Daily reported Covid death figures are too high because people are dying from conditions unrelated to the virus after testing positive, Sajid Javid has admitted.
On Wednesday, there were 359 deaths reported in Britain, but the Health Secretary said that “many” people were being included in the count who “would not have necessarily died of Covid”.
His comments came after death data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show a large discrepancy in weekly death registrations compared to the figures released on the Government dashboard.
For the week ending Jan 7, the UK Health Security Agency reported 1,282 deaths of people who had died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus.
However, ONS data show there were just 992 death registrations with Covid mentioned on the death certificate in that week.
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.
Covid was not the underlying cause of death in nearly a quarter of virus-related fatalities last week, official figures suggest.
The most up-to-date Office for National Statistics figures showed there were 922 deaths registered in England and Wales mentioned coronavirus on the death certificate in the week to January 7. Of them, Covid was not ruled to be the primary reason for the death in 210 cases, or 23 per cent — although it may have been a contributing factor.
For comparison, the share of deaths not primarily due to the virus stood at around 16 per cent when Omicron first arrived in the UK. With the Alpha wave last January, before the country embarked on its historic vaccination drive, the proportion was about 10 per cent.
The rise of the milder strain has led to a similar pattern emerging in hospitals, where nearly half of virus inpatients are not primarily needing treatment for the infection — compared to about 25 per cent with Delta.
EXCLUSIVE: UKHSA data shows infections are dropping in 96% of the country’s nearly 7,000 neighbourhoods
Parts of Castle Point, Shropshire and Bexley have seen infections fall by more than 70% week-on-week
And MailOnline analysis shows Omicron wave deaths were seven times lower than the peak last winter
Official figures show half as many Covid patients were in hospital at one time compared to the Alpha peak
And 4.5 times fewer patients were moved to critical care beds during the latest wave compared to last winter
Coronavirus cases are now falling in virtually every area of England, official figures show as the Omicron wave continues to collapse with deaths six times lower than in the second wave.
Some 6,519 out of 6,790 neighbourhoods (96 per cent) around the country recorded a fall in infections in the week to January 11, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
One of the checks and balances on rampant bad scientific research is to continuously assess how new ideas fit into the framework of the bigger picture. A new piece of information may seem perfectly reasonable and well-documented, but the domino effect of its implications gives you another way to test its validity. When multiple lines of seemingly rock-solid evidence contradict one another, that’s a good sign that something is wrong, even if you don’t yet know why. Whenever a thread seems out of place, it’s time to pull on that thread until you can figure out what exactly is going on.
…”Trusting the science” is not (and never has been) about trusting results or trusting experts. Trusting the scientists is what got us into this mess. For science to function properly, we must NOT trust the scientists. Instead, we must trust in the messy self-correcting process that allows truth to boil to the surface even if every participant in that process is flawed.
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of the Experts”
— Richard P. FeynmanScience is the relentless competition between measurable pieces of evidence, the ruthless gauntlet of debate, the willingness to question even the most “obvious” of assumptions, and the humbleness to test and retest any and all assumptions against hard evidence, most especially when those assumptions are our own.
https://www.juliusruechel.com/2022/01/who-do-you-trust-if-you-cant-trust.html
One of Britain’s most senior health advisers has been accused of disseminating “dodgy data” that inflated the potential risk of omicron.
Dr Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), is understood to have been the source of a contested claim by Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, that there is typically a 17-day lag between patients becoming infected and requiring hospitalisation.
However, independent experts pointed to Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, which suggested an average delay of nine or 10 days.
More than half of new ‘Omicron patients’ are actually people being treated in hospital for a different reason
These people are in hospital for physical injuries such as broken bones, heart attacks, or even routine care
Ministers are keeping a close eye on Covid hospital admissions as they weigh up imposing more restrictions
Two-thirds of new Covid hospital patients in England were actually admitted for a different ailment, MailOnline’s analysis of NHS data suggests – as a growing number of studies show Omicron is much milder than Delta.
In the two weeks to December 21, hospitals in England recorded 563 new coronavirus inpatients — the majority of which are believed to be Omicron now that the variant is the country’s dominant stain.
But just 197 (35 per cent) were being primarily treated for Covid, with the remaining 366 (65 per cent) only testing positive after being admitted for something else.
Fears the NHS could be overwhelmed with Omicron cases, one of the key concerns that spooked ministers into talk of Christmas lockdowns, appear to be unfounded based on the current data, it was claimed last night.
London’s hospitals have seen a spike in cases of patients with coronavirus, leading to fears hospitalisations are following the exponential increases seen with cases in recent weeks.
However, figures show up to 40 per cent of new Covid admissions in the past week only tested positive after arriving at hospital, possibly for a different illness or ailment.
For months the British public have been deceived with tales that there are just 5 million people in the United Kingdom who have refused to take up the offer of a Covid-19 vaccine. But today we can reveal that this is a lie.
It is a complete fabrication that has no doubt been used to make those who have refused the jab feel as if they are part of a minority, because an official UK Government report proves that in England alone there are approximately 23.5 million people who have not had a single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.
You asked
Please can you advise on deaths purely from covid with no other underlying causes.
We said
Thank you for your request.…Please see below for death registrations for 2020 and 2021 (provisional) that were due to COVID-19 and were recorded without any pre-existing conditions, England and Wales.
2020: 9400 (0-64: 1549 / 65 and over: 7851)
2021 Q1: 6483 (0-64: 1560/ 65 and over: 4923)
2021 Q2: 346 (0-64: 153/ 65 and over: 193)
2021 Q3: 1142 (0-64: 512/ 65 and over: 630)
The omicron epidemic is being driven by young, vaccinated people, according to mounting data from countries as diverse as the UK, Denmark and South Africa.
The new variant has now been detected in more than 60 countries, including 24 in Europe, with a similar pattern of infection and characteristics being reported across the globe.
…Data from Denmark – a world leader in genetic sequencing – shows that, of 3,437 omicron cases detected, just over 70 per cent have been among those younger than 40, according to the breakdown from the Statens Serum Institut published on Monday.
Some 75 per cent of these cases were in fully vaccinated individuals, the institute added, confirming that even the double jabbed can carry the virus.
Contrary to the claims made by Dr Rachel Clarke and Professor Stephen Powis last month and used to blame the unvaccinated for the mounting troubles of the NHS, new data out this week shows that the majority of Covid ICU admissions in October and November were among the vaccinated, not the unvaccinated.
The latest report from ICNARC shows that of Covid ICU patients in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 50.5% in October and 50.7% in November were double vaccinated. Add to that the 2.8% in October and 1.8% in November who were single-vaccinated and you get overall vaccinated proportions of 53.3% in October and 52.5% in November. That compares to 46.7% unvaccinated in October and 47.5% in November. Note that the unvaccinated here includes people who received a vaccine less than 14 days prior to the positive Covid test, so includes some (an unknown number) who are actually single vaccinated.
The UK is suffering a wave of excess deaths not fully explained by the coronavirus, according to official statistics.
There were 12,050 deaths registered in England and Wales in the seven days to November 12, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows. That was 1,719 more than the five-year average for 2015-19, or a 16.6 per cent increase.
High COVID-19 vaccination rates were expected to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in populations by reducing the number of possible sources for transmission and thereby to reduce the burden of COVID-19 disease. Recent data, however, indicate that the epidemiological relevance of COVID-19 vaccinated individuals is increasing.
…The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies four of the top five counties with the highest percentage of fully vaccinated population (99.9–84.3%) as “high” transmission counties.
Only six healthy children with no underlying health conditions died as a direct result of catching Covid during a 12-month window, NHS analysis has revealed.
Four died from Covid, while two developed a Kawasaki-like inflammatory condition called Pims-TS, caused by the virus.
The data calls into question the wisdom of closing schools and forcing children to spend months at home when the health risk to under-18s is so small.
Children ‘have 99.995 per cent chance’ of surviving virus
Categories
Health at a Glance 2021 – OECD
Health at a Glance provides a comprehensive set of indicators on population health and health system performance across OECD members and key emerging economies. These cover health status, risk factors for health, access to and quality of health care, and health resources. Analysis draws from the latest comparable official national statistics and other sources.
Alongside indicator-by-indicator analysis, an overview chapter summarises the comparative performance of countries and major trends. This edition also has a special focus on the health impact of COVID-19 in OECD countries, including deaths and illness caused by the virus, adverse effects on access and quality of care, and the growing burden of mental ill-health.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance_19991312
Commentary by The Daily Sceptic:
UK Life Expectancy in 2020 Was Still at 2010 Levels and Over 80, OECD Report Shows – The Daily Sceptic
Despite all the daily reports of deaths, the running total of over 165,000 Covid deaths, and the repeated lockdowns imposed to protect a health service ever on the brink of collapse, the country has experienced a mortality rate no worse than 2009. I don’t know about you, but I can remember 2009. I don’t recall any lockdowns and panicking, or coerced experimental medicine, or bodies piling up in the morgues. Yet it was a worse year for deaths than the great pandemic year of 2020. Let that sink in.
…The OECD analysis is in line with the analysis done in April by economist John Appleby writing in the BMJ. The chart below shows that age-standardised mortality in 2020 was lower than in 2008 and every year prior to it.
These prognosticators of doom have been wrong time after time after time. And not just a little bit wrong – epically wrong, all while morally condemning their more accurate opponents. As cases rose in early July, in the run-up to England’s full reopening on July 19, restrictions advocates said that it was inevitable we would reach 100,000 cases per day. Keir Starmer released a video statement in which he declared that “Boris Johnson’s recklessness means we’re going to have an NHS summer crisis. The Johnson Variant is already out of control.” A set of academics wrote a letter to The Lancet condemning the reopening as a “dangerous and unethical experiment”.
Why haven’t lockdowns worked? There are broadly two types of respiratory virus. There are those that spread person to person – like measles – in a continuous chain of transmission, uninterrupted by season and with every susceptible contact falling ill. Then there are those we do not understand so well, like influenza, which are much more complex. Instead of the simplistic close contact model, which assumes Covid spreads like measles, we should perhaps consider an alternative more sophisticated model based on influenza. The influenza virus model is unusual – it is predicated on the majority being exposed to a particular airborne virus but, oddly, only a minority appear to be susceptible to each year’s variant. To complicate matters further, influenza can also spread person to person.
The mortality data for England and Wales from ONS from 1 May 2021 until 17 September 2021 shows a significant excess, particularly in the 15-19 year age group. Depending on the baseline chosen, the excess for 15-19 year olds is between 16% and 47% above expected levels (see table 1 and 2). COVID-19 deaths were too small in number to account for the excess. A disproportionate number of these excess deaths were in males. A certain amount of variation by random chance would be expected but an increase of this proportion is large enough not to be dismissed without further investigation.
…Mortality has risen in younger age groups since 1st May 2021. The increase in the 15-19 year old age group is particularly noticeable, especially as deaths in this age group are uncommon. The excess deaths have a marked male predominance. An increase in ambulance call outs for patients who have had a cardiac arrest or are unconscious showed a coincidental noticeable rise from May 2021. The period also coincides with the rollout of vaccination. Finally, ONS have reported on a striking rise in age adjusted mortality rates in those with only one dose that accelerated in May 2021 to levels far exceeding those in the unvaccinated.
https://www.hartgroup.org/recent-deaths-in-young-people-in-england-and-wales/