Quote Originally Posted by Wheeze View Post
Either counting method is fraught because of the basic situation of death certification. The ONS stats show that 95% of the covid deaths are over 80 years age. Imagine an 85 year old diabetic patient with heart failure, kidney failure and COPD being admitted to hospital with breathing difficulties. This is a drastically common scenario every day, up and down the land. Ask any junior doctor! Any or all of those conditions will lead to breathing difficulty. Unfortunately the patient does not make it but routine testing includes the covid test which is positive. The junior doctor filling out the death certificate will put covid-19 on the death certificate maybe not a primary cause but certainly contributory. This time last year, the same clinical scenario would have no mention of covid. But today, the sad event is added to the hand-wringing tally of deaths intoned on the daily news. But its a nonsense. The death certification process is often a best guess. I know...I've been there. We used to get £25 for filling out a certificate. Junior doctors perk (or 'Ash Cash' as we bluntly called it!).
But .... the average 80 year old - with the average number of chronic conditions seen at 80 - has 9 years to live if a man, 10 if a woman. So the idea that Covid mainly kills those who are in the last few months of life needs careful appraisal. One estimate I saw was that to achieve herd immunity through infection rather than vaccination would mean a reduction in annual life expectancy of about 2 years - that is huge.