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Your tweets don't really say anything about the general case. The death counts record the number of people who died after testing positive for this coronavirus

Your tweets don't really say anything about the general case. The death counts record the number of people who died after testing positive for this coronavirus. This isn't how deaths related to any other respiratory infection are recorded. There is upward pressure on the number from people with comorbidity for whom Covid-19 wasn't the primary cause of death, and there is also downward pressure on the number from people who died due to Covid-19's effects but were never tested. The relative magnitude of those different pressures is not known at this point.

DanBC 7y ago
> The death counts record the number of people who died after testing positive for this coronavirus Probably important to point out the large regional variation. In the UK the doctor has to be able to say to the best of their knowledge and belief that covid-19 was the cause of death before putting it on the death certificate. We're not testing everyone, not even the ones in hospital for severe respiratory illness. We don't test dead people. So this feels like it's going to under-count, not over-count the deaths. If this was just people who were going to die anyway we wouldn't have the huge rates of excess mortality. We know we have excess mortality because (again in the UK) we're having to build temporary morgues to hold all the dead bodies, and we're having to change the process to register deaths.
- _-___________-_ 7y ago
  > In the UK the doctor has to be able to say to the best of their knowledge and belief that covid-19 was the cause of death before putting it on the death certificate. Is "covid-19 on the death certificate" the same thing as "this death is included in covid-19 counts reported by NGOs/media"? Because I've noticed several news outlets in the UK reporting death counts with wording like "deaths of people who tested positive".
  - DanBC 7y ago
    In the UK we have two different death counts. There's the numbers from Public Health England. These are more likely to be the numbers you've seen because they are updated daily and there's not much lag between death and reporting. The dashboard is here: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/f94c3c90da5b4e9f9a0b19484dd4bb14 https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/f94c3c9... (and tucked away in the bottom right there's a link to a PDF for the methods). The PHE numbers are: > The figures shown are deaths in NHS-commissioned services of patients who have had a positive test result for COVID-19. These are reported by the services to NHS England. NHS England extracts data at 5pm each day and are reported in the dashboard the following day. Following validation, the total number of deaths in England is published by NHS England. This is combined with death counts provided to DHSC by the devolved administrations to give a UK total which is published by DHSC. The devolved administrations may publish slightly different figures based on different cut-off times. Deaths outside NHS services are not included. Deaths of people who have had a positive test for COVID-19 could in some cases be due to a different cause. They're talking about NHS England there, but they're taking numbers from Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland (the devolved administrations) to give a total for the UK. These numbers will be higher because, like you've said, they're including people who die with as well as of covid-19. But they'll also be lower because they're not including people who die outside NHS hospitals. That means most people who die in care homes or hospices will not be counted. The other numbers are from the Office for National Statistics. These are going to be higher because they include all death wherever it happens that a doctor has said is due to covid-19. There's a lag between the death and the reporting of about a week because it uses death certificate data and that takes time. Here's a blog post from the Office for National Statistics about counting death: https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2020/03/31/counting-deaths-involving-the-coronavirus-covid-19/ https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2020/03/31/counting-deaths-involving...
    - _-___________-_ 7y ago
      Thanks!

DanBC 7y ago

> The death counts record the number of people who died after testing positive for this coronavirus Probably important to point out the large regional variation. In the UK the doctor has to be able to say to the best of their knowledge and belief that covid-19 was the cause of death before putting it on the death certificate. We're not testing everyone, not even the ones in hospital for severe respiratory illness. We don't test dead people. So this feels like it's going to under-count, not over-count the deaths. If this was just people who were going to die anyway we wouldn't have the huge rates of excess mortality. We know we have excess mortality because (again in the UK) we're having to build temporary morgues to hold all the dead bodies, and we're having to change the process to register deaths.

_-___________-_ 7y ago
> In the UK the doctor has to be able to say to the best of their knowledge and belief that covid-19 was the cause of death before putting it on the death certificate. Is "covid-19 on the death certificate" the same thing as "this death is included in covid-19 counts reported by NGOs/media"? Because I've noticed several news outlets in the UK reporting death counts with wording like "deaths of people who tested positive".
- DanBC 7y ago
  In the UK we have two different death counts. There's the numbers from Public Health England. These are more likely to be the numbers you've seen because they are updated daily and there's not much lag between death and reporting. The dashboard is here: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/f94c3c90da5b4e9f9a0b19484dd4bb14 https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/f94c3c9... (and tucked away in the bottom right there's a link to a PDF for the methods). The PHE numbers are: > The figures shown are deaths in NHS-commissioned services of patients who have had a positive test result for COVID-19. These are reported by the services to NHS England. NHS England extracts data at 5pm each day and are reported in the dashboard the following day. Following validation, the total number of deaths in England is published by NHS England. This is combined with death counts provided to DHSC by the devolved administrations to give a UK total which is published by DHSC. The devolved administrations may publish slightly different figures based on different cut-off times. Deaths outside NHS services are not included. Deaths of people who have had a positive test for COVID-19 could in some cases be due to a different cause. They're talking about NHS England there, but they're taking numbers from Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland (the devolved administrations) to give a total for the UK. These numbers will be higher because, like you've said, they're including people who die with as well as of covid-19. But they'll also be lower because they're not including people who die outside NHS hospitals. That means most people who die in care homes or hospices will not be counted. The other numbers are from the Office for National Statistics. These are going to be higher because they include all death wherever it happens that a doctor has said is due to covid-19. There's a lag between the death and the reporting of about a week because it uses death certificate data and that takes time. Here's a blog post from the Office for National Statistics about counting death: https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2020/03/31/counting-deaths-involving-the-coronavirus-covid-19/ https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2020/03/31/counting-deaths-involving...
  - _-___________-_ 7y ago
    Thanks!