UK are first in Europe with Over 150,000 deaths

The Office for Nationals Statistics compiles their figures from death certificates. Death certificates state the cause of death. They don't have on them 'by the way this guy died from a heart attack but he had covid so we'll count it as a covid death.'.

Despite MerylSreep's oft told story of her friend's experience I am not prepared to accept that thousands of doctors gave covid as the cause of death in some vast conspiracy to inflate the covid death figures. Who would want to do that? The government that has continually played down the death toll? Or doctors who, for some unknown reason, want to scare the population? I think that would be seriously impugning the integrity of the medical profession.

According to the ONS some 173,000+ death certificates have given covid as the cause of death. There 'may' be some faulty ones but not enough to seriously skew the figures.

Someone said earlier that it's not a competition. I agree. I don't really care that we're 'only' 30th in the death league. The number of deaths we have had is bad and could have been fewer had we had a more effective government.

A variant combining the features of Delta and Omicron has been found in some 25 people on Cyprus, 12 of them in hospital, and reported to the international database which tracks variants. This was reported last week on Medscape.

For our huge population, much larger than the 65,000,000 actually acknowledged, we are not doing so badly on total deaths but then you cannot compare apples and pears. India has a very young population , we are older, our ethnic diversity is very wide and so on.

It might be useful to focus on who is actually dying of Covid in this country and why.

Total deaths are meaningless. Are the same methods used in different countries?
Deaths per 1 million population ( from Worldometer )
USA 2573
Italy 2244
Belgium 2439
UK 2194
France 1915

Far too late to test on day 2- once you have spent time in the Terminal with crowds, eating, drinking, shopping, queuing and many hours sitting like sardines on a plane, and then same again at arrival terminal, on way home and mixing at home, etc.

It seems very clear that several variants are around.

It is sad that people have died and are continuing to die. Families are devastated. But how true are these numbers if people have had the virus got over it and then died of other reasons but fell into the 28 days of having covid. The true numbers will take years to finally be known as many thousands will die through not getting treatment and diagnosis for other diseases.

Kali2 you still have to test when you get back to the UK
There is no new varient

Alegrias1

*There's no new variant in Cyprus!!!*

Sheesh....

And English tourists can go there and not have to test before boarding plane and returning. Oh clever!

maddyone

Unfortunately I only got as far as the headline before I was asked to create an account and I don’t want to do that. Anyway the article appears to be saying that it’s down to genetics. I don’t really know how that can be as coronavirus is a novel virus, so humans have no immunity, well had no immunity when it was first identified. But I’m not a scientist so I know nothing.

I hope that research will enlighten us about this as I'm sure this has a basis in fact.
There are people in this country, seemingly healthy who have succumbed to Covid quite rapidly and become very ill, as you yourself know. Then I know people who have been very ill indeed with other illnesses including cancer, who have caught Covid and had mild or no symptoms at all, even before there was a vaccine.

I didn't realise it was a competition.

My friends brother was at the end of his life suffering with cancer. He was in hospital where he contracted covid.
My friend had to fight to get the cause of his death changed from covid to cancer.

Hear hear SuRu. I simply do not believe any of the statistics with which we are daily presented.

There's no new variant in Cyprus!!!

Sheesh....

150,000 deaths is a direct consequence of poor decision making by Boris and delaying interventions to stop the spread. We are not out of the woods (new variants are likely to appear as in Cyprus) but the Tory rightwing are hell-bent on profit over safety. The first task of any government is to protect the people and Boris has done badly on that. He did, it is true, throw money at vaccine development at an early stage - a gamble which paid off - and allowed Sunak to fund furlough but it is the NHS which should get the credit for the vaccine rollout. I give him 3 out of 10 pending the outcome of inquiries into PPE contracts.

how not ow

150,000 deaths of people who had tested positive with Covid within 28 days. Hard to believe but ow may died because of Covid and how many died with it?

I think we won't truly know which country has done "best" or "worst" for some time because of the different ways in which countries are using statistics. In the UK, we count anyone who dies within 28 days of a positive Covid test as having died of Covid, even if they already had a serious health condition like cancer or even if they were to get knocked down by a bus. In Germany, where my sister lives, they talk about "dying with Covid" if someone has another health problem and they don't count those deaths with their Covid death statistics. So we're not comparing like with like.

With regards to Japan, they are a much more compliant nation. If they are told to wear face coverings then that’s what they do. It’s certainly helped. Here in many places it’s like, what pandemic? There’s still far too many people not taking precautions.

Casdon

And Bonnie’s in Swansea, still holding out for a hero..although as a PCR test is £68 (not £130) she could probably afford to nip over to France now and then.

... but then she'll get lost!

I like the Janapese, I think they’re so very polite. I really enjoyed visiting Japan and seeing and learning about their culture and as I said, they were so very polite. I wonder if we’ll ever travel and see different cultures again, as we did pre Covid.

Far less overweight people in Japan, which by itself makes a difference.Genetics, diet and less tourism?Who knows.

I’ve always suspected their low figures may be due to the mask wearing they’ve always done and the no handshakes but bowing as a greeting.

They also seem to be a more obedient (for want of a better word) people with a cultural mindset of doing things for the greater good and not focusing on the individual (compared to UK)

Unfortunately I only got as far as the headline before I was asked to create an account and I don’t want to do that. Anyway the article appears to be saying that it’s down to genetics. I don’t really know how that can be as coronavirus is a novel virus, so humans have no immunity, well had no immunity when it was first identified. But I’m not a scientist so I know nothing.

maddyone

I’d certainly like to know how it was achieved by Japan.

I was going to suggest genetics, then I found this:

www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/12/11/national/riken-research-covid-19/

There is so much still under research that we have yet to find out.

Lots of raw fish?