IOM Covid removing restrictions

[thesultanofsheight]

6 minutes ago, HeliX said:

I'm gonna have to ask for a source...

It’s plastered all over the UK website 

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

Number of deaths of people who had had a positive test result for COVID-19 and died within 28 days of the first positive test. The actual cause of death may not be COVID-19 in all cases. People who died from COVID-19 but had not tested positive are not included and people who died from COVID-19 more than 28 days after their first positive test are not included. Data from the four nations are not directly comparable as methodologies and inclusion criteria vary.

Edited October 6, 2020 by thesultanofsheight

[HeliX]

4 minutes ago, trmpton said:

Yes it is.  A positive COVID test in the 28 days prior to death and you count as a Covid death.  Everyone is tested on hospital admission, so the figures are pants.

In a confusing move, the UK Gov website does back this up, but then claims that that's not how they're reporting the deaths:
"The total number of deaths reported in the daily numbers is less than the total number of deaths registered with COVID-19 on the death certificate, so the numbers reported have not generally been an over estimate."

They don't say how they get to the lesser figure...

[trmpton]

6 minutes ago, HeliX said:

I'm gonna have to ask for a source...

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/coronavirus-excess-deaths-involving-covid-19-rise-for-third-week-in-a-row-ons-says-12091464
 

 

[HeliX]

Just now, thesultanofsheight said:

It’s plastered all over the UK website 

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

Number of deaths of people who had had a positive test result for COVID-19 and died within 28 days of the first positive test. The actual cause of death may not be COVID-19 in all cases. People who died from COVID-19 but had not tested positive are not included and people who died from COVID-19 more than 28 days after their first positive test are not included. Data from the four nations are not directly comparable as methodologies and inclusion criteria vary.

I thought the WHO guidelines suggested only using deaths that were "clinically compatible" with COVID-19 rather than just time-based?

Of course it's difficult to know how big the overestimate is. The odds of dying on any given day from something are pretty low, so I suppose in that respect the chances are if you die within 28 days of a COVID-19 diagnosis, on balance it is likely to be the disease killing you. Seems daft not to eliminate things that were clearly unrelated though.

[wrighty]

8 minutes ago, HeliX said:

I'm gonna have to ask for a source...

It is true, and up until a few months ago the ‘within the past 28 days’ condition was ‘ever’, such that had they not changed it eventually there’d be 500000 covid deaths, or whatever the positive test count currently is. 

[trmpton]

10 minutes ago, HeliX said:

On the other hand though, all it would take is a few tourists needing ICU at the same time and we'd find ourselves in an absolute PR shitstorm. To be honest, I don't think tourism is the right way to go to keep the economy alive during this pandemic.

But the chances of that are minuscule of they had to provide a negative test certificate prior to arrival, say isolate for three days (with room service, lovely room etc) then further test and out and about.

There is a very slight risk that we might introduce some cases (get them to retest very 48 hours for the first 10 days they are here) but imho the potential rewards outweigh the tiny risk.  The long term positives to the economy, to a boost in new residents, and to our worldwide reputation could be huge.

Edited October 6, 2020 by trmpton

[HeliX]

20 minutes ago, wrighty said:

It is true, and up until a few months ago the ‘within the past 28 days’ condition was ‘ever’, such that had they not changed it eventually there’d be 500000 covid deaths, or whatever the positive test count currently is. 

According to the internet(!) it was reduced from 60 days to 28. Still seems somewhat bizarre not to further filter it by clinically compatible deaths (pneumonia, heart attack, etc). But then, so does tracking the stats in Excel.

[rachomics]

5 hours ago, Roger Mexico said:

It depends what you mean by 'mutated'.  The genetic material of the virus will be changing slightly all the time, as is true with any organism, and different lines/lineages of the virus will develop. This is useful to scientists because it means they can track the virus back through its 'ancestry' and it gives an idea of who caught it from whom - if not down to the individual, you can group cases into 'clusters' and see if something is a new outbreak.

 

This is correct, and we are in the middle of sequencing the viral genomes of all the cases from the first outbreak. I have ethical approval to analyse this data alongside contact tracing and antibody test data to gain an overall picture of the first outbreak. This will tell us things like how many unique introductions of the virus came into the Island, roughly when (because the mutations act like a clock that we can track back in time) and the geographical origin. It should also inform whether there are links between clusters of patients that contact tracing did not detect (possibly because of patients not being entirely truthful or not remembering). This should help the policy-makers should we see a second wave of community transmission on the Island. 

[trmpton]

36 minutes ago, HeliX said:

 The odds of dying on any given day from something are pretty low, so I suppose in that respect the chances are if you die within 28 days of a COVID-19 diagnosis, on balance it is likely to be the disease killing you.

I would suggest that the odds of dying within 28 days of a hospital admission that means you have to have a Covid test even if you weren’t display any Covid symptoms are significantly higher than the odds of just dying on a given day.

[WTF]

57 minutes ago, thesultanofsheight said:

Yes, if you had a positive Covid test in the last 28 days for the purposes of official UK statistics technically you died of Covid regardless of what actually killed you. 

even if you get run over by a bus ?

[trmpton]

3 minutes ago, WTF said:

even if you get run over by a bus ?

Yep

[TheTeapot]

By using that '28 days test doesn't matter what you die of its covid' line and using it to argue that the whole thing is massively overblown brings up the more unlikely scenario that for a few months there the was suddenly a remarkable and improbable spike in people getting hit by a bus. Thousands of them, run over in the street, MASS BUS MURDER, all marked down as covid deaths to cover it up.

 

[trmpton]

4 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

By using that '28 days test doesn't matter what you die of its covid' line and using it to argue that the whole thing is massively overblown brings up the more unlikely scenario that for a few months there the was suddenly a remarkable and improbable spike in people getting hit by a bus. Thousands of them, run over in the street, MASS BUS MURDER, all marked down as covid deaths to cover it up.

 

Nah it doesn’t.  People died in their thousands earlier in the year (to about the same level of excess deaths that flu caused in the uk in 17/18)

Now however very few people are dying and most of them would be dying anyway.  Do you have figures to say different?

[Gladys]

6 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

By using that '28 days test doesn't matter what you die of its covid' line and using it to argue that the whole thing is massively overblown brings up the more unlikely scenario that for a few months there the was suddenly a remarkable and improbable spike in people getting hit by a bus. Thousands of them, run over in the street, MASS BUS MURDER, all marked down as covid deaths to cover it up.

 

Odd to believe, but people die of all kinds of things.  Look at the daily figure reported on the TV, it says deaths of persons who have tested positive within 28 days of death. 

[thesultanofsheight]

12 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

By using that '28 days test doesn't matter what you die of its covid' line and using it to argue that the whole thing is massively overblown brings up the more unlikely scenario that for a few months there the was suddenly a remarkable and improbable spike in people getting hit by a bus. Thousands of them, run over in the street, MASS BUS MURDER, all marked down as covid deaths to cover it up.

 

Given lots of care home and hospital deaths would have been end of life anyway it could easily have had a big multiplier affect. They’re going to die of something. Many might not have lived for another 28 days anyway. The fact they might have tested positive for Covid in the last month is pretty much irreverent really.