How would you rate the UK's handling of this pandemic?

[Rorschach]

ere!! I'm elderly and my 3 kids are all much better off than I ever was! Tax them I say!

You are in a minority then (depending on the age of your children).

 

[Droogs]

There have been a few studies now suggesting that cells in the testes are vulnerable to COVID so it might affect fertility (including post-mortem showing severe damage after fatal disease in older men). We still only know bits and pieces about this disease and its effects (other than death, which I would say is undeniably obvious but that seems not to be the case).

I do wish some people could get over the complete logical fallacy of thinking that because the average age of death from COVID is not dissimilar to the average age of death there is not much loss of life expectancy.

OOh spooky. I was discussing a short story I read a few (20 odd) years ago about a pandemic that rage but only seemed to affect grown up and they sent their children out into the world to run everything and then found out by doing so they had made all their kids infertile

 

[Droogs]

Well it will all come out in the wash eventually and we'll see what really happened.

I hope I won't hear any complaints about tax rises etc that will be coming soon, maybe an increase in inheritance tax, maybe a capital tax on your property before you die? While I doubt it will happen I do hope that we will see some greater taxation on the elderly and not burden the young once again.

Bring it on - i haven't earned enough to pay any

 

[Jameshow]

We could have been the world leader. In 1990. I worked for a company which was designing and manufacturing a fibre multiplexing system for BT. It was part of a system to provide fibre in every home in the UK. It was called the Common System Architecture (C.S.A.).
BTs fibre roll out was stopped by Thatcher and her government. I couldn't believe how stupid it was to stop it.
What happened in the 30 years since, telecoms businesses have teased out bandwidth to maximise their profits. We were all shafted mega style.

quote from article
"""
At that time, the UK, Japan and the United States were leading the way in fibre optic technology and roll-out. Indeed, the first wide area fibre optic network was set up in Hastings, UK. But, in 1990, then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided that BT's rapid and extensive rollout of fibre optic broadband was anti-competitive and held a monopoly on a technology and service that no other telecom company could do.

"Unfortunately, the Thatcher government decided that it wanted the American cable companies providing the same service to increase competition. So the decision was made to close down the local loop roll out and in 1991 that roll out was stopped. The two factories that BT had built to build fibre related components were sold to Fujitsu and HP, the assets were stripped and the expertise was shipped out to South East Asia.""""

Boy I dislike that woman...

What was her involvement in ending hs225 development?

Cheers James

 

[Rorschach]

Bring it on - i haven't earned enough to pay any

That's only income tax, though I suspect there may be changes there too.

 

[Noel]

Sorry Noel but Brazillian Covid made me snigger a little.

A little lightness in these times is welcome.

 

[Jake]

life expectancy is forward looking and is different than age adjusted death rate in the past. I don't think life expectancy will be affected much in terms of population death rates. Life expectancy for individuals may change a lot.

The average person dying at 83 or whatever it is of COVID has ten or so years of life expectancy left. They are all on the right hand side of the average.

The might stuff is just fear mongering. Likely does or is proven to is plenty.

There are several studies saying might. The one I read was a does, albeit in a small sample of 5 men who died from COVID but severe damage - all basically destroyed functionally. I know as a yank you will not understand the precautionary principle, much more nail your balls to the wall and expect them to work mighty fine.

 

[Rorschach]

The average person dying at 83 or whatever it is of COVID has ten or so years of life expectancy left. They are all on the right hand side of the average.

So if you live to 83, you have 10 years of life expectancy left, that's why no-one dies age 83 then? My father died at age 75, his life expectancy was 12 years, but he still died at 75.

 

[D_W]

OK, you guys have a misunderstanding of how life expectancy is gauged here.

Someone age 83 has remaining life expectancy that puts their expected age at death above the average. They have already lived to 83, so they are a subset.

But it's also true that someone age 83 with CHF or dementia doesn't have a 10 year life expectancy, and someone in an extremely healthy subset would have a greater life expectancy. 10 sounds a little high at age 83, but we don't need to look to find out for sure if it's 7 or 11, it doesn't matter which.

The aggregation that brings together a number like I provided earlier (11) is based on cohorts (so someone age 58 with chronic high blood pressure probably expects to live more than 11 years, but less long than the average 58 year old. You take the cohorts that each person is in and put it together.

Since covid kills people in higher risk classes, it's fair to say that if the same death age occurred for classes with no pre-existing conditions, the average life years lost would be greater than 11 (but if you took data from the healthy cohort, there would be fewer deaths).

 

[D_W]

So if you live to 83, you have 10 years of life expectancy left, that's why no-one dies age 83 then? My father died at age 75, his life expectancy was 12 years, but he still died at 75.

Let's make it simpler - if you take 20 people and on a continuous basis, they die uniformly between 0 and 20 years, then the average is 10. That doesn't make the one who drew the short straw less dead, but if the cohort is created objectively, the data would predict the average accurately if you repeated the experiment some number of times.

 

[Rorschach]

Let's make it simpler - if you take 20 people and on a continuous basis, they die uniformly between 0 and 20 years, then the average is 10. That doesn't make the one who drew the short straw less dead, but if the cohort is created objectively, the data would predict the average accurately if you repeated the experiment some number of times.

I understand, I was making the point that just because someone dies at 83, doesn't mean they should have died 10 years later. Making that argument is silly as in any other year we don't say an 83 year old shouldn't have died yet.

 

[doctor Bob]

ere!! I'm elderly and my 3 kids are all much better off than I ever was! Tax them I say!

Why don't they give more away, then they could fully give to causes they support. I guess they are not fully fledge lefties.
Are your daughters or sons very hairy, that's the only true sign of a proper lefty, take Blair or Keir, far too groomed, corbyn or foot very grubby and hairy.

 

[Jake]

And if everyone then dies at ten, they lose no average life expectancy at birth.

 

[doctor Bob]

Poor bugger, died at 95 had his whole life ahead of him ...................

 

[D_W]

I understand, I was making the point that just because someone dies at 83, doesn't mean they should have died 10 years later. Making that argument is silly as in any other year we don't say an 83 year old shouldn't have died yet.

That's correct. My point was that the life expectancy taken off for each individual *should* be adjusted for their health conditions (the CDC in the US can do this kind of thing pretty easily - they collect death information by cause and while it does get faffed with a bit and finalized later, it's pretty reliable. Within the accuracy needed for discussion, the precision is way beyond good enough.)

The stories that provide change in life expectancy are never written in a way that someone who works with life expectancy may like to see it done, but I'm hoping that the quotes were from someone who knows what they're doing and not something the writer met on twitch.

 

[RobinBHM]

I understand, I was making the point that just because someone dies at 83, doesn't mean they should have died 10 years later. Making that argument is silly as in any other year we don't say an 83 year old shouldn't have died yet.

You claim that the "vast vast majority of people dying from Covid would've done so in 20/21 anyway".

To reach that conclusion, you must have used some methodology to establish what their life expectancy would've been had they hadnt succumbed to Covid.

What methodology did you use? (Beyond "it suits my argument).

 

[Jake]

He uses the false equivalence between average life expectancy at birth and average age of death of COVID.

 

[Rorschach]

You claim that the "vast vast majority of people dying from Covid would've done so in 20/21 anyway".

To reach that conclusion, you must have used some methodology to establish what their life expectancy would've been had they hadnt succumbed to Covid.

What methodology did you use? (Beyond "it suits my argument).

Life expectancy is one factor, it's old people that are dying and we had a good winter for flu etc the previous year. A large proportion of the deaths are also people from care homes, average stay in a care home is less than 3 years (depending no your source it ranges from 18 months to 30 months).

 

[Rorschach]

He uses the false equivalence between average life expectancy at birth and average age of death of COVID.

Life expectancy for those born now is 83, for those dying now at 83 life expectancy was a lot younger when they were born, they have done well to get this far.

EDIT: Life expectancy for someone born in 1931 was under 60 for a male.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...owhaslifeexpectancychangedovertime/2015-09-09

 

[RobinBHM]

Life expectancy is one factor, it's old people that are dying and we had a good winter for flu etc the previous year. A large proportion of the deaths are also people from care homes, average stay in a care home is less than 3 years (depending no your source it ranges from 18 months to 30 months).

Around half are from care homes....that leaves a lot who aren't....what do estimate their life was shortened by due to Covid.

The most vulnerable, require high levels of care.....so it's not surprising those in care homes have a high incidence.

The many millions of people with chronic health conditions yet live normal lives.....are far more able to shield as they don't need much contact.

Those that are vulnerable but have to work are at significant risk.....if there was no lockdown and herd immunity many many more of those would die.

You may not like the truth, but lockdowns are the only option to minimise Covid deaths.