How deadly is the coronavirus?
This is a useful article explaining that the deaths reported are when COVID19 is in the body but the person may have died from an underlying condition. It is a notifiable disease. Many of these deaths could still have happened.
From the link:-
"Every year, about 600,000 people in the UK die. And the frail and elderly are most at risk, just as they are if they have coronavirus.
Nearly 10% of people aged over 80 will die in the next year, Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, at the University of Cambridge, points out, and the risk of them dying if infected with coronavirus is almost exactly the same.
That does not mean there will be no extra deaths - but, Sir David says, there will be "a substantial overlap".
"Many people who die of Covid [the disease caused by coronavirus] would have died anyway within a short period," he says.
Knowing exactly how many is impossible to tell at this stage.
Prof Neil Ferguson, the lead modeller at Imperial College London, has suggested it could be up to two-thirds.
But while deaths without the virus would be spread over the course of a year, those with the virus could come quickly and overwhelm the health service."
More at link.
