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So, a question to those who are smarter than I am. ONS data in the last few weeks have had the percentage of deaths with Covid on the death certificate as the underlying cause drop from c.90% for much of the last year to 74-77%. I would expect that to have been the case given...
...the instances of severe disease will reduce on account of vaccines having an impact, but not quashing moderate cases entirely. So you may imagine some 80+ YO in particular passing away with Covid as a contributing factor now rather than the underlying cause....
...to be clear, this is not me joining the dark side and saying the data's not accurate, far from it. But, do we need to change the way we interpret it? We see plenty of trends using the 28 day rule or the ONS data, but may the trends look better still by looking just at....
...those cases where Covid is the underlying cause. Looking at the likes of @john_actuary, @jneill @JamesWard73 @_johnbye on this and wonder if it is yet a statistically relevant metric to look at?
In fact, @SarahCaul_ONS, is this data readily available anywhere rather than going through the weekly bulletins one by one. It would be handy to see how the percentages have changed in the last 6 months.
