England

Browse the articles related to this topic below.

Coronial autopsies identify the indirect effects of COVID-19 – The Lancet

Post author By EvidenceNotFear
Post date 10 August 2020

Review of autopsy reports enabled the determination of the relative contributions of undiagnosed COVID-19 and lockdown restrictions on deaths. Of the 67 autopsies done at our hospital during the first 2 months of lockdown, only two autopsies identified COVID-19 that was undiagnosed before death. More frequently, reduced access to health-care systems associated with lockdown was identified as a probable contributory factor (six cases) or possible contributory factor (eight cases) to death. These causes included potentially preventable out-of-hospital deaths such as acute myocardial infarction and diabetic ketoacidosis, in which patients contacted the health services by telephone and were advised to self-isolate at home rather than attending hospital. Direct reference to financial or work pressures caused by COVID-19 was identified in three of ten cases of suicide.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(20)30180-8/fulltext

Tags Autopsy, Collateral Damage, COVID-19, Death Registration, England, John Radcliffe Hospital, Lockdown, Pathology, Suicide, The Lancet, UK, Wales

News

Daily covid death count could be scrapped – The Telegraph

Post author By EvidenceNotFear
Post date 10 August 2020

A review will examine reports that officials were “over-exaggerating” the number of deaths from coronavirus.
On July 17, the Health Secretary asked PHE to urgently investigate the way daily death statistics had been reported, leading PHE to say it was “pausing” the daily release.
Under the previous system, anyone who has ever tested positive for the virus in England was automatically counted as a coronavirus death when they died, even if the death was from a car accident.
Weekly rather than daily counts could help improve accuracy for future death counts, but could also make it harder to draw comparisons in the event of a second wave of the virus.
Prof Carl Heneghan, director at Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, has called for a cut-off period for the way the death toll is calculated in England of 21 days.
Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, reportedly holds the view that excess deaths are the best measure to use, which will be unaffected by the PHE review.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/09/daily-covid-death-count-could-scrapped/

Tags CEBM, COVID-19, England, Errors, Misinformation, Professor Carl Heneghan, Professor Chris Whitty, Public Health England, Statistics, UK

Publications

Why no-one can ever recover from COVID-19 in England – a statistical anomaly – CEBM

Post author By EvidenceNotFear
Post date 17 July 2020

Here, it seems that PHE regularly looks for people on the NHS database who have ever tested positive, and simply checks to see if they are still alive or not. PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the COVID test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community. Anyone who has tested COVID positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE COVID death figures.

By this PHE definition, no one with COVID in England is allowed to ever recover from their illness. A patient who has tested positive, but successfully treated and discharged from hospital, will still be counted as a COVID death even if they had a heart attack or were run over by a bus three months later.

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/why-no-one-can-ever-recover-from-covid-19-in-england-a-statistical-anomaly/

Tags CEBM, COVID-19, Death Registration, England, Errors, Public Health England, Statistics, Testing

Opinion

This is what we shot ourselves in the foot for – Hector Drummond

Post author By EvidenceNotFear
Post date 8 July 2020

Novelist Hector Drummond decided to look at the annual death figures for England and Wales from the Office for National Statistics. This is what he found after graphing the numbers all the way back to the turn of the twentieth century.

The 2020 death figures on the right cannot even be considered a spike over the course of the century.

He explained his methodology in this post:

This is what we shot ourselves in the foot for

Tags Charts, COVID-19, England, Hector Drummond, Mortality Rate, Office for National Statistics, Statistics, Wales

Opinion

Near identical dynamics for England, Sweden, Spain – Professor Paul Dennis

Post author By EvidenceNotFear
Post date 28 June 2020

Professor Paul Dennis, a geologist and isotope geochemist at the University of East Anglia, compared the deaths in England, Sweden, Spain. He found near identical dynamics, which supports the theory that COVID-19 appears to follow the Gompertz curve in every outbreak region. This implies that social distancing and lockdown has no effect.

https://twitter.com/PFDgeologist/status/1267406710597189632

Tags COVID-19, England, Gompertz Function, Lockdown, Professor Paul Dennis, Social Distancing, Spain, Sweden

News

Why the English sacrificed liberty for lockdown – UnHerd

Post author By EvidenceNotFear
Post date 23 April 2020

When our American cousins cry “Live Free or Die” and take to the streets to protest overweening state authority during lockdown, whether they know it or not, they are honouring the tradition of English liberty.

https://unherd.com/2020/04/why-have-the-english-sacrificed-liberty-for-lockdown/