Coronavirus accounted for 1% of all deaths in England and Wales in the second week of this month.
That’s among the lowest figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) since March when the pandemic took hold.
Tag: Statistics
Official statistics for COVID-19 are publicly available and anyone can download the data for analysis. All the numbers so far show that the virus is far from being a ‘once in a century’ plague.
Browse the articles related to this topic below.
- ‘Circuit break’ may be a grave error with terrible consequences for the health of the British people and for the health of the country.
- The Government is once again in the grip of doom-mongering scientific modellers who specialise in causing panic.
- The latest reliable data from Spain (up to September 3) which does not indicate any sort of upward curve in infections, let alone one coming to get us here in Britain.
- Anyone with clinical experience of dealing with respiratory viruses knows that the only certainty is uncertainty itself.
- Making comparisons between countries using different national data with different definitions is no more useful than trying to compare apples and pears.
- Latest study shows that nearly a third of all Covid-19 deaths recorded in July and August might have actually been the result of other causes –cancer, for example, or road traffic accidents.
- Sweden has probably suppressed Covid-19 to the same level as Great Britain but without draconian measures.
- Anyone going down with a new respiratory illness is likely to be suffering from a cold – not Covid.
Covid-19 accounts for an average of 11 of the 1,687 deaths in Britain every day, according to official statistics.
| Cause | UK deaths per day |
| Heart disease | 460 |
| Cancer | 450 |
| Dementia | 240 |
| Flu and pneumonia | 124 |
| Lung disease | 84 |
| Accidents at home | 16 |
| Infections | 16 |
| Suicide | 15 |
| COVID-19 | 11 |
| Road accidents | 5 |
- Sweden never went in to full lockdown. Instead, the country imposed a partial lockdown that was almost entirely voluntary.
- The only forcible restriction imposed by the government from the start was a requirement that people not gather in groups of more than 50 at a time.
- People followed the voluntary restrictions pretty well at the beginning, but that they have become increasingly lax as time has gone on.
- After an initial peak that lasted for a month or so, from March to April, visits to the Emergency Room due to covid had been declining continuously, and deaths in Sweden had dropped from over 100 a day at the peak in April, to around five per day in August.
- Dr. Rushworth hasn’t seen a single covid patient in the Emergency Room in over two and a half months.
- COVID has killed under 6,000 people.
- On average, one to two people per day are dying of covid in Sweden at present, and that number continues to drop.
- In the whole of Stockholm, a county with 2,4 million inhabitants, there are currently only 28 people being treated for covid in all the hospitals combined.
- Sweden seemed to be developing herd immunity, in spite of the fact that only a minority had antibodies, was due to T-cells.
- Immunity may be long lasting, and probably explains why there have only been a handful of reported cases of re-infection with covid, even though the virus has spent the last nine months bouncing around the planet infecting many millions of people.
- Almost all cases of reinfection have been completely asymptomatic.
- People develop a functioning immunity after the first infection, which allows them to fight off the second infection without ever developing any symptoms.
- England and Italy have mortality curves that are very similar to Sweden’s.
- Lockdown only makes sense if you are willing to stay in lockdown until there is an effective vaccine.
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/09/19/covid-19-does-sweden-have-herd-immunity/
The great 20th-century pandemics, comparable in so many ways to their 21st-century heir, accounted for myriad private tragedies. Yet, unlike this novel coronavirus, their public, political significance was negligible. They were treated as public-health challenges, problems for clinicians, virologists and epidemiologists. And there were arguments at the time that more should have been done to mitigate their harm. But there was no sense of a world ending. No talk of a new normal. No attempt, that is, to reorganise the entirety of societal life around the threat they posed.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/09/18/making-an-apocalypse-out-of-a-pandemic/
Dr. Mike Yeadon, former Chief Scientific Advisor, Pfizer:
- The evidence suggests that a substantial number of the positive cases are false positives.
- The government doesn’t know or is not disclosing the false positive rate.
- False positive rate may be as high as 1%, which would mean most or all of the positives are false positives.
- We are finding traces of an ‘old’ virus which can’t possibly make people sick.
- The test looks for a piece of genetic code. A positive test does not mean someone is sick.
- ONS says the prevalence of the virus is less than 0.1%.
- Pillar 2 (community) testing seems to be flawed. Method of processing samples would be inadmissible if this were a forensic case.
- The number of COVID deaths is continuing to stay low and fallen for 6 months. For it to suddenly increase would need a big change in transmission.
- Young people would have been the first who caught COVID-19 because they were not social distancing. The idea that the young people are now getting it is “for the birds.”
- If positive tests are false, they will be distributed evenly in the population. This is what we’re finding.
- Mass testing is not the answer.
- Sweden is not doing mass testing and their society has had 0.06% of their population die from COVID-19. This is the same as the UK.
- We are using a test with an undeclared false-positive rate.
- Are we re-testing the positives? This is unclear.
- A second lockdown is going to amplify the non-COVID deaths.
- UK’s lockdown was too late to prevent the initial spread.
- Mass population immunity is keeping the deaths low. This is the most reasonable explanation for the differences between the models and reality.
Officials in Nashville, Tn. concealed from the media how few coronavirus cases had been traced to bars and restaurants in the city, according to emails sent between the mayor’s office and the city’s health department
Public Health England has listed 18 areas of intervention with stricter rules
They had only a combined 141 people in hospital as of September 3, NHS shows
One person in hospital for every 38,000 in a population of over 5.4million
Despite an infection rate of more than 120 cases per 100,000 people and local lockdown rules preventing people from meeting anyone they don’t live with, fears about the virus spreading translate to only two people in hospital.
Sky News host Alan Jones says he has warned time and time again the political leaders who are the architects of this coronavirus response will not be able to escape the criticism that is now finding its way into the public place. It comes as an economist in the Victorian Department of Finance and Treasury, Sanjeev Sabhlok, on Wednesday penned an article in the Australian Financial Review announcing his resignation from his position.
- Policies are a sledgehammer to kill a swarm of flies.
- The Spanish Flu killed killed at least 50 million out of 1.8 billion people out of worldwide.
- To compare with Spanish Flu, COVID-19 would need to kill 210 million people. It has only killed 0.9 million.
- 60 million people worldwide normally die each year.
- There are strong scientific arguments against lockdown.
- The data was clear from February that the elderly should be protected but this wasn’t done.
- Epidemiological models have badly exaggerated the risk.
- There was never any reason to mandate measures such as face masks.
- COVID-19 is no worse than the Asian Flu.
- Lockdowns cannot eradicate the virus.
Current test results should not be automatically accepted as real
Imagine a world where COVID-19 has been eliminated. To be certain this is true, the government conducts regular tests at random. The number of positive results should be zero, right? Wrong. There will always be a proportion of cases tested that come back with a false positive test result. Thankfully, for COVID-19, the false positive rate is less than one percent of tests done. But it is not zero. It will be impossible for us to ever reach zero. Why? Because COVID-19 cannot be eliminated, even if it is likely to evolve to be more benign and become a seasonal problem like influenza.
- The NHS has not resumed anything like normal service. But the predicted Covid deluge never materialised.
- Current Covid death toll of 41,628 is barely half the total fatalities of the 1968 flu epidemic in the UK.
- Hospital admissions for cancer were down by 36 per cent in April and another 37 per cent in May.
- The State has wildly over-reacted, partly as a result of being in thrall to scientists such as Professor Neil Ferguson with unproven theories and dubious modelling.
- More than 1,600 people die in Britain every day, yet, despite the Government’s scaremongering, the coronavirus daily death toll has been in single or low double figures for weeks.
When the postmortem is done on the media’s coverage of COVID-19 (and it will be), it will be clear that the virus was no Black Plague — it’s not even the flu on a bad year.
SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, has killed 56,749 Americans as of Tuesday.
That’s not good. But it’s not as bad as the 2017-2018 flu season, when 80,000 -plus perished. And it’s a long cry from what all the experts were warning about just a few weeks ago: First, they predicted 1.7 million Americans dead; then they redid the models (this time apparently entering a few more “facts”) and said 100,000-240,000 dead.
Fatality rate:
- A recent Stanford University antibody study estimated the fatality rate from the virus is likely 0.1% to 0.2%
- In New York City, the death rate for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01%, or 10 per 100,000 in the population.
- People aged 75 and older: 0.8%
- For children under 18, the rate of death is zero per 100,000.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/28/covid-19-turning-out-to-be-huge-hoax-perpetrated-b/
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that in the week ending 28 August 2020 1,040 deaths were linked to influenza or pneumonia. However, just 101 deaths were linked to coronavirus
https://www.mirror.co.uk/science/flu-pneumonia-killed-10-times-22666018
UCLA researchers analyzed more than 10 million patient records for visits to Los Angeles hospitals between December and February
They saw 50% increase for visits for ‘coughing’ compared to the average number seen in the same period during the prior five years
At least 18 more people were hospitalized for respiratory failure than in a typical year
LA’s first case of COVID-19 was identified at LAX on January 26, and a second wasn’t found for another five weeks
The new research suggests that the virus might have been in LA months earlier, before it made people sick enough to trigger the December uptick in ER visits
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8718753/COVID-19-LA-CHRISTMAS-study-suggests.html
Has the Covid ‘second wave’ already run out of steam? On 9 July, just when Britain was reopening the hospitality sector and other businesses, the World Health Organisation announced that the pandemic was ‘accelerating’. Much of the coverage in Britain also implies that we are possibly in the early stages of a second wave. But that talk is lagging behind the data. Globally, the number of new recorded cases peaked on 31 July at 291,691 and has shown a slight downward trend ever since. In terms of deaths, they peaked at 8,502 on 17 April and have also been on a slight declining trend ever since. On the worst day in the past week – 2 September – 6,312 deaths were recorded. Most of the worst-affected countries are now showing downward trends in both daily cases and deaths, including the US, Brazil, Russia, Peru, Colombia, South Africa, Mexico, Chile and Iran. Among the top dozen worst-affected countries, only India is now showing an upwards trend in deaths. Spain and Argentina are showing slight upwards trends in new cases, but not deaths. All these figures, of course, have to be read in conjunction with a huge increase in testing – so a slight increase in new cases does not necessarily imply that the disease is in fact spreading.
As for Europe’s ‘second wave’, that, too, has fizzled out – with new cases now declining in Germany, and Sweden, and remaining flat in Italy, Ireland and Belgium. There is no obvious trend either way in Poland, Denmark or Portugal. The country with the clearest rising trend is Croatia. There was, until last week, a sharply-rising trend in Greece, although this has flattened off in recent days. You can follow country by country data on new infections and deaths here.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/europe-s-second-wave-has-fizzled-out
The number of over-50s with Covid-19 represents a fifth of those nationwide
Just three per cent are aged over 80, down from 28 per cent six months ago
Peak age range for infections is now in the 20s but used to be in the 80s
Sparked hope further restrictions could soon be reduced as older people shield
THE odds of catching Covid-19 in England are about 44 in a million a day, official figures show.
There are between 1,200 and 4,200 new infections a day, testing figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest.
And many of those infected will not even know they have it.
Only about one person in 100 dies after being infected and another one in 100 suffer long-term effects.
There is just a one in two million chance of dying from Covid-19 in England.
That means coronavirus is as risky as taking a bath or skiing — and considerably less risky than scuba diving or sky diving.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12557446/chance-catching-covid-44-in-million/
Britain is not entering a second wave of coronavirus infections and rising numbers of cases are a result of increased, more accurate testing picking up infections among younger people, experts say.
Professor Carl Heneghan, a medicine expert at the University of Oxford, said: ‘There is currently no second wave. What we are seeing is a sharp rise in the number of healthy people who are carrying the virus, but exhibiting no symptoms. Almost all of them are young. They are being spotted because – finally – a comprehensive system of national test and trace is in place.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8689021/There-no-second-wave-UK-Oxford-expert-says.html
More than 180,000 Americans have died of coronavirus as of Monday
The CDC’s latest fatality data shows that COVID-19 was listed as the sole cause of death for just 6% of those killed by the virus
94% of fatalities were in people who also suffered at least one chronic health condition, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity or heart disease
On average, people who died of coronavirus had 2.6 additional underlying health conditions
Up to 90 percent of people tested for COVID-19 in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada in July carried barely any traces of the virus, a new report says
Experts say it could be because today’s tests are ‘too sensitive’
In the US PCR testing is the most widely used diagnostic test for COVID-19
PCR tests analyze genetic matter from the virus in cycles and today’s tests typically take 37 or 40 cycles
Experts say this is too high because it deems a patient positive even if they have small traces of the virus that are old and no longer contagious
They suggest lowering the number of cycles, which would hone in on people with a higher viral load and who are more contagious
Today there are 5.9million cases of COVID-19 in the US and there have been more than 182,000 deaths
The study looks at the cases of 122 people who have died in the region outside of a hospital setting – either at home or in accommodation for the elderly – and whose deaths were attributed to Covid-19. Half of this group were aged 88 or over. Of the 122 cases, 111 were judged to have extensive comorbidities (the presence of one or more additional conditions) and 11 had moderate comorbidities. Not one of those who died, in other words, were in good health. In only 15 per cent of cases was Covid-19 judged to be the direct cause of death. Covid-19 was a contributory cause in 70 per cent of cases, and in the remaining 15 per cent death was judged to have been caused by another underlying cause – most often heart disease. The study can be read here, in Swedish.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-percent-of-covid-deaths-were-directly-from-covid-/