Quote Originally Posted by Mark G View Post
This week's More or Less on BBC R4 this morning had some interesting stats on the virus. It's worth a listen I kthink, regardless of your views on the BBC or on stats being capable of proving anything. If I understood some of it correctly your chance of dieing of this so far if you are a healthy adult between 15 and 65 is 1 in 19000. Also the number of deaths amongst health workers may not be statistically very much higher than the rate in the general population (accepting that if they ran out of PPE things would change). There's also some interesting stuff about death rate comparisons by country. Make if it what you will but I usually find this programme full of common sense and helps put things in context. They have some interesting things to say about the peak too - one argument is that it occurred a couple of weeks ago.
The death rate of those in their 60's is 3.5% or there abouts - hardly insignificant. And we have almost certainly had far more deaths than the official figures have stated up until now - the deaths in care homes, and those of people in their own homes of uncertain cause - there seems little doubt that many will turn out to be Covid related. One of the now classic presentations is "happy hypoxia" - people with severe pneumonia, a very low oxygen level, yet they are not at all breathless. Breathlessness of course brings you to medical attention - if you are not breathless, and do not present with for example collapse or confusion, you may simply die at home.
Let's hope we have passed the peak - new hospital cases do seem to be going down - and that a vaccine comes along soon.