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England to revise DOWN its Covid-19 death toll by up to 10 percent after bizarre 'counting mishap':
Public Health England [(PHE)] currently counts the deaths of all people who have tested positive for Covid-19 among the coronavirus fatality total whether their death was related to the disease or not, an error which was noted in July, prompting the suspension of the daily death toll and an "urgent review" of protocol.
In other words, as many as 4,170 fatalities could be wiped off England's current Covid-19 death toll of 41,686.
According to reports in UKmedia, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock will bring all coronavirus fatality reporting in line with Scotland and Northern Ireland public health models, wherein a death is marked as Covid-19-related only if it occurs within 28 days of a positive test.
[...]
In England, of all deaths that occurred up to 24 July (registered up 1 August), 49,017 involved #COVID19. For the same period, @DHSCgovuk reported 41,143 COVID-19 deaths https://t.co/hKH0tTRb2W
— Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) August 4, 2020
If the system is not updated, the total of roughly 265,000 confirmed cases in England would all eventually be counted as Covid-19 fatalities regardless of the actual cause of death.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 09 2020, @06:25AM (16 children)
Agreed, 100%. But, it seems to get more complicated than that. In one location, any respiratory ailment at all that resulted in death was attributed to Covid. When asked "why?" the answer was, federal money was available for Covid treatment, but not for routine ailments. Stories abound, on Facefook and elsewhere.
Are those stories all factual? I can't know, nor can anyone else. Anecdotes aren't data, but enough anecdotes should get people's attention.
When you look at the statistics for your own county or state, ask yourself, "Are these numbers real?" The only thing you can be reasonably sure of, is that numbers are probably not any higher that what is published.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Sunday August 09 2020, @07:34AM (10 children)
All of which is totally irrelevant for the UK. All medical costs are paid by central government (from National Insurance contributions and other taxes), so there is no difference in who pays for each treatment. Cost has no bearing on the UK's figures. The problem which is clearly explained is that deaths from cancer, coronary disease and a multitude of other conditions entirely unrelated to COVID-19 were all simply marked as being as a result of the latter. This applied to people killed in car accidents, accidents at work and in the home, and to all of those who were expected to die from their conditions before COVID even existed.
The UK scientific community is trying to understand why there appears to have been more deaths from COVID-19 than elsewhere in Europe. This is an important question as it might indicate a link between COVID-19 and poverty, ethnicity, treatment, the way people live in family groups, lifestyle or how the pandemic has been handled. However, if the data itself is inaccurate then any subsequent analysis will also be flawed. Correcting the figures to reflect more accurately what has happened will help to solve many questions that will be important in successfully countering the virus.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Sunday August 09 2020, @08:20AM (3 children)
there also may be a link between MMR vaccination rates and the effects of Corona virus [sciencetimes.com]
This may help explain some of the differences across the world. [washingtonpost.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @04:28PM (2 children)
Same with tuberculosis vaccines and flu vaccines. Covid is cured by getting vaccinated, doesn't matter which one. I've been going to different places and getting all of them I can once a month.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @06:41PM (1 child)
Someone does not understand what vaccination is, or does. Could I interest you in some Hydroxychlorinequinine?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @07:31PM
Just getting any vaccine protects against covid.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.27.20161976v2.full [medrxiv.org]
Also see:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/health/tb-bcg-vaccine-coronavirus-study/index.html [cnn.com]
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/mmr-vaccine-could-prevent-worst-symptoms-of-covid-19 [medicalnewstoday.com]
https://www.livescience.com/getting-flu-shot-help-coronavirus-outbreak.html [livescience.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 09 2020, @12:02PM (5 children)
Unless, of course, something in this does have bearing. A difference not in who pays, but in how much they pay or which account the money comes from, may indeed explain this peculiar overcounting of covid cases. Notice also that you equate revenue with cost. They are not the same thing. Medical costs need not change a bit. But revenue can change a lot depending on how one presents those costs for reimbursement.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday August 09 2020, @06:03PM (4 children)
You don't understand the UK system. Doctors do not get involved in billing. They provide the treatment that is required providing it is within the capabilities of the hospital. Their job is to save lives, to help those that need it, to treat those that require it. For things such as COVID, nobody even asks how much it will cost. The Government puts healthcare at a fairly high priority,
Hospitals do not issue bills for reimbursement to the government. And the government has already borrowed and invested £billions extra to pay for the additional money that is being spent to pay for the COVID-19 pandemic. Could the healthcare system be better with more investment? Of course it could; the 2021 budget forecast can be found here [ukpublicspending.co.uk].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @06:43PM
Khallow not understanding . . . It's an American thing. Queer Bono?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 09 2020, @10:44PM (2 children)
Doctors don't mop the floors either, but somehow the work gets done.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday August 09 2020, @11:48PM (1 child)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 10 2020, @12:02AM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by kazzie on Sunday August 09 2020, @08:02AM (4 children)
In England's case (as alluded to in TFA), they've been counting the death of who's had a positive test as being a Covid-related death. Even if they tested positive back in April, recovered, and then died of something else last week.
That system might have been fit for purpose whe were still at the start or peak of the outbreak, but it's absurd to keep doing that now that we're in the long tail.
Other nations in the UK (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) sensibly decided to limit that window, so a death was only counted as Covid-related if it ocurred within four weeks of a positive test.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Sunday August 09 2020, @08:03AM
Argh, tag fault: there should have bean an ”anyone" in that first paragraph.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday August 09 2020, @12:16PM (2 children)
Except that in the UK it is a doctor (your regular one if you die at home, or a hospital one if there) who enters the cause of death on a Death Certificate. If they are just putting down "Covid-19" because they have a record that you tested + for it back in April then they are being very lazy or incompetent. And they would have to know even less about medicine than I do to put down "Covid-19" for a corpse that had been dragged out of a car accident with its head smashed in.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @04:30PM
I heard about a guy who fell into the Mississippi river and got eaten by a catfish, then during the autopsy he tested positive for covid. Even George Floyd tested positive at autopsy.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Sunday August 09 2020, @04:38PM
I doubt that they"re putting that as a single cause of death: many people are dying because of (e.g.) respiratory failure rather than the viral infection itself. That's why the details being collected are deaths involving Covid-19 [ons.gov.uk]. As TFA explains, England were including deaths that ocurred months after an individual recovered from Covid-19, where the other three nations weren't. And they've now gone back and weeded out a lot of these deaths from thier running total.
There may be other miscounts being resolved too: the UK Government (and the only body collating figures for England) stopped releasing figures [itv.com] last month, and I'm sure that they stopped giving running totals even earlier when they realised many deaths were being double-counted (though I can't find a convenient link atm).
I'm only paying passing attention to the English figures, however, as I'm concentrating on my local (Welsh) figures.