UK coronavirus spread already worse than winter worst-case scenario

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/30/uk-coronavirus-spread-already-worse-than-winter-worst-case-scenario.html

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Man, that sounds almost as bad as transgender people competing in sports, or bureaucrats in Brussels levying onerous regulations on England’s banana growers.

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Which we can blame on Spain, thanks to Swiss research.

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“ * In comparison with the deaths due to influenza and pneumonia occurring in the year to 31 August 2020, deaths due to COVID-19 have been higher than every year monthly data are available (1959 to 2020).”

Source : Office for National Statistics - https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsduetocoronaviruscovid19comparedwithdeathsfrominfluenzaandpneumoniaenglandandwales/deathsoccurringbetween1januaryand31august2020#main-points

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Must suck that you are our new pinata.

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Well welcome

Do you mean this Office of National Statistics

Maybe you didn’t catch this graph

Two other points

  1. The case fatality rate is about 4.5% according to the JHU site. Infection fatality rate is a different measure. What is the source of that data and what are you putting in the denominator?

  2. Well done restricting your concern for those 45 and younger or 55 and younger.

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I don’t think all the blame falls mainly on the Spain.

The article you cite clearly cites the UK travel policy And UK vacationers as another cause.

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“It only kills the olds! PARTY ON, UNDER-45s!”

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So the blame on Spain comes mainly from the planes?

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No it is all over Europe thanks to holidaymakers grabbing a few days in Spain when lockdowns permitted and, presumably, forgetting all they had learned from the previous months.

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As many as 100,000 people a day in the UK are catching the Covid-19 virus, more than four times as many as the government planned for—and more than in the U.S., which has a population five times larger.

Are we again comparing estimated infections in the UK to confirmed cases un the US? Things are bad enough these days without making useless and misleading comparisons like that.

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I don’t disagree with what you are saying but I didn’t think Spain owned all of that problem. There is plenty of blame for Europe’s second wave to go around.

Maybe I’m a touch sensitive as the 1918 Spanish Flu likely originated in Kansas

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Um… it’s just transgender; just like I’m Black, not ‘blacked.’

Just fyi.

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Ah, but which would the Daily Mail use, I wonder.

(Thanks!)

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Unfuck them.

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tenor-27

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They’d use untermenschen if they could get away with it.

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Come on now, let’s not taint the rest of the UK with England’s shambolic handling of this. We’re all dealing with this in our different ways with various levels of bullshittery but the articles are specifically talking about England and their frankly Byzantine tier system which nobody seems to understand.

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Too many syllables and not enough English for their troglodyte readership.

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Hello Matman. To your points:

  1. You present a graph noting “the number of deaths with a mention of COVID-19 on the death certificate”. I must assume that you are not aware of the distinction between dying with COVID-19 (i.e. “mentioning COVID-19 on the certificate) and dying of COVID-19. In the first wave and, to a lesser extent now, Intensive Care Unit support was not possible in >90% of cases because of the extent of victim’s existing morbidity. They died with COVID-19 but, sadly, would have died anyway of their pre-existing cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurological, urinary, or immunological morbidities. It’s relevant to note that the death rate in all countries is inversely correlated to the severity of last year’s flu season. In countries that escaped high flu death rates last winter - like the UK and Sweden - there was a large population of people who were susceptible to pulmonary infection and who, having survived the winter, sadly died with COVID.

  2. You correctly note the difference between Case Fatality Rate and Infection Fatality Rate, but appear not to be aware of the significance. The former is the ratio of deaths to the number of “cases” I.e. individuals in which fragments of viral DNA are present. The latter is the ratio of deaths to the number of infected. Case Fatality Rate systematically overstates prevalence in two ways: (i) Not all DNA fragments are active, so Case Fatality Rate systematically overestimates virulence (see “dying with COVId, above). (ii) Testing largely targets the symptomatic. Up to 66% of the infected are asymptomatic and are therefore not tested. The denominator in the fatality ratio is therefore very significantly higher. So Infection Fatality Rate (the measure that determines the probability of you dying of COVID-19) is very significantly lower than the Case Fatality Rate (the measure that determines the probability of you dying of COVID-19 having displayed symptoms of it).

  3. I am not restricting my concerns to those of 55 and younger. I’m noting that, to die of COVID-19, you have to have lived longer than most 55 year olds will. I did not note, but do now, that within the excess mortality rate now being registered are younger people who are dying of undiagnosed cancers and other diseases for which treatment has been denied.

  4. You may find the following graph helpful. It is the Uniter Kingdom Office Of National Statistics weekly death rates as of this week plotted in relation to the range of weekly death rates for the last ten years. It shows clearly that deaths are within or only very marginally exceed 10 year averages, and are largely following the usual seasonal pattern. Again, it is relevant to note that this data shows all deaths and therefore also shows those excess deaths which are as a result of undiagnosed and untreated cancers, heart disease, and other treatable illnesses which have increased as a consequence of COVID policies.

(I obtain my data largely from the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, England.)

All the best.

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