I’m not sure death rates are actually the thing we need to be looking at to determine the impact of covid any more, given the lack of testing of non-hospitalised people with infections and the massive increase in long term illness. Plus I’d love to know how many of the deaths which are not directly labelled as covid, are heart/lung related and in people who have “recovered” from one or more covid infections. I worry that this gives a more positive impression than the situation warrants.
I strongly disagree. Like I say, the fact that we are in negative excess deaths (and haven't really been seeing excess deaths since the start of 2023) implies to me that there can't be too serious a problem. And I don't think your metric is at all a sensible one - essentially everyone has had COVID now (probably 95%+ of the population) and mostly recovered (no inverted commas), so of course there'd be lots of deaths in the category you describe, but I don't think that tells us anything useful.
I accept your point about the death category. However that isn’t the only thing that is worrying me. Are you saying the increase in long term chronic illnesses, increase in sickness absence from schools and increase in working age people not in or seeking employment doesn't bother you at all?
Yes, of course those things bother me, and I'm kind of offended that you imply that they wouldn't. I'm just not sure that you can automatically put increases in the last couple of years down to the effect of COVID infections though, when there's a whole bunch of things going on (2020-21 is different). For example
Thank you Oliver, I think this stuff is still enormously helpful.
I’m not sure death rates are actually the thing we need to be looking at to determine the impact of covid any more, given the lack of testing of non-hospitalised people with infections and the massive increase in long term illness. Plus I’d love to know how many of the deaths which are not directly labelled as covid, are heart/lung related and in people who have “recovered” from one or more covid infections. I worry that this gives a more positive impression than the situation warrants.
I strongly disagree. Like I say, the fact that we are in negative excess deaths (and haven't really been seeing excess deaths since the start of 2023) implies to me that there can't be too serious a problem. And I don't think your metric is at all a sensible one - essentially everyone has had COVID now (probably 95%+ of the population) and mostly recovered (no inverted commas), so of course there'd be lots of deaths in the category you describe, but I don't think that tells us anything useful.
I accept your point about the death category. However that isn’t the only thing that is worrying me. Are you saying the increase in long term chronic illnesses, increase in sickness absence from schools and increase in working age people not in or seeking employment doesn't bother you at all?
Yes, of course those things bother me, and I'm kind of offended that you imply that they wouldn't. I'm just not sure that you can automatically put increases in the last couple of years down to the effect of COVID infections though, when there's a whole bunch of things going on (2020-21 is different). For example
1. It seems like a lot of long-term absence from work is driven by things like depression https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/24/500000-under-35s-out-of-work-long-term-illness-uk
and you can argue whether hospital waiting lists are symptom or cause but they've been rising for a long time (pre-pandemic)
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7281/
2. School absence rates in 2024 are lower than in 2023
https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-attendance-in-schools
https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-attendance-in-schools/2023-week-29
(albeit higher than pre-pandemic)
3. Rates of "significant activity limitation" from Long COVID are no higher in February 2024 than September 2022
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/long-covid.htm
etc
I did not mean to imply that, or to offend you, and I apologise for wording my comment in that way. Thank you very much for the links.
Sorry, I was being unnecessarily snarky. It gets a bit of a reflex from the Other Place unfortunately