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Worth mentioning that the control group wasn’t matched for hospital admission status, while the study group was solely people who ended up in the hospital. I’m

• azakai 6y ago
  Yes, but that seems like a very relevant type of control group. If a person got COVID and ended up in the hospital, and that person wants to know what possible long-term harm that could cause them (that is, compared to had they not gotten COVID and not been hospitalized), then the article focused on exactly that.
  • makomk 6y ago
    Not really. The UK has been testing pretty much everyone who's admitted to hospital for COVID since the start of the outbreak regardless of why they were admitted, which means there's going to be quite a few people in the COVID and in hospital group who were actually admitted due to other, unrelated conditions. Particularly if they were being admitted to hospital regularly...
    • azakai 6y ago
      Good question to ask, but no, they didn't look at people who tested positive but were admitted for something else: > Individuals were included if they had a hospital episode from 1 January to 31 August 2020 with a primary diagnosis of covid-19 (from the full paper)
    • iso1210 6y ago
      And throughout their stay. My father was vaccinated in January, went into hospital after a siezure (not unknown) a in mid febuary, he was tested on arrival, and was negative. Continued to be tested, and by early march (2 weeks after admittance) he tested positive.
  • sokoloff 6y ago
    That’s what they attempt to focus on, but inadvertently introduce bias in terms of people’s proclivity to show up at the hospital for any given severity of issue. People who present once for one thing are probably more likely to present a second time: either because they have a lower threshold for seeking help, they have overall poorer health and so present more often, or because they have a referring primary doctor who is biased towards admitting over treating outpatient.
    • azakai 6y ago
      That's a fair point. That could inflate the later admission numbers. However, I don't think it can explain the far higher death rate.
      • sokoloff 6y ago
        The poorer general health one it seems would have a bias towards all-cause mortality rate, though perhaps not to the full magnitude as observed.
        • azakai 6y ago
          Possibly. But poorer general health is something they explicitly tried to account for with the control group, at least.
• surfpel 6y ago
  The most useful result here is to isolate the impact of covid hospital admission status on the probability of mortality, not the difference between covid and other hospitalizations.
  • peytn 6y ago
    Anyone who’s even dipped a toe in this policy area can tell you that when old people and hospitals meet, gaudy statistics follow. It’s common knowledge in the field. To not include that context or any points of comparison seems irresponsible to me given the publicity.
    • nightpool 6y ago
      The excerpt from the study quoted above says "Rate ratios were greater for individuals aged less than 70 ... with the largest differences seen for respiratory disease (10.5 (95% confidence interval 9.7 to 11.4) for age less than 70 years v 4.6 (4.3 to 4.8) for age ≥70)" Isn't that a clear indication that there's something besides "general trends in old people" going on here?
      • incrudible 6y ago
        Age isn't the only factor, you need to control for underlying health conditions, which apparently they chose not to. Suppose you have COPD at age 50, for one you are less likely to live to 70, but also you are at a far greater risk with COVID. It would not be unexpected if such a person were readmitted to the hospital or die months later.
        • azakai 6y ago
          They did account for underlying health conditions. The control group was matched for relevant clinincal diagnoses, as well as general health factors like BMI and smoking (see "matching variables" section in the paper).
          • 6y ago