Carl Hennigan

speaker

978 appearances 7 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2020 last heard May 2020

Carl Hennigan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Talk Evidence · Talk Evidence covid-19 update - Remdesivir, care homes, and death data · 17 Apr 2020 podcast

focusing on the change in the data, not the absolute numbers.

Yeah, and we noticed that in the early days of the way the data was reporting, there was huge disparities between NHS England's data and the ONS data.

It was about 70% to 80% out.

And you got reports saying, oh my gosh, death could be 70%, 80% more.

When we've looked at it, actually what's happened here is NHS England death data has got much better.

It's been reported more accurately.

And actually, there's only about a 10% discrepancy.

So we feel that actually there's not going to be as big a problem as what David said.

And is this idea that you have to focus on the change because one of the key aspects is in the pandemic is you expect the deaths like the infection to double about every five to six days.

And if they keep doubling, if they'd have kept doubling, we'd have been at about 2,000 deaths per day now plus.

That's the doomsday scenario.

So the deaths are very high, but actually reassuring in that they're not the pandemic prediction models that we've seen.

They are more acting like what we call a seasonal effect with a really bad flu that we get in this peak, particularly in the elderly.

Now, it's really important to understand this concept of the elderly, because one of the most important aspects is if you compare in a pandemic, let's take like swine flu.

One of the most important aspects is the reason that was called a pandemic is that actually the deaths occurred in disproportionately in younger people.

those under 75.

That's what happens with a new novel virus when it is a pandemic, as opposed to a seasonal outbreak where most of the deaths occur in the very elderly or those over age 75.

And one of the reassuring points, and I know this doesn't explain every death is important, but what David's point was about the 10,000 people is what's reassuring in this pandemic is the deaths in those young people are very, very small, particularly in children.

Whereas in influenza outbreaks and pandemics in the past, they've been affected very badly.

So we get asked a lot about case fatality rates.

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