And so it starts to unravel

All I can say is that I am very very disappointed in our Government and its handling of the whole thing. There has been mixed messages, and whether the figures are right or wrong a lot of people have died. I am grateful for the lockdown as I felt I was kept safe but now we are being told that everything will be back to normal and I do feel quite scared that all our hard work will be for nothing. And no doubt the statistics will keep rolling in and we will still be debating whether they are right or wrong.

I'm not disputing our death figures at all, but do wonder why we as a country that never ran over capacity for ITU beds seemingly have a worse death rate than some countries with much poorer health care facilities.

Deaths for the last 3 weeks released have been lower than the 5 year rolling average, which would indicate that some people that should have been dying now have already died, probably either as a result of contracting covid19 or because their health care was impacted by the pandemic. A&E doctors are very concerned about the drop in numbers of people presenting with urgent acute conditions ie heart attacks etc
Growstuff you said It could be because there's more testing in France but France (as of today) quote just over 2.6 million tests in total against 13.1 million tests for the UK. Even deducting the postal tests sent out that haven't been returned the UK is still conducting vastly more tests than France

Yet again, I’ll say, look at our excess death figures ie deaths from all causes.These are incredibly accurate as the ONS produces these figures from actual death certificates. I doubt there are any deaths registered where in fact nobody died. Because of things like seasonal flu where death rates vary from year to year, the ONS allows for this by calculating excess deaths on a rolling 5 year average which irons out yearly differences. Our excess death rate is about 65, 000. The
majority of these are COVID related although some will be due to not getting necessary health care because of COVID. These figures I’d guess will grow over time especially for deaths from cancers. There is no way that our excess death figures can be explained away in the hope of proving that our deaths from COVID aren’t as bad as painted. If you think the ONS is part of an anti Government conspiracy then I recommend the sterling journalism of the FT on this as well

Why is anyone surprised, it was always an exercise in the use and abuse of statistics? No two countries have counted deaths in the same way. If one has a condition such as cancer then anything that interacts with that can have a detrimental effect.

I know of someone here in Scotland whose nephew and his friend died in a car accident both in their 20's in April. Their deaths were put down as Covid, also a few people who had heart attacks, no Covid symptoms whose deaths were put down as Covid. As no post mortems were being done, every death was put as Covid.

German death certificates do include a cause of death.

However, they are in two parts. The first part, handed to relative, doesn't include the cause of death.

The second part does list a cause of death and is given to the regional authorities.

So the family isn't officially told the cause of death, but the authorities know.

www.dimdi.de/dynamic/en/classifications/icd/icd-10-who/causes-of-death-statistics/

If we cannot agree on the method of accounting for the deaths in the UK then how can we make any comparison with other countries using other criteria and staff who had been trained differently? We cannot assume a common standard of training
I ended up with pneumonia after visitors from the Far East in December. What was the cause of this? No-one told me but then there was little interest before China started notifying people of what had happened there.

Not at all surprised - have been saying so!
More too will unravel, just wait and see.

Was talking to a friend this morning who has terminal cancer and her husband is quite ill at the moment and needing to be seen. Her current encounters with GP & Hospital care makes me lost for words!

Seasonal Flu counts for a lot of deaths each year. Have these been lumped in with the CV statistics?

I’m glad they are getting to the bottom of the numbers , important learning for the future etc. Whatever ... I still have a tear every day for those lost to Covid and for the grieving friends and families. Going forwards there are such important lessons and ways to make lives better. Ever hopeful. ?. Keep safe

How can anyone on here say we may have masses of immunity and locked down for nothing? All the research using antibody tests show few of us have had it and immunity appears to wane even in the those who have...

Bluebellwould

Absolutely agree with you. My son definitely had it in January but he’s not in any statistics anywhere. The whole country could have had it and no one will ever know, so we could all have been isolating for nothing. I’m still not going out though!

Sure I had it in January too, I remember an irritating cough and a struggle to breathe and I'm not in any statistics...yet.

I think the review is more to do with Hancock trying to save his job or the Government's performance in responding to the outbreak.

I doubt if the numbers will change significantly if deaths after the 28-day cut-off point are recalculated.

There is probably no "perfect" method for counting deaths from the virus. If the virus causes other life-threatening complications which may not have arisen before the virus was caught then it is a death from the virus, however indirect that may seem. And maybe some of these complications arise more than 28 days later - I don't know.

I agree with Janetashbolt. The deaths from the virus figures are likely to be under - not over-stated. This is because of comparing them with the excess deaths figures for the same period in the last 5 years.

The Government was slow in deciding on the lockdown and carried on allowing people to fly in to the UK without quarantining them (apart from the cruise ship passengers) until last month - incredible! They even stopped working on a test and trace system prematurely, which suggests they thought they could contain the virus - how?

Trying to massage the deaths figures at this stage doesn't alter the fact that their response to the outbreak has been lamentable.

I'v looked at the ONS figures again. These are for England and Wales alone.

In the period from w/e 13th March to w/e 3rd July there were 50,199 deaths registered with covid19 on the death certificate.

This does not include figures for NI or Scotland.

The statistics could be wrong in either direction. Too many deaths recorded as due to coronavirus as the person died with it not of it; but also many deaths, especially in care homes near the beginning, where the virus was not diagnosed.

My daughter was very ill in January before we knew about covid. She had two lots of antibiotics to clear a very bad chest infection. Then in Feb I had to cancel two dental appointments because I had a bad cough, sore chest etc., have we had covid? How can we know.

I am convinced that myself, Mr B and my son all had Covid19 over Christmas, the Dr who I saw said it was a virus. Eventually I got over it but it left me extremely weak and took around 6 weeks to get back my energy. Also left me with a damaged lungs so I now have to use an inhaler and visit the hospital. I ask how many other people over the winter just had a virus? I believe the Covid19 was in this country much earlier than reported and I don't think we will ever know the true figures for deaths worldwide.

The saying. " Lies. Damn lies and statistics ". seems to have some significance here.

We certainly were not isolating for nothing - only by keeping people apart can the spread of this virus be halted.
Does it really make any difference how a loved one’s death is recorded?- the grief is the same.

Sounds awful Molli- but why have you not been tested to see if you, or any of the people you mentionned, has actually had it?

The reason for Germany's death rate being so low is because they do not disclose medical details on the death certificate.
My BIL died in June, he had cancer but developed pneumonia and was tested for covid19.
I asked my sister what they had listed as cause of death and she said that no medical details are entered, only place of birth and place of death.
A doctor is not allowed to disclose health issues to an employer either thus allowing incidents like the airline pilot who flew the German plane into a mountain.

Looking back we feel pretty sure we had it back in Feb. We had what we thought were horrendous colds with persistent cough. DD and all of her family had it too. The school I teach in were all coughing and dropping like flies and had to close for 2 days for deep clean so did my GS’s school. We were quite poorly and then I went down with Shingles. Then lockdown happened! A friend was also really poorly at Xmas, he suffers from asthma and he went down with what they said was a chest infection but he was ill for 4 weeks. He’s pretty sure now it was Covid.

As they say, figures can be manipulated to mean anything. Nothing has been standard in all this Covid-19 death rate or infection numbers. Even the 4 nations in the UK have different systems.

Other countries figures are the number of deaths over and above the norm for that period. In UK that's over 65,000. So our figures have been under stated.