Why so many deaths outside hospitals?

[Djgr]

In what respect ?
I accept that the daily figures presented are not an accurate record of infections/deaths from the previous day - they reflect what has been registered that day.

if there is dubiety about the figure for C-19, I maintain that a better figure is to use excess deaths over the period. This is a truer reflection of how it has been dealt with.

And for those who say ‘they would have died anyway’ - we all die eventually - so using that logic, any figure is meaningless as we all die anyway.
These are people who’s lives have been cut short either due to a virus or the lack of capability to multi task and deal with other illnesses. I do not blame the NHS, but rather those who hold the purse.

What is the level of under/over reporting (in absolute figures & percentage) ?

Current weekly excess deaths is approximately zero.

 

[LAX54]

There's obviously what's been posted already in terms of the ridiculous way things are attributed to covid, but here's the big clue:

Flu and coronavirus

A working paper finds a negative link across 32 European countries and explores what this means for policy.

insight.jbs.cam.ac.uk

The key quote - “This implies that there were over 30,000 people alive in the UK at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic who would have been expected to die in the previous two flu seasons. These people are likely to have been predominantly elderly and in poor health,” says the working paper, entitled “COVID-19 death rate is higher in European countries with a low flu intensity since 2018”.

In other words, there's so many in care homes who have died "from" Covid because, ordinarily, we'd have expected them to have died in the previous couple of years, but didn't

A work collegue pointed out to me a couple of days ago, that in the 2018 flu season, according to ONS figures 50,000 died in the UK alone, we are up to 45,000 currently, with figures dropping

 

[30907]

A work collegue pointed out to me a couple of days ago, that in the 2018 flu season, according to ONS figures 50,000 died in the UK alone, we are up to 45,000 currently, with figures dropping

The 2018 figure is "excess winter mortality" from all causes in England and Wales - in this century the typical winter figure is +30k, so flu contributed an extra 20k.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/excesswintermortalityinenglandandwales/2018to2019provisionaland2017to2018final#excess-winter-mortality-by-cause-of-death

45k (rising at 500pw) is the confirmed Covid figure - the excess deaths figure for the whole UK is around 65k (but now slightly negative).

 

[talldave]

But the death figures will probably average out next year and the year after because some people have died earlier than they might have done this year.

 

[Jamesrob637]

Another day of high death toll but very few in hospitals. What is happening in the wider community?!

 

[Djgr]

Another day of high death toll but very few in hospitals. What is happening in the wider community?!

When you say "wider community" this means "care homes"

 

[jtuk]

Another day of high death toll but very few in hospitals. What is happening in the wider community?!

PHE probably found a few dozen more people that had it in March but just had a heart attack now

 

[HSTEd]

In what respect ?

The PHE figures count the deaths of people that have been infected by the coronavirus.
If they have tested positive at any time, their death is marked as a coronavirus death, regardless of time elpased or circumstances.

You could get coronavirus in march, test positive, recover, then get hit by a bus or a meteor or get stabbed to death and still register as a coronavirus death.

 

[45107]

The PHE figures count the deaths of people that have been infected by the coronavirus.
If they have tested positive at any time, their death is marked as a coronavirus death, regardless of time elpased or circumstances.

You could get coronavirus in march, test positive, recover, then get hit by a bus or a meteor or get stabbed to death and still register as a coronavirus death.

But how wrong/incorrect are the figures in relation to the overall number of deaths (in excess of the norm).
If they are being removed from the C19 figures, then there is something else unexplained that was causing the excess.
And I know that now that the figures are now flat lining (as opposed to falling), the number excess fatalities has also returned to 5 year norms.

 

[Jamesrob637]

When you say "wider community" this means "care homes"

Just anything that isn't hospitals but yes predominantly care homes.

 

[talldave]

Has the convenient miscounting been corrected moving forwards or are we still blundering on collecting flawed data?

 

[BananaRepublic]

There might have been a clue in that during March, April and May, there was a complete absence of news reports, talking of bodies stacking up, or piles of coffins waiting to be dealt with.

I’m sure many of us remember the news stories from Italy back then, of loads of coffins being stored in various places, like hospital chapels and the scenes showing the nightly convoys of Italian Army trucks moving coffins out of cities like Bergamo, because the capacity to deal with them had been far exceeded.
Likewise NYC, where refrigerated trailers were being used outside the hospitals, to store the excess number of corpses.

Here in the U.K., they created a number of emergency morgues, such as a using hanger at Birmingham airport, marquees erected outside existing hospital morgues and at the Nightingale hospitals, such as the one at the ExCel centre in east London.
None of it used.

The average wait for a funeral pre-Covid was 2 to 3 weeks in most of the UK.
Our neighbour and another friend, both lost there elderly fathers in early April and May respectively. Neither Covid related.
There was no extraordinary waiting time between their deaths and their funerals.
Sadly, my wife also lost her Dad at the end of May. The funeral took place 2 weeks to the day after he passed away.

I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theory nut job, but I couldn’t help thinking at the time that the U.K. must have a massive amount of excess capacity to deal with deaths, if the headline Covid fatality figures hadn’t generated news reports like “bodies stacking up shock horror!”
Something didn’t seen right.

 

[bramling]

There might have been a clue in that during March, April and May, there was a complete absence of news reports, talking of bodies stacking up, or piles of coffins waiting to be dealt with.

I’m sure many of us remember the news stories from Italy back then, of loads of coffins being stored in various places, like hospital chapels and the scenes showing the nightly convoys of Italian Army trucks moving coffins out of cities like Bergamo, because the capacity to deal with them had been far exceeded.
Likewise NYC, where refrigerated trailers were being used outside the hospitals, to store the excess number of corpses.

Here in the U.K., they created a number of emergency morgues, such as a using hanger at Birmingham airport, marquees erected outside existing hospital morgues and at the Nightingale hospitals, such as the one at the ExCel centre in east London.
None of it used.

The average wait for a funeral pre-Covid was 2 to 3 weeks in most of the UK.
Our neighbour and another friend, both lost there elderly fathers in early April and May respectively. Neither Covid related.
There was no extraordinary waiting time between their deaths and their funerals.
Sadly, my wife also lost her Dad at the end of May. The funeral took place 2 weeks to the day after he passed away.

I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theory nut job, but I couldn’t help thinking at the time that the U.K. must have a massive amount of excess capacity to deal with deaths, if the headline Covid fatality figures hadn’t generated news reports like “bodies stacking up shock horror!”
Something didn’t seen right.

It does seem utterly crazy that economically ruinous measures have been and continue to be based on dubious figures. That said, when analysed on the news it was suggested by several “experts” that they didn’t think the miscounting was likely to have been that significant.

I seem to remember it was suggested that Britain did not see the Italy scenes as our outbreak was fairly well spread around the country, whereas Italy’s was very concentrated in one region, at least initially?

 

[al78]

There might have been a clue in that during March, April and May, there was a complete absence of news reports, talking of bodies stacking up, or piles of coffins waiting to be dealt with.

I’m sure many of us remember the news stories from Italy back then, of loads of coffins being stored in various places, like hospital chapels and the scenes showing the nightly convoys of Italian Army trucks moving coffins out of cities like Bergamo, because the capacity to deal with them had been far exceeded.
Likewise NYC, where refrigerated trailers were being used outside the hospitals, to store the excess number of corpses.

Here in the U.K., they created a number of emergency morgues, such as a using hanger at Birmingham airport, marquees erected outside existing hospital morgues and at the Nightingale hospitals, such as the one at the ExCel centre in east London.
None of it used.

The average wait for a funeral pre-Covid was 2 to 3 weeks in most of the UK.
Our neighbour and another friend, both lost there elderly fathers in early April and May respectively. Neither Covid related.
There was no extraordinary waiting time between their deaths and their funerals.
Sadly, my wife also lost her Dad at the end of May. The funeral took place 2 weeks to the day after he passed away.

I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theory nut job, but I couldn’t help thinking at the time that the U.K. must have a massive amount of excess capacity to deal with deaths, if the headline Covid fatality figures hadn’t generated news reports like “bodies stacking up shock horror!”
Something didn’t seen right.

Maybe lockdown helped prevent the scenario of bodies stacking up.

A bit like the panic over the millenium bug, where disaster didn't happen because software engineers took action to correct it in the months leading up to the critical date.

This is the point of having warnings of anticipated disaster in advance, to give people and services/infrastructure a chance to prepare and pre-empt. Waiting for disaster to happen (or taking a gamble it wont because you can't be bothered to do anything/spend money), then trying to sort things out when the brown smelly stuff hits the fan is a dreadful strategy. Think of advance warning of severe weather, is it better to act on those warnings, or take a gamble it is overexaggerated and try to sort things out when the trees and power lines are coming down, and the rivers are bursting their banks?

 

[yorksrob]

There might have been a clue in that during March, April and May, there was a complete absence of news reports, talking of bodies stacking up, or piles of coffins waiting to be dealt with.

I’m sure many of us remember the news stories from Italy back then, of loads of coffins being stored in various places, like hospital chapels and the scenes showing the nightly convoys of Italian Army trucks moving coffins out of cities like Bergamo, because the capacity to deal with them had been far exceeded.
Likewise NYC, where refrigerated trailers were being used outside the hospitals, to store the excess number of corpses.

Here in the U.K., they created a number of emergency morgues, such as a using hanger at Birmingham airport, marquees erected outside existing hospital morgues and at the Nightingale hospitals, such as the one at the ExCel centre in east London.
None of it used.

The average wait for a funeral pre-Covid was 2 to 3 weeks in most of the UK.
Our neighbour and another friend, both lost there elderly fathers in early April and May respectively. Neither Covid related.
There was no extraordinary waiting time between their deaths and their funerals.
Sadly, my wife also lost her Dad at the end of May. The funeral took place 2 weeks to the day after he passed away.

I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theory nut job, but I couldn’t help thinking at the time that the U.K. must have a massive amount of excess capacity to deal with deaths, if the headline Covid fatality figures hadn’t generated news reports like “bodies stacking up shock horror!”
Something didn’t seen right.

A few winters ago, there were news reports of hospitals having to hire refridgerated lorries to act as morgues due to excess winter mortality. I wonder if this led to the responsible authorities putting in extra capacity as a result, which proved useful during the heigjt of the epidemic.

 

[30907]

Just anything that isn't hospitals but yes predominantly care homes.

According to ONS (see figure 8 below) there has been a significantly above average number of deaths at home for the last four weeks (but below average in hospitals or care homes). This is unusual - but I think it is normally a small figure.
Around half covid-certified deaths are still in hospital and most of the rest in care homes.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...2020#deaths-registered-by-place-of-occurrence

Has the convenient miscounting been corrected moving forwards or are we still blundering on collecting flawed data?

The figures which PHE are still using now clearly overestimate the numbers which is a good reason for no longer publicising them (for the first 3 months they were widely criticised for being underestimated - I wouldn't call that convenient). AFAIK PHE haven't come up with a new measure (a 4-week cut-off has been suggested but that would be an undercount).
That's why the ONS figures are preferable- see my earlier post #11.

 

[Djgr]

According to ONS (see figure 8 below) there has been a significantly above average number of deaths at home for the last four weeks (but below average in hospitals or care homes). This is unusual - but I think it is normally a small figure.
Around half covid-certified deaths are still in hospital and most of the rest in care homes.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...2020#deaths-registered-by-place-of-occurrence


The figures which PHE are still using now clearly overestimate the numbers which is a good reason for no longer publicising them (for the first 3 months they were widely criticised for being underestimated - I wouldn't call that convenient). AFAIK PHE haven't come up with a new measure (a 4-week cut-off has been suggested but that would be an undercount).
That's why the ONS figures are preferable- see my earlier post #11.

The additional deaths at home may be as a result of poorer medical care for non COVID issues that resulted from lockdown.

 

[Freightmaster]

The additional deaths at home may be as a result of poorer medical care for non COVID issues that resulted from lockdown.

That, plus the fact that many old people have been refusing to visit hospital for serious conditions,
as they are scared to death (literally!) of catching the virus.




MARK

 

[Jamesrob637]

Again, the hospital total today is almost the final figure.

 

[MikeWM]

There are about 100 deaths reported in hospitals over the last week.

There are about 460 deaths reported in total over the last week.

There is clearly something still very wrong here. Either we're not dealing with cases correctly and leaving most to die without attempting proper treatment, or the numbers are nonsense.

 

[Jamesrob637]

10 in hospitals yesterday and today. That's about as low as things get right now.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Just 7 deaths being reported today in the UK. We are so close to a zero death weekend day...

 

[Jamesrob637]

Just 7 deaths being reported today in the UK. We are so close to a zero death weekend day...

I saw ten but it's nonetheless very low on Sundays and Mondays since a fair while now. Maybe seven is hospitals and ten is in all settings given that the hospital figure makes up a large percentage of the final figure on Sundays/Mondays?

 

[MikeWM]

I saw ten but it's nonetheless very low on Sundays and Mondays since a fair while now. Maybe seven is hospitals and ten is in all settings given that the hospital figure makes up a large percentage of the final figure on Sundays/Mondays?

It is 10, but three of them were from, err, April. Utter nonsense.

 

[Jamesrob637]

Well worldometers reports 7 which is the best (lowest) figure since March 12th.

 

[Domh245]

If we really have under 100 a week dying in hospitals, and 300 or 400 'elsewhere', there is something badly wrong (why are people not being treated in the hospital?)

The latest week of data from the ONS shows it was about a 50:50 split between hospitals and non hospitals in England & Wales.

Location	Total Deaths	COVID Deaths
Home	2978 (33.75%)	29 (9.83%)
Hospital	3301 (37.41%)	167 (56.51%)
Hospice	505 (5.72%)	6 (2.03%)
Care Home	1785 (20.23%)	91 (30.85%)
Other communal establishment	31 (0.35%)	1 (0.34%)
Elsewhere	223 (2.53%)	1 (0.34%)

% is per 'category' of deaths so that comparisons can be drawn between the COVID and regular death locations - the main takeaway is that Hosptials are over-represented in COVID deaths, but that would be expected!

 

[MikeWM]

The latest week of data from the ONS shows it was about a 50:50 split between hospitals and non hospitals in England & Wales.

Yes, that looks rather more reasonable than the ludicrous discrepancy we're getting from the PHE figures (which would appear to have less than 1 in 4 dying in hospital...)

 

[Jamesrob637]

12 in hospitals today, 119 in all settings. So the wider community is suffering from massive weekend lag.

 

[Bletchleyite]

12 in hospitals today, 119 in all settings. So the wider community is suffering from massive weekend lag.

While that does mean your last few days are unreliable, it would be better if it was all based on date of sample/date of death. You can get that on the Government site but only for individual countries, not the UK as a whole.

 

[DannyMich2018]

12 in hospitals today, 119 in all settings. So the wider community is suffering from massive weekend lag.

Yes it puzzles me that the UK hospital deaths are about 100 or so per week now but total weekly deaths 450-500ish so are so many people dying at home? There are now less than 1300 people in hospital with Covid in the UK now with less than 100 on mechanical ventilators so why so many still dying??