The Highest Excess Mortality Rate in Europe

Also I'd like to add the hospitals turning people away from care homes isn't quite correct.

One of the homes my wife works in has a resident with breathing difficulties that she has suffered with for many years. She took a particularly bad turn about 10 or so days and was taken to hospital.
The resident returned back to the care home yesterday with a negative covid-19 test. Now I'm not saying some residents of care homes aren't been taken to hospital but unless you know their personal care plan then you cannot comment on the reasons why.
Randy, you have a point, but you absoloutely cannot use one example either. That adds nothing. Lots of folks do this and we all apply our own experience when understanding a situation. That is natural, but it does mean you are getting only a very small view of the entirety.
 
You are missing the point, when the deaths were high they were top of the agenda on every news website.
Now they are lowering every day for the past few days the daily death rate is no longer important to them

Sure the media have been asking for months for the correct figures to be given? And the daily death toll is the top story on pretty much every news website each day so I would say this is still fairly important to them, haven't seen any news outlet stop reporting death figures yet
 
Randy, you have a point, but you absoloutely cannot use one example either. That adds nothing. Lots of folks do this and we all apply our own experience when understanding a situation. That is natural, but it does mean you are getting only a very small view of the entirety.

I agree with you. Just counteracting the argument that people think everybody who lives in a care home isnt getting medical treatment. The same people also seem to believe that catching the virus automatically means you are going to hospital, you will be put on a ventilator and you will then die, forgetting that dying from other causes is still much more likely than dying from covid-19.
 
I knew I shouldn't have led with PPE...

My original post was having a go at the press and the reporting of all of these things rather than a defence of government. You will notice that I agreed that they are all valid concerns but the thread is asking why we have the highest excess deaths in Europe and I was trying to make a point that the 100+ NHS deaths are not the cause of those highest figures but the media are currently on a PPE campaign. My ventilator point was to show that they originally covered that hourly and they have now stopped when it has been found to not be a major issue. Once PPE stocks are adequate they will move onto the next scandal.
 
Admittedly I've not read this whole thread but with all of the bashing and blaming there are some facts that people ignore.

1. Not enough PPE. True and it isn't good enough but wouldn't have any real impact on the number of deaths.
2. Not enough ventilators. Only an issue when we reach capacity which we avoided so wasn't an issue so didn't cause excess deaths.
3. Underfunded NHS for 10 years. True again but we haven't exceeded capacity so isn't a cause of excess deaths.
4. Not enough critical care beds. Again, we aren't at capacity, we even have brand new hospitals built that have no patients.
5. Not enough tests. An issue which has key workers off work unnecessarily which again isn't a cause of excess deaths because we haven't exceeded capacity.
6. Deaths in Care Homes. Social care is underfunded, always has been. This is an issue. There have been suggestions people have been dying in care homes instead of being sent to hospital because hospitals can't cope though which is false. There are just more people in care homes that are in the demographic that are vulnerable to the virus and so that's why there have been more deaths there.

The media have blown a lot of things out of proportion. Things that are issues but haven't been the cause for excess deaths but they need scandals to keep the news interesting because there is nothing else going on for them to report on. We actually have empty hospitals and doctors, nurses and healthcare workers with no work because we have cancelled everything else. That will have knock-on effects that could be worse than covid itself.

So, why have we had more deaths than other countries? It's hard to say. We are almost certainly recording deaths differently, there isn't an international standard. There is no way China have only had the deaths they claim for example. We are a hub, people from all over the world come here, London especially. The transport situation there is mostly public so close quarters and more likely to get the virus. The public refuse to adhere to the guidelines. Maybe we weren't strict enough with lockdown.

There are certainly things that the government have failed at but the majority of those things haven't been the cause of excess deaths. We will only really know after seeing annual figures whether deaths were excess or whether the early rise in the year is offset by lower deaths later in the year. Obviously people dying early is terrible but if the measures we have put in place mean we have the same number of deaths as we would have done anyway then you could argue that it was dealt with appropriately. That will only be possible once it is all over though.

1. Do you not think adequate PPE would have stopped some of the NHS workers who became infected and either suffered illness themselves or passed it on to others ?

2. If we had treat all care home sufferers we would have exceeded the available ventilator capacity.

3. We stopped other treatments, cancer care, non critical care etc so we didn’t exceed capacity so your point is incorrect, the surge of admissions for COVID would have exceeded capacity in normal circumstances.

4. The new hospital in London has turned away more people than it has treat because of a lack of staff, a facility can only be used if the infrastructure is there to support it.

5. We will have had asymptomatic shedders spreading the disease to people who subsequently died, that would not have happened if they had been tested.

6. No people have been left in care homes with no treatment beyond palliative care, the option of hospital is not open to them, to suggest otherwise is simply wrong.

You explain yourself in this paragraph why capacity hasn’t been exceeded and the potential of additional deaths through that policy. When we have 1000’s of deaths a week from a virus, the country in lockdown and all sorts of things going on related to Covid-19 and the handling of it I think to say it’s press overreaction isn’t fair.

Yeah countries like France are including their care home deaths in their figures, we aren’t so we are underreporting, London is only a hub if you keep
allowing people into the country, that was a government decision that will have spread further infection. Public transport is going to have an impact of course, but London isn’t the only city with that problem. Who is responsible for lockdown and it’s enforcement?

And if the death rate is higher at the end of the year and we don’t speak up now what then ?
 
I knew I shouldn't have led with PPE...

My original post was having a go at the press and the reporting of all of these things rather than a defence of government. You will notice that I agreed that they are all valid concerns but the thread is asking why we have the highest excess deaths in Europe and I was trying to make a point that the 100+ NHS deaths are not the cause of those highest figures but the media are currently on a PPE campaign. My ventilator point was to show that they originally covered that hourly and they have now stopped when it has been found to not be a major issue. Once PPE stocks are adequate they will move onto the next scandal.
In this assertion you are right Boromike. The press reporting has always been sensational, that sells papers. They will report what they believe people want to read, and with online heatmaps and click tracking they are, very likely, right.

Doom and gloom always sells better than good news. I would add that there is very little good news about covid-19 though.
 
1. Do you not think adequate PPE would have stopped some of the NHS workers who became infected and either suffered illness themselves or passed it on to others ?

2. If we had treat all care home sufferers we would have exceeded the available ventilator capacity.

3. We stopped other treatments, cancer care, non critical care etc so we didn’t exceed capacity so your point is incorrect, the surge of admissions for COVID would have exceeded capacity in normal circumstances.

4. The new hospital in London has turned away more people than it has treat because of a lack of staff, a facility can only be used if the infrastructure is there to support it.

5. We will have had asymptomatic shedders spreading the disease to people who subsequently died, that would not have happened if they had been tested.

6. No people have been left in care homes with no treatment beyond palliative care, the option of hospital is not open to them, to suggest otherwise is simply wrong.

You explain yourself in this paragraph why capacity hasn’t been exceeded and the potential of additional deaths through that policy. When we have 1000’s of deaths a week from a virus, the country in lockdown and all sorts of things going on related to Covid-19 and the handling of it I think to say it’s press overreaction isn’t fair.

Yeah countries like France are including their care home deaths in their figures, we aren’t so we are underreporting, London is only a hub if you keep
allowing people into the country, that was a government decision that will have spread further infection. Public transport is going to have an impact of course, but London isn’t the only city with that problem. Who is responsible for lockdown and it’s enforcement?

And if the death rate is higher at the end of the year and we don’t speak up now what then ?
Do you have a source for point 4?
Because from what I've read it's because the hospitals in London have handled the 'surge' so the nightingale hasn't been needed. Also staff are still on 'stand by'.

Point 6, have you seen every personal care plan of these residents who live in care homes and have died in them? Do you know the average amount of time a person lives in a full time fully assisted care home? 11 months.

Also estimates coming out this morning that this "lockdown" will cause 18,000 deaths from cancer. That is shocking.

https://careappointments.com/care-n...die-from-cancer-due-to-covid-19-impact-study/
 
Source for point 4

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...es-nightingale-hospital-to-turn-away-patients

No I haven’t seen the personal care plan for every patient in care homes but I have a niece, cousin and a couple of friends who work within that sector in different establishments that have all suffered deaths, that life expectancy is considerably shortened if you don’t receive proper medical treatment.

The point on cancer deaths is well made, these people will not be counted as excess deaths in the figures but the priority of care has meant that had the hospitals been able to support a full service and not compromised its support then in some cases they would have survived.
 
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I'm a believer that they built these extra hospitals because they didn't want to see the same scenes we saw in northern Italy and parts of Spain with overcrowded corridors etc. But that hasn't seemed to have happened here with the relevant people even coming out and having to tell people that hospitals are open for things other than covid-19 cases.

The nurse shortage for nightingale hospitals is media spin.
https://www.hsj.co.uk/service-desig...ly-empty-as-icus-handle-surge/7027398.article

Plus I know of two close acquaintances that were put on stand by for the hospital on Harrogate.

Life expectancy when you move into a care home is short anyways Mary, that's just a fact that was the case before this crisis and will be the same afterwards. If their life expectancy wasn't so short they would still be at home and not forking out thousands of pounds a month for care. Now that's not an excuse for the deaths, but when my wife tells me that certain resident care plans have orders that they must not be taken to hospital for example for whatever reason there will be thousands more in the same boat.

When do we start worrying about those not affected by the virus but dying from other means connected to the current situation? Lack of cancer treatments, strokes, heart attacks, suicides, domestic abuse killings? When do they get daily graphs and running death totals?
 
Nobody mentioned the Nightingale hospitals. Fantastic effort IMO.
We saw what was happening in Italy with them being overloaded and responded accordingly...

Looks like they might not be required BUT NOBODY'S MENTIONED it. And people have the gall to saw it's not political !

Not true Nobby. A number of us have said ‘great job’ on putting Nightingale, and other new hospitals up from scratch.
 
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I'm a believer that they built these extra hospitals because they didn't want to see the same scenes we saw in northern Italy and parts of Spain with overcrowded corridors etc. But that hasn't seemed to have happened here with the relevant people even coming out and having to tell people that hospitals are open for things other than covid-19 cases.

The nurse shortage for nightingale hospitals is media spin.
https://www.hsj.co.uk/service-desig...ly-empty-as-icus-handle-surge/7027398.article

Plus I know of two close acquaintances that were put on stand by for the hospital on Harrogate.

Life expectancy when you move into a care home is short anyways Mary, that's just a fact that was the case before this crisis and will be the same afterwards. If their life expectancy wasn't so short they would still be at home and not forking out thousands of pounds a month for care. Now that's not an excuse for the deaths, but when my wife tells me that certain resident care plans have orders that they must not be taken to hospital for example for whatever reason there will be thousands more in the same boat.

When do we start worrying about those not affected by the virus but dying from other means connected to the current situation? Lack of cancer treatments, strokes, heart attacks, suicides, domestic abuse killings? When do they get daily graphs and running death totals?

I absolutely agree that building the Nightingale hospitals was the correct decision, to be fair the article you quote doesn’t mention staff availability but does mention tight criteria for admittance which may have played a part in some patients being refused admission, my understanding was had the other other units had full admissions there would have been a real issue in staffing Nightingale London, thankfully that hasn’t fully materialised.

I totally understand that but it’s not all cases and it’s those who wanted treatment and may have responded to it that didn’t get it that are relevant to this situation, if beds were available and consent for treatment was present why wasn’t admission to hospital and treatment forthcoming ?

I’m absolutely on the same page as you there Randy, for me there is a concerted effort to prioritise Covid patients as those figures are the headlines, extra deaths of other causes indirectly linked to Covid are seemingly collateral damage.
 
I don't know AM. I'm sure there are lots of things the public aren't been told and will never be told until there is a full public enquiry.

I do know that for as much negative news this virus has caused it isn't a world ending event.
 
I have deliberately kept out of this thread. So I do not know whether this site have been mentioned here. As a place for comparing stats from across Europe.

https://www.euromomo.eu/

Apologies if someone has posted this already here.

Back to keeping away again now.
 
I get this I do, but what exactly do you want to happen right now?

On the subject of PPE, why aren't NHS management getting dragged over the coals like the government is? On the subject of care homes why aren't the private owners of these care homes that make up 80% in this country getting slaughtered in the press? Why aren't the Chinese government getting flogged and questioned about why they let this virus loose worldwide?

The whole crisis has been politicised since Boris announced the pubs were shutting and that's a disgrace to the people who have passed away due to this virus.

There will be race all day Wednesday to draw the best graph to make sure we become the number one country in the world for deaths and infections due to covid-19 no matter what it takes. Sounds bonkers right? Well that's the impression I'm getting recently.

NHS management aren't getting put over the coals because they get given £1 to buy £2's worth of gear, get their staff numbers cut by 20% and then just told to make do. Then when they try and buy the gear they need, or get more staff, it/ they don't exist as our government said we didn't need/ want it.

How can anyone be expected to prepare for our Pandemic response, when the government couldn't even prepare themselves, and loads of them responsible hadn't even read the report!!! Based on the flaws the government actually did notice and highlighted themselves, they did absolutely zero about it, zero gowns in stockpiles and not enough masks, how can anyone else be expected to make up for that colossal fcuckup. It's like blaming a passenger for the car crashing, just because they were in the car, you might want to question the drink driver instead.

How can a care home be majorly responsible when tons of the general population are infected that surround and visit them? They have next to zero authority to just do what they like medically, like what a hospital could (if it was funded, or given supplies). The staff also either don't have the training, or are incapable of being trained at that level, but that's all that's available. There's a mass shortage of nurses who are on terrible money, so who the hell would want to work for a place that can only pay even less? You're saying the tree in the middle of the Forrest fire is at fault, yet they have nowhere to go.

The nurses employed by the NHS, effectively the government and those on the covid wards are being told to work when there's pretty much a 100% chance of being infected, it's practically manslaughter or GBH and there's certainly no danger pay. That's why people are whinging at the government, and highlighting our horrendous graphs as the performance in each of them is a joke. This was all caused by a delayed and $hitty lock-down, that wasn't specific or firm enough. You're actually complaining about people complaining, but those on your side are the same types of people that support that moron government who were sick of experts. We just wanted you and the government to listen to the experts, the actual experts who know about these things and react to them. Our "experts" or "the science" as they are now called, are obviously clueless, or being steered in a money saving direction, rather than a people saving direction. The world has shown them, that by saving the people, the infection will slow so far that it becomes containable, which in turn helps the economy. This "herd immunity" is still in action, but the way it's dragging on is going to damage our economy and cost a lot more lives than locking down two weeks earlier and coming out of lock-down two weeks earlier (whenever that is).

Is it the Chinese government that tell the Chinese people to eat weird stuff, and trade them at illegal markets? A nation of that size is bound to do things slightly different to the rest of the world, It's a developing nation, we also did some pretty rotten/ bad stuff when we were developing too. It's not like corona-viruses originated in China, look at the USA for that back in the 1930's. Yes, this one strain probably did, but seeing as they have about 1/5 of the worlds population, things are going to happen there, it's a statistical fact.
Their people/government managed to spot it, lock down, contain, test, track and be well on their way to recovery all within the same time it's took us to even reach our peak. They did all that with next to no notice, and they're all back at work now, like it's normal. The world should be following exactly what the Chinese did to contain it, you can't just blame them for a disease occurring in their country, it's happened to every developing nation in the world.

Boris doing a press conference on Friday afternoon to announce the pubs close on Friday night has to go down as one of the biggest **** ups the world has ever known. He might as well have just said "go on your last night bender lads!". He is either to dumb to realise that's what people would do, or he's a absolute cretin who wanted more people infected for his herd immunity b***ks.

You say "draw the best graph", like the numbers/ lines are being manipulated to make things look worse for us? We don't need to do that, there's tons of word sites with independent graphs and anyone that can read one can see we're doing/ have done a crap job.
 
Why is then that the care home company my missus works for has enough PPE for all of their assisted living care homes around the country?

You also assume Wev that one I'm a fan of the current government and two that I was against the special measures. Both of which are incorrect. The special measures aren't a lockdown or a quarantine at all, I wish the media would stop saying it. We should have stricter controls which I've spoken about before and got shouted down for.
If you truly believe the figures that China have posted then thats your prerogative but when compared to the other 180+ countries in the world with covid-19 cases it's bleeding obvious they are full of ****. The most populated country on the planet, with 1.4 BILLION people living there only having 82,000 cases and 4500 deaths is bull**** and you know it.
 
It's not like corona-viruses originated in China
Corona viruses have been around for thousands of years. They have a particular problem in China with wet markets, but it's questionable that is the source of this particular virus. Bats (believed to be the origin) are not sold in the Wuhan wet market that is accused of starting the pandemic according to eye witnesses.

Bats are researched in the Wuhan virology labs. Apparently the horseshoe bat colonies found 200km away from Wuhan are breeding grounds for a variety of corona viruses, and this topic is a research specialty of the only Bio-level 4 lab in China in Wuhan. A lab that has multiple reports of poor practice. And internal Chinese studies have said that the lead researcher has at least twice had to quarantine himself after accidents handling infected bats.

Their people/government managed to spot it, lock down, contain, test, track and be well on their way to recovery all within the same time it's took us to even reach our peak
I recommend being sceptical about any news coming out of China - in fact any news at all. Independent witnesses believe the death toll in Wuhan alone is at least 40,000.

you can't just blame them for a disease occurring in their country
True. But you can blame them for lying to the WHO, and for the WHO lying to the world all the way until late January. The fist patient was at least December 8th (and probably earlier), but China lied about person to person contact for 6 weeks during which the virus spread like wildfire in Wuhan. China eventually locked down Wuhan, including stopping all internal flights, but astonishingly allowed international flights from Wuhan until much later. It was that inaction that allowed the virus to spread around the world. The fact every other country (except Taiwan) believed the complete BS coming out of the WHO obviously didn't help.
 
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Here is a 2 1/2 minute video from the Sky news site last night showing the figures in a slightly different way.

I am not going to comment on this video. Apart from saying that Sky point out that there is no specific documented reason for the additional deaths (over and above the ones documented as coronavirus).

I will leave people to draw their own conclusions.

https://news.sky.com/video/coronavirus-how-many-people-are-dying-of-covid-19-11980197


I watched this and I'm a bit confused - looks to me like the reference points on the graph are weekly totals whereas this year's line is cumulative. Is that right or am I missing something?
 
But you can blame them for lying to the WHO, and for the WHO lying to the world all the way until late January.
Firstly how do you know they lied to the WHO? Or did they just fail to correctly identify the nature of this virus?

Secondly, if the Chinese were lying to the WHO, how exactly were the WHO lying? Surely they were only repeating what the Chinese said?

China lied about person to person contact for 6 weeks during which the virus spread like wildfire in Wuhan
Again, did they lie or fail to understand?

Wuhan locked down on January 23rd, we did nothing, two months later we locked down and even then the instructions were confusing. Many people, myself included were already avoiding going to social events like gigs or football matches. Ireland cancelled St. Patrick's day celebrations and closed schools whilst we were allowing Cheltenham to take place and fans from Athletico Madrid to attend a match in Liverpool.

China's failure or guilt does not absolve this Government from resposibility for its inaction and lack of clarity in instructions to the populace. It does not excuse them from lack of preparedness, it does not excused them from inadequate provision of PPE, it does not excuse them from failure to identify the threat and it does not allow them to avoid explaining their dalliance with "herd immunity". As The Sunday Times opined this government "sleepwalked" into this crisis.
 
I watched this and I'm a bit confused - looks to me like the reference points on the graph are weekly totals whereas this year's line is cumulative. Is that right or am I missing something?
Look at the graphs from 1 minute onwards. On these 2 graphs everything is weekly deaths (he says so). The blobs are all of the figure going back to 1970 (I think he said). The black line is weekly deaths for 2020, not cumulative deaths. After that he makes an adjustment for weekly deaths based on the fact that there are more people in the country now compared with earlier. So the chart changes to weekly deaths per 100,000 people. Again the weekly deaths for 2020 are much higher than historical figures.
 
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