3 ms·

UK gov suspends publication of daily COVID-19 death toll over accuracy concerns

• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• mytailorisrich 6y ago
  The time between diagnosis and eventual death is not key. What's key is the cause of death and whether a patient had been cured in the meantime. If someone is successfully treated, discharged from hospital then dies from an unrelated cause (a scenario they mention in the article) then they do have a point. I doubt these are common cases, though, but they should indeed be evaluated and corrected. But their proposal to have a hard cut-off of 21 days after diagnosis is equally flawed although I can see the government being keen on lowering official stats...
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• DanBC 6y ago
  This isn't as big a deal as some people seem to think. Most people were not using the daily updates because the problems are well known. There's lags in the data (especially around weekends and public holidays), the data can't be compared across the UK, and this data (even with this method) tends to under count deaths. It's a mistake to think it has lead to an over count of deaths. Most people are using the weekly ONS data instead. EG, this tweet: https://twitter.com/ActuaryByDay/status/1284468751790936065?s=20 https://twitter.com/ActuaryByDay/status/1284468751790936065?...
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]