The Lemon Fool

Is there any information about why UK death rates appear to have ratched up and stabilised at 300/day (110,000/year) rather than mirroring the falls in positivity and hospital admissions, as normally occurs ?

It's a rather depressing prospect - during lockdown it was ~10, out of lockdown with Delta it was ~100.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

Look across at the modelling board to see a graph of this phenomenon
https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.p ... 60#p476991
And some following discussion

There's been some change to the way they report, and also a lot of deaths may be coincidental
As the Beeb says;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274
As of 1 February, the reported daily deaths figure now includes people who have died after being infected for a second time. These people used to be removed from the totals.

It doesn't make much difference to the overall death toll (less than 1%) but it may complicate the trends in the weeks after the change takes effect.

Some of the recent rises in deaths could also be down to "coincidental" Covid: people who died within 28 days of a positive test for something other than Coronavirus.

With historically high numbers of cases, this "coincidental" figure would be expected to increase.

Daytona wrote:Is there any information about why UK death rates appear to have ratched up and stabilised at 300/day (110,000/year) rather than mirroring the falls in positivity and hospital admissions, as normally occurs ?

It's a rather depressing prospect - during lockdown it was ~10, out of lockdown with Delta it was ~100.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

I'd imagine it's a mixture of things.

Firstly (and mainly) there is a lot of it about.
This will cause more deaths due to COVID and also, at this stage in the pandemic, incidental deaths with COVID (this amount proportional to the amount of virus in the population)

I think the 28 days figure has been changed to include people reinfected with omicron; previously it had to be 28 days from your first ever positive test, but omicron with its significant reinfection capabilities required this to be updated. This will catch deaths that previously flew under the radar.

There is also the effects of waning efficiency of vaccines; as time goes on the likelihood of something bad happening increases, until it is reset by a booster.

....but in short it's likely just because there's so much of it around

-sd

Daytona wrote:Is there any information about why UK death rates appear to have ratched up and stabilised at 300/day (110,000/year) rather than mirroring the falls in positivity and hospital admissions, as normally occurs ?

It's a rather depressing prospect - during lockdown it was ~10, out of lockdown with Delta it was ~100.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

Right across the top of that page it has:

CHANGE TO METRIC 1 February 2022 — Deaths definition in England updated to align with revised cases definition More
CHANGE TO METRIC 31 January 2022 — Cases definition now includes multiple infection episodes More

mc2fool wrote:

Daytona wrote:Is there any information about why UK death rates appear to have ratched up and stabilised at 300/day (110,000/year) rather than mirroring the falls in positivity and hospital admissions, as normally occurs ?

It's a rather depressing prospect - during lockdown it was ~10, out of lockdown with Delta it was ~100.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

Right across the top of that page it has:

CHANGE TO METRIC 1 February 2022 — Deaths definition in England updated to align with revised cases definition More
CHANGE TO METRIC 31 January 2022 — Cases definition now includes multiple infection episodes More

Even so, does that change in metric really account for the tripling of deaths over Delta being reported currently?

Mike4 wrote:Even so, does that change in metric really account for the tripling of deaths over Delta being reported currently?

No, the greatly increased infectiousness of omicron does.

From around 1st Aug 2021 to 1st December 2021 yes there were around 100 deaths per day. (Although it actually spiked up to over 180.)

Over that period we were recording in the region of 30k-50k cases per day.

The recent peak was over 200k cases per day, and we are currently at around 100k.

More cases, more serious cases, more deaths.

murraypaul wrote:

Mike4 wrote:Even so, does that change in metric really account for the tripling of deaths over Delta being reported currently?

No, the greatly increased infectiousness of omicron does.

From around 1st Aug 2021 to 1st December 2021 yes there were around 100 deaths per day. (Although it actually spiked up to over 180.)

Over that period we were recording in the region of 30k-50k cases per day.

The recent peak was over 200k cases per day, and we are currently at around 100k.

More cases, more serious cases, more deaths.

This ^ with bells on
- the change in metrics counts for a (not insignificant) percentage
- the change in infectiousness counts for orders
log stuff has to be beaten in to you before it becomes almost normalized (even then I'm more comfortable with it in the S domain than talking about deaths)

-sd

If the virus is particularly widespead then a lot of people in hospital for other stuff will pick it up (hospitals being ideal infection incubators..) so there will be people passing away with Omicron where it wasn't a major contributory factor

servodude wrote:

murraypaul wrote: No, the greatly increased infectiousness of omicron does.

From around 1st Aug 2021 to 1st December 2021 yes there were around 100 deaths per day. (Although it actually spiked up to over 180.)

Over that period we were recording in the region of 30k-50k cases per day.

The recent peak was over 200k cases per day, and we are currently at around 100k.

More cases, more serious cases, more deaths.

This ^ with bells on
- the change in metrics counts for a (not insignificant) percentage
- the change in infectiousness counts for orders
log stuff has to be beaten in to you before it becomes almost normalized (even then I'm more comfortable with it in the S domain than talking about deaths)

-sd

Both the ONS and Zoe data also suggest that the "official" daily numbers are significantly underestimating the actual numbers of cases.

John

murraypaul wrote:
More cases, more serious cases, more deaths.

And you'd imagine there should be included in this series "more in ICU", well I would anyway.

But that nice Mr Harford on the wireless this afternoon said surprisingly, there are "almost none". (If I heard him right.)

Yet more evidence of something I think, but not really sure what. I guess it shows that everyone is dying of something else now, whilst infected with covid..?

Thanks guys, I've done some more research -

Adding in reinfections does not a 200% increase make -

"reinfections now representing around 10% of episodes per day" - UKHSA
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/covi ... infections

and a breakout chart of reinfections from todays indie_SAGE briefing -
https://youtu.be/21TKKKFfGYo?t=323

and consequently, neither does it explain the desynching of hospitalisations & deaths.

So it looks like more people are dying outside of hospitals.

Daytona wrote:Thanks guys, I've done some more research -

Adding in reinfections does not a 200% increase make -

"reinfections now representing around 10% of episodes per day" - UKHSA
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/covi ... infections

and a breakout chart of reinfections from todays indie_SAGE briefing -
https://youtu.be/21TKKKFfGYo?t=323

and consequently, neither does it explain the desynching of hospitalisations & deaths.

So it looks like more people are dying outside of hospitals.

Latest plots across on modelling board
https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.p ... 73#p478673