Steve Powis said in Sunday’s press briefing that scale of deaths outside hospital won’t be known for some time, but ONS already reported a figure almost 25% higher than government’s – and trusts have said deaths in hospital twice as high
During Sunday’s press briefing alongside Michael Gove, NHS medical director Steve Powis told journalists that the government will not know how many people are really dying of the coronavirus for ‘days and weeks’.
Currently the government is only reporting deaths that take place in hospital and among patients with a confirmed coronavirus test.
Many care homes are reporting multiple deaths among their residents – and NHS hospitals are being forced by capacity constraints to send infected, elderly patients back to care homes even though this will almost certainly mean infecting other, highly vulnerable residents.
Powis said that although the Office for National Statistics (ONS) had begun reporting deaths outside hospital, it would take a considerable time for the scale of non-hospital mortality to become clear:
But the ONS has already reported – and according to its figures, almost a quarter more people had died of COVID-19 than were being reported by the government, even before the crisis had really taken hold in the UK.
But that is only a small part of the story. NHS hospitals in London have told each other that the government is under-reporting deaths in hospital – and whistleblowers say the under-reporting is by half.
It is against this backdrop that Tory policies and lack of preparation in ventilators are forcing trusts to send people back to care homes unequipped to care for them – and as one health worker told the SKWAWKBOX last week:
Forcing hospitals to send infected people back into care homes with no means of containing the virus is going to infect residents and the people caring for them. It’s the equivalent of pulling the pin on a grenade and throwing it into a room full of elderly people.
That’s basically what the government is doing. Their failure to start preparations when they had the opportunity is killing people and their failure to prepare now is going to kill even more. It’s unforgivable.
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The clip you show purporting to be Sunday’s press briefing, was not from yesterday’s meeting. As Matt Hancock chaired that one.
My cousin is in hospital in Edinburgh with C-19. He’s asthmatic. We’ve been informed that the hospital have put a DNR on him. I’m not sure if this is with or without his consent. When his sister called the hospital told her he’d taken a turn for the worse. However, his brother calle him directly and my cousin said he’s no better and no worse.
There are reports of people out of hospital, being sent DNR forms and being asked to sign them.
Many with definite symptoms have died without having been tested. Nurses, doctors, nursing home residents & staff and people who have died out of hospital, have not been tested. Those are not included in the daily figures.
We need to check the difference in mortality numbers now, compared to previous years. Add to those, the deaths of many whose treatments have been deferred eg oncology. The reluctance to test is in keeping with an intention to deceive. The herd immunity approach was intended to put Hedge funds & Co raking it it, over and above the hundreds of thousands lives that would br lost. The most vulnerable poor were expected to be the main casualties. Preliminary figures prove just that. The relatively poor working class is expendable to Johnson & Cummings. Covid-19 may not be panning out exactly as they expected.
There will be a lengthy, and super expensive inquiry which will kick the issue into the long grass. It will not report before the two Tories Johnson & Starmer are out of office making millions like WMD Blair. It will apportion no blame to those responsible. The inquiry will repeat the phrase “in hindsight…” The persons who conduct the inquiry will be sir and/or lady this and that.
Those who keep shtum will be thrown a peerage or other baubles. Compliance is cheap and expensive at the same time. The true cost includes lives which need not have been lost. 🌹🌹🌹
One thing worth pointing out is that the government trails suggesting that Covid-19 is an unusually dangerous disease *for the entire population* (see on your tele every day) is supported by no evidence whatsover. The risk is massively biased by age and pre-existing conditions.
“We need to check the difference in mortality numbers now, compared to previous years.”
Absolutely.
… and figures will always have a time lag.
Currently, there is no evidence that Covid-19 is a notably lethal disease in comparative terms, and that mortality rates tend to be *over*-estimated.
For an examination of the problems in the data :
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-to-understand-and-report-figures-for-covid-19-deaths-
For available contextual historical and current data across Europe :
https://www.euromomo.eu/outputs/zscore_country15.html
… and for contextual data comparing with UK all deaths and ‘flu/pneumonia deaths :
http://inproportion2.talkigy.com
In terms of European monitoring, Sweden is interesting. With the caveat about data delay, it’s refusal to implement total lockdown (it has stuck with social distancing and hygeine measures) is not currently associated with any observable increase of mortality.
No RH, when the trumpet sounds, the Covid-19 mortality rates will be found to have been GROSSLY underestimated. Would you like to put a bet on it ??? When the figures are compared, both the overt and covert deaths for the period January 2020 to January 2021, I predict a considerable increase over the previous year. That is why we urgently need Labour to be true to the values of Tony Benn, Ken Loach, Chris Williamson, Rossen, George Galloway, et all. Otherwise Johnson & Cummings callousness will continue. 🌹🌹🌹
Can you point me to the data that your bet is based on, signpost? I can’t find any hard sources that indicate this scenario at present.
The one thing that does worry me is that this lockdown may extend the life of the virus in the community before immunity overtakes it, thus producing a further wave of infection.
No RH. Think. Analyse what you observe. Find your own data and place your bet. Winnings to St Thomas’ Hospital would be my pref. But you r free to suggest otherwise. Place your bet.
Re: your statement of a further wave post shutdown – I believe that would be scenario because of Johnson, Cummings & Co’s POLITICAL CHOICES. 1️⃣ Decision not to test ALL frontline staff, including Care-home and social care staff. ➕ All supermarket staff, GP surgeries. Any area with high “social interaction”. ➕ Prison environment, which is now privatised, but prison is a hotbed of infection… an incubator of physical and social disease. Prisoners have significant others outside prison.
2️⃣ Failure to screen at our air and seaports. In particular, cruise ship ports and LHR. Cruise ships have long been a fertile breeding space for eg Noravirus. LHR one of the busiest international and national air intersection. Up to a month ago, Johnson, Cummings & Tory Co allowed around 8 Airbus A380s to go to and fro to DBX … or is it DXB Dubai, the busiest international air intersection, linking the entire world. Johnson failed to order thorough screening with forward and backwards tracing.
3️⃣ Johnson, Cummings and Tory Co, deliberately failed … ie WILFUL NEGLECT to ensure proper Visors, face masks, gowns, and foot covers available ASAP in adequate numbers for ALL at the forefront of looking after patients. Johnson and Cummings say they were following science. THAT IS A LIE. Science is logical. And takes note of best practice and observations elsewhere. You replicate what works. We had over THREE MONTHS warning of the outbreak in China. Furthermore, the Tories hid the outcomes of the last preparedness “run” in 2016. It showed the country was unprepared. Jeremy Hunt the anti-health health sec rejected recommendation to correct this. Cameron, the molester of dead pig’s heads, failed. Theresa May failed to overrule the Hunt. They were all happy to be “UNPREPARED”. It suited their ideological purpose. DIVIDENDS trump LIVES. Lives are TRUMPED by spending on the vulnerable. The sick, the old, the disabled, the poor ate a burden to Tories. Workers who keep the country working are two a penny with zero hour contracts. There is an infinite supply of them.
REECE MOGG’s Hedge Fund see the pandemic as an opportunity for unprecedented gains. MSM presenters were saying yesterday that nothing was wrong with that as it is the purpose of hedge funds to make profits. Those who can, please scour Talkradio and LBC listen again. As so much was happening, i did not note it. It was between 10:00 and 16:00 hours on both days. But not 12-1500 hrs on LBC as i don’t listen to that full shameless propaganda trash. Plus it is v v v noisy. If anyone is good track down the weekend presenter who reacted to the Reece Mogg’s confirmation of callousness, that. Would be brill. 🌹🌹🌹
RH: “Can you point me to the data that your bet is based on, signpost? I can’t find any hard sources that indicate this scenario at present.”
Coz only the ‘hardest’ of sources will convince RH, right?
InProportion2 @ talkigy dot com/about:
“I am a private individual from the UK, a former architect (RIBA) who has had a long career in information technology working with data and numbers. I am not a scientist nor medic.”
Even the officially released figures are concerning.
Up until yesterday (Sunday) the official number of serious/critical cases had stood at 163 for eight consecutive days and suddenly shot up to over 1550.
The latter figure is closer to the known average reported from China of only 4.7% of cases requiring critical care. Whilst the lower figure was always untenable.
More worryingly are the UK closed cases figures compared to those of other countries. There are only two outcomes to a closed case; either recovery/discharge or death.
Leaving aside the important issue of discharges of elderly or other vulnerable cases to care homes etc the official figures for numbers recovered has again stood at a low 135 for the past nine consecutive days.
In that time the UK recovered/death rate has dropped from 10%/90% down to 3%/97%. As of yesterday apart from Holland (currently 12%/88%) and Ireland (15%/85%) most other countries, including not just France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Canada, USA, and Australia but also Iran, Iraq, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Brazil are way above the UK on this metric over hat eight day period.
Which is in effect the official survival rate metric.
An appalling figure before ever consideration is even taken of any unrecorded cases not making it to hospital or premature discharges of vulnerable patients back into the community (care or own homes).
It’s also worth noting that up until 16 March (when Johnson made his first TV address) the UK daily case figures were tracking slightly above the published average daily increase of 33%. Since then they have been mostly well below that average suggesting either the UK is coping better than elsewhere or that the figures, as suggested in this article and elsewhere, are under recorded and therefore skewed.
We know from the data from China that the number of known cases in the early weeks are a fraction of the true existing cases. Which only catch up later on the time line when those cases either report for treatment or are actively captured in the data as a result of dedicated teams tracking cases and breaking the contagion chains.
That is clearly not occurring in the UK with anywhere near the same level of effectiveness and efficiency. Which means we are unlikely to ever know the true/real number of cases except by means of a statistical guess.
You won’t know anything until the truth is told, then people who played a part in this should go to prison
Only God can judge
Vic
Trouble is – he’s a Tory 🙂
And a figment of the imagination.
Vic, sadly they won’t go to prison. They never do. When we had a chance of prosecuting Tony Blair for lying to parliament to invade Iraq, the PLP in the main, absented themselves, abstained and even voted against. Most heartbreakingly to me, was that some if not all of the PLP front bench found other “important” things to do. When discussing this last October, i was told by someone big in one of the unions… “busy writing policies”, that they “would have been absent for hood reason”. “It would have been important”. Well today is proof we must sharpen up on what we consider ”important”.
There is a saying. The devil finds work for idle hands to do. Another is “Nature abhors a vacuum”. The failure to even try to keep the 45 minute merchant of lies, busy fighting against prosecution and conviction, was a catastrophic failure of insight, decisiveness and a true rootedness in reality… this world here and now. By failing to act promptly to neutralise the war criminal WMD Tony Blair, allowed the creature to scheme with Arsetair Campbellend, Mandelson, Straw. It was obvious. I remain amazed.
Forgot to say, Alex Salmond stuck his neck out. He took the risk to bring the motion to prosecute the WAR CRIMINAL Tony Blair. Why did the PLP especially the front bench not support Salmons’s motion? I am neither fan nor foe of Alex Salmond, but why was the opportunity to bring WMD Blair to justice squandered? It is pointless to join protests for justice and not stand up and act here at home. Opportunities to pursue justice should never be wasted again.🌹🌹🌹
The truth is written by the victors.
One thing that should be noted is that the government ‘trails’ about Covid-19 being a particularly lethal disease for the *entire population* is based on no data at all.
There is a very strong bias towards those over-65 and those with pre-existing conditions, or a combination of both.
Which raises the question of ‘Why the scary fiction?’ An honest statement would simply focus on the need to protect the vulnerable and the demand on the health services.
… and note the IFS on the effects of this lockdown :
“The low-paid, young people and women are likely to be the hardest hit by the coronavirus shutdown of businesses including restaurants, hotels, pubs, retailers and transport services.”
… and the following about Rees Mogg’s firm :
“Somerset Capital Management (SCM), which manages investments in emerging markets, told clients that the dive in stock market valuations around the world since the pandemic took hold had made “excellent entry points for investors”.
Now that’s what I call reliable and logical data!
We will only know the true figure, after the inquiry that follows the pandemic — except of course, that there will be no proper investigation. Will the government really want to criticise themselves? Many of those that died with different symptoms to those in hospital, are now in the ground or cremated– will the public public accept mass exhumations.? We only need to look back to the initial HIV outbreak to realise that large numbers of people can die with their symptoms unrecognised. Those dying from auto-immune syndrome, will not be registered in the figures for Covid. The figure 25% of the total not diagnosed in the community would represent the number of women not figuring in the hospital statistics. Covid appears to kill more men than women, but this might be an illusion. However, the chance to correct the data is clearly slipping away.
Lies….damned lies & ……….we will never know the figures because most coviid19 deaths will never be registered…….don’t get too close to the body. Assumptions will be made & no-one will question. preferred conclusions & figures. Who died of Covid 19; who died of pneumonia; who died of respiratory failure due to asthma etc?