Coronavirus outbreak

[midlife]

I think the age changed with updated "shielding/staying safe" advice.
Can see it going down like a lead balloon given an ageing work force it may take out even more staff from direct care which is just what we need right now. Maybe that's way they split "vulnerable" into vulnerable and extremely vulnerable.

My clinics are segregated into vulnerable / non vulnerable. Currently 70 years is the cut off age however fit. Been told that at work I can't catch Covid because of procedures and that's why we switch off the NHS app.

Gives the management side more to think about, I'm just a clinical grunt!

 

[Dave Davenport]

It's OK, Boris has just awarded a £200m contract to a start up tech company (directors; a Mr & Mrs Cummings) who have promised to produce a working 'whole world' time machine by Christmas.

 

[tom73]

At least the lockdown news has pushed this down the list so one government positive. Today the Uk joined an exclusive club ninth after the US, India, Brazil, Russia, France, Spain, Argentina and Colombia. We hit a million cases given the mess testing is in and has been from the start the real number is well over that.

 

[raleighnut]

From Kit's feed we also discover the oh so surprising news that Aaron Banks is an innumerate unfeeling çunt of the highest order:


View: https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1322232057494470659

Look at it from a 'tory' point of view, that's a shitload of people they don't have to pay pensions to and not only that once we are dead there will be a bunch more houses they can buy up and rent out.

 

[raleighnut]

I'll just dig out my oxygen tent and my inflatable chimp. What the fark is the use of stopping people from shopping for a new telly if everyone is still going to work / school to sit indoors for 8 hours with strangers. Even if the r rate comes down it will only increase again, it's all pointless the disease is here to stay either live with it or we might as well all slit our wrists because we will all be farked mentally and socially if the government is going to tell us all we can do is work and sleep (and then only in your primary residence regardless that you might own anywhere else) total lockdown is sheer stupidity, a bit like Brexit, just another way of farking the country and making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

The like is for the post, not the facts 😢

 

[Bollo]

Anything that treats everyone rather than focusing on one illness and primarily one age group.

So you want to abolish something but haven't given any thought to what should replace it?

The NHS was put under enormous pressure by a new and poorly-understood disease that was particularly dangerous to older people and those in poor health. Guess were these people tend to hang out?

The decisions taken about maintaining NHS services at the height of the pandemic in March and April were judgement calls and would have had to balance competing risks and trade-offs, possibly with a good dose of political interference thrown in. Whether those decisions were right will probably only become clear once the pandemic is either cured or mitigated. The NHS is a finite resource so when demand exceeds supply something has to give. If you want more capacity, then be willing to pay for it.

Other health services (Spain, France, Italy for example, the US doesn't have a health service, it has a health industry) suffered similar or worse breakdowns. For all its faults, the NHS does a reasonable job despite the UK having one of the lowest per-capita spends across similar industrialised, high-income nations. Funding is a political decision. If you want a better health system, then vote for a government that's willing to be honest about how much that really costs. Abolishing something doesn't make the problem go away.

 

[livpoksoc]

So you want to abolish something but haven't given any thought to what should replace it?

The NHS was put under enormous pressure by a new and poorly-understood disease that was particularly dangerous to older people and those in poor health. Guess were these people tend to hang out?

The decisions taken about maintaining NHS services at the height of the pandemic in March and April were judgement calls and would have had to balance competing risks and trade-offs, possibly with a good dose of political interference thrown in. Whether those decisions were right will probably only become clear once the pandemic is either cured or mitigated. The NHS is a finite resource so when demand exceeds supply something has to give. If you want more capacity, then be willing to pay for it.

Other health services (Spain, France, Italy for example, the US doesn't have a health service, it has a health industry) suffered similar or worse breakdowns. For all its faults, the NHS does a reasonable job despite the UK having one of the lowest per-capita spends across similar industrialised, high-income nations. Funding is a political decision. If you want a better health system, then vote for a government that's willing to be honest about how much that really costs. Abolishing something doesn't make the problem go away.

All of this. The original comment seems to fly in the face of the naysayers of the NHS who usually decry 'wasted spending' on very specific treatments for marginalised individuals or 'health tourism'.

You will miss it when it's gone.

 

[oldfatfool]

The fact is that at the start of the pandemic the NHS stopped treating other ailments on the belief that it would eventually need the capacity to treat covid. Cancer sir? Come back in 6 months we might need this bed for someone else. Boris banged on last night that this lockdown was about not forcing the NHS to make a choice about who it treats and saves, but sorry i think that choice as already been made.

 

[IaninSheffield]

The fact is that at the start of the pandemic the NHS stopped treating other ailments on the belief that it would eventually need the capacity to treat covid. Cancer sir? Come back in 6 months we might need this bed for someone else.

Well, not exactly.
From 'NEXT STEPS ON NHS RESPONSE TO COVID-19' issued by CE & COO of NHS England on 17th March.
"Assume that you will need to postpone all non-urgent elective operations from
15th April at the latest, for a period of at least three months. ... Emergency
admissions, cancer treatment and other clinically urgent care should continue
unaffected. In the interim, providers should continue to use all available
capacity for elective operations including the independent sector, before
COVID constraints curtail such work."
Though the experience of individuals in different parts of the country may of course not reflect that intent.

 

[Bollo]

The fact is that at the start of the pandemic the NHS stopped treating other ailments on the belief that it would eventually need the capacity to treat covid. Cancer sir? Come back in 6 months we might need this bed for someone else. Boris banged on last night that this lockdown was about not forcing the NHS to make a choice about who it treats and saves, but sorry i think that choice as already been made.

If the NHS stopped all other treatment, I really need to find out who that guy was with his hand up my @rse!?

 

[vickster]

If the NHS stopped all other treatment, I really need to find out who that guy was with his hand up my @rse!?

His whole hand
Was his name Herriot?

 

[Bollo]

His whole hand
Was his name Herriot?

It bloody felt like it! 😬

 

[MrGrumpy]

Well indeed. If I was a betting cycler I would put money on a Scotland-wide lockdown (our tier 4/5) in the next few weeks.

That’s what we don’t want to do and I hope it doesn’t happen. . West of Scotland should have been in tier 4 now ! Something persuaded the FM not to ,liked To think it’s because cases are dropping but something tells me it might be the issue with her vast majority of voters !
Edit

just to add , I suppose the chance of a national lockdown might be more clear for Scotland if furlough is extended

 

[tom73]

@oldfatfool You know that to be fact do you or are reading the in the papers? The NHS at no point has closed to anyone who need’s immediate or emergency treatment. Elective surgery was on the whole stopped. Some other treatments based on individual clinical history was delayed based on the risk of COVID outweighing other factors. But only if the clinical history allowed. Not wholesale but case by case. Effect of COVID on NHS capacity is not just beds you simply can’t run a normal health service with COVID all around. Every intervention or patient contact now needs PPE , distancing means less room in clinics, more staff off with sickness or isolating. Some services stopped not because of beds but a total lack of planning and lack of PPE. Thanks to governments forgetting calls to plan and stock up.

Most of the NHS is outside a hospital primary care never closed and much has been running on the whole at normal levels. Face to face GP appointments as the norm has stopped. But most people never need a face to face appointment in the first place, other services like pharmacies remained open. Many clinics still ran but in different ways like drive thoughts or moved to other buildings like unused football function rooms.

What Boris was saying and clearly you’ve missed the point. Is that come the week of Christmas the whole of the NHS not just Critical care or ICU will totally run out of beds. Not just for covid but for everyone that means no treatment for anyone. Which leaves one option only clinicians making life or death decisions not an clinical need but on bed numbers. That means allowing people to die on the street outside the hospitals or in the back of ambulance's on mass or in hospital corridors alone. Not just the old but anyone now think about it. No one can ever know if they need care or become critically ill including you.
I’ve seen the effect of making a clinical call to stop treatment has on ones who have to make them. Having to make it day in day out on just having a bed or not. Will break many HCP’s never mind ones who at home will have pick up pieces.

The NHS is not prefect it never was but a hell of a lot of work , by many has gone into stopping the wheels coming off first time round at what personal cast only time will tell. Most of the work you and others will never see or what effect being pushed to limit has had. So for the ones who have and ones who live with them kindly either get the facts right, try and understand the bigger picture, but above all have some respect to the many who everyday try and care for others even when the odds are not looking good.

 

[fossyant]

Boris banged on last night that this lockdown was about not forcing the NHS to make a choice about who it treats and saves, but sorry i think that choice as already been made.

I'm due some blood tests, but I won't be bothering. Didn't bother 18 months ago as the queue was horrendous, and the consultant then 'made up' my test results in a letter to my GP. Shan't be going near the flea pit this time. The test's aren't essential - only endocrinology.