At 15:33 26/03/2020, Paul Hewson wrote:
>Has anyone picked up the story about the UK Covid mortality stats
>counting method changing, and more importantly can they point to any
>authoritative or sensible commentary? I've heard that (a) relatives
>must consent before numbers put out (b) time period counting has
>changed and (c) more cause of death put down as pneumonia than
>covid. (a) sounds implausible, (b) sounds plausible and (c) I could
>sort of understand, but we still get (eventually) COVID as a factor
>even if Pneumonia was given as the cause.
I must say that I hadn't heard of this one. Indeed, I have been
regarding (and still regard) the 'deaths' figures to be about the
'hardest' data we have.
I agree that (a) sounds like a pretty ridiculous suggestion, and I'm
not sure what you mean by (b).
As for (c), in terms of normal death certification etc., the cause of
death would probably normally be given as "pneumonia", or "viral
pneumonia", without specifying the pathogen (which, under normal
circumstances, will probably often not be known). However, I'm not
sure how these figures are being collected, but there surely must be
some process in place for reporting (known or suspected) Covid-19
deaths to some 'central point' - the 'daily figures' obviously cannot
be based on death registrations (or, as below, prior 'notifications'
of the 'notifiable disease), since deaths are not registered
'immediately'. I would also imagine that, even when we weren't doing
many tests, people in hospital ill enough to eventually die would
probably have been a group who nearly all would have got tested, so
in most cases the pathogen involved ought to be known.
Does anyone know what the 'central collection process' is? Covid-19
infection is, of course, now a 'notifiable disease', so it should be
reported to the appropriate authorities immediately when diagnosed
(or even suspected), but that doesn't necessarily help in terms of
real-time counting of subsequent deaths in such patients
Moving slightly sidewise, what I'd love to see would be data on
hospital admissions for Covid-19 infection. That would also be very
'hard data', but would have the great advantage (in terms of
monitoring progress of the outbreak) that it would be a week or two
'ahead' of the deaths data. However, I have failed miserably in
attempts to find data on UK hospitalisations (in UK or anywhere else)
- has anyone seen any?
Kind Regards,
John
----------------------------------------------------------------
Dr John Whittington, Voice: +44 (0) 1296 730225
Mediscience Services Fax: +44 (0) 1296 738893
Twyford Manor, Twyford, E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Buckingham MK18 4EL, UK
----------------------------------------------------------------
******************************************************
Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your
message will go only to the sender of this message.
If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's
'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically
to [log in to unmask]
Disclaimer: The messages sent to this list are the views of the sender and cannot be assumed to be representative of the range of views held by subscribers to the Radical Statistics Group. To find out more about Radical Statistics and its aims and activities and read current and past issues of our newsletter you are invited to visit our web site www.radstats.org.uk.
*******************************************************
|