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Coronavirus

So, Sweden's "success" with "no lockdown" (both completely arguable) is much more complex than a couple of graphs can possibly show.
 
Does anyone know the actual numbers caused by Covid 19 . ?? .

The Financial Times was keeping a well reasoned tally of excess deaths.
It is most likely the most reliable figure to go by, as it will cover all people who have died but not been identified as covid victims.
When I last looked in around mid June, they had already accounted for over 62,000 excess deaths. So that's all the deaths since virus started less the average number of deaths normally occurring over the same period of year (based on average of previous five years).

I would presume now the figure must be in the order of 70,000.

And just to compare to previous pandemics, excess deaths is the usual way history tallies their death tolls as for example, there was no blood tests being done during the plague.
They just counted people who were dying who weren't expected to.

So whether it's now 65000 or up to 70000 it is a huge tragic death toll already.
 
The 1918 'flu pandemic - often regarded as the benchmark for nasty stuff of this kind in the modern era - is estimated to have killed 228, 000 and 650,000 in the UK and US respectively.

Obviously, populations were smaller in both countries back then, but a few points to bear in mind:

1) That 'flu came in several waves and we're just entering the second wave with deaths already at 1/3 of those in 1918.

2) We have much better treatments than in 1918, so we can reduce mortality accordingly.

3) The worst case of seasonal 'flu in living memory caused 88,000 deaths in the US and 28,000 in the UK. We are already at 3 x that rate.

The evidence is in on this issue.
 
The 1918 'flu pandemic - often regarded as the benchmark for nasty stuff of this kind in the modern era - is estimated to have killed 228, 000 and 650,000 in the UK and US respectively.

Obviously, populations were smaller in both countries back then, but a few points to bear in mind:

1) That 'flu came in several waves and we're just entering the second wave with deaths already at 1/3 of those in 1918.

2) We have much better treatments than in 1918, so we can reduce mortality accordingly.

3) The worst case of seasonal 'flu in living memory caused 88,000 deaths in the US and 28,000 in the UK. We are already at 3 x that rate.

The evidence is in on this issue.

Also the 1918 flu came at a time when everyone would have been either injured or very undernourished or both, after the worst war humanity had seen up until then.
 
Also the 1918 flu came at a time when everyone would have been either injured or very undernourished or both, after the worst war humanity had seen up until then.
And a lot of its transmission came in troop movements, military hospitals etc. before moving on to the non military population.
 
October 15th
"Spains infections are on a downward trend,and the hope is the UK and France will follow shortly. It is my opinion the current cycle will get nowhere near the previous peaks. You,and others may think differently to this which is fair enough. The coming weeks will show this one way or another."

Well we know the answer now and it's only been 2 weeks since this prediction
 
October 15th
"Spains infections are on a downward trend,and the hope is the UK and France will follow shortly. It is my opinion the current cycle will get nowhere near the previous peaks. You,and others may think differently to this which is fair enough. The coming weeks will show this one way or another."

Well we know the answer now and it's only been 2 weeks since this prediction

Ireland (north and south) do seem to be turning down again in terms of cases.
Scotland and Wales seem to be peaking but more time needed to be sure on that.
England, not known yet.

One thing though, whilst cases seem to be stabilising (as in not rapidly increasing still), deaths do seem to be climbing a lot.
So is that a consequence of NHS being overwhelmed again with admissions as happened in spring?
 
Ireland (north and south) do seem to be turning down again in terms of cases.
Scotland and Wales seem to be peaking but more time needed to be sure on that.
England, not known yet.

One thing though, whilst cases seem to be stabilising (as in not rapidly increasing still), deaths do seem to be climbing a lot.
So is that a consequence of NHS being overwhelmed again with admissions as happened in spring?

There's always a lag. Current hospital admissions are at about half the level they were in the Spring, but are still increasing. In some areas of the country, they are actually higher than they were in the first wave.

Deaths lag behind admissions which lag behind infections.

Since the testing regime has changed over time, infections isn't, per se, a great measure of where things are. The more comparable stats are admissions and deaths.

You can also look at R-rates, but these are difficult to calculate. Having said that, R > 1 across the country, as far as we can see, so infections will necessarily rise.
 
Ireland (north and south) do seem to be turning down again in terms of cases.
Scotland and Wales seem to be peaking but more time needed to be sure on that.
England, not known yet.

One thing though, whilst cases seem to be stabilising (as in not rapidly increasing still), deaths do seem to be climbing a lot.
So is that a consequence of NHS being overwhelmed again with admissions as happened in spring?

I don't believe anywhere in the UK is overwhelmed yet, many are very, very busy and a couple have cancelled some surgeries.
Given the rate at which we brought online the Nightingale hospitals (and one assumes they have merely been mothballed rather than completely disassembled again) we won't be short of ICU beds nationally I don't think. At a local level that might be different. Of course each of those ICU beds need staffing full time with at least 3 trained staff and we definitely don't have that capacity. If the rate continues to rise as it is we will inevitably experience a degradation in services as we simply wear out the hospital and support staff (again). That period may well be shorter than last time since none of those staff have had much (if any) time to rest and recuperate from the last time they had herculean demands placed up them (and all that clapping didn't actually do much in that respect to help).

I predict that they will rise heroically to the challenge (as I predicted last time they would) but there is no doubt exhausted staff driven to the end of their tether, under immense workload, with a much higher than average risk of contracting the disease and the pressure of having peoples lives in their hands will make mistakes and have to live with them.

Still at least if this peak arrives to match the springs our government will have sorted out all those PPE shortages so our heroic NHS staff can be confident they have the best gear available to give them the best chance of survival eh?

Our government owes them that at the very, very least after the complete cl**terf**k of the Spring where there is no doubt in my mind that Boris, Dominic et als complete incompetence and willingness to divert government funds to their friends and crooks on the make actually killed some NHS workers.

Make no mistake this government has blood on it's hands, this must not be forgotten...
 
I don't believe anywhere in the UK is overwhelmed yet, many are very, very busy and a couple have cancelled some surgeries.
Given the rate at which we brought online the Nightingale hospitals (and one assumes they have merely been mothballed rather than completely disassembled again) we won't be short of ICU beds nationally I don't think. At a local level that might be different. Of course each of those ICU beds need staffing full time with at least 3 trained staff and we definitely don't have that capacity. If the rate continues to rise as it is we will inevitably experience a degradation in services as we simply wear out the hospital and support staff (again). That period may well be shorter than last time since none of those staff have had much (if any) time to rest and recuperate from the last time they had herculean demands placed up them (and all that clapping didn't actually do much in that respect to help).

I predict that they will rise heroically to the challenge (as I predicted last time they would) but there is no doubt exhausted staff driven to the end of their tether, under immense workload, with a much higher than average risk of contracting the disease and the pressure of having peoples lives in their hands will make mistakes and have to live with them.

Still at least if this peak arrives to match the springs our government will have sorted out all those PPE shortages so our heroic NHS staff can be confident they have the best gear available to give them the best chance of survival eh?

Our government owes them that at the very, very least after the complete cl**terf**k of the Spring where there is no doubt in my mind that Boris, Dominic et als complete incompetence and willingness to divert government funds to their friends and crooks on the make actually killed some NHS workers.

Make no mistake this government has blood on it's hands, this must not be forgotten...

Yes that's basically what I meant.
And overworked rather than overwhelmed is what i should have put.
But effect of that was my point. The more acute patients there are, It is totally inevitable that staff cannot give every patient as much time as they would need to.
And ambulances more busy too so people might not get admitted fast enough to be saved and so on.
And critical resources (equipment drugs etc)
may well struggle to keep up.
And you can't magic up the consultants out of thin air however many other staff you assign to this.
So deaths will rise and are doing so.
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54750775

Just to emphasise the lag effect between cases, hospitalisations and deaths..

If we bring the virus under control today deaths would still be expected to rise for another 4 weeks.

Current R rate is still above 1 (although locally that may differ) so although the rate of increase has been brought down we are still making no impact at all in actually reducing the spread of the virus, all we've actually done so far with Tier 1 and 2 restrictions is slow it's rate of growth.

An analogy would be if we were a car then we haven't even applied the brakes, we've just lifted our foot off the accelerator a bit...
 
Our younger son got back from a week's holiday in Crete a couple of days ago (I wouldn't have gone, personally.......), and he was surprised by the difference in controls.

They had to produce documentary proof of a negative covid test to the airline taken 48 hrs before travel, and they they had to go through (some sort of) checks on the aircraft and before entering the airport over there.

Coming back, no checks at all
 
Our younger son got back from a week's holiday in Crete a couple of days ago (I wouldn't have gone, personally.......), and he was surprised by the difference in controls.

They had to produce documentary proof of a negative covid test to the airline taken 48 hrs before travel, and they they had to go through (some sort of) checks on the aircraft and before entering the airport over there.

Coming back, no checks at all

What we need to do is convince the government covid is black. Then, it would never be allowed in. 😁
 
Our younger son got back from a week's holiday in Crete a couple of days ago (I wouldn't have gone, personally.......), and he was surprised by the difference in controls.

They had to produce documentary proof of a negative covid test to the airline taken 48 hrs before travel, and they they had to go through (some sort of) checks on the aircraft and before entering the airport over there.

Coming back, no checks at all

And that has been the key area of a huge massive failing by this government.
They simply threw away any gains from the spring lockdown by allowing unconstrained travel in and out ever since this started.
All the places that have essentially eradicated covid from their territory have done so by having a maximum control of all people coming in.

We had one planeload at the very start that got locked up somewhere on the Wirral.
And then (and including during the worst spell in spring) everyone else was allowed to fly in from absolutely anywhere with zero checking. And your example above shows the checking is still non existent.