possible that the day-to-day figures follow this pattern and severely underestimate the number of dead. Of course, even if the true figures were a few thousand dead in Thailand, this would still be a relatively low number. 
 

so the numbers could be wrong in Thailand without it being a deliberate cover up.
 

3 hours ago, 86Tiger said:

The point being all these persons with existing conditions, i.e. the high risk group, should have been isolated from the general population immediately in order to limit potential vector of the disease entering their system.

 

All good in theory but would it be practically possible? Certainly not in March or April with so many unknowns. Sweden kept things open more than most countries but completely failed to protect their elderly care homes.

Individual cases may be interesting but you should always look at the bigger picture to draw conclusions.

plenty of people smoke 20 Cigarettes a day and never develop lung cancer but if you look at the bigger picture you would notice that smoking is a risk.

plenty of young people are affected severely by Covid but if you look at the bigger picture you would notice that the risk is actually very very small.

12 hours ago, Berkshire said:

You are missing the key point.  The OP is asking "pro lockdown advocates" the question.  No such person exist. 

This is the point.

It is like calling people who believe that there should have been no government interventions "pro death advocates". 

7 minutes ago, marvin1950 said:

Look again

You have to be cautious with these stats, different countries will have different ways of counting mild or serious patients, some may not distinguish between the two and some don’t even count recovered patients.
 

The above also states that 8% of closed cases died and it is obvious the real total is much much less.

Does anybody know the difference between SSFs and SSF extras?
 

is it true that if you invest 200,000 In the SSF extra, you can invest another 200,000 in the SFT?
 

Would be grateful for any help.

1 hour ago, marvin1950 said:

Read all the information.

i am talking about Thailand 3,162 cases, recovered 3,053 (96.5%)

Deaths 58

Globally Active Cases - 4,122,786;

Mild Conditions - 4,065,038 (98.6%)

Lockdown, curfew, lost jobs caused the following increases:

Suicides - Unknown

Spousal Abuse - Unknown

Rape & Murder - Unknown

Mental Illness - Unknown

Alcoholism - Unknown

People die every day from high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes

 

Nothing in life is 100% guaranteed.

However, 96.5% is pretty close

Again, you are massively oversimplifying things.

this is not a straight decision between the virus or the economy. The economy is going to face a severe downturn whatever the government does, in Thailand the tourists would have stopped coming, nothing the Thai government can do do stop that. We don’t know how this will play out but there’s certainly the possibility that the countries that were strong at the start and got back to relative normality first will be the ones that suffer least economically.

All your Unknown’s are just that, it may surprise you to know that many countries actually reduced mortality and thus life expectancy went up during the great depresssion during the 1930s. I say this to demonstrate how complicated this question is.

The truth is that countries need to balance public health and the economy and that is extremely difficult because there are still so many unknowns with the virus. Has any country got that balance right? Too soon to tell but I’m not surprised a lot of countries were very cautious, it should be the natural instinct to be cautious when public health is concerned.

7 hours ago, CG1 Blue said:

I'm not kidding myself. I'm recognising that there are multiple factors and that it would be foolish to make assumptions at this stage. You clearly feel comfortable making assumptions. That's your choice. 

This is akin to saying you shouldn’t make assumptions about getting wet if you go for a walk on a rainy day without an umbrella. 
 

The current numbers (the huge jumps in all-cause mortality) all suggest strongly that deaths are being undercounted.

History (Attributable virus deaths are always increased by analysis of mortality data) strongly suggests deaths are being undercounted. 
 

30 minutes ago, CG1 Blue said:

But you could also say that the impact of lockdown has caused more deaths than usual. Suicides, people staying away from GPs and hospitals with serious but treatable conditions etc. So the total death rate may be higher for lots of other reasons.  

There are lots of variables here and the things you mention will have an impact but if you think the majority of the excess deaths in the UK aren’t attributable to COVID then you’re kidding yourself.

35 minutes ago, samsensam said:

i have a friend who works in the NHS, it seem the uk hs been a little over enthusiastic about the covid related death numbers, even if the was the slightest chance it could have been covid it goes down as covid, even when it is highly likely that covid wasn't the actual cause of death.

Anecdotes from friends is one thing, comparative death data is another. A lot more people are dying in 2020 in the UK than usual. Much more than reported COVID deaths.
 

if deaths from other causes were being included in COVID stats then all-cause mortality wouldn’t have increased by so much.
 

The evidence is very clear on this matter, deaths are almost certainly being undercounted.

14 hours ago, kingdong said:

Britain has a strange way of compiling the corona body count,it would appear any death from heart conditions terminal cancer etc should the deceased happen to have corona,that is put down as cause of death.

This is almost certainly a myth.

you can analyse comparative death data, 2020 compared with an average of previous years.  The UK have around 42,000 reported COVID deaths but more than 60,000 more deaths in the last few months than what would be expected.

the death count in the UK (and many other countries too) is being undercounted.

14 hours ago, vermin on arrival said:

It's going to be interesting long term to see if these countries which got hammered and people are saying will be regarded as toxic places, are actually going to be disaster proofed and have better long term prospects because they reached the "saturation point"/ herd immunity and the places which people think did significantly better end up having long term issues and concerns with the disease returning since no significant portion of the population caught the disease.

This could well be the case but one could also imagine the mortality rate of Norway, Finland or Denmark never approaching what it is in Sweden because they will have learnt from Sweden’s mistakes. They will protect care homes more and they will be better prepared in terms of PPE and testing.

If their economic downturns are going to be similar to Sweden’s (another metric we don’t know yet) then  their method, with short sharp lockdowns, will be considered more effective.

but those are two big questions we won’t know the answers to for a while...