Britain tops Europe’s ranking of deaths above the highest. But it will take years to fully assess the effectiveness of national responses.
In late April, which resulted in an eternity ago, I wrote an article for the Guardian about the disorders of comparing Covid-19 mortality rates in the UK with those of other countries, and I said, “It’s tempting to verify to build a rating. Array, however, we will have to wait months, even years, to get a real picture. Three months later, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) duly met a rating from European countries, according to Eurostat at the end of May. The UK is at the top. But unlike football or Eurovision, it’s not a ranking you have to lead.
The ONS investigation absolutely ignores the statistics about coronavirus deaths we hear all the time, and only counts the total number of deaths regardless of the cause. It then calculates the surplus relative to the average of the last five years, adjusting the country’s age. Any excess is likely due to Covid-19, the effects of the blockage or some other reason.
By rating countries based on excess mortality accumulated since the beginning of the year, England tops the list, with almost 8% more deaths than the five-year average. Spain is currently (7% more), followed by Scotland (5%) Belgium (4%). Wales and Northern Ireland rank fifth and eighth respectively. The UK has made a mistake.
However, the UK did not revel in the highest peak in over-mortality transitority: until mid-March, Bergamo in Italy had more than nine times the general number of deaths, resulting in the kind of desperate stories that led to the NHS coverage campaign. Array The largest city in Europe was Madrid, for a week in mid-March. A month later, Birmingham had more than 3 times its overall mortality rate, and some local spaces were even higher: in one week in April, Brent, in north London, had more than 4 times its overall death toll. These statistics obscure what must have been a devastating time for communities.
For those of us who are obsessed with these things, it’s no wonder that Belgium had only a portion of England’s relative excess mortality, as websites that make comparisons abroad show it as the country (ignorant San Marino) with the highest number of coronaviruses. . deaths consistent with millions of inhabitants. But Belgium has been very beneficial in calling the deaths of Covid-19, which in line with perhaps has given it an even poorer record than it deserves.
It is worth noting that disorders with covid-19-like death counts are obviously illustrated every day when the England Public Health scoreboard publishes a recount for the UK; for example, another 119 and 83 coronavirus deaths were reported last Tuesday and Wednesday. NHS England lately suffers fewer than 15 Covid-19 deaths, which coincides with the day in hospitals, however, the incredibly higher PHE figures for England also come with one of more than 250,000 people who have already tested positive and died of any cause, even though it has no relation to the coronavirus.
The Department of Health and Social Services has suspended those daily figures, however, they are still ongoing at all foreign sites and are very likely to be used through others to make judgments on progress in the UK. They would possibly give a negative picture incorrectly, as the ONS recently reported that the total number of deaths in the UK has not shown general excesses in the past five weeks.
But when you look at where the deaths occur, it’s transparent that we don’t go back to normal: other people stay away from hospitals and die at home. In England and Wales, there were 766 excess deaths in the house in the week ending 17 July, of which only 29 were by coronavirus, while hospitals recorded 862 fewer deaths. As a result, more than one hundred deaths consistent with the day occurred at home, which would usually happen in the hospital; this is at least a relief from the peak of the epidemic, where there were 2,000 more deaths in the house according to the week.
Most other people would rather die at home, however, it seems that we do not have a concept of the quality of those deaths and if some of them have been delayed if they had gone to the hospital.
Why has the UK done so badly? An indication is given through the interactive map provided through the ONS report, which shows the evolution of excess mortality at the local point across Europe. We see strong hot spots in northern Italy and central Spain, which remain quite localized; for example, Rome has not experienced excessive mortality. But it’s scary to see these extra deaths erupt fairly evenly across the UK, as thousands of other people returning from the winter holidays in Spain and Italy have sown many separate epidemics across the country. The epidemic in the UK was more widespread and lasted longer than in other countries, where its mortality returned to overall levels in May, while the UK surplus continued until June.
But as I said before, it is a mistake to check the smart functionality or bad feature of individual causes. Sweden did the wrong thing and is in sixth place in the standings, only Wales. To what extent is this due to their liberal measures, avoiding a strict blockade? And how much is this due to the fact that a large number of Swedes take the winter holidays in Spain and Italy, and have returned and caused epidemics, or that (as in the UK) their retirement homes were not well protected? There are no undeniable answers.
My first comments remain: it will take years to assess well the situation of the epidemic and the measures taken to combat it. We now have a rating table, but as to why the UK has done so poorly, the arguments will continue.
David Spiegelhalter is president of the Winton Center for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge. It’s the Art of Statistics