The French figures look bad at the moment because they are retrospectively adding in nursing home deaths much later than when they actually occurred.

As far as I know the UK figures still only include hospital deaths which means their situation is much worse than it appears from the figures.

So when will both countries include deaths in the community, and to what extent are deaths being excluded because no test was ever performed?

I think it will be some time before we get accurate counts for most countries, and then only by inference from a much higher than usual total death count in the population.

Already I see quite a few right wing commentators saying its only people in the 70+ age range who are dying, and they would have died sooner rather than later in any case.

Some are arguing that the shut down is crazy because people die in huge numbers all the time, and this is only a bump on that road. It's almost as if they regard this as a necessary cull of expensive to maintain and unproductive elderly people.

Index of Frank's Diaries