COVID19

[Marky147]

I'm #6 on their list, which is good with me, and hopefully get stabbed up sometime in early '21.

[Marky147]

John's update on vaccines is promising.

Did that calc and my window is basically whole of February 2021, which is pretty good.

My mate has morphed into what you'd expect if Alex Jones, David Icke & Eddie Bravo all jumped into Jeff Goldblum's pod in the fly.

Because 'he's aware of what's going on, and he knows'...

Worrying, but if he's happy, good luck to him.

[Marky147]

https://twitter.com/ActuaryByDay/status/1340352013478088706

Happy Xmas 

[Ironside]

but only the brown bin this week

[Doobs]

https://twitter.com/ActuaryByDay/status/1340352013478088706

Happy Xmas 

I raise you


https://mobile.twitter.com/NickStripe_ONS/status/1340412018076110849

Given current weekly numbers of deaths, we can sadly assume that there are likely to be over 600k deaths registered in E&W this year There have only been 600k+ deaths registered in a single year once before – in 1918, the year of the “Spanish” flu pandemic

As people will point out, we have a bigger population than then, but we also have enormous advances in medicine, so if is still a bit shocking.  If you look up that thread it features one of the latest bullshit graphs to do the rounds.  I saw a worse one yesterday where somebody had loterally built in a mortality bump between March and May in their comparison with this year.  Feck knows which low life was responsible, but I can confidently state that until this year there hasn't been a March to May mortality bump in the last 30 years I have been working with mortality.   Mortality normally increases as the winter comes on from October or so and starts falling as the weather improves into spring.  Some years have been worse than others because the weather has been worse, or the flu strain was worse, there was nothing renotely like the first Covid wave.

Just cancelled my trip up North.  In the last few weeks we had gone from 5 days to 2 days to day trip.  Until yesterday we were ahead of official advice.   The 5 days was booked 6 months ago and not when the 5 day bubble was announced.     Hopefully my mum can be vaccinated by Easter so we can pop up before then.

I must get my "Wednesday" update out, but it has gone much as expected.  Even without the new variant, stopping lockdown 2 when they did always looked a bit too risky.

[nirvana]

The madness continues. It really is an Orwellian nightmare.

The response, to stop a few hundred thousand people dying some years before their time, is utterly ridiculous from any perspective.

If we really 'felt' the pain of people dying years before their time we would spend much more of GDP on the NHS and disease research and we've chosen not to for many years.

I really don't get it - no doubt social media and 24/7 news cycles are ruining people's perspective on life, living and death.

[Jon MW]

...https://mobile.twitter.com/NickStripe_ONS/status/1340412018076110849

Given current weekly numbers of deaths, we can sadly assume that there are likely to be over 600k deaths registered in E&W this year There have only been 600k+ deaths registered in a single year once before – in 1918, the year of the “Spanish” flu pandemic

As people will point out, we have a bigger population than then, but we also have enormous advances in medicine, so if is still a bit shocking.  ...

I agree with the gist of his thread about misrepresenting statistics - but it's pretty disappointing that he chooses to end it like this.

This is just trying to dazzle people with big numbers.

The UK population in 1918 was a bit less than 40 million (so ignoring that includes Scotland) 600k deaths is 1.5% of the total
The UK population now is a bit less than 70 million so 600k deaths is 0.8% of the total.

So just brushing past that by saying  - but medical advances - seems a bit disingenious. Having approximately half the mortality seems like a pretty good measure to take into account medical advances.

Plus he ends up saying that the excess deaths is in the region of 70k  - this is a lot - but a 13% (ish) increase in deaths has decidedly less impact than saying 600 thousand deaths.

On the other hand -  -  -

...
The response, to stop a few hundred thousand people dying some years before their time, is utterly ridiculous from any perspective.
...

a 5% increase in excess mortality would make headline news and probably lead to an enquiry - so in this context 13% is pretty huge.

And this is with all the measures that have been taken.

It doesn't really matter the number of people or when they would have otherwise died - if your death rate is expected to change by 1 or 2% a year and then it suddenly tips into double figures, that will decimate your economy. Having a 13% increase instead of a 20/30/40% increase is really not something I'd see as an over reaction.

[nirvana]

Jon, given the demographics of the people dying, you really think a big increase in mortality would decimate the economy ? Arguably, from an economics point of view it would benefit the economy. Also, very confident that the measures taken have damaged the economy way beyond doing nothing if we focus on the economy only.

We'll never know how many would have died if we didn't take these measures but we can look at other countries and see in very broad terms

a) Some had more draconian measures ' can ve see your papers' , and the death rate is similar
b) Some were more laissez faire, and the death rate is similar
c) In global terms, there are very few outliers

I don't think there is anything that points to the global response being sensible and I think the only argument that can be made is that deaths have been reduced by an undefinable amount x as I'd acknowledge some lives must have been saved. Pick your number dependent on whose model you read.

[Marky147]

The madness continues. It really is an Orwellian nightmare.

The response, to stop a few hundred thousand people dying some years before their time, is utterly ridiculous from any perspective.

If we really 'felt' the pain of people dying years before their time we would spend much more of GDP on the NHS and disease research and we've chosen not to for many years.

I really don't get it - no doubt social media and 24/7 news cycles are ruining people's perspective on life, living and death.

It's a nightmare because everyone is now a Facebook/Twitter certified Epidemiologist, or Vaccinologist, lol.

The video Doobs posted by the actuaries explained that it's not just 'people dying a few years before their time'

They've got to you, Dr Henderson

[Marky147]

If there is a run on most of the hospitals, that in turn causes mayhem in all aspects of life, and the economy goes tits up anyway.

[Marky147]

Got a full on Agenda 21 and great reset NWO guy next door, and he is fully on the Icke express.

Well could you tell me this Marky if we are in the middle of a Pandemic how is the NHS under less strain than it was this time last year?

There is fewer people in Hospital now then there was in Spring

These are Facts, not a Wacky theory

Was his last post... 

[Doobs]

...https://mobile.twitter.com/NickStripe_ONS/status/1340412018076110849

Given current weekly numbers of deaths, we can sadly assume that there are likely to be over 600k deaths registered in E&W this year There have only been 600k+ deaths registered in a single year once before – in 1918, the year of the “Spanish” flu pandemic

As people will point out, we have a bigger population than then, but we also have enormous advances in medicine, so if is still a bit shocking.  ...

I agree with the gist of his thread about misrepresenting statistics - but it's pretty disappointing that he chooses to end it like this.

This is just trying to dazzle people with big numbers.

The UK population in 1918 was a bit less than 40 million (so ignoring that includes Scotland) 600k deaths is 1.5% of the total
The UK population now is a bit less than 70 million so 600k deaths is 0.8% of the total.

So just brushing past that by saying  - but medical advances - seems a bit disingenious. Having approximately half the mortality seems like a pretty good measure to take into account medical advances.

Plus he ends up saying that the excess deaths is in the region of 70k  - this is a lot - but a 13% (ish) increase in deaths has decidedly less impact than saying 600 thousand deaths.

On the other hand -  -  -

...
The response, to stop a few hundred thousand people dying some years before their time, is utterly ridiculous from any perspective.
...

a 5% increase in excess mortality would make headline news and probably lead to an enquiry - so in this context 13% is pretty huge.

And this is with all the measures that have been taken.

It doesn't really matter the number of people or when they would have otherwise died - if your death rate is expected to change by 1 or 2% a year and then it suddenly tips into double figures, that will decimate your economy. Having a 13% increase instead of a 20/30/40% increase is really not something I'd see as an over reaction.

I think you are a bit rude calling me disingenuous, as the death toll is truly shocking, and neither I nor the person I quoted said that the around 600k deaths we will see this year were just Covid deaths.  1918 which was the comparitor used, was the year of Spanish Flu and late in the First World War and modern medicine was in its infancy.  There are very few years like it between that date and this one.  The closest ones are 1940 when deaths in Engalnd and Wales* increased by 82,000 (to 581k) and 1918 where deaths increased by 113,000 (to 612k). 

Up until 2011, total deaths had been on a clear downward trend for my entire working life, and so even the "austerity" deaths and the reversal of mortality improvements were both a bit shocking.  Some of the increase since 2011 was likely down to bad flu years and possibly an ageing population, but prior to 2011 the effect of mortality improvements was stronger than the effect of an ageing population.  Last year deaths were just shy of 531k.  For comparison deaths per year in 1917 were 499K and 500K in 1939 (and 484k as recently as 2011).  If you'd spoken to an actuary at the start of this year, they would have told you that the mortality rates between 2015 and 2019 were unusually high and not unusually low (please ignore those who have been pretending that the last 5 years were low mortality years).

This year we have had deaths that have increased by amounts that were only seen two or three times in the last century (1929 was the other really big one).  So the original tweeter could have chosen either increases in deaths, or total amounts, and both would have been in the regions of amounts rarely seen since 1918.  I am not convinced it is much less shocking if it turns out that the increase in deaths is the biggest year on year increase since 1940 and not the biggest since 1918, and even if we looked at the increase as a proportion of population we'd still likely be going back to 1940.  The deaths have been older people on average this time, but there are genuinely huge numbers of excess deaths (and the increase over the year is greater than nearly all of us have seen in our lifetimes).   Without all the interventions, I don't think it is an exagerration to say we could have seen Spanish Flu type mortality here.

* England and Wales was the original comparison, so I have stuck with it. 

[Marky147]

Nicking that for the tinfoil next door, doobs.

Roll on 2022.

[Marky147]

Dr John with dinner

[Jon MW]

...
I think you are a bit rude calling me disingenuous, as the death toll is truly shocking, and neither I nor the person I quoted said that the around 600k deaths we will see this year were just Covid deaths...

Easy now, you used an awful lot of words to explain how they're serious numbers when I was never disputing that and ended my post with explaining how a "low" number like a 13% increase is actually a "huge" number in the context given.

I was more expressing my opinion about his use of communication - his thread very much seemed to be criticising people using "dishonest" manipulation to dazzle people with numbers but he then ended his thread with "honest" manipulation to dazzle people with numbers.

But maybe he has more experience of this and knows that the only way to get the point across is to be dramatic.

Having tens of thousands of deaths from a global deadly pandemic doesn't particularly seem surprising or shocking to me, I apologise if I offended you, I didn't appreciate how sensitive and easily shocked you were.