Chit Chat
There is currently 1 person viewing this thread.
BBC’s health correspondent has broken ranks with an article posing a number of key questions.
‘But what the figures do not tell us is to what extent the virus is causing the death.
It could be the major cause, a contributory factor or simply present when they are dying of something else. ’
‘The Office for National Statistics is now trying to determine the proportion of these deaths that are caused specifically by coronavirus. Reports in Italy have suggested about 12% of their deaths are due to the disease.’
‘Every year, about 600,000 people in the UK die. And the frail and elderly are most at risk, just as they are if they have coronavirus.’
‘Nearly 10% of people aged over 80 will die in the next year, Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, at the University of Cambridge, points out, and the risk of them dying if infected with coronavirus is almost exactly the same.’
"Many people who die of Covid [the disease caused by coronavirus] would have died anyway within a short period," he says.
Knowing exactly how many is impossible to tell at this stage.
Prof Neil Ferguson, the lead modeller at Imperial College London, has suggested it could be up to two-thirds.‘
Coronavirus: How to understand the death toll https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654
‘But what the figures do not tell us is to what extent the virus is causing the death.
It could be the major cause, a contributory factor or simply present when they are dying of something else. ’
‘The Office for National Statistics is now trying to determine the proportion of these deaths that are caused specifically by coronavirus. Reports in Italy have suggested about 12% of their deaths are due to the disease.’
‘Every year, about 600,000 people in the UK die. And the frail and elderly are most at risk, just as they are if they have coronavirus.’
‘Nearly 10% of people aged over 80 will die in the next year, Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, at the University of Cambridge, points out, and the risk of them dying if infected with coronavirus is almost exactly the same.’
"Many people who die of Covid [the disease caused by coronavirus] would have died anyway within a short period," he says.
Knowing exactly how many is impossible to tell at this stage.
Prof Neil Ferguson, the lead modeller at Imperial College London, has suggested it could be up to two-thirds.‘
Coronavirus: How to understand the death toll https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654
sort by:
Show
per page
Replies: 44
|
By:
where in the article linked is italy mentioned?
|
|
By:
This may well be true but there are also many people dying who should not be.
|
|
By:
Yeah, I'm confused too. That link has nothing to do with what's above it.
|
|
By:
This is so interesting.
BBC has clearly edited it out. If you google the phrase was clearly in the article when Google last indexed the BBC website but it has gone now from the actual article. Google : 'Reports in Italy have suggested about 12% of their deaths are due to the disease.' 3rd result is: Coronavirus: How to understand the death toll - BBC News www.bbc.co.uk › news › health-51979654 3 hours ago - Reports in Italy have suggested about 12% of their deaths are due to the disease. How many could die? Chart showing the estimated death toll ... |
|
By:
Even taking the above as basically true, it is missing the point, ie. Health services across the world are being swamped to capacity in a 3-5 week period, whereas the 10% of people over 80 would ordinarily die spread over the course of a 12mth period.
|
|
By:
Yes some people still don't understand that the issue is overwhelming of health services, when 95% of the population no longer have a health service. Deaths from all illnesses rocket in all age groups when that happens, so no surprise to see a lot of non-C19 deaths. That is what lockdowns are brought in for, in advance of that happening and it hasn't happened in the UK or most of Europe yet but it is happening in Italy and Spain, hence the massive death numbers.
Flu and other viruses don't have the capability to overwhelm a health service, hence why lockdowns don't occur for them. |
|
By:
lurka • April 2, 2020 11:39 AM BST
Flu and other viruses don't have the capability to overwhelm a health service, hence why lockdowns don't occur for them I thought COVID-19 was a flu strain  |
|
By:
It's a totally moot point really if it's 12% or even 2% as the hysteria is now at a level where any indication we might back off on any measures "as the vast majority are going to die anyway" will be met with ferocious levels of anger so showing "everything possible is being done" is the path here to avoid political suicide.
Quite how it'll play out in Sweden will be interesting.. |
|
By:
I saved the article last night fearing it would be deleted. I contacted the bbc this morning asking them to refer to it. Instead they edited it.
However there are still a lot of interesting points. |
|
By:
Re the pressure on the NHS. I took a friend to A&E at 530pm the other day. Zero waiting time. No one there. Usually rammed.
The lockdown has freed up a lot of capacity. Fewer road accidents, accidents at work and sporting injuries. In my county there’s 230 confirmed cases from 1.3m people. It’s wrong to say all hospitals are under pressure. |
|
By:
Hotspots will be understand pressure.
Remember the first peak will not be for another 2-3 weeks then the second peak will come a couple of months after the lockdown ends. People I know who work in 2 UK hospitals and one I know in Spain say everything is very quite at the moment. Barely any 'normal' cases. |
|
By:
It can't be as simple as just misreporting elderly deaths. The main areas that people retire to including my home county have some of the lowest incidence of Covid19 deaths.
|
|
By:
What percentage of dead is required...ffs
|
|
By:
IT HAS TO FIT THE NARRATIVE
|
|
By:
YOU Do realise they have layers of management at the bbc
they have editorial boards and meetings of editors who instruct their presenters on the line today before going on just saying they will also interfere during transmissions |
|
By:
The virus is triggering other health complications
5G will cause most of them as well when its implemented |
|
By:
|
|
By:
Its killing people
But bare in mind the flu in 2016/17 killed 500,000 worldwide |
|
By:
|
|
By:
France 1,355 deaths today
 |
|
By:
Apparently they may have included 800+ nursing home deaths not previously disclosed in today's total.
|
|
By:
|
|
By:
That's his own words from his vlog edy go look it up
|
|
By:
So the 24 hour deaths is 555 then lurka
They can't go adding previous deaths into a 24 hour deaths total, surely it has to be 555 +800 previously not counted |
|
By:
He said it may have a similar case fatality rate to a severe flu or a pandemic flu if you assume that the number of asymptomatic cases is a number of times higher than the reported cases. But that doesn't deal with the issues at hand, ie 1) that way more people (ie 100% of population) can get infected by this, so way more people can die from it and 2) therefore hospitals can easily get overwhelmed by it (which hasn't happened yet in the UK) and when that happens 95% of people can't get treatment for anything so the C19 fatality rate jumps hugely and people with other illnesses also can't get treatment for them and will die also (and none of these latter cases will be classed as C19 deaths).
Yes it is a one-off in France but they will add them in daily as they happen from now on, I assume. And the UK still has to add these on too, because they only report deaths as 'of those hospitalised... x have died'. That means that all the graphs showing where the UK is at are wrong and they are still on the same path as Italy. The hope for the UK is that if it gets worse it does so in a widespread manner because it is large concentrations in small areas in Spain and Italy that is causing overwhelming in those relatively small areas. |
|
By:
lurka the fatality rate will drop the more cases we get in, 50,000 deaths and now over 1 million cases, the cases are going up way faster than the deaths, and the critical are flattening, 5% fatality rate but the milds are vastly larger than the critical now so that % will drop below 1% very quickly
Could even drop as low as 0.5% which puts it right in line with flu deaths %s |
|
By:
If this virus spreads South of Rome into say, Naples, which is one of the most densely populated areas in Europe, then there will be anarchy in Italy. The people in the South are much poorer, nowhere near as healthy, don't have as much hospital cover and a huge amount of them work under the table in the black market and they already can't 'work' because of lockdowns. They will be starving and there will be looting and all sorts. The Italians have had to pay them money to support them, even though they are not on the radar and don't pay tax.
Another difference to flu is with flu you can still visit and say your goodbyes and hug your loved ones before they go. You can't with this, you get ashes in an urn and no funeral in a lot of cases. That is awful for the dead and for the families. Another point people comparing it with flu seem to be missing. It will be comparable to flu in 2 years or sooner if it's still around. But you are missing the point entirely comparing it before then. Lockdowns are in place as a temporary attempt to substitute herd immunity and a vaccine which don't yet exist. And it is still expected to overwhelm the health service even with a lockdown. The WHO recommend reporting all deaths where the deceased was positive for C19 as a 'C19 related death', even if they die from something else. This is what the vast majority of countries are doing but the UK death figures don't do this (yet), which is worrying. |
|
By:
Cases will top 2.5m by next Friday, and the deaths will be around 100k I would imagine which will be 4% fatality rate
By 17th April cases could be 6m and deaths 200,000 which would be 3.3% and so on and so forth And that could be lower for deaths because of lockdowns taking effect |
|
By:
I'm guessing there's going to be between 5-10m deaths worldwide
|
|
By:
I know all that but even if it has a real fatality rate of less than 0.5% it can still lead directly or indirectly to way more deaths than that if it overwhelms hospitals even in only one or two big cities. That is the problem in every pandemic. That is why you don't compare it with a virus like flu that doesn't cause a pandemic, you compare it with other pandemics.
|
|
By:
But the flu is a yearly pandemic lurka
It effects millions and it causes 500,000 deaths worldwide That's a pandemic |
|
By:
36m died of Spanish flu
This might be close to that in a worse case scenario But with the lockdowns the virus will run its course and become weaker with each passing month |
|
By:
the flu is not a pandemic. Flu is endemic. The flu can only infect a relatively small amount of people and doesn't overwhelm hospitals. Can you not see that fundamental difference? The death rate is not the issue and anyone who is comparing the death rate to flu is completely missing the point. Compare like with like. Compare this virus with flu when there is immunitu and a vaccine, ie when it is an endemic like flu
|
|
By:
What are you dudes on? ffs...stop it.
 |
|
By:
Most people who die from HIV/AIDS do not die from the virus itself but rather from so-called "opportunistic infections," which take advantage of a weak immune system.
Just saying most of these people would have died this year anyway is a strange way to look at things. I would say if somebody dies and they have the virus, then the virus killed them Otherwise you are starting to distort the stats, which will be important to utilise in the future You are entering into the realms of "if my aunt had bðllocks, she'd be my uncle" |
|
By:
You don't think they were dissecting the figures when the Spanish Flu was about.
I would imagine anybody who died from Spanish flu symptoms while that was prevalent in a country would have been deemed to have died from it |
|
By:
‘Nearly 10% of people aged over 80 will die in the next year, Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, at the University of Cambridge, points out, and the risk of them dying if infected with coronavirus is almost exactly the same.’
|
|
By:
This is an interesting study. NHS Highland December 2016.
A new strain of virus could emerge in any country (including the UK) but is most likely to first present in China or the Far East where the close proximity of humans, poultry and pigs in farming communities facilitates mingling of human and animal viruses with possible exchange of genetic material. Unprecedented growth in international travel, deterioration in the public health infrastructure in many countries and widespread emergence of drug- resistant bacteria (which may cause secondary infections in influenza patients) all contribute to the possibility of the next pandemic being severe. Influenza pandemics are rare events but when they occur they usually result in major morbidity and mortality, huge demands on health services and a wide range of impacts beyond the healthcare system on daily activities, business and the economy. Health services and other services could be rapidly overwhelmed. https://www.nhshighland.scot.nhs.uk/publications/documents/health%20protection/nhs%20highland%20pandemic%20influenza%20plan%202016.pdf |
|
By:
injera, they seem able to give an exact number of deaths every day to this virus, surely they could tell us exactly how many have died all told this week , and compare it with averages of same time last few years,
|
