Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[elbows]

I and some others have spoken about the heart health problems the virus itself may be causing. Elevated excess death figures over a sustained period of time are part of that discussion.

It is very important that other possible factors are included in such discussions and attempts to get to the bottom of things and try to reduce the problem. I note that the Times has the following thing on its front page today. I havent searched for the actual article online due to a lack of time at the moment.

My main concern and complaint with the following sort of angle is if it entirely misses out the 'some of these problems may be down to the virus itself' angle. Reasons this might happen include the fact that authorities and various other interests really dont want to promote the idea that we should still be trying to actively reduce the number of covid infections as much as possible. Because of the political ramifications that come with many of the ways this would be achieved in practice. A subject that has obviously bothered me greatly over the last year or so.

 

[zahir]

That Times article:

Covid pandemic blamed for increase in heart deaths | News | The Times

archived 30 Dec 2022 22:56:26 UTC

archive.ph

 

[elbows]

Thanks for the link. Its also important that we dont let the entities such as the Telegraph, who tend to use every phenomenon of that type to make bogus claims that its all the fault of lockdowns, to poison the well and distract from trying to fix the issues caused by the way healthcare was disturbed by the pandemic.

The bogus shit is obviously bogus because healthcare and the normal patterns of diagnosis, prevention and treatment would still have been disturbed by the pandemic, even if the various non-pharma interventions that the Telegraph hates had not taken place. In fact some of the disruption would have been even worse, because we would have had more covid cases, more workforce absences, more health services being overwhelmed, and probably a similar or even greater amount of people avoiding or being unable to access routine checkups etc.

 

[elbows]

More of the usual mix of explanations for NHS woe and excess deaths, along with uncertainties in regards how to fairly ascertain the proportion of blame to different factors here:

On Sunday, RCEM president Dr Adrian Boyle said between 300 and 500 people were dying every week as a result of delays to emergency care.

He said a severe flu outbreak, which was made worse by a lack of immunity because of Covid isolation measures, has resulted in bed occupancy reaching record levels.

"What we're seeing now in terms of these long waits is being associated with increased mortality, and we think somewhere between 300-500 people are dying as a consequence of delays and problems with urgent and emergency care each week," he told Times Radio.

"We need to actually get a grip of this."

But NHS England's Chris Hopson said care needed to be taken "jumping to conclusions about excess mortality rates and their cause without a really full and detailed look at the evidence".

He said a study of the evidence was "under way", but until detailed work was conducted "it's really difficult to say".

Mr Hopson listed multiple factors that have contributed to pressures on NHS services including:

18% more people coming into A&E in the last six weeks compared to the same period last year
Covid patients in England increasing to 9,500 compared to 4,500 a few weeks ago
Some 3,750 flu sufferers in hospital beds compared to 520 one month ago
Delayed discharges of medically fit patients, which currently stands at 12,000
A growing population and a decline in living standards

He said adding all these together left "25,000 of the 100,000 NHS beds" filled with either medically fit patients waiting to be discharged and people suffering with either Covid or the flu.

Mr Hopson also said there were 9,500 NHS staff absent at the moment due to Covid.

Some A&Es in complete state of crisis, warn health chiefs

Hospitals are facing soaring demands and experts say there is "no doubt" it causes harm to patients.

www.bbc.co.uk

I note that the 500 deaths a week claim rather dominates the newspaper front pages today.

 

[elbows]

They're stopping publication of some stats. (((elbows)))

UK to stop publishing Covid modelling data

R range and growth rate, which during the height of the pandemic was published weekly in England, deemed ‘no longer necessary’

www.theguardian.com

Thanks for drawing my attention to that. I actually only recently realised that they were still routinely producing the figure for R and some medium term modelling.

I wont shout too loudly about them stopping this because the R figure hasnt been used by the public, politicians or media much for a very long time, and experts and medical authorities still have other measures by which to judge the situation. And the R estimates tend to be a bit too laggy to be extremely useful. Its absence wont make much difference on its own to our ability to see new waves arrive and end. But maybe the medium term modelling has been used for planning purposes and the end of that modelling might have a detrimental affect on that, I dont know. As with most other data that has stopped, they tend to pad the announcements with the sense that if things got really bad again they would look at bringing some of this stuff back. But Ive got no sense of what threshold would need to be breached in order for that to happen, I suppose things would probably have to get so bad that the whole politics of covid would be changed again, eg having to comsider bringing back certain non-pharmaceutical measures.

 

[elbows]

Now they are actually telling parents to keep sick children off school:

Parents in England are being urged to keep children off school if they are unwell and have a fever, amid high levels of flu and Covid-19 cases.

The same applies for nurseries, according to advice from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).

The number of scarlet fever cases is also high, it warned.

A head teachers' union welcomed the advice, issued as pupils prepare to return to lessons after the Christmas holidays.

Flu and Covid cases are "currently circulating at high levels and are likely to continue to increase in coming weeks", the UKHSA said.

"High numbers of scarlet fever, which is caused by group A streptococcus, also continue to be reported."

Prof Susan Hopkins, its chief medical adviser, said: "If your child is unwell and has a fever, they should stay home from school or nursery until they feel better and the fever has resolved."

Children told to stay home from school if sick amid flu, Covid and scarlet fever

The advice to parents at the end of the Christmas break comes amid high levels of flu and Covid cases.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[SpookyFrank]

You'd think 'don't send your kids to school if they're sick' would be just the policy at all times, but in reality we've got parents who can't afford to stay home with their kids. And schools employing people just to harass anyone whose kid doesn't show up because it's making their numbers look bad and OFSTED will want to know why they haven't been hassling the parents of sick kids enough.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Ordered another batch of 60 FFP2 masks as I'm starting to run low on the ones I bought last year or so. Isn't showing any signs of going away unfortunately.

 

[_Russ_]

I shudder to think of the level of education that UK children are going to leave school with in a few years.

(please dont do the usual knee jerk bollox and think this is a criticism of keeping sick children away from school)

Now they are actually telling parents to keep sick children off school:

Children told to stay home from school if sick amid flu, Covid and scarlet fever

The advice to parents at the end of the Christmas break comes amid high levels of flu and Covid cases.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[elbows]

The messages they've started to feel the need to tell the public are the modern, watered down equivalent of the 'changes in mood music' that I used to gone on about back when such things were presented in more dramatic fashion with a wider range of policy tools waiting in the wings.

Todays example feels like saying hello to a long lost friend, its the BBC highlighting a tory minister who is actually prepared to say that some advice to wear masks is sensible.

Covid and flu putting massive pressure on NHS - health secretary

The health secretary blames the pandemic and flu for NHS pressures, but insists government has right plan.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[elbows]

The authorities in this country love to make use of this claim:

He said people with conditions like heart disease had been reluctant to come forward for support at times during the pandemic - and this was a major factor in the demands now being seen.

From We're focussed on supporting NHS - health secretary

Its likely got some truth to it, its one part of the picture, but often seems to be far from the largest factor. Surely the winter disease waves and covid wave are the biggest factors right now, coupled with the longstanding bed-blocking issue and staff vacancy issues. I think they like to go on about it because its not something that requires an immediate change of policy, public behaviour etc. These days it could also be used to try to reduce the number of deaths that some are directly attributing to overloaded A&E and long ambulance response times, or otherwise excuse this picture.

For example even back in the early days of the pandemic Whitty liked to go on about this aspect when making excuses for inaction in the name of balance. I dont mind it being raised but it often came up in the context of reasons not to activate non-pharmaceutical measures in a timely way, and I'm never going to be happy about that, not when it plays into the hands of certain tory agendas.

 

[8ball]

The authorities in this country love to make use of this claim:



From We're focussed on supporting NHS - health secretary

Its likely got some truth to it, its one part of the picture, but often seems to be far from the largest factor. Surely the winter disease waves and covid wave are the biggest factors right now, coupled with the longstanding bed-blocking issue and staff vacancy issues. I think they like to go on about it because its not something that requires an immediate change of policy, public behaviour etc.

For example even back in the early days of the pandemic Whitty liked to go on about this aspect when making excuses for inaction in the name of balance. I dont mind it being raised but it often came up in the context of reasons not to activate non-pharmaceutical measures in a timely way, and I'm never going to be happy about that, not when it plays into the hands of certain tory agendas.

Yeah, poss being exaggerated. Definitely a thing, though. Treatment for my heart condition has been delayed and the surgeons have told me this is because many of the patients they have been seeing have been showing up in significantly worse shape than was the norm a few years ago.

 

[elbows]

Yes its a real factor. I'm just paying special attention to which things the health secretary and the authorities are more comfortable acknowledging, because I always focus on that side of things and the things they are less keen to highlight. They are especially keen not to attribute a portion of the excess deaths to the ongoing affects of the virus itself, because that would directly challenge their whole 'learning to live with covid' approach.

Along the same lines I still think its absolutely ridiculous that in a 'democracy' where we are told the press has an important role to play, we dont even get any proper public debate about whether the whole 'living with covid' thing, which was long sold to us on the basis that there would be challenges a few times a year especially in winter, and that every so many years might be especially grim, needs rethinking given that so far we've had 4 notable waves in a year.

 

[elbows]

Which means that more than 4 times a year I find myself asking the question 'endemic equilibrium wankers, where are you now?'. That concept was used to justify and sell people on the current approach, but of course once that was done that narrative is nowhere to be seen, we are supposed to forget that prediction, we are not supposed to go on about it having dismally failed to turn out that way. Meanwhile in casual conversations more of the old attitudes have slipped back into view, people casually mentioning having had 'a cold' recently etc etc.

 

[elbows]

Typical shit from the from page of the Daily Mail. They want people to think of masks as dystopian, rather than awful articles like this one and certain shithead MPs actually being what comes across as dystopian.

I also note that their language makes covid sound like a thing of the past, and they deliberately choose to speak of 'cold and flu victims' rather than 'covid and flu'. Dodgy fuckers.

 

[brogdale]

Typical shit from the from page of the Daily Mail. They want people to think of masks as dystopian, rather than awful articles like this one and certain shithead MPs actually being what comes across as dystopian.

I also note that their language makes covid sound like a thing of the past, and they deliberately choose to speak of 'cold and flu victims' rather than 'covid and flu'. Dodgy fuckers.

View attachment 358298

Desmond Swayne in print form.

 

[8ball]

Typical shit from the from page of the Daily Mail. They want people to think of masks as dystopian, rather than awful articles like this one and certain shithead MPs actually being what comes across as dystopian.

I also note that their language makes covid sound like a thing of the past, and they deliberately choose to speak of 'cold and flu victims' rather than 'covid and flu'. Dodgy fuckers.

View attachment 358298

I thought staying at home when you had something transmissible predated covid by a long, long way.
And if they are talking about wearing a mask when you have the lurgee and have to go out, well I guess it’s better than a leper bell.

 

[Steel Icarus]

To these psycho cunts the idea of collectively taking measures to help others is dystopian.

 

[elbows]

Scotland's hospitals are "almost completely full", with bed occupancy exceeding 95% last week, the first minister has said.

Nicola Sturgeon said services were facing "truly unprecedented" pressures.

Demand for hospital beds had been driven up by "extraordinary" levels of winter flu, rising rates of Covid infections and cases of Strep A.

Scottish hospitals are almost full, says Nicola Sturgeon

The first minister warns of "exceptional and severe" pressure on Scotland's health services.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[elbows]

Overall deaths in 2022 is something I've been going on about for ages and now most of the data is published we get some more articles about it:

Excess deaths in 2022 among worst in 50 years

New figures show more than 650,000 people died in the UK last year.

www.bbc.co.uk

More than 650,000 deaths were registered in the UK in 2022 - 9% more than 2019.

This represents one of the largest excess death levels outside the pandemic in 50 years.

Well thats in part because we arent actually outside the pandemic.

Covid is still killing people, but is involved in fewer deaths now than at the start of the pandemic. Roughly 38,000 deaths involved Covid in 2022 compared with more than 95,000 in 2020.

I will probably pick at the wording of that claim and the number used later.

Some of the excess may be people whose deaths were hastened by the after-effects of a Covid infection.

A number of studies have found people are more likely to have heart problems and strokes in the weeks and months after catching Covid, and some of these may not end up being linked to the virus when the death is registered.

As well as the impact on the heart of the virus itself, some of this may be contributed to by the fact many people didn't come in for screenings and non-urgent treatment during the peak of the pandemic, storing up trouble for the future.

OK thats more like it, I'll give them a point for drawing attention to all of those aspects rather than totally shying away from heart etc effects of the virus.

 

[CH1]

Overall deaths in 2022 is something I've been going on about for ages and now most of the data is published we get some more articles about it:

I think excess deaths will go on increasing as the baby boomers die off (including me - I'm nearly 69).
These NHS types piss me off - I had an MRI scan on last Sunday morning at 10 am - seemed fully staffed notwithstanding the strike. Maybe they prefer working overtime? My last scan in July 2022 was at 6.30 pm on a Friday - equally empty in the waiting room, but less staff on duty than Sunday morning.

BTW the scan instructions stipulated Renal tests. I didn't fancy my chances of getting my GP to order a blood test - or Kings College Hopsital's Serco phlebotomy unit providing a result in time (what with Christmas/New Year/strike etc).
I remembered I'd had some of these tests last year - and printed out two pages from "Patient Access"
The MRI technician binned them.
"We're not going to inject you!" she said.
EIGHT pages to tell you all about your MRI appointment - and really they only need give you the time.
No wonder the NHS is fucked.

 

[elbows]

Age-adjusted mortality data is available which will allow for that and remove the affects of an ageing population from the trends, although I'm not sure that the population data they use to do these calculations is as good as I would ideally like it to be.

Meanwhile, comparing deaths from all causes in England and Wales in 2021 to 2022:

Due to a bad covid wave and vaccines not having had enough time for maximum impact, by early March 2021 there had been over 35,000 more deaths registered that year than there were by the same stage in 2022. However due to the shitty situations that have happened over the rest of 2022, by the end of the year the difference in number of deaths registered in 2021 compared to 2022 had fallen to just under 9,500.

Unlike the previous BBC article I'm not really setup to talk about UK deaths as a whole because I have to combine data from 3 different sources to do that. Maybe I will actually try to do this at some point like I used to in the first year or two of the pandemic, but even I dont spend as long on this sort of thing as I used to.

 

[SpookyFrank]

These NHS types piss me off - I had an MRI scan on last Sunday morning at 10 am - seemed fully staffed notwithstanding the strike. Maybe they prefer working overtime?

I guess the NHS is actually fine then. Besides all the idle carpetbagging staff anyway. That's a weight off my mind.

 

[kabbes]

Stuart McDonald, an actuary at LCP, has modelled the likely impact of excess deaths deriving from long waiting times at A&E alone.



15,000 in the past 18 months. He thinks that is likely highly conservative, however, as the paper it is based on did not give estimates for how mortality increases with waiting time, only the effect of a wait longer than a given number of hours.

 

[elbows]

Its a disgrace that it hasnt been made more of a story of until recently. Whatever the various causes people attribute it to, the excess deaths have been showing up very clearly in weekly data for a very long time. In 2022 the weekly deaths from all causes didnt dip in seasons like summer, breaking the pattern that has otherwise been visible in pretty much every year for which data exists.

 

[elbows]

It seems that the latest covid wave and the flu wave peaked ages ago. By the time the media mood music changed in regards the pressure on hospitals, things were already at or beyond the peak.

In terms of the deaths from all causes picture, we've just experienced the worst period since the first pandemic winter. Here for example are figures for England from the weekly flu/covid report:



From https://assets.publishing.service.g...1130179/Weekly_Flu_and_COVID-19_report_w3.pdf

That same report does include a bunch of covid and hospital data that will enable people who were always curious as to how covid hospital rates compared to flu rates for a fairly bad flu season to get some sense of that. Although that data doesnt tend to stretch back to the worst covid waves we had pre-vaccine, you can either look for that data elsewhere or just consider how the flu this time comapres to even the 'milder' covid waves of 2022.

 

[teuchter]

What's that spike in Jul/Aug 22?

 

[Chz]

Anecdotally, quite a lot of kids got it just before school let out for the year and brought it home.

 

[elbows]

What's that spike in Jul/Aug 22?

Excessive heat.

 

[elbows]

For example this was 1976 daily deaths in England and Wales, which also featured a summer death spike.