Originally Posted by
Paul852
The key thing to remember is that in the next 90 days approximately 200,000 people would die in the UK regardless of Covid-19, and there will be a pretty good correlation between those 200,000 and those who will die of/with Covid-19. It's not at all clear to me that the net growth in deaths will be particularly dramatic.
You are making the assumption that the people who would have died anyway (normal death rate) will dilute the numbers of deaths purely attributable to Covid-19. Some, perhaps. Many of those already deceased had underlying health conditions but that increased their susceptibility to Covid-19 effects being terminal - you can't assume they would have died anyway. What is very clear is that there is a pandemic infection doing the rounds that kills up to 3% of those infected, and we still do not know
exactly what proportion of the population is likely to become infected. As for dramatic net growth or otherwise in deaths, there is pretty good evidence from the Bergamo (Italy) local newspaper, where the obituary notices have gone from the normal 1.5 pages to 10 per day. I call that dramatic.
For all of us, it is worth re-reading Dr
tbd's excellent post #109 - he is only a consultant anaesthetist so might know what he is talking about? Time to start taking this seriously.