Quizzes & Puzzles0 min ago
Why Uk Has The Highest Covid-19 Deaths?
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I haven't been following the news for a long time on the deaths number. According to data on the net, India and US is doing very well. India has a death rate of 2.5%, US 4% and UK 15%.
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The death rate basically reflects how well the respective health service has succeeded in keeping ill people alive and also whether any people have been left to die without medical intervention. Two other things come to mind: The UK is not quite the "champion", very nearly but not quite as France has a worse outcome on the parameter you are using (% deaths out of total cases). The other is that both India and the USA are probably "behind" in the development of the pandemic within those countries and a month or two down the road it seems likely that these two will "catch up" with Europe, especially as the USA is currently a strong contender for global "champion" in mismanagement of Covid 19.
The 'percentage death rate' is meaningless unless you know what it's actually a percentage of.
According to the latest statistics
https:/
44,819 people in the UK have died of Covid-19. If you calculate that as percentage of the 289,603 lab-confirmed cases, you end up with a death rate figure of 15.48%. However one study has suggested that 19 million people in the country had already been infected with the disease by mid-May and even those studies that suggested that a much lower number might have been infected by then still put the figure at around 6.5 million.
https:/
If we take that lower figure but then round it up to, say, 8 million to take some account of the additional number of people who've been infected over the intervening two months between the date of the study and now, that provides a figure for the death rate in the UK of 0.56%.
Throughout most of the time that Covid-19 has been present in this country, the policy has been that anyone who has the relevant symptoms should NOT be tested for the disease but simply self-isolate instead (unless their symptoms become very severe). So the labs have generally only being testing people who've got serious and well-developed Covid-19. Inevitably, quite a high percentage of them will go on to die. In other countries they've been testing people who've only ever had the slightest of symptoms (together with asymptomatic people who might have been in contact with others who'vegot the disease), meaning that they're working from completely different base figures when calculating their percentage death rates.
According to the latest statistics
https:/
44,819 people in the UK have died of Covid-19. If you calculate that as percentage of the 289,603 lab-confirmed cases, you end up with a death rate figure of 15.48%. However one study has suggested that 19 million people in the country had already been infected with the disease by mid-May and even those studies that suggested that a much lower number might have been infected by then still put the figure at around 6.5 million.
https:/
If we take that lower figure but then round it up to, say, 8 million to take some account of the additional number of people who've been infected over the intervening two months between the date of the study and now, that provides a figure for the death rate in the UK of 0.56%.
Throughout most of the time that Covid-19 has been present in this country, the policy has been that anyone who has the relevant symptoms should NOT be tested for the disease but simply self-isolate instead (unless their symptoms become very severe). So the labs have generally only being testing people who've got serious and well-developed Covid-19. Inevitably, quite a high percentage of them will go on to die. In other countries they've been testing people who've only ever had the slightest of symptoms (together with asymptomatic people who might have been in contact with others who'vegot the disease), meaning that they're working from completely different base figures when calculating their percentage death rates.
Buenchico/Chris is correct: In the UK a more general incompetence may explain why the UK situation is not as bad as the official figures insist it is (the authorities also insist that any comparison is invalid but explanations keep pointing toward additional embarrassment on top of "the system" being as incompetent as the figures suggest.....), pretty much from the beginning the handling of the crisis has suffered multiple facets of chaos. Not testing, not keeping reliable records, the list goes on and there are plenty of options for clouding the issue. There is nothing to suggest any argument will succeed in making the UK look as if it has done well or even simply so-so and on other parameters than the one this post uses the picture will still look uncomfortable at best. Meanwhile the official figures are what is presented and they are all anyone (worldwide) has to go on when forming a view on the UK's performance.
The anti British tone of all Karl's posts means they are a bit of a turn off to those looking for an objective view which is a shame because occasionally there are some good points.
I agree with Buenchico that it's a meaningless figure and i don't understand why Karl and others have referred to it previously.
A far better stat is deaths per million population but even that is difficult because of how countries count them (of/with Covid, etc)- Spain for example changed the basis for new deaths, and some countries' figures are just not reliable. So excess deaths per million is probably better. But whichever deaths rate we use UK definitely has one of the worst in the world and questions must be asked. It may be though
I agree with Buenchico that it's a meaningless figure and i don't understand why Karl and others have referred to it previously.
A far better stat is deaths per million population but even that is difficult because of how countries count them (of/with Covid, etc)- Spain for example changed the basis for new deaths, and some countries' figures are just not reliable. So excess deaths per million is probably better. But whichever deaths rate we use UK definitely has one of the worst in the world and questions must be asked. It may be though
On the excess death consideration: What do we do when a country actually has a negative "excess death rate" (i.e. fewer died during the Covid period) when comparing this year's same (Covid) period to, say, the average over the last three years, one that exceeds the total deaths from Covid ? Do we then say that Covid was a blessing because some people were either prevented from dying or brought to life because of Covid 19 - of course not, "excess death" is just another woolly metric to try and overcome/soften the impact of the clear (anti-British) bungling of the whole crisis.
I make no apology for being truly appalled and angry over the unnecessary death of somewhere around 43,000 people in the UK - unnecessary by definition because elsewhere (by implication) they would have recovered. The anti-British label suggests one should smile instead and ask for more please rather than moan/complain. This is as good as it gets and appropriate for the UK, is it ?
I make no apology for being truly appalled and angry over the unnecessary death of somewhere around 43,000 people in the UK - unnecessary by definition because elsewhere (by implication) they would have recovered. The anti-British label suggests one should smile instead and ask for more please rather than moan/complain. This is as good as it gets and appropriate for the UK, is it ?
San Marino, Belgium and Andorra are worse than us per million pop.
https:/
https:/
-- answer removed --
hi Maheem new subscriber
no there arent good reasons
look at the DNA - there are good reason to think it came from a bat or a pangolin
if you want to see a leak of a pathogen from a lab watch - "Cordon" - the Dutch version is best
The 'percentage death rate' is meaningless unless you know what it's actually a percentage of.
yeah but no but it is used a stat world over and is easily understood - start off with a body count ( that is the easy bit)
it is not a rate there is no time element - case fatality ratio - and for reasons described it is always an overestimate - and that is its meaning - it gives you an upper bound
America has a case fatality ratio of around 10%
a useful paper on 3000 cases is
https:/
and the short answer is: the authors have no idea
we are still stuck on - latino, black and asian patients get more hospital admissions ( so more in the 20% death rate band) more admitted to ITU ( death rate goes up ) and ventilations ( up to 80% dead)
that high blood pressure, and diabetes is bad and are all present in gtr proportion in the high risk groups
and that is IT - as we were in Feb 2020 and no further forward
no there arent good reasons
look at the DNA - there are good reason to think it came from a bat or a pangolin
if you want to see a leak of a pathogen from a lab watch - "Cordon" - the Dutch version is best
The 'percentage death rate' is meaningless unless you know what it's actually a percentage of.
yeah but no but it is used a stat world over and is easily understood - start off with a body count ( that is the easy bit)
it is not a rate there is no time element - case fatality ratio - and for reasons described it is always an overestimate - and that is its meaning - it gives you an upper bound
America has a case fatality ratio of around 10%
a useful paper on 3000 cases is
https:/
and the short answer is: the authors have no idea
we are still stuck on - latino, black and asian patients get more hospital admissions ( so more in the 20% death rate band) more admitted to ITU ( death rate goes up ) and ventilations ( up to 80% dead)
that high blood pressure, and diabetes is bad and are all present in gtr proportion in the high risk groups
and that is IT - as we were in Feb 2020 and no further forward
I prefer a bit of context when the death rate is given - there's at least one poster on this site (although not currently on this thread) who only ever gives the number, and when I've pointed out the context to him, accuses me of not caring.
Context...
1) 0.06% of the population who have caught Covid have died.
2) 0.0007% of the population under 45 who have caught Covid have died.
3) People over 75 represent over 90% of the deaths.
4) Somebody over 80 is 70 times more likely to die of Covid than somebody under 40.
From this the sensible conclusions to draw are that we must protect the old and/or vulnerable, but for the vast vast majority of everybody else, and if they are in reasonable health, they are overwhelmingly unlikely to die, and that supposes they catch it in the first place, and with the odds of doing so at 1 in 4000, that alone is unlikely.
Context...
1) 0.06% of the population who have caught Covid have died.
2) 0.0007% of the population under 45 who have caught Covid have died.
3) People over 75 represent over 90% of the deaths.
4) Somebody over 80 is 70 times more likely to die of Covid than somebody under 40.
From this the sensible conclusions to draw are that we must protect the old and/or vulnerable, but for the vast vast majority of everybody else, and if they are in reasonable health, they are overwhelmingly unlikely to die, and that supposes they catch it in the first place, and with the odds of doing so at 1 in 4000, that alone is unlikely.
// ... "excess death" is just another woolly metric to try and overcome/soften the impact of the clear (anti-British) bungling of the whole crisis. //
This is absolute nonsense. As a well-known Anti-British traitor**, I use excess deaths precisely to underline the impact of the bungling etc etc.
But, more seriously, the reason that excess deaths is an important measure is because if a disease merely kills people who, in effect, were already going to die that week, then, in practical terms, the disease would have had no impact whatsoever. This is not what the data shows. The excess mortality curve shows a clear and significant rise in mortality in the UK during the peak of the Covid-19 epidemic, and serves to place the 45,000 deaths in a far greater context than a narrower focus on "deaths among confirmed cases" could achieve. This is why Professor David Spiegelhalter, arguably the UK's foremost statistician, tends to emphasise excess mortality as a measure of the impact of the pandemic over other measures, and he certainly isn't politically biased in favour of the Government (and rather famously rebuked the Government for trying to use his work to justify their attempt to avoid international comparison).
The more wider point is, in any case, that every statistic is relevant in some way or another, and it should be clear and obvious that focusing on just one part of the picture is going to be either misleading or incomplete. There is no political agenda behind looking at additional measures per se; in fact, the reverse is true far more often than not.
**sarcasm.
This is absolute nonsense. As a well-known Anti-British traitor**, I use excess deaths precisely to underline the impact of the bungling etc etc.
But, more seriously, the reason that excess deaths is an important measure is because if a disease merely kills people who, in effect, were already going to die that week, then, in practical terms, the disease would have had no impact whatsoever. This is not what the data shows. The excess mortality curve shows a clear and significant rise in mortality in the UK during the peak of the Covid-19 epidemic, and serves to place the 45,000 deaths in a far greater context than a narrower focus on "deaths among confirmed cases" could achieve. This is why Professor David Spiegelhalter, arguably the UK's foremost statistician, tends to emphasise excess mortality as a measure of the impact of the pandemic over other measures, and he certainly isn't politically biased in favour of the Government (and rather famously rebuked the Government for trying to use his work to justify their attempt to avoid international comparison).
The more wider point is, in any case, that every statistic is relevant in some way or another, and it should be clear and obvious that focusing on just one part of the picture is going to be either misleading or incomplete. There is no political agenda behind looking at additional measures per se; in fact, the reverse is true far more often than not.
**sarcasm.
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