scotia wrote:9873210 wrote:scotia wrote:Thanks for the data. I'll display the admissions (projected deaths) and reported deaths tomorrow night. Regrettably the latest English Admissions (to the 12th) seem to be back on a plateau, and the deaths by reporting date are now significantly climbing - but (hopefully) these may include a backlog of reports due to the seasonal holidays.
I think it's far enough after the holidays that the clear climb in deaths is real. However, the climb is, as yet, relatively small compared to previous waves. So far deaths have not reached a peak anywhere, so extrapolating from prior waves is suspect; but it seems likely the total deaths may be significantly less than prior waves, if we're lucky as few as 5,000 or less than 10% of prior wave. And that would be out of many more infections than for prior waves
So far deaths in South Africa still haven't peaked. It remains possible that there will be a longer tail of delayed deaths than in prior waves.
I am also looking at
New York State, which is possibly ahead of the UK, and may be a better peer to the UK than SA. NYS numbers do not look so comforting as SA. Current NYS deaths, ICU cases and hospitalizations are all trending unpleasantly. Absolute numbers are similar to Jan 2021, but cases are four times higher so on a per case basis results are better. Still there's an awful lot of sickness and dying. There are also some more
pessimistic views
Thanks for the info. Yes - I was trying to be a bit optimistic on the reported deaths, but I fear that they are climbing. However, as you say, it doesn't look like any way as bad as the pre-vaccine peaks.
I’m becoming increasing sceptical of the deaths data assuming that we’re talking about people dying within 28 days of first testing positive for Covid-19 (henceforth “28DA”). I think that at the moment one really needs to look at the mentions-Covid-19-on-death-certificate numbers (henceforth “CODC”) and just accept the lag on that data.
My concern with the 28DA data is due to the massive amount of testing that we are doing now and the huge number of positive cases each day. Throughout the pandemic, or at least since testing on any reasonable scale started, it has been the case the some percentage of all the people dying on any given day from heart attacks, strokes, accidents etc some percentage will have tested positive for the first time in the previous 28 days but now with so many more tests being done, we have already hit over 2,000,000 tests a day on 2 days in January, and the case numbers showing that there is still a fairly high positivity rate that must surely mean that the percentage of those not-Covid-19 deaths that get dragged into the 28DA figures increases.
I know there is the counter effect of a genuine Covid-19 death not making it into the 28DA figures because that person had already tested positive over 28 days before death but with Omicron now looking more and more like it is less severe hence very possibly causing fewer genuine deaths I think the accidental overcounting effect is probably swamping the accidental undercounting effect.
Neither of those distortions happen with the CODC numbers but there is a delay in compiling that data due to the time it takes for the death certificates to be processed so I can see why the 28DA data is still published but I do worry that with the massive amount of testing and probably quite a few people testing themselves for the first time in the run up and over Christmas the distortions on the 28DA data might be in danger of making those data a very unreliable indicator now.
- Julian