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Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
Nimrod103
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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404093

Postby Nimrod103 » April 14th, 2021, 7:54 am

XFool wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:
murraypaul wrote:Overstated sounds like you are implying people were fiddling the figures, and got caught.
The headline figure has always been deaths within 28 days of a positive test.

The figures for deaths are used by the media to make international comparisons, by which measure the UK comes out looking bad.
But such comparisons would seem to be invalid.

Err... but, AFAICS, that Telegraph article is only about the current situation in the UK and the current low level of deaths.


It’s about extrapolation. Why should the current situation be different to that pertaining throughout the epidemic?

Nimrod103
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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404096

Postby Nimrod103 » April 14th, 2021, 8:38 am

XFool wrote:From that Telegraph article:

"Prof Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, said: "All the data is highly reassuring. There is becoming a case over the next couple of weeks to bring forward the reopening of hospitality, but that's offset with caution around big events."

Speaking purely personally, I don't find that terribly reassuring. Not from the source quoted, bearing in mind some comments from said source at the very beginning of the pandemic (Yes! "the pandemic"). But that's another story.


Do your concerns extend to Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge?
A Cambridge risk expert said he would remove Covid-19 restrictions faster if he was in charge of Government policy.
From today's Telegraph.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404099

Postby servodude » April 14th, 2021, 8:48 am

Nimrod103 wrote:
XFool wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:The figures for deaths are used by the media to make international comparisons, by which measure the UK comes out looking bad.
But such comparisons would seem to be invalid.

Err... but, AFAICS, that Telegraph article is only about the current situation in the UK and the current low level of deaths.


It’s about extrapolation. Why should the current situation be different to that pertaining throughout the epidemic?


Extrapolation! Great word
- use it on the daily deaths curve going in to any "lockdown"
- you might also need the "geometric" or "exponential" to work out how to do that correctly

Take that and then "integrate" it and.... it should be starting to make sense about now... ???

Seriously I would have expected you to be of an age to understand log tables ;)

Meanwhile I really worry for the figures thing going forward given there's now about a third of the UK that can never die from COVID given the artful accounting

-sd

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404100

Postby Mike4 » April 14th, 2021, 8:56 am

servodude wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:
XFool wrote:Err... but, AFAICS, that Telegraph article is only about the current situation in the UK and the current low level of deaths.


It’s about extrapolation. Why should the current situation be different to that pertaining throughout the epidemic?


Extrapolation! Great word
- use it on the daily deaths curve going in to any "lockdown"
- you might also need the "geometric" or "exponential" to work out how to do that correctly

Take that and then "integrate" it and.... it should be starting to make sense about now... ???

Seriously I would have expected you to be of an age to understand log tables ;)

Meanwhile I really worry for the figures thing going forward given there's now about a third of the UK that can never die from COVID given the artful accounting

-sd


The point professor Spiegelhalter was making on the R4 this morning was a simple one, not expressed yet on here AFAICS.

He was suggesting a large number of supposed COVID deaths were still over 70, yet the over 70 cohort is nearly completely vaccinated. Therefore very few of these deaths can be from COVID whatever the docs put on the death ticket.

The other explanation of course could be that the vaccine(s) is/are not as effective as the Matt Hancock, BJ et al would like us to think.


(Spelling edit.)

Nimrod103
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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404101

Postby Nimrod103 » April 14th, 2021, 8:57 am

servodude wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:
XFool wrote:Err... but, AFAICS, that Telegraph article is only about the current situation in the UK and the current low level of deaths.


It’s about extrapolation. Why should the current situation be different to that pertaining throughout the epidemic?


Extrapolation! Great word
- use it on the daily deaths curve going in to any "lockdown"
- you might also need the "geometric" or "exponential" to work out how to do that correctly

Take that and then "integrate" it and.... it should be starting to make sense about now... ???

Seriously I would have expected you to be of an age to understand log tables ;)

Meanwhile I really worry for the figures thing going forward given there's now about a third of the UK that can never die from COVID given the artful accounting

-sd


The ONS are saying that (having studied the true causes of death) 25% of deaths previously attributed to being caused by Covid, were in fact not caused by Covid - this pertains to the current situation. The victims may have had Covid when they died, but Covid did not cause their deaths.

But it seems reasonable to extrapolate that 25% of deaths at the various peaks of deaths during the last year were also not caused by Covid.

You are saying that applying that 25% to the past data is incorrect? Why?

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404103

Postby GrahamPlatt » April 14th, 2021, 9:14 am

I thought we’d agreed in earlier discussions that labelling these 25% as covid deaths just evens up the field for those deaths missed by being outside the 28 day window?

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404123

Postby murraypaul » April 14th, 2021, 10:37 am

Nimrod103 wrote:The ONS are saying that (having studied the true causes of death) 25% of deaths previously attributed to being caused by Covid, were in fact not caused by Covid - this pertains to the current situation. The victims may have had Covid when they died, but Covid did not cause their deaths.


No, that is not what they are saying.
They haven't studied the true cause of death, or gone back and revisited old cases, and the cases were not previously attributed to being caused by covid.
This isn't some scandal where previous figures were wrong and are being recalculated, there are two sets of figures, this is the difference between them.
I think you have been mislead by the reporting.
They are comparing a) deaths where covid was listed on the death certificate as a possible cause or complication to b) deaths where covid was listed on the death certificate as the underlying cause of death.

Edit: From the ONS notes:
Deaths "involving" a cause include all deaths where the cause was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, as a main cause of death or a contributory cause. Deaths "due to" a cause are subset of "involving", and only include deaths where the cause was the underlying (main) cause of death.


Btw, the ONS also provide the same pair of figures for influenza and pneumonia. There the difference between involved and from for the same week was 78%.

But it seems reasonable to extrapolate that 25% of deaths at the various peaks of deaths during the last year were also not caused by Covid.

You are saying that applying that 25% to the past data is incorrect? Why?


Because is it.
You can look at the actual data from ONS that I posted earlier that shows that.
If you believe the ONS data for last week, why wouldn't you believe it for all weeks?
For w/b 2nd April, the difference between 'involving covid' and 'caused by covid' was 23%.
For w/b 8th Jan it was 11%.

As to why, there seems at least two obvious answers.
a) Hospitals are better able to cope with cases, increasing survival chances for all
b) The people catching covid now are, on average, younger than those catching it earlier.
That makes their chances of surviving covid much higher.
That means there is more chance of them happening to die of something else.
Putting it very bluntly, those most likely to die of covid already have.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404124

Postby 88V8 » April 14th, 2021, 10:48 am

murraypaul wrote:.... those most likely to die of covid already have.

That's likely true.
But there's also the consideration of potentially cluttering up hospitals with non-terminal covid patients, when there is such a backlog of non-covid work.

And, perhaps the fact that non-whites are being tardy in accepting vaccination, so if the govt was to let things rip they could be accused by the usual suspects of throwing minorities to the wolves.

V8

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404130

Postby Mike4 » April 14th, 2021, 11:03 am

88V8 wrote:
murraypaul wrote:.... those most likely to die of covid already have.

That's likely true.
But there's also the consideration of potentially cluttering up hospitals with non-terminal covid patients, when there is such a backlog of non-covid work.


But surely, the non-terminal COVIDs cluttering up hospitals are only non-terminal because they are in hospital, getting oxygen, intubation, Ivermectin and the whole panoply of expert medical and life support. Made to stay at home and take paracetamol, they would turn into deaths.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404144

Postby 88V8 » April 14th, 2021, 11:51 am

Mike4 wrote:
88V8 wrote:
murraypaul wrote:.... those most likely to die of covid already have.

That's likely true.
But there's also the consideration of potentially cluttering up hospitals with non-terminal covid patients, when there is such a backlog of non-covid work.

But surely, the non-terminal COVIDs cluttering up hospitals are only non-terminal because they are in hospital, getting oxygen, intubation, Ivermectin and the whole panoply of expert medical and life support.

Yes, but that's the point. If restrictions were lifted, infections would rise and more people would end up in hospital where interventions would save their lives but at the expense of the NHS's capacity to do anything else.

Anyway, they won't be prematurely lifted. Spiegelhalter notwithstanding.

V8

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404170

Postby XFool » April 14th, 2021, 12:56 pm

Nimrod103 wrote:
XFool wrote:From that Telegraph article:

"Prof Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, said: "All the data is highly reassuring. There is becoming a case over the next couple of weeks to bring forward the reopening of hospitality, but that's offset with caution around big events."

Speaking purely personally, I don't find that terribly reassuring. Not from the source quoted, bearing in mind some comments from said source at the very beginning of the pandemic (Yes! "the pandemic"). But that's another story.

Do your concerns extend to Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge?
A Cambridge risk expert said he would remove Covid-19 restrictions faster if he was in charge of Government policy.
From today's Telegraph.

No, they don't, AFAIK. Just to Prof Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404276

Postby Clitheroekid » April 14th, 2021, 6:22 pm

Nimrod103 wrote:Not sure where to post this because although the story contains a statistic, it is an extremely important statistic.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/0 ... sed-virus/

So deaths from Covid in the UK have been overstated by 33%. Some here have been keen to trumpet how bad the UK pandemic performance has been compared to other comparable countries. Maybe our performance has not been bad.

Some of us have been saying right from the outset that the death rate was almost certainly hugely exaggerated, if only because other countries that had responded in a similar way had recorded much lower rates.

As the pandemic went on it's likely that this got even worse.

As I understand it, everyone who has been admitted to hospital during the pandemic would have received a CV test. We know that people who are ill, obese, elderly or otherwise vulnerable are far more likely to catch CV than others. By definition, such people are also far more likely to be admitted to hospital than the rest of us - this was just as much the case before the pandemic as during it.

So it's highly likely that a much higher proportion of those admitted to hospital would have tested positive than a similar sample taken from the population generally. But every single one of them would have been classed as a CV death even if they'd been terminally ill from some other disease and had exhibited no CV symptoms at all.

What we have not been told is the number of people who were admitted to hospital because of CV symptoms as distinct from those who tested positive but had been admitted for some entirely different reason.

As a sideline, I wonder when the BBC will stop issuing their daily gloomcast of the number of deaths etc. Now that the figures are down to the low 20's they are becoming rather silly, bearing in mind there are typically 1,600 - 1,700 deaths every day in normal times. Giving the CV deaths figure such prominence has the unfortunate effect of making these others seem unimportant. Non-covid deaths matter! ;)

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404280

Postby murraypaul » April 14th, 2021, 6:34 pm

Clitheroekid wrote:So it's highly likely that a much higher proportion of those admitted to hospital would have tested positive than a similar sample taken from the population generally. But every single one of them would have been classed as a CV death even if they'd been terminally ill from some other disease and had exhibited no CV symptoms at all.


They would have been classified as a death within 28 days of a positive test, but those is not the figures being discussed in the Telegraph article.
That article is talking about the difference between death certificates that mention covid vs death certificates that list covid as the underlying cause of death.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404300

Postby XFool » April 14th, 2021, 8:09 pm

This looks grim:

‘A tsunami of cases’: desperation as Covid second wave batters India

The Guardian

Doctors speak of a new variant of the virus that appears to be spreading faster than ever before

"Over the weekend bodies piled up outside the government hospital in Raipur, in the state of Chhattisgarh, because the hospital had “not expected so many people to die at once” from coronavirus and could not cremate them fast enough. In Surat, in the state of Gujarat, crematoriums became so overwhelmed with coronavirus victims that families began burning their dead on open ground."

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404307

Postby XFool » April 14th, 2021, 8:26 pm

Clitheroekid wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:Not sure where to post this because although the story contains a statistic, it is an extremely important statistic.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/0 ... sed-virus/

So deaths from Covid in the UK have been overstated by 33%. Some here have been keen to trumpet how bad the UK pandemic performance has been compared to other comparable countries. Maybe our performance has not been bad.

Some of us have been saying right from the outset that the death rate was almost certainly hugely exaggerated...

Yeah. As some of us noticed at the time.

Clitheroekid wrote:As the pandemic went on it's likely that this got even worse.

Is it? How "likely"? How "worse"? How do you know?

Clitheroekid wrote:As I understand it, everyone who has been admitted to hospital during the pandemic would have received a CV test. We know that people who are ill, obese, elderly or otherwise vulnerable are far more likely to catch CV than others.

Do we know this? We certainly know they are, unsurprisingly, more vulnerable if they do get it. Which is why so many of them ended up in hospital.

Clitheroekid wrote: By definition, such people are also far more likely to be admitted to hospital than the rest of us - this was just as much the case before the pandemic as during it.

So it's highly likely that a much higher proportion of those admitted to hospital would have tested positive than a similar sample taken from the population generally.

During a pandemic? No [expletive deleted], Sherlock! :) [That's not what I posted!]

Clitheroekid wrote: But every single one of them would have been classed as a CV death even if they'd been terminally ill from some other disease and had exhibited no CV symptoms at all.

Here we go again...

Clitheroekid wrote:What we have not been told is the number of people who were admitted to hospital because of CV symptoms as distinct from those who tested positive but had been admitted for some entirely different reason.

I'm getting that déjà vu feeling all over again...

"It's not a pandemic, 'cos it's the wrong kind of pandemic", "It's not a wave, 'cos it's the wrong kind of wave", "It's not COVID, 'cos you've got a hernia" etc.

Clitheroekid wrote:As a sideline, I wonder when the BBC will stop issuing their daily gloomcast of the number of deaths etc. Now that the figures are down to the low 20's they are becoming rather silly, bearing in mind there are typically 1,600 - 1,700 deaths every day in normal times. Giving the CV deaths figure such prominence has the unfortunate effect of making these others seem unimportant. Non-covid deaths matter! ;)

So it hasn't occurred to you that reporting reducing figures of deaths etc. during a pandemic might not be a "daily gloomcast", it might actually be Good News?

It is also - brace yourself! - News. Something that I believe is within the BBC's remit.
Last edited by XFool on April 14th, 2021, 8:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404309

Postby murraypaul » April 14th, 2021, 8:30 pm

XFool wrote:So it hasn't occurred to you that reporting reducing figures of deaths etc. during a pandemic might not be a "daily gloomcast", it might actually be Good News?


Certainly that is how I see it.
Looking at our figures vs most of those in mainland Europe should make people realize how much worse things could be right now.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404311

Postby Lootman » April 14th, 2021, 8:36 pm

XFool wrote:
Clitheroekid wrote:As a sideline, I wonder when the BBC will stop issuing their daily gloomcast of the number of deaths etc. Now that the figures are down to the low 20's they are becoming rather silly, bearing in mind there are typically 1,600 - 1,700 deaths every day in normal times. Giving the CV deaths figure such prominence has the unfortunate effect of making these others seem unimportant. Non-covid deaths matter! ;)

So it hasn't occurred to you that reporting reducing figures of deaths etc. during a pandemic might not be a "daily gloomcast", it might actually be Good News?

The other day the number of daily new deaths was 10. I suppose you can argue it is news. But then maybe 15 people died that same day from falling down the stairs. Isn't that bigger news?

The reality is that any kind of focus on Covid has the effect of bigging it up as a story. The implication seems to be: "Yes, almost nobody is dying from this thing any more, but we want to keep ramming it down your throat anyway."

Instead how about a daily report of deaths in the UK and their cause, without commentary? Something like this:

Heart disease: 500
Cancer: 500
Road accidents: 200
Overdoses: 100
Domestic accidents: 50
Violent crime: 20
Covid 10
Sports accidents: 2
Lightning strikes: 1

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404313

Postby XFool » April 14th, 2021, 8:39 pm

And from that Guardian article on India: The Guardian

"Just a month ago, while Europe grappled with soaring cases and stringent lockdowns, there was a widespread belief across India that the country had avoided the spectre of a second wave through a combination of herd immunity from the first wave, which eased off around November, and a speculated natural immune resistance among Indians."

Uh, huh. There's that ole man magical thinking again for you.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404317

Postby XFool » April 14th, 2021, 8:56 pm

Lootman wrote:The other day the number of daily new deaths was 10. I suppose you can argue it is news. But then maybe 15 people died that same day from falling down the stairs. Isn't that bigger news?

The reality is that any kind of focus on Covid has the effect of bigging it up as a story. The implication seems to be: "Yes, almost nobody is dying from this thing any more, but we want to keep ramming it down your throat anyway."

Did you ever consider a career with Pravda, Lootman?

AGAIN - The COVID-19 is a news story of historical proportions. Furthermore (How much longer, Oh Lord? How much longer?) it is not an event: "6 dead in accident at Penge". It is an ongoing situation, evolving (in more than one sense of the word) in time over hours, days, weeks, months, years. We are not "Done", "Finished", "Over". We are on a trajectory. (Some liked Geometry, I only woke up for Calculus)

Lootman wrote:Instead how about a daily report of deaths in the UK and their cause, without commentary? Something like this:

Heart disease: 500
Cancer: 500
Road accidents: 200
Overdoses: 100
Domestic accidents: 50
Violent crime: 20
Covid 10
Sports accidents: 2
Lightning strikes: 1

Oh Jeez! Where to start... "You can NOT be serious!" :) [I guess you may be being ironic/sarcastic - least I hope so!]

So hows about a running commentary of every single aircraft landing safely without incident at Heathrow, every minute of every hour of every day?
Least the BBC wouldn't then be accused of "Socialist/Pro EU bias" etc. But I wouldn't bet on it.
Last edited by XFool on April 14th, 2021, 8:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#404319

Postby swill453 » April 14th, 2021, 8:56 pm

Lootman wrote:Heart disease: 500
Cancer: 500
Road accidents: 200
Overdoses: 100
Domestic accidents: 50
Violent crime: 20
Covid 10
Sports accidents: 2
Lightning strikes: 1

You could always save a bit of time and cut out the ones that aren't contagious and might kill your gran (if she isn't vaccinated).

Covid:10

Oh yeah, as you were...

Scott.


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