ONS debunks ‘spurious’ Covid deaths claim shared by David Davis
Claims shared on social media, including by the former Brexit secretary David Davis, that the true number of deaths in England and Wales caused by Covid could be 17,000 have been debunked as “spurious” and factually incorrect by the Office for National Statistics.
The ONS responded after tweets by Davis suggesting that the figure 17,371 represented the death toll in people with no other underlying causes. Davis tweeted: “Up to the end of September 2021, the official count of the deaths of people with Covid was 137,133.” He added a freedom of information (FoI) request indicated only 17,371 of those deaths occurred in people with no underlying causes.
The FoI request to the ONS asked for all deaths in which Covid had been given as the sole cause on the death certificate, which is about a tenth of the generally stated toll.
James Tucker, an analyst at the ONS, said that to suggest the lower figure “represents the real extent of deaths from the virus is both factually incorrect and highly misleading”. It was common for Covid victims to have had a pre-existing health condition, but that did not mean they were at “imminent risk of dying from that condition, or even considered to have reduced life expectancy”, he wrote in a blog.
Tucker wrote:
More than 140,000 deaths have been due to Covid-19, meaning that it has been determined as the underlying cause. To exclude individuals with any pre-existing conditions from this figure greatly understates the number of people who died from Covid-19 and who might well still be alive had the pandemic not occurred.
BA.2 is still growing in domiance here and in 49 other countries worldwide
BA.2, the newly detected version of Omicron, is not a cause for alarm, scientists say
My colleague Melissa Davey reported earlier Australia has recorded its deadliest day ever of the Covid pandemic, as the first cases of the BA.2 descendant of the Omicron variant were recorded in New South Wales.
What is BA.2? Is it something to be worried about?
Denmark, India, UK and northern Europe have recorded the most cases of BA.2, a descendant of Omicron. While it looks to be outcompeting the original Omicron strain, particularly in Denmark, there is no evidence of increased severity.
A report released on Thursday by the UK ’s Health Security Agency offers some reassurance, suggesting that current vaccines protect against BA.2 just as well as they do against the original Omicron variant, with better protection against symptoms — an average of about 70% – two weeks after a booster.
CNN reports:
Experts say there’s no reason to panic over BA.2, which was first detected mid-November and has since spread to 49 countries including the United States.
“Among all the lineages of Omicron, this is the one showing a higher increase of cases. But we have to be careful in interpreting that, because higher increases from a very low number are easier to observe,” said Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo , assistant professor of medicine for infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago .
Like the more familiar version of Omicron, BA.2 has a large number of changes – about 20 – concentrated in the spike protein, the part of the virus that’s targeted by vaccines.
Unlike Omicron, however, it doesn’t cause a certain signature on lab tests called an s-gene target failure, meaning it can look like other SARS-CoV-2 variants on a first screen. That has some calling it ‘the stealth variant’.
But Lorenzo-Redondo says that nickname has caused people to think that it can’t be detected in lab tests, which isn’t the case.
“There has been confusing messaging about this subject. Both FDA-approved lab-based and at-home tests should detect this lineage, as well as the other Omicron (sublineage), BA.1,” he said.
In Denmark , BA.2 now accounts for about half of all new Covid-19 cases, according to a recent statement from Denmark ’s Statens Serum Institute.On Thursday, Dr Sujeet Kumar Singh , director of India ’s National Centre for Disease Control, said that BA.2 had become the dominant strain there.
Yeah, that makes sense, Im just a little concerned about BA.2 nipping off this decline in cases when we really really need to get cases (or at least hospitalizations) down to pre delta surge levels for an extended period of time. Who knows with the data. Im not privy to things that will cause short-term data issues in regions of South Africa so dont want to come off as too alarmed. But I did notice the 7 day average was flattening out faster than I would have hoped for over the last week.
Sweden with UK then
Sweden has decided against recommending Covid vaccines for children aged five to 11, the country’s health agency said, arguing that the benefits did not outweigh the risks.
“With the knowledge we have today, with a low risk for serious disease for kids, we don’t see any clear benefit with vaccinating them,” Health Agency official Britta Bjorkholm told a news conference.
She added that the decision could be revisited if the research changed or if a new variant changed the pandemic. Children in high-risk groups can already get the vaccine.
Sweden recorded more than 40,000 new cases on 26 January, one of the highest daily numbers during the pandemic, despite limited testing.
While the fourth wave has seen daily infection records shattered, healthcare is not under the same strain as during previous waves.
Oh no…
I see it coming
I mean sure these people find viruses all the time but still…feels like we run bad at this stuff as of late
Vaccines still seem pretty damn effective
https://twitter.com/craig_a_spencer/status/1486939431282135042?s=21
Yeah, I can’t imagine doing my job while successfully dodging COVID (as of right now) without being vaccinated.
Sure but I guess the stats are HEAVILY skewed as the vaxxed cases are more likely to be asymptomatic, less likely to test, let alone have PCR’s that may be recorded.
I guess I’m saying the vaxxed cases graph is bullshit but hospitalisations and deaths stand strong and that’s where it’s at.
Citation needed.
Churchill when he reads something on BBC:
Churchill when Nurse Dr John posts something on YouTube:
The difference between these two? Nothing.
There are some parallels between how the Omicron surge is receding in the UK and how the Alpha surge receded across the US back in February-April of 2021. In that case there was a drop, then it leveled off and went up for a week or so, then it resumed it’s drop. Hopefully that is happening here as well. It is also possible that the delta drop would have followed a similar path if not for the fact that omicron surged when it did.
Many other variables change in one country eg school holidays, changing rules re distancing and masks etc. England is newly fully open so I’d be surprised to see the drop resume.
I guess we’ll see. UK’s 7dma is currently the lowest it has been since December 21 per the nytimes tracker:
Ok? As less people get sick, less people get tested…. Has the positivity rate stayed the same or gone up? Because posting the testing data without the positivity rate is pretty lol.
We’re told no need for PCR after postive LFT, hence the case numbers, based off PCR only have dropped a little
OK Bud, you must have watched more of his vids than me.
So the positivity rate is declining, the number of tests are declining, and the number of cases are declining, but maybe cases are actually increasing because reasons?