What’s with this hospitals admissions business?

Now pro-lockdown folks (in the UK) are saying something along the lines of “okay, deaths may be way down, but hospital admissions are climbing. Last week up 50%. What happens if younger people who are obese catch the virus, get really sick and hospitals are overrun?”.

So I looked it up, for the UK. Yes daily admissions are up 50% last week. But still daily admissions and totals are just one-tenth of what they were back in April. And back then they didn’t even have to use the emergency Nightingale hospitals, which are on stand-by should they be needed.

This seems yet another angle of the ongoing panic. First it’s deaths. Deaths go down, so then it’s cases. Cases zoom up but deaths remain low, so then it’s “long covid”. Which turns out to be similar to any other viral infection, so now it’s the young obese getting sick and stressing hospital admissions. All just keep the panic going. 

Palm on forehead.

ADDED (18 Oct). More graphs! (All for the UK)

Daily hospital admissions. See if you can find where they are 
“Nearly at March levels” as claimed by the Deputy CMO

Meanwhile, back to deaths and case infections:

In short: cases up, deaths low

“Excess deaths” are those over - or under - projected normal.
I doubt it’s widely known that they are running below normal

You’re not supposed to compare Covid with the flu…
Pneumonia and flu together are more than Covid.
Official NHS figures. One must ask: WTF?

These charts are all based in UK government data, from sources such as the NHS and the Office of National Statistics, where they are openly available, but not in such a user-friendly graphs. I could have made the graphs, but found them already done, courtesy of the Daily Mail. Some may object the Mail is just a trashy tabloid. Two facts remain: (1) The charts are based on official data, aka “the science”. (2) One will search in vain for these in your non-trashy press, The Guardian, the Independent, the BBC website, not even in the Times. Where instead, one might learn to panic a bit more because  “Liverpool admissions devastate other care” (The Guardian), or hospitals stressed (Independent). In short, the only place I’ve found such charts is in the MailOnline.

We watched Jonathan Van-Tam, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer give a press conference the other night. He said “were nearly back to March” in terms of hospital admissions. That is true only if you’re very selective with the data (choosing Blackpool only) and if “nearly” means less than half of March, and just one tenth of the peak. Van-Tam and his two sidekicks wore gloomy faces. And the media asked only about the caseload,  not about deaths, which remain low. And the data above show that admissions are nowhere near March-April levels. 

I don’t for one minute suggest conspiracy here. I guess it’s just that Medical officers have nothing to gain by giving a more balanced picture instead of the worst case, and ditto the politicians. The media go along because bad news sells better than good; “if it bleeds, it leads”. 

The data remain stubborn things,  however. No matter “surging“ cases, death rates are lower by orders of magnitude than in the frost wave. And hospital admissions, overall, are just one tenth.