12 votes

UK suffers second-highest death rate from coronavirus

5 comments

  1. Deimos
    Link
    The article's title was changed and this note added at the bottom:

    The article's title was changed and this note added at the bottom:

    This article has been amended to take into account a on-off revision to Spanish data on Thursday. This meant the UK now has the second-highest death rate from coronavirus after Spain rather than the highest rate as originally reported. This article has been modified to replace a chart linking excess deaths to lockdown dates with one linking excess deaths per million.

    6 votes
  2. [4]
    babypuncher
    (edited )
    Link
    My hypothesis is that higher death rates in first world countries correlate to worse testing (i.e. only the obviously sick get tested, so people with only minor symptoms don't factor in to the...

    My hypothesis is that higher death rates in first world countries correlate to worse testing (i.e. only the obviously sick get tested, so people with only minor symptoms don't factor in to the totals).

    How has the UK's testing been?

    1 vote
    1. DanBC
      Link Parent
      This article is looking at all cause excess mortality. It doesn't matter how many people test positive. They're not looking at how many of the people who test positive go on to die.

      so people with only minor symptoms don't factor in to the totals).

      This article is looking at all cause excess mortality. It doesn't matter how many people test positive. They're not looking at how many of the people who test positive go on to die.

      5 votes
    2. vektor
      Link Parent
      from the article. This has nothing to do with undercounting cases => higher fatality rate. This is deaths per inhabitant. Note that for both countries mentioned (UK and Spain), the excess...

      according to excess mortality figures.

      from the article.

      This has nothing to do with undercounting cases => higher fatality rate. This is deaths per inhabitant. Note that for both countries mentioned (UK and Spain), the excess mortality in the article is ~1.5x the confirmed direct death toll. It also compares only 19 countries - those where data is available. Franky, we should be more worried about the countries where data is not available (or not trustworthy) and shouldn't use the limited data to draw flawed comparisons.

      2 votes
    3. sron
      Link Parent
      The statistics are meant to be included in the daily briefing, but: [Government] ‘had not noticed’ daily testing figure has disappeared for several days in a row Also they set a target of 100,000...

      The statistics are meant to be included in the daily briefing, but: [Government] ‘had not noticed’ daily testing figure has disappeared for several days in a row

      Also they set a target of 100,000 a day by the end of April and only hit it by also counting tests that were sent out to people instead of ones that are actually being processed. They set a target of 200,000 by the end of this month and as you can imagine they are quite a way off that.

      At the moment anyone with symptoms can get a test sent to them but I don't know how long it takes and I think there is quite a high false negative rate with them, think I saw that in this video https://youtu.be/T7TBwq4ZSI8

      Also just found this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/28/coronavirus-testing-hit-struggle-match-results-with-nhs-records

      2 votes