Quote Originally Posted by Muddy Retriever View Post
So if you agree that if someone dies under a bus 3 months after a positive test it is nonsense to call it a Covid death, why do you think these figures should continue to be published?

It is true that some people who die of Covid do so more than 28 days after contracting the virus but it is a small minority - 12% according to analysis done by PHE. So as I said the other day if the daily reported figure is say 9, the true figure might be 10. The old method could well say 100 and this discrepancy would get much larger over time. Also don't forget there will be a small number of people reported as having died of Covid within 28 days who died of something else, so still a possibility of over count.

As for the excess deaths over and above the reported Covid figures, I do not think the general agreement is that this is due to Covid. Both Sage and The Universities of Sheffield and Loughborough have said it was down to the non-treatment of other conditions due to lack of access. You may put that down to Covid, I put it down to a choice that was made. Even now, these services are still not back to the levels they should be despite most hospitals not having a single case of Covid in them.
Because for every bus death there will be a Covid death that was missed as the test was a false negative - and letting us see the results using the old method of working out the figures means there is no sudden jump in the numbers, and we can compare the results from the start of the pandemic up to the present.
The 88% of Covid deaths within 28 days, as I said, depends on how you define a Covid death, and how accurately the death certificate is filled out. I am very suspicious that many of the deaths said to be from pneumonia and flu are in fact "missed" Covid deaths. And imagine the pressures on a doctor filling out a death certificate where the Covid was hospital acquired.
If someone cannot have their curative cancer operation because there would not be an ICU bed for them post op because of Covid, then that is a Covid death as far as I am concerned. Many such operations, and the investigations preceding them, have been delayed. Hence my enthusiasm for excess deaths, not just deaths said to be from a specific cause.