The UK response - Part II - read OP

JP Liz V1

https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1451511913205088258

..

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118059671#Comment_118059671

So they shouldn’t have done any testing then, is that what you’re saying?

Martina1991

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118060343#Comment_118060343

They should have spent the time and resources expanding existing testing capacity in accredited labs that had the logistics for specimen handling, storage and transport. That had computer systems and software for recording, reporting and data analysis in a much more streamlined way.

Instead of samples being delayed, mishandled and data disappearing down black holes. They also outsourced tens of thousands of samples to the US at one stage and a load of them had to be discarded as well.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118060450#Comment_118060450

They did. They increased the capacity of the existing land three fold.

Denny61

The current situation in uk.is the ideal breeding ground for new varient...all the vaccines in the world ain't going to stop this one . ..

agoodpunt

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-cases-could-fall-significantly-in-november-even-without-plan-b-modelling-suggests-12444117

something the irish media wont print, "endemic equilbrium" love it hope it happens too

Patser

293 deaths in the UK..... 293. And you have to go digging for the info on BBC. As a nation, the UK have collectively decided to ignore Covid, all the bad news and pretend it's not happening

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51768274

HalfAndHalf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118109662#Comment_118109662

No deaths being reported in the daily announcement here either and hasn’t been for months! Have to go digging for that info too and last week as a comparative to the U.K. population we had over 550 deaths in one week!

As a per capita equivalence to the U.K., our cases today work out at 52,000!!

We’re not doing anywhere near as well as some would have us believe, and we’re behind the U.K. timeline heading into winter!

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118109719#Comment_118109719

If by "here" you are referring to the RoI then the stats are given every day in the six one news and presumably other bulletins.

If I look at the Irish Times website they have a while section for Coronavirus and today's stats were published there four hours ago.

HalfAndHalf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118110131#Comment_118110131

By here I mean Ireland. That’s why I said here in response to a post about the U.K.

Last week no deaths were reported on The six one on a daily basis. I only happened to see the news on the Saturday when they posted on screen they’d been 67 deaths the previous week.

So why aren’t they on the daily stats, or did all 67 die on the Saturday? I get the RTÉ alerts every day and there has not been a single death included in the figures in months.

serfboard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118109719#Comment_118109719

Daily death numbers aren't being reported in ROI since the HSE hack. Weekly death numbers are given though.

Patser

And on the RTE website, the daily numbers are instantly top of page. Covid is still in our national conciousness.

And even as you say, our last reported comparative figure is 550 deaths per week... that compares to a UK average of 162 per day, literally double per week and with a steady upward trend in the UK.

So my point is, we're still fairly aware and focused on Covid here, with constant debate about what's needed, masks still very much in evidence, vaccinations at well above 90% and boosters being rolled out. Also a clear, unified political message on what needs to be done.

In the UK, with double the death rate, masks have become a political issue (look at Govt non-mask wearing, Opposition all mask wearing benches at PMQs last week), the daily reporting of numbers is nowhere near headline news, Covid is being ignored

serfboard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118110212#Comment_118110212

Here's another way of looking at the numbers - up until today's figure, the deaths in the UK in the last seven days per million population was 16 - in ROI it was 13. Not so far off ...

HalfAndHalf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118110212#Comment_118110212

I’d argue the stats on the U.K. being double ours but besides that we’re now in an upward trajectory while they’re coming down, competitive cases are 51,000 here and 33,000 there.

we’re also fully aware of it as every day it’s the main focus of the news; because, we’re still coming out of the strictest and longest lockdowns of the whole EU whereas the U.K. have been pretty much open since June.

So of course it’s the forefront here and not there. They’ve been getting on with a relatively back to normal life for a 3rd of a year, we’ve still got to put a mask on to go to the toilet in a pub then take it off again to sit at a table 1 metre from some other people.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118110212#Comment_118110212

when you access the BBC website from a foreign country, you go to the global front page, not the UK one. The UK front page has the latest covid news and the BBC news runs with the numbers every evening.

When I was there last week, the impression I got was that people are starting to lose faith with the numbers, because they are still basing it on anyone who has died from any cause, within 28 days of testing positive, rather than died from covid.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118111258#Comment_118111258

I'm not sure why people would be starting to lose faith in the numbers. If that is the basis for the UK count, the numbers have been calculated on the same basis all along, surely?

If anything, the reverse should be the case. As the excess deaths figures for the UK become available, it seems likely that the official count of people who are recorded as dying in consequence of Covid is significantly understating the impact of the pandemic.

(It should be pointed out that the "within 28 days" metric is only used for immediate measurements of Covid deaths. It's used because these are reported on a daily basis, before the death certificates (which state a medical opinion as to the cause of death) are available. When the death certificates become available corrected figures can be prepared - deaths within 28 days of testing, but where Covid is not stated as a cause of death on the certificate subtracted; deaths later than 28 days but where Covid is stated added. In practice the corrections have been modest, which suggests that, as a technique for getting reasonably reliable figures rapidly, the 28-day rule is pretty robust.)

Christy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118111422#Comment_118111422

The odds of dying in a car crash are generally pretty low and don't become higher if you test positive for Covid (generally they should decrease pretty heavily actually). The hypothetical of people testing positive and then getting hit by a bus just doesn't happen and certainly not in big enough numbers to really throw off the count as much as people who take issue with the 28 day figure then to suggest.

brickster69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118109662#Comment_118109662

It's a big jump from 40 yesterday isn't it ?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118111422#Comment_118111422

maybe not hit by a bus, but if you are admitted to hospital, you are given a covid test. With high infection rates, there is a high chance of testing positive even if you are asymptomatic. If you then die, which people do in hospitals, you are recorded as a covid death.

VinLieger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118111609#Comment_118111609

It doesnt change the fact that this seems to be the way deaths have been counted since this all started though. For what reason would people start losing faith in this if its how its always been?

robinph

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118111579#Comment_118111579

I believe that is because the numbers for England were not reported the day before, so yesterday's numbers were for both days.

The 7 day average is still fairly stable and not moved massively, despite multiple big spikes in case numbers at various points over the last several months.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118112803#Comment_118112803

Because over 80% of the adult population are fully vaccinated.

robinph

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118113105#Comment_118113105

But your chances of dying from something other than covid within 28 days of a positive test has barely changed. You test positive and then spend some time isolating, bit less than before but no major difference. No more likely to die from a DIY accident whilst isolating now than you would have been a year ago. Then after isolation you head back to work and a slight increase in the chances of having a traffic accident, but no reason to think that the number of crashes has jumped significantly since before covid such that it's messing with the stats in any significant way.

If there was a major discrepancy between the numbers though it would be picked up in the weekly ONS stats that get released and they would have made some adjustments to how things are counted.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118113291#Comment_118113291

The ONS stats just pick up where covid is mentioned on the death cert, not the actual cause of death. But even with that, changes to the Cause of Death Cert mean it is a lot easier and quicker for a doctor to decide covid was an underlying cause of death than it is to actually investigate the death. If it is covid related, then the death is not referred to the coroner, if the doctor signing the form was not attending the patient during their illness.

besides all that though, people are vaccinated and the majority of those over 50 have now had their booster. What more can be done?

S.M.B.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118113590#Comment_118113590

Surprised to hear that the majority of over 50s have received three vaccines when the narrative seems to be that booster uptake rates have been a concern.

A very quick look at where I go for numbers and I don't see a 50%+ figure too.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118113590#Comment_118113590

Covid is mentioned in the death certificate if it is, in the opinion of the certifying medic, the cause or one of the causes of death. It is not routinely mentioned if the patient had tested positive for Covid.

You raise an interesting question: If people are vaccinated and the booster programme is proceeding well, what more can be done? But it begs a prior question: does anything more need to be done? And that depends on what infection or death rates are like. If infection, hospitalisation or death rates are problematically high, then something needs to be done. If "yet more vaccination" seems likely to yield diminishing returns, the something needs to be something else - other infection control measures.

I've seen people urging the idea that we have to learn to "live with Covid", by which on investigation they seem to mean that we should live as if we didn't have Covid - take no further precautions or measures. This doesn't seem rational to me. If the protection achieved by vaccination is high but not high enough, then we have to supplement it with other measures, which may be permanent or at least indefinite until we e.g. develop other and more effective vaccines. It could be social distancing measures, it could be masking in shared spaces, it could be something else. There is no law of God or nature that says we will ever arrive at a position where we can live as if the Coronavirus had never evolved, and suffer no adverse consequences for doing so.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118111609#Comment_118111609

I know. It's crude. But overcounting like that is offset by undercounting of those who are untested or whose positive test was more than 28 days ago but in whose deaths Covid is, in fact, a contributory factor. And the evidence suggests that the crudities pretty much net out. The daily death figures, when refined with better information, do not change hugely. They are not perfect, but they are good enough to be extremely useful, and the trends in them are meaningful.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118115964#Comment_118115964

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid-vaccine-booster-jab-over-50s-book-b962496.html

50% of over 50s, 14% of the population.

brickster69

The 3 month gap between all vaccines certainly is starting to look like an inspirational move now. Considering that those most at risk were vaxed first and that group will be feeling the most affects of the waning now no doubt now it saved many lives.

Certainly gave extra time for the planning for the mass rollout of the boosters also.

VinLieger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118113105#Comment_118113105

And that has nothing to do with the fact that deaths have been counted the same way this whole time so i still dont understand what peoples problem is.