There’s been a bit of an unpleasant and inaccurate narrative over recent days that the majority of COVID-19 deaths were people who were “at death’s door” in any case. That they died “with” rather than “of” the disease. I want to address that. 1/8
In the next week there will be a bulletin on this from one of the team at @COVID19actuary but for now some brief thoughts from me.
I’ll refer to yesterday’s update from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC). 2/8
Full report:
icnarc.org/DataServices/A…
I’ll refer to yesterday’s update from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC). 2/8
Full report:
icnarc.org/DataServices/A…
The first thing that jumps out from the medical history section of Table 1 is that 93% of those critically ill with COVID-19 were “able to live without assistance in daily activities” prior to developing the disease. That typically suggests reasonable health. 3/8 
Secondly, just 7% of 2,124 intensive care admissions had “very severe comorbidities”. That’s significantly less than typical viral pneumonia patients (as illustrated in table 1)👆
So 19 out of 20 were free of the most severe life-limiting conditions. 4/8
So 19 out of 20 were free of the most severe life-limiting conditions. 4/8
Lastly, for now, the age distribution. Most critical cases are aged between 50 and 80.
People of this age, without severe comorbidities, could reasonably have expected to have years of life ahead of them before they contracted this disease. 5/8
People of this age, without severe comorbidities, could reasonably have expected to have years of life ahead of them before they contracted this disease. 5/8
There‘s a danger of drawing conclusions from ICU admissions that I ought to bring out. Given capacity limits there will inevitably be some triage going on, ie admitting those with the best chance of survival. This will skew the data to some extent. 6/8
Still, this data covers all admissions from the start of the epidemic until 3 April. For much of that period we are told that spare capacity was available so this data should not be skewed too much away from the typical critical case. 7/8
Hopefully this goes some way to addressing the false narrative that these people would have died soon anyway, and we’ll hear rather less of it from journalists and commentators who ought to know better. 8/8
The bulletin I made reference to above has now been published on LinkedIn. When I am able to I will provide another link for people who don’t use that site.
