As that number of deaths creeps closer and closer to average 100 per day I find myself wishing for more clarity on the number - as well as a reduction in it.

Does 100 peole who have had Covid at some point in the last few weeks suggest Covid has actually killed 80, or 60, or 40 per day?

I'm sure it's been discussed before and maybe there is more detailed information somewhere, but it's nagging at me, and my vulnerable and nervous partner more so.

I am not sure if there is a full UK more detailed view, but the below from NHS England might be useful
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistic...-daily-deaths/

It will be nearer 80 than any other figure. How do we know? Because there was a point between Alpha and Delta when there was very little of the virus about, and the death rate fell even though it was at a time when respiratory deaths are usually higher than now. The lowest it got to was 5.7 at the end of May. so if it's now 98.3 it's probably 90 a day killed directly by COVID. Of that 90, I would estimate 10 are people under 50 who would have been saved if they have been vaccinated, and 25 are people over 50 years old who would have been saved if they had joined the 90% of citizens and got vaccinated. So 35 easily avoidable deaths. Every day.

The good news for most of us is that vaccines have saved around 1800 to 1900 lives a day.

What does this mean for the number of fully vaccinated people who die with COVID every day?

Thank you both.

From the Telegraph

What those numbers don’t tell is how many of those 27 people under 50 who were fully vaccinated and died had some underlying conditions.

Yes, so I personally think is best to be honest about this, I have a feeling some commentators are gliding away from being open to what is going on. The unpleasant reality is that at least 55 of the 98 people dying every day from COVID-19 were fully vaccinated - they did everything they could and yet still succumbed to this virus. Now clearly this is better than the 1,400 who were dying daily in January 2021, but the plain fact is that the biggest decider of outcomes, once infected, is age. With age comes acentuation of other illnesses, to avoid the term co-morbidities. This means most people dying now are double vaccinated. To give a relative marker, during a bad flu season 100 deaths a day was quite common, if that was concentrated in particular parts of the country then it could result in hospitals declaring a Major Incident, something that hasn't happened during Delta, due to the fairly even spread of casualties. Probably we were too tolerant of 100 deaths from influenza / pneumonia, we've learnt that much from COVID.

Can we do more to reduce casualities? Yes, clearly we need to continue protecting the vulnerable and the more younger people who get the jab the better since this is breaking up the transmission chains. We also need them to be able to operate during surges with less exposure to carriers. I'm afraid to say that I'm still giving first vaccines to care home workers, and many elderly people see a number of care workers each week. You will have seen in the news about one monoclonal antibody treatment by Regeneron that the MHRA has approved. There is an even more interesting one from AstraZeneca which may get approved. So there will be improvements in prevention and treatment. The elderly too should build up even better antibodies to the virus, though they are sky high now.

Some are, notably high BMI, but in some cases we had difficulty finding medical records for them since they hadn't been to a doctor recently. They didn't think they had an underlying condition. Well, we all tend to die of something or other, this underlying conditions business is a bit relative anyway. Other cases involved lots of things going wrong all at once and it's not always clear what difference COVID would make. If you wanted a rough estimate, I would say about 50% were certainly badly ill, tending upwards from there.

I did a fuller version of that Telegraph story here, including a graph:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/33505799-post9036.html

funny that isn’t, most countries have no truck with this exempt nonsense eg SA and Spain

Thank you so much for all these insights. I really appreciate them.

I've been trying - and failing - to write something like this so thank you for having put the point across so eloquently.
All we need to do is wear a mask. And get a jab, but mainly wearing a mask. It's not the funniest thing, but it's doable, it's simple and has an impact.
How many of the 100-or-so daily deaths could've been saved by wearing a simple piece of cloth when on public transport I don't know, but keeping the mandate on (and making exemptions resting a little less on people's morals or the inexistent "good British common sense") might've helped.

Thanks for that. And yes, I’ve been thinking for some time that what gets us over the line with this is a magic pill that stops COVID in its tracks should symptoms present*.

* Edit: And one can only hope this whole experience has a positive side effect of leading to effective therapies for things like the Common Cold and Influenza.

Thanks CWS for your detailed analysis as usual. Maybe this is a pessimistic outlook, however, what now?

We seem to be finding out vaccine effectiveness declines more quickly than we expected or hoped, and they certainly are not as effective in preventing deaths as we once thought? The way things are going now, the coming winter (when many people who got jabbed in Q1 this year have a waning vaccine) appears to be another long, dark one?

Apart from developing and improving the current vaccines (which is likely to take many months), what is next?

1) There is little or no evidence that vaccine decline in effectiveness. Some limited data out of Israel, maybe, compared to the fortnightly ONS mass surveillance data from the UK covering a lot more people and systematically gathered. This much larger data set last reported on Thursday (as it does every fortnight) that antibody rates are rising, currently the England figure is 94.2%, similar figures in the rest of the UK. That was the data reporting period ending 26 July. If we compare this with 3 May, the figure then was 75.9%. This is for antibodies, T cell immunity is also on top of that, but it's impossible to measure.

Here is a breakdown. The green line shows antibody readings, the light blue line vaccine dose1, dark blue is vaccine dose2.

Have a look at the oldest group, 80 plus - you can see a dip around April time, so dose1 antibodies start to dip, then it shoots up again with dose2. It has slightly waned a bit since then to 92.4%, in a group whose immune system isn't built to carry on forever. The small dip there isn't significant, particularly when you add in T cell coverage. And that's the very worst age cohort! For those 50 to 59 and all those younger, antibody rates are either going up a bit or going up a lot. Notice how those 25 to 34 have a green line higher than vaccination - that's the impact of natural infection.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...922/UwDrUR.jpg

2) Vaccines are actually slightly more effective in preventing deaths than we first expected. It was initially thought vaccines could stop around 95% of deaths, the current real world calculation is that vaccines are stopping 95-99% of deaths. Compared to influenza where the vaccine is often about 55% effective in this area.

3) It seems that a lot of people thought vaccines would be 100% effective for all aspects of COVID, That was never, ever the case, no vaccine is that good. And in all honesty I don't know of a single public health professional who has ever said that either (self included). The COVID vaccines are massively better than we could have possibly hoped for in the circumstances, but it's really important to appreciate their limitations - and there are quite a number of limitations (not 100%, don't work so well on the immuno-suppressed, variants and so on).

Beyond vaccinations, and potentially boosters. Well from the figures above it's dificult to justify a booster campaign. Maybe for the over 70s, but even then you can see the case isn't exactly overwhelming. But we've now had the first monoclonal antibody treatment licensed, albeit at £2,000 a patient. And there is another monoclonal treament which has a preventative effect. Stage III trials suggest results nearly as good as vaccination, so if that's approved it could help the immuno suppressed and / or be a useful complementary stage. Then as you point out we can look to second generation vaccines. And doubtless there will be further improvements to how we treat sick people.

But right now the most important thing is to get younger people on to and beyond dose 2, and there is still some way to go there. While healthcare capacity is at threat we can't afford to relax. Those who haven't had their jabs need to be encouraged to protect themselves and all of us, as soon as they can.