@wanderlust wrote:Interesting theory although it's predicated on figures which
very few people have any faith in - especially as the numbers conflict with the government's own "excess deaths" figure which puts covid-related deaths at over 60k so far.
Registered deaths are undeniable, government spin on the other hand.....
Don't you mean you and your mates on social media don't have any faith in!
There are three methods of measuring deaths, the daily notifications from the government, the number of death certificates that mention Covid and excess deaths, the last two are from the ONS which is independent of the government.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274The totals to the 29th July are (rounded up)
46,000
56,000 and,
64,000
Why would the government 'spin' a lower number when they and everybody else knows the ONS is daily stating higher ones???
Clearly initial figures that the government give daily are subject to incompleteness (not every hospital or wherever the community GP's report to) files their reports daily and obviously they are prone to human error.
Similarly 'excess deaths' will include those who have sadly died, not because of Covid directly but because their other illnesses have not been able to be treated properly whilst the pandemic as been on going.
It would therefore seem logical that Covid deaths are somewhere in between the two totals with the death certificate total of 56,000 being as good as any.
Apparently 616,000 people died in the UK two years ago - 2018.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/281488/number-of-deaths-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/The difference between the death certificate total of 56,000 and the governments daily total of 46,000 being around 10,000 which is arguably about the true totalish?
So if 620,000 (rounded up) died in a full year in 2018, then something like 310,000 died in half the year (yes I know the deaths are seasonally effected but lets take 310,000 as a reasonable total)
The Covid total is up to the end of July but as if we take off two months for January and Feb when nothing much happened Covid death wise then we are talking about 10,000 deaths in a similar 6 months period.
So 10,000 divided by 310,000 multiplied by 100 = gives a margin of error rate of just 3.22%.
Higher than one would like but completely understandable under the circumstances of all the pandemic entails.
So no, I don't believe the government are trying to spin the death totals even though the nutjobs on Twitter and Facebook believe they are!