I was talking about Italy one month ago. The hospitals came under pressure a month ago and within a week things had gotten wildly out of control. I was putting context on your point
Just on the Italian case, it has it’s own particular set of variables that are not necessarily replicated in other countries (see post above about age, underlying medical conditions, state of hospitals pre-coronavirus).
The problem with the media reporting on deaths is that they end up being incorrectly used to make assumptions on the state of the world. They keep conveniently omitting the numbers on mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic individuals, which is a fundamental component on how prevalent the virus is.
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Are the numbers you quote deaths due to COVID-19, or deaths with COVID-19? That’s a question of high importance here.
In what way? If you have an underlying issue you can’t argue that person would have died regardless of a COVID19 infection.
Christ
You can. When a report of a COVID-19 death says the person was old and had underlying medical conditions, that has got to be taken into account. I posted above, more than 99% of the coronavirus deaths in Italy were people who had previous medical conditions. 84% of the deaths to-date were in the 70+ age bracket, and 50% were in the 80+ bracket. These statistics point to people that are vulnerable to death by chest infection from causes ranging from flu to pneumonia to coronavirus. The correct way to report on a lot of these deaths would be to say coronavirus contributed to, but did not cause, the death.
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How will lads drink in pubs wearing face masks
Jaysus wept, somebody reads way too much Spiked Online
Poorly
Wtf?
These deaths are okay cause those people were old & sick anyway?
If a virus came along that had the potential to wipe out, say 90% of humanity, right-wing nutcases would be telling us that the virus was a good thing on the basis that it would lead to less death - on the basis that everybody dies in the end but if 80% of the world’s population was wiped out there would be far less reproduction and therefore less people around to die in the long run.
There is no safe dose of death fetishism.
#openthepubs
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This is a “talking point” now particularly among American right-wing nut jobs. There’s a Fox News presenter called Brit Hume (who @labane1917 linked to yesterday) who is heavily pushing this “narrative”.
It’s straight out of Hitler times when the old and sick and “inconvenient” were involuntarily euthanised, ie. murdered.
The death rate in parts of Italy is six times the normal rate and you have bloodthirsty lunatics like @ironmoth telling us it’s nothing to worry about.
Calling him a sociopath would be unjustly kind.
If people revert very quickly to the patterns of behaviour of before the crisis,
the epidemiological models are correct. There would be a second wave of
infections.
But behaviour will be different, either because of the lessons people have
learned during this crisis, or because of the constraints placed upon them by
rules and regulations. How many people will shake hands the day after the
lockdown is lifted?
I stopped reading here
No, that is not what I said. I said that when an old and already sick person contracts coronavirus and dies, it is a distortion of the full facts to report that death as being due to coronavirus.
So a Nursing Home resident with a weak ticker who contacts Covid19 is not a Coronavirus death?
The “Freddie Mercury didn’t die from AIDS” excuse. 
Bang on.
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From speaking to a neighbour who has just started back work as a doctor in recent weeks, a major issue they are seeing is people presenting at hospital with ailments that should have been treated weeks ago. In many cases whatever their complaint is has progressed so badly that they are unlikely to recover, but because of the current situation they didn’t want to be taking up NHS time or were simply too frightened to go to hospital. Iv also heard of 2 cases where people in their 30s have had the final rounds of their chemotherapy cancelled, just when it looked like they were getting on top of things. However because there will be no images of these people on beds with ventilators they will largely be forgotten about. The number of deaths in the 6 months after this thing has been got under control, and the ages of people dying then, could tell a very sad tale.
16000 people in the UK die prematurely each year from the affects of air pollution, I hope none of the people demanding a lockdown at all costs drive a diesel car.
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