Why is the daily UK MORTALITY still so high from Covid?

[Arjy2000k]

I've been following the covid data on worldmeters for a while now. The UK infection rate has fallen quite dramatically, it's daily rate is now better than Spain and France. Per 100,000 it's actually doing very well, compared to many other countries in Europe. It also has very few people left in hospital, on ventilators, or in a seriously critical condition (doing much better than the rest of Europe).

 

Yet it's death rate continues to be so high.

 

So if you look at a few days ago, the rest of Europe had the odd death from Covid. Most countries had none - France, Italy, Germany had 0 deaths. Spain had 2. Yet the UK posted 120.

 

Back at the peak the UK was having some thousand daily deaths, but it's dropped down now. But it's still averaging over 500 a week, and it doesn't seem to drop. We get days where over 100 are dying. How is this possible?

 

Now people say the UK reporting is skewed. But is it? Why would a government want to increase it's numbers? It doesn't make sense.

 

The deaths in hospitals are also very low. Infact if you isolate that 120 number, only 15 died in hospitals. So where are the other 105 dying? With hospitals now freed up, why are people not dying in hospitals?

 

There is obviously the care home issue, but once again why aren't the people in care homes who are ill being taken to hospital?  Also it still doesn't explain then why Spain or Italy aren't seeing the same numbers, as they have a more elderly population than the UK.

 

The UK also has the highest excess death rates in Europe, before anyone says the numbers are an inflated conspiracy.

 

Does anyone know whats going on? Why are other countries seemingly on top of this but the UK is still struggling with mortality?

 

 

[scammed]

by that graph we can conclude that none of the policies has any effect,

since sweden has none of the policies.,

i think the reason is the rest of the world cancelled sending infected to

nursing homes except england.

the death toll is almost entirely in advanced retiree age

[Dumbastheycome]

Perhaps the UK Hospital ICU system is  still so stressed treating the large number of best potential survivors and leaving out those with low potential ? There  is always a lag  between spikes of infection and the later eventual percentage who succumb.

[mfd101]

- Incompetence at the political level (failure of leadership and clear messaging over time);

 

- Incompetent society unable to organize itself to look after the poor & the aged (Who cares about old people? they're all poor anyway).

[GroveHillWanderer]

18 minutes ago, scammed said:

by that graph we can conclude that none of the policies has any effect,

since sweden has none of the policies.,

i think the reason is the rest of the world cancelled sending infected to

nursing homes except england.

the death toll is almost entirely in advanced retiree age

You can't conclude anything from data covering only a single day.

 

Also, the death toll isn't "almost entirely in advanced retiree age." As of May, in New York for example, over 25% of total coronavirus deaths were in people under 65 and worldwide, the proportion of deaths in younger people keeps increasing. 

 

 

[Matzzon]

Incompetence - Weakness - Bad Control - UK Today

That´s like the hard truth! It will also work as page title regarding SEO for United Kingdom in about 2 years.

Edited August 2, 2020 by Matzzon

[bellboy]

The lazy reaction is blame boris and his cronies !

The truth is .. The people are not following social distancing . large crowds gather. People hugging each other when they meet . 

The bias uk media  has its own agenda. If it woud stick to reporting facts on what is happening . instead of its opinion . People might take cronoviris more seriously .

Edited August 2, 2020 by bellboy

[twocatsmac]

33 minutes ago, bellboy said:

The lazy reaction is blame boris and his cronies !

The truth is .. The people are not following social distancing . large crowds gather. People hugging each other when they meet . 

The bias uk media  has its own agenda. If it woud stick to reporting facts on what is happening . instead of its opinion . People might take cronoviris more seriously .

Agreed, too many younger brits see the virus hardly affects their age groups so it’s a summer of parties, raves, demos, riots (to come), etc.

 

Probably one of the reasons lockdowns weren’t introduced earlier was that the public wouldn’t accept it, just like they don’t accept it now.

 

Some footballers are still kissing each other after scoring too. ????

[steve2112]

i just read a protest against masks and common sense in berlin just drew 15,000 people,  so don't count out Germany and other countries catching up to the US and UK stupidity levels.

 

i'm joking of course, no one will ever beat the USA for stupidity, USA #1!!!!  

[AndrewMciver]

Does anyone have a breakdown in which settings UK mortality is occuring? Hospital deaths are very low now, most often in single figures. Yet the final figure at the end of each day is sometimes over 100. 

 

What i see an obvious different from UK care to asian care, is that when you are ill in asia you tend to go hospital straight away, get on treatment, oxygen, and most often or not you tend to recover quickly and are released quickly.

 

In the UK you are told to wait, stay at home, till you become serious. This often means you get to the point when people turn up to hospital they are in a serious condition, and often end up staying longer and longer, rather than if they just turned up straight away and got treatment. 

 

But UK hospital rates are now very low. So i really want to know what the hell is going on. It's not as simple as saying 'these are just cases of someone getting covid, and then getting him by a bus and recording death as covid'. I find this implausable, and the figure would be miniscule. 

 

[torturedsole]

I don't trust the way the government measures C19 deaths in the UK or any other country for that matter.  Feels like I'm being fed randomly inflated numbers to justify 4.5 months of lockdown.  

 

If the figures are to be believed then it's the aged and infirm that are most at risk.  

[ukrules]

12 hours ago, Arjy2000k said:

Why would a government want to increase it's numbers? It doesn't make sense.

Lets not confuse the organisations who work out and provide the figures with the government, they are very different things.

 

In fact they are polar opposites, the people who run branches of government organisations often hate and actively work against the government and its policies. A kind of political sabotage.

[CG1 Blue]

10 hours ago, bellboy said:

The lazy reaction is blame boris and his cronies !

The truth is .. The people are not following social distancing . large crowds gather. People hugging each other when they meet . 

The bias uk media  has its own agenda. If it woud stick to reporting facts on what is happening . instead of its opinion . People might take cronoviris more seriously .

I think the point the OP is raising is that the UK death rate is so high. What you describe here would result in a high infection rate. The UK has a low infection rate, but still has a high death rate. 

 

I have heard certain commentators in the UK saying that our hospital care is poor compared to other European countries, such as Germany. I hear countless stories about incompetence and negligence in UK hospitals leading to unnecessary complications and sometimes unnecessary deaths. I have personal experience of this. 

 

But it's not popular to suggest our brave NHS workers are not all selfless saints. 

 

[torturedsole]

15 minutes ago, CG1 Blue said:

The UK has a low infection rate, but still has a high death rate. 

We can't possibly know if the UK has a low infection rate as testing is low and the reliability of testing is low. I know I had C19 back in March and quite certain the infection rate in the UK is high.  

[Arjy2000k]

19 minutes ago, torturedsole said:

We can't possibly know if the UK has a low infection rate as testing is low and the reliability of testing is low. I know I had C19 back in March and quite certain the infection rate in the UK is high.  

 

This is wrong.

 

The UK has one of the highest testing rates in the world. It has the highest testing rates in Europe, double the number of tests Germany have carried out (which is second).

 

It also has mobiel testing, taking testing into hot spots (eg Leicster).

 

As someone posted, it's not about the rate of infection (which has dropped in the UK to a low point), but rather why the death figure remains very high.

[daveAustin]

The main reason UK's rate is so high (there were 5 today btw) is because whoever caught it has a three-month window to die from it. Meaning, if you contracted COVID19, recovered and then died 10 weeks later from stubbing your toe in the bathroom and banging your head, you are registered as dying from coronavirus/C19. This is unheard of in other countries AFAIA. Also, many cases were mixed up with the flu. Numbers are more likely in the 20k region, which is still high of course, but given the aged state of the nation and London being the global hub, isn't so bad.

[Scott]

1 hour ago, daveAustin said:

The main reason UK's rate is so high (there were 5 today btw) is because whoever caught it has a three-month window to die from it. Meaning, if you contracted COVID19, recovered and then died 10 weeks later from stubbing your toe in the bathroom and banging your head, you are registered as dying from coronavirus/C19. This is unheard of in other countries AFAIA. Also, many cases were mixed up with the flu. Numbers are more likely in the 20k region, which is still high of course, but given the aged state of the nation and London being the global hub, isn't so bad.

If you have a source for the the counting of people dying in the 10 week period, please post it.  

 

[Scott]

An off-topic post has been reported and removed.  

 

[Arjy2000k]

2 hours ago, daveAustin said:

The main reason UK's rate is so high (there were 5 today btw) is because whoever caught it has a three-month window to die from it. Meaning, if you contracted COVID19, recovered and then died 10 weeks later from stubbing your toe in the bathroom and banging your head, you are registered as dying from coronavirus/C19. This is unheard of in other countries AFAIA. Also, many cases were mixed up with the flu. Numbers are more likely in the 20k region, which is still high of course, but given the aged state of the nation and London being the global hub, isn't so bad.

 

Source for this? I keep hearing by conspiracy theorist on twitter, that you can get Covid, recover, die from a accident, and it will go down as Covid death. But i can't honestly believe this. There maybe some cases where covid might have been a secondary reason for death.

 

But the EXCESS DEATH levels (average number of deaths over the past 5 years over this period) in the UK are worst than even the covid numbers. Infact the UK excess deaths from January to August are the worst in Europe.

[tribalfusion001]

3 hours ago, daveAustin said:

The main reason UK's rate is so high (there were 5 today btw) is because whoever caught it has a three-month window to die from it. Meaning, if you contracted COVID19, recovered and then died 10 weeks later from stubbing your toe in the bathroom and banging your head, you are registered as dying from coronavirus/C19. This is unheard of in other countries AFAIA. Also, many cases were mixed up with the flu. Numbers are more likely in the 20k region, which is still high of course, but given the aged state of the nation and London being the global hub, isn't so bad.

Correct, other countries have a 28 day limit, but in the UK we count after 28 days to be included in the death totals. Hancock says the NHS are looking into the figures and will be revised at some point.

 

Friday's death figures were 120, 14 died in hospital and 106 from care homes or at home, 119 had multiple underlying conditions, aged between 73 to 92. The thing that puzzles me is why those who died at home or care deaths were not admitted to hospital if they covid-19 was that bad. This is why the figures are suspect in the UK and until an investigation is held some people are skeptical about the true mortality in the UK for covid-19 including me.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/02/uk-covid-19-excess-deaths

Edited August 2, 2020 by tribalfusion001

[Arjy2000k]

41 minutes ago, tribalfusion001 said:

Correct, other countries have a 28 day limit, but in the UK we count after 28 days to be included in the death totals. Hancock says the NHS are looking into the figures and will be revised at some point.

 

Friday's death figures were 120, 14 died in hospital and 106 from care homes or at home, 119 had multiple underlying conditions, aged between 73 to 92. The thing that puzzles me is why those who died at home or care deaths were not admitted to hospital if they covid-19 was that bad. This is why the figures are suspect in the UK and until an investigation is held some people are skeptical about the true mortality in the UK for covid-19 including me.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/02/uk-covid-19-excess-deaths

 

I agree on your point - that if people in care homes (or there own homes) are so ill that they are close to death, why aren't they being transported to hospitals to attempt treatment? In what condition are they dying without even bothering to go to a hospital? It doesn't make sense to me. The media barely mention it.

[tribalfusion001]

9 minutes ago, Arjy2000k said:

 

I agree on your point - that if people in care homes (or there own homes) are so ill that they are close to death, why aren't they being transported to hospitals to attempt treatment? In what condition are they dying without even bothering to go to a hospital? It doesn't make sense to me. The media barely mention it.

Correct they don't mention it, but plenty of comments in online papers do here in the UK. Ever since they added care homes and home deaths to the totals I have questioned what the true figures are. The clue is the multiple underlying conditions that they have and they had covid-19 but recovered but died of one of their conditions.

 

There is an interesting PDF that I found on a UK government website that mentions that people need to scared of covid-19 to adhere to social distancing measures, so I guess the figures are inflated for that purpose.

 

Check out this article and there is a link to the gov.uk site where you can download the PDF. https://evidencenotfear.com/how-sage-and-uk-media-created-fear-in-the-british-public/

Edited August 3, 2020 by tribalfusion001

[Arjy2000k]

4 minutes ago, tribalfusion001 said:

Correct they don't mention it, but plenty of comments in online papers do here in the UK. Ever since they added care homes and home deaths to the totals I have questioned what the true figures are. The clue is the multiple underlying conditions that they have and they had covid-19 but recovered but died of one of their conditions.

 

There is an interesting PDF that I found on a UK government website that mentions that people need to scared of covid-19 to adhere to social distancing measures, so I guess the figures are inflated for that purpose.

 

Check out this article and there is a link to the gov.uk site where you can download the PDF. https://evidencenotfear.com/how-sage-and-uk-media-created-fear-in-the-british-public/?fbclid=IwAR2z-VP2MDcVw5igiBBJXSn0s_gQDvD8v3mqQ1wf0hznivJsGiH1ImyNQsc

 

Interesting read.

 

I can firmly agree there may have been reasons for the government in the initial stages to scare/shock people to stay at home. But now with the virus in low numbers, the economy on it's knees - the same govermnemt are urging people to get back to work, start spending, save the high street, etc. - the numbers of deaths reported are still very high.

 

What incentive would a government have to make the figures worst now ... it's essentially scaring the population, hurting investment, and makes the government look incompetent. Surely most governments would want to laud their achievements how they've tackled the virus and got on top of it. For these reasons alone i don't buy that the government (or PHE) are inflating the figures.

 

Matt Hancock said two weeks ago he was going to look into the figures. Yet here we are, two weeks later, still reporting some 100 plus deaths in a day sometimes.

[Yinn]

16 hours ago, mfd101 said:

 

- Incompetent society unable to organize itself to look after the poor & the aged (Who cares about old people? they're all poor anyway).

A whistleblower has claimed elderly Covid-19 patients are being sent to care homes 'to die' as part of a longstanding culture of freeing up hospital beds. 

The source, whose work means they have close connections with care homes in the UK, alleged that people are currently being discharged from hospital before their coronavirus test results are known.

As a result, patients risk missing out on crucial treatment - contributing to the care home sector's soaring death toll.

 

link

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8274403/Whistleblower-claims-elderly-Covid-19-patients-sent-die-care-homes.html

 

Black heart.

[Arjy2000k]

48 minutes ago, Yinn said:

A whistleblower has claimed elderly Covid-19 patients are being sent to care homes 'to die' as part of a longstanding culture of freeing up hospital beds. 

The source, whose work means they have close connections with care homes in the UK, alleged that people are currently being discharged from hospital before their coronavirus test results are known.

As a result, patients risk missing out on crucial treatment - contributing to the care home sector's soaring death toll.

 

link

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8274403/Whistleblower-claims-elderly-Covid-19-patients-sent-die-care-homes.html

 

Black heart.

 

At the start of the crisis, the government witnessed scenes in Italy with patients lying in corridors, and were worried that was coming to the UK. Their fatal error was they discharged masses of patients in hospitals that weren't in life threatening conditions, to free up hospital space. Alot of those discharged were elderly back into care homes without being tested. It was a horrific error. Then compounded further that there was no lockdowns or safety protocols for elderly homes till it was far too late.

[tonray]

Could the High Mortality rate be linked to diet ?

 

[Yinn]

2 minutes ago, tonray said:

Could the High Mortality rate be linked to diet ?

 

Look like my dog do it. 

[Yinn]

10 minutes ago, Arjy2000k said:

 

At the start of the crisis, the government witnessed scenes in Italy with patients lying in corridors, and were worried that was coming to the UK. Their fatal error was they discharged masses of patients in hospitals that weren't in life threatening conditions, to free up hospital space. Alot of those discharged were elderly back into care homes without being tested. It was a horrific error. Then compounded further that there was no lockdowns or safety protocols for elderly homes till it was far too late.

Terrible. Family not care them. 

“Care homes” not care same.

 

RIP

[CorpusChristie]

1 minute ago, Yinn said:

Look like my dog do it. 

I was just looking at that photo and thinking how tasty that food looked .

I've changed my mind now 

[hotandsticky]

5 hours ago, Arjy2000k said:

 

This is wrong.

 

The UK has one of the highest testing rates in the world. It has the highest testing rates in Europe, double the number of tests Germany have carried out (which is second).

 

It also has mobile testing, taking testing into hot spots (eg Leicester).

 

As someone posted, it's not about the rate of infection (which has dropped in the UK to a low point), but rather why the death figure remains very high.

 

 

I find the comments about the high death rates confusing. I am not sure whether that is in absolute terms or relative to other countries. 

 

 

Certainly the daily death numbers have dropped. I own a crematorium in the UK and we have seen numbers drop from a 4 week peak of 60 cremations per week to 33 bookings this week and only 24 next week. The latter number is lower than 'normal' for this time of year. I accept that my numbers may not exactly mirror national figures but apart from local hotspots I would imagine they are fairly representative.