New coronavirus in/from China

[Catweazle]

I think someone already wrote that a better measure will be the number from March to March, though the numbers until end-of-year are bad enough.

What the covid-deniers repeatedly fail to grasp is that with no lockdown the people currently missing treatments for other diseases would still be missing treatments as the hospitals, their car parks and surrounding roads would be choked with ill and dying people. There is no point trying to explain this to people who have dug themselves so deep into the hole.

[Little John]

I think someone already wrote that a better measure will be the number from March to March, though the numbers until end-of-year are bad enough.

What the covid-deniers repeatedly fail to grasp is that with no lockdown the people currently missing treatments for other diseases would still be missing treatments as the hospitals, their car parks and surrounding roads would be choked with ill and dying people. There is no point trying to explain this to people who have dug themselves so deep into the hole.

Quite apart from the typical hysterical bullshit about roads "being choked up with ill and dying people", do you seriously not grasp how the use of terms like "covid-deniers" makes people like you look really, really stupid?

[Catweazle]

I think someone already wrote that a better measure will be the number from March to March, though the numbers until end-of-year are bad enough.

What the covid-deniers repeatedly fail to grasp is that with no lockdown the people currently missing treatments for other diseases would still be missing treatments as the hospitals, their car parks and surrounding roads would be choked with ill and dying people. There is no point trying to explain this to people who have dug themselves so deep into the hole.

Quite apart from the typical hysterical bullshit about roads "being choked up with ill and dying people", do you seriously not grasp how the use of terms like "covid-deniers" makes people like you look really, really stupid?

You have chosen to ignore the fact that covid patients are already being treated in ambulances in car parks, or left in care homes, and that's with the lockdown. You must understand the scale of the problem you would have caused, but you've already stated that you'd like to see people die, and you seem to relish "blood on the streets", so I shouldn't be surprised.

I'd have more respect for you if you'd simply admit that you would throw the old and infirm under your ideological bus. Obviously I'd still find you abhorrent, but at least honest.

[Little John]

.....I'd have more respect for you if you'd simply admit that you would throw the old and infirm under your ideological bus. Obviously I'd still find you abhorrent, but at least honest.

More emotionally incontinent, fact free drivel I see.

Meanwhile, some more facts:

ONS data is now updated for the whole of 2020 for England.

It shows % deaths of population 1963 to 2020 by highest.

This shows that we have had 37 other years with worse death figures when you account for population size.

Even since 1990, 2020 is still only the 14th highest year as a percentage of the population. So again just an average year.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/?fbclid=IwAR0100 ... js6NghSo68

[clv101]

So again just an average year.

I simply don't understand how you can write that with a straight face, maybe you're just trolling for kicks? Just an average year.

Firstly, the numbers in your chart show 2020 as the highest proportion of the population died in 20 years, that's almost a generation.
Worst in a generation is not "average"

Secondly, this 'anomaly' only started in in April, it only took the pandemic 9 months to achieve this figure. Taking a 12 month rolling average could push the death total up by maybe 50k and take us to the worst percentage in 30 years.

Thirdly, why compare this year with years 20 or 30 years ago? That's not comparing apples with apples. It's no okay or 'average' for this year to be the same as 1999 or 1990! Life expectancy in 1990 was 75 compared with 81 today

Fourthly, a more robust way of establishing the significance of the 2020 pandemic in the UK is to calculate the population adjusted excess deaths over the 5 year average. This avoids the problem of comparing with different eras, with significantly different demographics and public health. Doing that produces this chart:



It shows the 2020 deaths were the largest deviation from the 5 year baseline since WWII. Note also this is calendar year, not rolling 12 months which will be significantly higher as the majority of 2nd wave deaths are still to come in the next ~6-8 weeks.

By claiming that 2020 was Just an average year you have either been misled, lied to. Or you are attempting to mislead, lie to us. There isn't a third option here.

[Catweazle]

Where is this table from ? The link doesn't go to it, and the figures don't match anything I can find.

Meanwhile, some more facts:

ONS data is now updated for the whole of 2020 for England.

It shows % deaths of population 1963 to 2020 by highest.

This shows that we have had 37 other years with worse death figures when you account for population size.

Even since 1990, 2020 is still only the 14th highest year as a percentage of the population. So again just an average year.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/?fbclid=IwAR0100 ... js6NghSo68

[Little John]

The ONS has pulled the relevant the data set/s for the 20th century and the first 10 years of the 21st century sometime in the last 24 hours. Though, the data since 2010 is still there.

So, I have had to go to the National Archives. I am reconstructing the data summary for a second time and will re-post it post here with links to the relevant National Archive page/s data sets on which that summary will be based in the next 24 hours.

[Little John]

No shit. Who'd have thought it eh? Get a virus and your immune system remembers it for next time. Goodness me, it's almost as if immune systems were evolved to do this.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covi ... 9tlCCI3dvY

Covid victims gain immunity from the virus

Beating disease ‘as good as’ getting vaccine, say scientists

[Catweazle]

No shit. Who'd have thought it eh? Get a virus and your immune system remembers it for next time. Goodness me, it's almost as if immune systems were evolved to do this.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covi ... 9tlCCI3dvY

Covid victims gain immunity from the virus

Beating disease ‘as good as’ getting vaccine, say scientists

If only some clever scientist could figure a way to fool the immune system into thinking that the virus was present, and build an immune response to it. Then we could have herd immunity without people having to die.

[Little John]

No shit. Who'd have thought it eh? Get a virus and your immune system remembers it for next time. Goodness me, it's almost as if immune systems were evolved to do this.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covi ... 9tlCCI3dvY

Covid victims gain immunity from the virus

Beating disease ‘as good as’ getting vaccine, say scientists

If only some clever scientist could figure a way to fool the immune system into thinking that the virus was present, and build an immune response to it. Then we could have herd immunity without people having to die.

Everyone dies. Very old people and very frail people are definitely going to die sooner than everyone else. These are simply facts of life. It also doesn't mean such people are being "thrown under the bus" to state these facts.

A few more very old people and a few more very frail people this year are dying a few months to a year or so sooner than they might have done. This is also a fact.

Next year, we might have expected to see a sharp drop in the yearly number of very old people and very frail people dying. This is because you cant die twice.

I say "might have expected" since, in reality, we are likely to have another larger than average set of deaths next year. But, at that point, it will not be deaths of people who were, all other things being equal, likely to die. It will be of people who would ordinarily, on the back of medical advances made over the last century for conditions, ranging from heart disease to cancer and many more besides, who will not have received their treatments on time or at all. Ordinarily, the number of people on the NHS waiting list for more than a year for critical treatments was around 9,000. During 2020, due to the Covid restrictions and dropping of treatment plans by the NHS thsi number has now topped 200,0000

The infantile "morality" of you and those like you is going to kill many people before their time for years to come. and this does not even bring into the equation the number of people whose lives will be shortened in the coming decades on the back of the poverty that the economic collapse that has been created by these lock-downs.

People like you are truly stomach turning. Not because you are being deliberately evil. But, because you think you are being "good". Which is, in truth, the worst kind of evil.

[Catweazle]

People like you are truly stomach turning. Not because you are being deliberately evil. But, because you think you are being "good". Which is, in truth, the worst kind of evil.

You mean like people who think they know best, and are acting for the greater good, by spreading lies and disinformation to further their agendas ?

I've met people like that.

ps/ I'm looking forward to that data.

[UndercoverElephant]

Quite apart from the typical hysterical bullshit about roads "being choked up with ill and dying people", do you seriously not grasp how the use of terms like "covid-deniers" makes people like you look really, really stupid?

No. It's you who looks stupid. You look like raving lunatic, quite frankly. We have known since April that the biggest problem with covid is its tendency to clog up hospitals with people who can be kept alive with intensive care, but take weeks or months to recover to the point they can be discharged.

You think Catweazle is evil??

[clv101]

People like you are truly stomach turning.

Look in the mirror. Yesterday you were promoting the notion that 2020 was "just an average year."

[kenneal - lagger]

LJ, don't you check your sources of information? That link, as has been already pointed out, doesn't link to the table you posted; the latest ONS estimate of population is the mid 2019 one and that says 66,796,807 not the figure you quoted; the ONS will not post the 2020 population figure until June 2021; and they aren't posting the deaths figure for 2020 until the end of January; if the 2019 figure is wrong and the 2020 figure doesn't exist how do we know that the other figures are not a fairytale? Your source has been feeding you porkies, mate.

If that source was incorrect shouldn't you go back and check all your other sources? If one is feeding you porkies perhaps all the others are.

You continually tell us that people die anyway but that a lot of people are dying who hadn't got covid because they couldn't get into hospital. You then tell us that the lockdown is bad and is causing deaths. Can't you see that without the lockdown the disease would spread further, quicker and would increase the numbers with covid at any one time which would result, with the same hospitalisation rate, in more people being admitted to hospital at that one time?

The hospitals are telling us that they are being flooded with covid patients with over 50% of beds filled with covid patients. Operating theatres are being converted into intensive care wards denying people who need operations the space to have their operations but still you say the lockdown is bad. Hospitals are now telling us that increasing numbers of young people are getting very sick and dying and long covid is becoming an increasing accepted diagnosis.

Yes, the lockdown is bad for people and the economy but you obviously can't or won't see that things would be worse without it. At the beginning of the pandemic and this thread we had Chris pointing to the exponential rise in cases and then Vortex was publishing figures for the UK and the potential rise. Until the lockdown was instituted this exponential rise was achieved. If the exponential rise in cases was achieved because we didn't lockdown we would have had dead bodies in the streets because we couldn't keep up with the death rate; we wouldn't have had any hospitals running because most of the staff would have gone down with the disease or exhaustion; and the economy would have collapsed anyway because there would have been so many people sick and the rest too frightened to go out that we would have had a voluntary lockdown. All simply because of the very high number of cases at any one time.

I agree that it wouldn't have lasted very long and we would have been over it physically by now but mentally? You, LJ, would have been jumping up and down, even more than you are now, accusing the government of a dereliction of responsibility and calling for insurrection and blood on the streets because of the effect on the working classes. You're doing that now but perhaps you would just like to see blood on the streets anyway? Maybe that's just the way you are!!

[PS_RalphW]

Just to back up Kenneal.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 21249461v1

When a Intensive Care Unit is full, the risk of individual patients dying increases sharply.

A bit of a no-brainer, really. The more patients a unit has to help, the less help they can give each patient.

Just emphasising the value of not letting the rate of infection get so high that the system is seriously stressed, because more people will die as a result.