Does your death number takes into account the massive backlog that was added yesterday (around 3000 deaths) ? Basically the deaths since February were undercounted by 50% and this was corrected yesterday, rising the 7 day daily average.

With an average of around 2000 people dying a day of all causes, it’s impossible not to have hundreds dying a day ‘with’ covid when 20-25% of the population has had it within 28 days, no?

For that reason, would ventilator figures not be the most accurate reflection of how things are?

This data cock-up affects the cumulative total which I have not been reporting. The 7 day rolling average also does not include this. The total reported deaths for England this year is 17,864 which includes the 2,714 that were missed. We should remember that there have been numerous 'data corrections' in the last two years.

This was discussed a week or so ago and I agree that the patients in ventilation beds is our best indicator at present.

Absolutely - the deaths number has always been very questionable in my mind - the whole 'within 28 days of a positve test' thing and the with Covid vs of Covid' always seemed ripe for over-reporting of deaths to me. And we have a situation yesterday where the number of reported deaths nearly matches the number of people on ventilators. Surely in the vast majority of cases where people die 'of Covid' they spend several days on ventilators in the days prior to death - hence the number of ventilator beds has to be a decent multiple (3x-7x) of the actual number of daily deaths?

Your analysis is flawed. I think those destined to die don't don't give up the ghost the day they are introduced to ventilation. So maybe you should be looking at the numbers on ventilation some days, maybe weeks, before your reference day for deaths.

Agreed here. I find it interesting that, once all is said and done, the numbers for all the developed nations similar to us (Europe, US etc.) all seem to be converging. You can never compare precisely because of our definitional differences, but it does seem that, whatever route we took, we all end up in much the same space and yet we all end up in blaming our own governments for doing a bad job!

Yes, in fact there are two very different cohorts here. Those in intensive care are there because they are expected to survive, just about. It's certainly not a structured pathway of palliative care. So those in ICU at the moment remain younger people who didn't get vaccinated or had only one vaccine. And mostly they do live, even if there are life changing implications such as brain damage. Whereas those who are dying remain older males, particularly those not vaccinated, and often never admitted into hospital let alone intensive care. And at a certain level of frailty in wouldn't be sensible for them to end up in intensive care.

We then need to ditch the "with Covid" or "of Covid" debate - what matters to my mind is whether their death would have been avoided if they had not caught COVID-19. So people in their 40s with Diabetes don't normally die, but add in COVID and their chance of doing so goes up rather a lot. Someone dying aged 40 with chronic diabetes with COVID would be an example of this. Now the numbers and analysis in this space does give different numbers here, but my take is that when you see a COVID-19 death rate, somewhere between 60% and 80% of these victims would still be alive if they had not caught COVID-19, which is a lot (and quite different from cold or most influenzas). Numbers have slightly improved recently but the 60% to 80% figure is still sound to my mind.

Daily data:

Cases 41,384 (69,811 last Friday)
Deaths 347 (191)
Patients admitted 2,406 (2,540 the 28th)
Patients in hospital 20,331 (19,648 on the 31st)
Patients in ventilation beds 357 (356 on the 31st)
Vaccinated up to and including 7 April 2022:
First dose: 52,873,079
Second dose: 49,520,206
Booster: 38,928,184

The rolling seven day daily average for cases is now down 36.8% on the previous week and the same measure for deaths is up 32.2%. The rolling 7 day daily average for deaths is 210.7 today. The number of tests conducted is now around the half million per day mark (and falling) which is where we were early in January last year. The peak was 1.75m tests in January this year.

:tu:

That knowing, almost smirking "did they die of Covid, or with Covid?" has to be one of the most irritating memes to fall out of the Covid story.

To be clear, is the corollary of that statement that 40% to 60% of deaths probably represent folk without significant comorbidities, who simply succumbed to the disease ?

This is for the 20 to 40% bracket: There will be a mix of things in there, but typically they had a co-morbidity which was the cause of death, and though they had COVID it would have made no difference one way or the other. So things in the strokes / heart failure area for example. A number of cancers don't have much connectivity to respiratory conditions. Also some would be people at the end of their palliative journey, and yes maybe COVID contributed to mortality but it would not have made more than a few days difference. For the 60% to 80% bracket then COVID had a clear impact on mortality which would not have happened 3 years ago.

I recall there is at least some preliminary data, or at least strong suspicions that Covid contributes to strokes and possible heart issues, so these are not the cleanest examples of dying with Covid. The unrelated cancers are better examples, or even better, motor vehicle accident deaths with Covid.

On the other hand, people on ventilators, especially for a period of time, we should probably be counting those as future/delayed covid-related premature deaths, or possibly heavy disabilities...

And just for some additional context here are the numbers since the start of this year,

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ed7d93869c.png

And the overall numbers since the start of the pandemic

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...944ece5366.png

Some updated figures from the ONS for January and February this year, see under "NHS Test and Trace services and vaccine programmes"

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/gross...k/february2022

NHS Test and Trace
January 2022 - £3,370m
February 2022 - £1,790m

That's interesting, but it covers both T&T and vaccination. To say, as it was inferred, that we spend a billion a month on free LFTs isn't quite telling the whole story.