Since the announcements on Covid-19 deaths began in the UK I have not been alone in thinking there was something odd about them. They, and related figures for those on ITU, and even the number of cases, made no sense. They simply did not behave as pandemics seem likely to do (i.e. exponentially) and most especially so before lockdown head any chance of an impact, which it probably has now.
But then we realised that the data was wrong.
Deaths reported were only in hospitals. They were way out of date. Those not in hospital were not recorded. Care homes and deaths at home did not, apparently, count. And then last week we found as a result that deaths were at least twice as high as the government had said.
Numbers in ITU also made no sense. And then I realised that almost certainly these were only counting people in ITUs, and not those being ventilated off ITUs, which was happening all over the place. I admit I have no evidence for this, but given the pattern of semantic differentiation seen in other stats I very strongly suspect this to be true.
And of course the number of cases is wrong: the UK abandoned testing and tracing on 12 March, believing that curtailment of coronavirus was pointless despite all the medical advice, and that herd immunity was the answer. Since the policy has not changed, meaning that the UK has no effective mechanism or chance of coming out of lockdown unlike other similar countries, the data remains pure CRAP, which stands for a ‘completely rubbish approximation' to the truth.
But now we know things are worse. We know people are dying in very large numbers at home. They're not necessarily dying of Covid-19. But they're dying. The Guardian discusses this today.
People are not going to A&E, by choice. Some are dying instead. A South Wales A&E consultant has said he has not seen a case of sepsis for three weeks when he expects one a day. The missing ones are dead. That's what happens.
The elderly are not being taken from care homes. And we now know they are dying there instead. The stress on staff - of whom I have seen many over the last few years, before my father died 18 months ago - must be immense. And none are well rewarded from the stress they are suffering.
Despite this we're now told the government thinks Covid-19 deaths are ‘near a peak'. They may be. But they don't know that. That is all that can be said with certainty. I repeat, all that we know is that they do not know.
They do not know because they chose to stop testing.
They did not know because even though from 2017 onwards they knew they were unprepared for this eventuality they did nothing to prepare for it.
We know because we know that the government did not invest in the NHS - hence the appeal of the wholly false promise of £350 million a week on the side of a bus.
We know because the staff are telling us.
And we know because they are building morgues, buying body bags and digging mass graves, which tells us that they really have no idea in which direction this is all heading, but that it's reasonable to assume that the worst has yet to come.
Unfortunately, maybe that's true.
I do believe that sometime soon the UK will have to slowly reopen. The condition may be face masks. There will be social isolating for a long time to come. We will not go back to normal as we so recently described it for along time, maybe. And maybe never, because what was what it was like is so likely to never be again.
But what we do know is that right now most people are unlikely to have had coronavirus. Even those who are sure they have, as I am, cannot be 100% certain: no one has tested us, after all. We're just down to balance of probabilities. And we also face the risk that it may be possible to get it twice.
In this case we are a very, very long way from herd immunity, which only a vaccine can really deliver. So waves of lockdown and virus are going to continue. And more people are going too die.
A little while ago a colleague said to me that surely I did not believe that we'd have 20,000 Covid-10 deaths? How could I do that? The answer was that the data, which he as a data specialist should have understood, said that it was inevitable: we'd started tackling an exponential growth way too late to prevent that happening. I said then that I thought the figure of 20,000 was way smaller than I thought it would actually be.
I have another colleague, a doctor in this case, who has thought throughout that we're actually facing hundreds of thousands of deaths, and that we still are. The curve may have been flattened for now - and thank goodness for that. I am not disputing that the government has achieved something, albeit to late. But without track and trace - the supposedly discredited WHOs answer to this - and which is the only proven mechanism that has delivered results, as South Korea and Germany are proving - and which we, like Trump, will not do - then there will be not just tends of thousands more deaths from or as a consequence of coronavirus, but maybe hundreds of thousands.
This is our reality. And the result is that discussion of lockdowns well into 2021 are wholly appropriate: they are going to happen.
At some point this will end.
Then we will have some idea of the true casualty rate.
But then again, we also will not, because the human cost of these policy failings will now last the lifetime of all those now on earth. For some that remaining time will be foreshortened, unnecessarily. For others it will be blighted. And much of that will be because governments dedicated to self interest, national boundaries, austerity and isolation have not acted in the public and common interest.
We need to restore that sense of the public and common interest if we are to survive this.
Only that can make a better future possible.
But right now the winners are solely in the financial sector, to which most of the government's money has also been directed so far.
We have such a long way to go.
And so much thinking to do.
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Amen to all of that, Richard. The ludicrous sight of partial figures being inflated to the status of certainty is one of the many farcical features of the new ‘normal’. I am depressed that Keir Starmer, instead of pressing for clarity and accuracy – which would involve the neglected/abandoned serious testing programme – is simplisticly and credulously asking for clarity on “an exit strategy”. Do Labour leaders learn nothing? This government has and is failing its citizens massively and continuously – and all Labour can do is twitter at the edges, basically accepting the new fantasy world created by ‘official’ narratives/figures as real. They will – yet again – have sold out even the possibility of a debate anchored in truth. It is beyond despair.
This piece is seriously depressing yet there is nothing in it that I think wrong. The government understands that if they let the NHS, our national religion, get overwhelmed they will pay a heavy price. We have a government that was elected after it lied and lied and lied. It works and they’re doing it again. Obfuscation works wonderfully well and public focus can easily be averted. The popular widespread view is that a hospital environment is a pretty good place to catch Covid-19. That’s why most people dare not go there particularly if they are elderly or frail.
As you describe, in so many important areas we lack the most basic information. For example, anecdotal reports suggest a significant number of new cases and hospitalisations are of NHS staff. The government did not tell us because the great majority of those staff cases are, of course, a failure caused by lack of PPE. The Tory government created a massive Brexit department yet are now relying on some increasingly discredited scientific and medical experts to provide cover for their multilayered incompetence. I fear you are right that we have a long way to go with many unnecessary deaths. We also have a total aversion to talking about any aspect of unlocking the Lockdown. Repeated questioning by serious correspondents at the Downing Street briefings are repeatedly ignored or shut down. The government must realise that in the end we will compare what we have done with what has been done in Germany and South Korea and China and we will come up wanting very badly with death rates hundredfold greater.
Thanks
I corrected a typo. I hope I will be forgiven
The under recording of deaths is truly shocking as you point out. The ignoring of the situation in care homes, whether local authority, private or charitable trust run is tantamount to criminal as they have all been starved of protective equipment and testing devices. Matt Hancock on the BCC Radio 4 Today programme brushed aside the critisism made by all social service heads that supplies to care homes is a “shambles”. When challenged by Nick Robinson he flannelled, gave no apololgy and gave some meaningless statistics of what he hoped would be supplied. He promised 100.000 tests a day by 30 April but there is only 16,000 a day at the moment so it looks like his prediction will be way below what is required.
I had thought Hancock was a pretty straight shooter, but he seems to have just lied (or perhaps was mis-informed or mis-remembered) when asked yesterday why the government missed its target of 25,000 tests per day by mid-April.
He said there was no such target, but plain as day, this release from his own department on 18 March says “Officials are working to increase the number of tests that can be conducted by Public Health England and the NHS to 25,000 a day. The increased capacity is expected to be ready within 4 weeks, with highest-priority cases being tested first.” https://www.gov.uk/government/news/testing-for-coronavirus-covid-19-will-increase-to-25-000-a-day
Four weeks from 18 March was yesterday.
He lies…
The evidence for wearing masks and a robust response is unquestionable [1,2].
In any public space (particularly enclosed) there is an invisible cloud of floating ultra-fine droplets, people breath out very small droplets <1micron [1, 3], and larger droplets dehydrate to form smaller and smaller droplets whilst airborne. These smaller droplets stay airborne for a long while (an area I taught at postgraduate level and have research experience in).
Countries with robust response and face mask wearing have low death counts, e.g. see [4]:
Taiwan 6
Hong Kong 4
Singapore 10
New Zealand 9
[1] "Face Masks Against COVID-19: An Evidence Review" (not complete peer review) https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202004.0203/v1
[2] "Face masks for the public during the covid-19 crisis" BMJ 2020; 369 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1435 (Published 09 April 2020)
[3] "Exhaled particles and small airways" Bake et al. Respiratory Research, 2019.
doi.org/10.1186/s12931-019-0970-9
[4] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
I fear we will have to suffer them then
I agree about Starmer – he was far too nice last night on Channel 4 when asked about this – he never mentioned austerity at all. We can only hope that Labour really goes for the jugular of this most uncaring and arrogant Government.
There are so many things happening here. Today we had a bin collection and none of the binmen had face masks on. Yet there they were, collecting.
Too many of the medical/care staff we see dying are obviously from immigrant backgrounds yet not so long ago we had Farage and Theresa May telling us that immigrants were a drain on our society and we needed to leave Europe (yet apparently we are importing labour to pick our crops – I wonder if they will be given PPE?).
I remember when it was even suggested that doctors were being paid too much as the Tories stirred up resentments in society under the guidance of Lynton Crosby.
I honestly think that England has become the arsehole of the world – I really do.
Talk about peeing into the wind!? We have become masters of it. In fact, it’s embarrassing. If it wasn’t for that other idiot over the pond, I’m sure this nation would be first in line for world ‘Moron’ status.
The nonsensical herd immunity idea looks to me like an attempt to cover up for the fact that the UK had very little capacity to carry out testing thanks to the Tories strategic errors in preparing for a pandemic which was both forecast and inevitable at some point. They chose to ignore the warnings. I call that criminal negligence.
Hancock: “Unlike some countries, we didn’t go into this crisis with a huge diagnostics industry.” (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/03/why-has-the-uk-lagged-behind-in-testing-for-the-coronavirus)
We should be thinking about widening testing (ALL public sector works first), widely available PPE (ALL public sector workers first and I mean ALL) and then we can think about how to have an exit strategy. No one still working should be untested or without PPE. It’s a disgrace. Germany – I mean – look at the size of it and what they have managed to do.
In fact – why is PPE and testing not part of the exit strategy? Why do we need to zoom solely in on provision of a vaccine?
The vaccine just seems like a coded way of avoiding anymore expenditure. The route one to the end of it all. This to me is the Government tacitly acknowledging that it has not the capacity for PPE and testing. Which to me means that it has failed us. Starting late was bad enough; not having enough to respond with when you do is – well – as others have said – criminal.
The vaccine is probably a magic bullet that allows someone else to be blamed for not delivering it.
“We need to restore that sense of the public and common interest if we are to survive this.”
Zero chance under a Conservative administration. Of course, a highly polished post-Covid programme will be promoted by the Gvt via a compliant MSM and skillfully manipulated social media (despite Piers Morgan doing an unexpectedly stalwart job in holding ministers to account) that will not address the socio-economic problems exposed by this crisis.
While the Tufton St Tories continue to pursue their agenda with absolute control of the executive and the parliamentary confidence that comes with an 80 seat majority, the main focus for everyone else must be coming together to design and construct a clear strategy that will stand a realistic chance of booting these corrupt charlatans out of office. One can only hope and pray that Keir Starmer has the requisite ability and political acumen to do do just that, without being drawn back into the time-wasting and unproductive internal politics of the LP. Like you, I’m reserving judgement on him. Right now he needs a wide coalition of support to rescue the country out of the regressive mire into which it is being surreptitiously sucked.
Do you have any inside knowledge suggesting there is some meaningful attempt by opposition parties to work together for the common good? A starting point would be a cross-party policy unit with some real clout, bringing together people such as yourself to help write what must effectively be a 5 & 10 year ‘business plan’ for the nation. Otherwise we’ll just stumble along reacting to the unravelling disaster over which Johnson will continue to preside, wistfully hoping that eventually a better government will materialise ‘deus ex machina’.
I am not hearing much (stress, much) about working together
Personally, I think Keir Starmer’s approach is correct – it asks us to look forward and think about how the lockdown may be unwound. Many people I speak to are doing just that and thinking about what it might look like. Joe Public doesn’t want a lot of shouty politics at this stage. By focusing on where we are heading KS can build some credibility for Labour.
It doesn’t do to get angry in a war zone – you have to do the best you can with what you have – whilst still calling out the problems. The real story is getting out much more effectively than we perhaps realise.
I am getting a lot of good feedback from people about Starmer right now
The feeling is is he is listening and answering questions when no one else is
Those calling for him to go have to appreciate that the Tories really do want you to say that
Of course, Starmer must not only stay – but he, and his team, really must break the Johnson government’s currently virtually unopposed framing of the issues.
The steady daily drip-feed of faux ‘progress’ briefings interlaced with language, which attempts to insinuate that ministers are really colleagues of NHS workers/doctors/nurses and that not only are ‘we-all-in-this-together’ but that statements of earnest endeavour are the same as responsible achievement is a, literally, deadly poison. Its persistent seeping of blinding untruths into the public sphere must be challenged, rubbished and replaced by an unflinching and repeated enunciation of the real – and horrendously shaming – facts. If he does not do this – indeed lead on this – he will find himself and his party, however internally rejuvenated, back in the hopeless situation of swimming in an undrainable swamp of Tory and, let’s not foget, Brexitanian lies.
The manipulation of ‘Clapping for Carers’ and Johnson’s allegedly plucky resilliance are ghastly warnings of just how far the MSM fuelled narrative has already slipped into mythic territory – and, politically unchallenged, it will only get worse. He could start by launching a major broadside at the shameful refusal by No. 10 to condemn Trump on defunding the WHO and link that with an absolute insistance on the provision of proper staistics here.
Comprehensive testing, contact tracing and ‘lockdown’ of hotspots provides intelligence on the path/movement of the disease. It gives information on the numbers affected, infected and recovered. This information is vital in terms of an ‘exit strategy’. The fact that comprehensive testing wasn’t done from the start of this, and still isn’t being done, means that this inept and negligent Govt. will be severely hamstrung in developing an ‘exit strategy’. Perhaps this is why such reliance is being placed on the ‘magic bullet’ aka a vaccine. And worse, the continuation of a covert strategy of ‘herd immunity’.
I agree with this post,the figures are inaccurate,but worst of all we have no test and trace. The governmet must use any temporary respite time the NHS gets to implment a full and comprehensive test and track scheme going,having abandoned it they must recommence it. We have tens of 1000s of local environmental health officers sitting at home doing nothing who are ready,willing and able to help according to the local authority health chief,this is what they are trained to do. This is our ONLY exit strategy until a vaccine become widley available…18 months maybe?
I was shocked to hear the elderly are being discharged from hospital back to their care home without testing them for coronavirus. That must rank at the same level as discharging them with an AK-47.
I’ve tapped into your Twitter account feed looking at issues pertaining to the vaccine and Neil Ferguson.
So that’s why PPE and testing are held back – so that the vaccine can be exploited by the provider as well some sort of deep change in our economy can be affected (not to mention the opportunity of levering in more surveillance capitalism). A perfect storm.
Did I get that right?
BTW – Starmer – he hasn’t got started yet so I don’t want him to go. I’m just not voting for his party that’s all.
There is another possibility regarding the stats, I feel saddened even having to write about this, the poor souls who should have been better cared for.
But maths…
I think we are reaching the maximum amount of deaths possible in a hospital because of the number of available hospital beds and the morbidity rate of the disease.
There are around 160 -170,000 hospital beds in the UK.
The average period of time in hospital with this disease is 8 days (chief science officer).
So on average, if all hospitals Only treated people with the virus then you would expect 21,000 new arrivals every day and the same number of departures.
Realistically how many beds have been / will be set aside for victims? One third? They talked in March of freeing up 30,000 beds in hospital in prep for the virus, but let’s stick to 1/3rd.
The current mortality rate from the government dodgy stats are 13%
21,000 X 13% x 1/3 = 910 maximum daily deaths based on capacity
(admit back of the envelope calc – so, happy for it to be corrected).
So unless they start hospitalising more people and giving them the full care they need there, their numbers will hit an upper boundary.
The other thing to note is the total deaths in Scotland has been going up each day by more than 10%, while in England under 7% recently. We are under the same lockdown – implication being something is different and we don’t know what it is, so we should investigate. It is possible the Scottish figures are more accurate than the English (or vice versa).
Open borders, no testing, no nothing as travellers arrive, in contrast to other countries. https://www.ft.com/content/91dea18f-ad0e-4dcb-98c3-de836b1ba79b
Makes a nonsense of taking back control of our borders, doesn’t it?
Isn’t the answer that the government lies because it knows it can? There are too many people, like with Brexit, who are not bothered enough (at all) to find out if what’s being said stacks up or whether what they say contradicts what they said previously. Add to that their control of large parts of the media and a serious lack of morality and bingo they find it easy to do. That’s why Boris can state ‘we are ramping up to 250k tests a day’ and Hancock can deny he said it was 25k/day. That’s why they can say there was mix up in joining with Europe for ventilator purchasing when Hancock had already said they were involved the week before. Then when they don’t lie they embellish for their own benefit, was Boris really that ill? Did Hancock really have it? Has Cummings really got it and where is he? They build sympathy so many people feel they have gone the extra mile for the cause, because they know the outcome is going to be disastrous. They have been caught out by arrogance, pomposity and a lack of skill, will and decisiveness. Unfortunately we have no way out and so we shouldn’t allow the government one. Now is the right time to be asking publicly the difficult questions directly to government and insisting on an answer. I like what I have seen of Starmer so far, this should fall to him and his team and not Piers Morgan.
Further very uncomforable reading regarding our government’s incompetence,
http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=87580#disqus_thread