Coping With Covid

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Hell Razor5543
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

The mortality rate is still dropping (and it does not appear to be a blip). We are now at 18% (and have been for a couple of days). Still I wish the UK Government were not fudging the figures. They have not released the figure for the number of survivors since mid April (and, using my spreadsheet the formula indicates the UK has a mortality rate in excess of 98%, which I KNOW is wrong). If the UK and the Netherlands governments were to publish the full figures it is likely that the worldwide mortality rate would actually be lower by a point or two.
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by Michel »

The issue is that the government have mismanaged the whole thing spectacularly and simply lied their way through it. It’s been a sh1tshow from start to finish.

People point to Spain and Italy as being disastrous and mismanaged - we’ve got 3000 *more* deaths than Spain and only about 600 less than Italy, over less time.

Compare Bogotá and London.

London - 8 million people, 4600 people per square kilometre, 6041 Covid-19 deaths

Bogotá - 10 million people, 7000 people per square kilometre. 101 (yes, 101) Covid-19 deaths.

Now. Why is this? It’s because those in power there (and in NZ, Germany, Australia and ironically China) realised immediately they had no idea about this, and listened to the advice of experts and acted on it immediately.

We got dumped with those in power here. The ones who some time ago told us “we’ve had enough of experts”..
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by bobins »

If you listen to the scientists and the experts (the ones with no axe to grind), they say it's not really worth comparing death rates from country 'A' to those in country 'B'. They are not all recorded the same way, they are not always accurate, there is no reasonable and accurate way of recording deaths from Covid-19 - for example : how do you record someone who dies with Covid-19 and not of Covid-19 ? If someone dies with no symptoms, how do you check whether they died of C-19 ? There are wayyyy too many variables to make it even slightly worthwhile comparing death rates - country 'A' isn't country 'B'. Population densities, ethnic diversity, and public attitudes all have a huge part to play along with government planning and implementation. There is, however, merit in comparing trends. If the countries maintain their recording metric, then you can identify a trend - and that shows many Eurpoean countries are basically trending the same way.
As one of the people that I heard interviewed put it - "This isn't like the Eurovision Song Contest". It's not about who comes first.

There have been governemnt failings - despite having a very good pandemic emergency plan in place for a long time (based on the SARS and MERS outbreaks), they didn't actually implement some of the plans recommendations - PPE stockpiles was one issue*. A couple of other countries basically used and implemented our pandemic emergency plan - the difference being they spent the money on actually implementing most of it. Those countries have had better outcomes - though very many people have still died.

*- The Govt's plan seemed to have been to place orders for PPE as soon as they became aware of the outbreak back in January. A lot of those orders either weren't delivered from the suppliers or were sub-standard.
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by Gibbo2286 »

Too much politics involved in the reporting, not the government reporting, the media reporting, left wing slants put on every figure by the Guardian, the Mirror and the Independent and to some extent by the BBC, Laura Kuensberg cannot report anything without putting her own negative slant on it.

Likewise the Mail the Sun and the Express doing their bit for the right.

I think the government has done all it can in the circumstances by trying to keep the public informed with their daily updates and keeping to the science rather than bending to the media rants..

It's a hundred years since the last time we had such a pandemic, nobody in their right mind could expect the country to be fully prepared for such a happening but the politicians will play the blame game to the full.
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by bobins »

Michel wrote: 02 May 2020, 08:22
Now. Why is this? It’s because those in power there (and in NZ, Germany, Australia and ironically China) realised immediately they had no idea about this, and listened to the advice of experts and acted on it immediately.
I'd suspect:
NZ : They pulled up the drawbridge very promptly - something that wouldn't have been politically acceptable here. They have a much lower population density. They have better public enforcement of the lockdown.
Germany : Does have a better healthcare system with a much higher availability of critical illness hospital beds. They implemented large scale testing earlier.
Aus : Don't know, I'm afraid. I haven't looked into Australia's response.
China : I wouldn't trust the figures from China. There's not much I'd trust from China.
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

As far as I can tell the Government is only publishing SOME of the hospital statistics. They are not publishing the number of patients who could be said to have survived COVID 19, or the correct number of active cases. The three sets of figures that may be correct are;

Number of Reported Cases (177,454),
Number of New Cases (6,201),
Total Number of Deaths (27,510),

These figures are being updated daily. However, ever since mid April the number of people who have recovered from COVID 19 is shown as N/A, while the number of active cases (as of yesterday, when the figures came out) is 149,600 (I didn't know there were that many available beds in the hospitals).

It should be very simple to calculate how many people have recovered from COVID 19 (OK, they will to recover from the effects of COVID 19, but if they no longer test positive it would be fair to say they have recovered). There can only be two 'groups'; active cases and closed cases. In the 'closed' cases group there can also only be two outcomes; died and survived. Hospitals MUST be recording these statistics, but they are not being passed on to the general public. If my spreadsheet was correct (remember, it cannot be, as it is using data that is not being updated) only 344 patients have survived COVID 19. Using the number 27,510 (total number of deaths as of yesterday) my spreadsheet calculates a mortality rate of 98.76% against cases closed (15.5% mortality against TOTAL number of cases). If the first figure is correct (I KNOW it cannot be, as people (such as the Prime Minister, Health Secretary and Chief Medical Officer to name but three) have recovered but the survival figure has not been updated), based on there being about 68 million people in the UK, if everybody in the UK were to contract COVID 19 there would be only about 1 million survivors.
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by Gibbo2286 »

I don't see how a figure for those who have recovered can be found if they simply don't know how many have contracted the disease,

How many who just shut themselves away when they had a cold or flu symptoms were actually suffering from mild covid, recovered and never got into the figures.
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

My first sentence said "As far as I can tell the Government is only publishing SOME of the hospital statistics."

I accept that, until a person has been tested, it cannot be possible to count anybody who thinks they have had/got COVID 19. However, if a hospital tests a patient and they are found to have COVID 19 they are added very quickly to the statistics. It is the Closed Cases statistics that are not being updated for the general public to read.
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by Gibbo2286 »

Hell Razor5543 wrote: 02 May 2020, 09:32 My first sentence said "As far as I can tell the Government is only publishing SOME of the hospital statistics."

I accept that, until a person has been tested, it cannot be possible to count anybody who thinks they have had/got COVID 19. However, if a hospital tests a patient and they are found to have COVID 19 they are added very quickly to the statistics. It is the Closed Cases statistics that are not being updated for the general public to read.
Our posts crossed James I hadn't read yours when I posted mine, however I think your spreadsheet fails on pretty well all points, the old 'garbage in garbage out' computer phrase comes to mind.
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by bobins »

As I've said before - I'd suspect the reason they won't publish survival statistics is that they don't want to give a false sense of security to the public. If the Govt. put out the figures that 99% (made up statistic) of the people who get infected survive Covid-19, then it wouldn't be unreasonable for the public to think : "If the death rate is that low, why am I bothering to stay indoors ?". Cue: millions of people ignoring the lockdown. Cue: tens of thousands more infections as the pandemic takes hold again. Cue: NHS overwhelmed.
I can see why it's frustratiing that the Govt. won't publish the figures, but I can see why it makes perfect sense why they don't.

There was an intersting statistic from Prof. David Spiegelhalter* yesterday. He reckoned you are very roughly as likely to die of C-19 this year as you were likely to die anyway. So if you hadn't planned on dying this year, not to worry too much.
*-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Spiegelhalter
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by Michel »

I’m out of here. I’m heartily sick of people making excuses for this shambles of a Government.

Left wing BBC? You’ll be talking about Ms Kuenssberg will you? The very same who’s been found to have breached impartiality guidelines more than once , clearly favouring the Tories? FFS.

Pulling up the drawbridge unacceptable but 28,000 deaths are?

Blatant lies about figures and stats?

The Government has done all it can to update us? Are you serious?

As usual, it appears to be all the fault of the left. Have you failed to notice we’ve been controlled by the seriously selfish and incompetent right for 10 years.

No wonder this country is (-expletive removed-) with views like I read on here.

As an immigrant friend of mine from Portugal to the UK said only yesterday - “I came here as an adult 10 years ago. I still can’t believe the trust you people put in anyone with a posh voice and a suit”...
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

There are only TWO countries who are blatantly NOT publishing all of their hospital statistics; The UK and the Netherlands (other countries might not be passing on the correct numbers, but are not being blatant about it). Under Total Recovered they BOTH are showing N/A. However, (where the UK is concerned) the stats for Total Cases, New Cases, New Deaths and Total Deaths ARE being updated daily. It appears that some bureaucrap just has decided the UK cannot handle GOOD news, so is not telling us how many people have SURVIVED this bl00dy COVID 19.
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by bobins »

Or, perhaps, some scientist or emergency planner who has a better understanding of public perceptions and reactions has decided that not publishing the figures might save a few more lives.
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by white exec »

Without reasonably accurate and extensive testing, we do not know how many have, have had, or are carrying the infection. This, then, makes it impossible to quote a meaningful national "recovered from" figure, except for small categories of people.

International comparisons, as said, are problematic, with the only crude figure which might mean something being 'deaths per 100,000 population'. But even this is a poor comparison, because of all the geographical and social factors that affect infection spread. David Spiegelhalter's article has been widely praised for describing the difficulty, and is worth a read:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -countries.

Many of us suspect that the manipulation of statistics by governments is not something any one country has a monopoly of, and the UK is no exception. This last week has seen this go into overdrive.
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Re: Coping With Covid

Post by bobins »

As the (mis)quote goes:
"A Single Death is a Tragedy; a Million Deaths is a Statistic"
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