I was saying to my son that localised issues with beds had happened since I recall starting to watch the news. Can the system support, what - 5% ?, of the beds being taken by longer term Covid patients now though? It seems to me that we have some element of control over those numbers - by not mixing when we don't have to, and taking a few more precautions (masks, distancing), the case numbers don't increase and the hospitalisations track the cases - but if the system can handle what is 'projected' from the increased mixing then it implies the gov is 'right' in saying mix and party. Do you know what the data projections are saying?
Some sort of convalescent facility sounds to me like it would be useful. Perhaps they could transfer the well enough patients there. They could have used some of the nightingale hospitals . But I suppose staffing them would be the problem.
Sadly ambulances queueing outside A&E is not new ... on quite a few occasions my aged father was sent by ambulance from the care home to A&E with various conditions ranging from a fall with head injury to chest infection/pneumonia, severe kidney infections and problems with his catheter and a possible stroke ... on each occasion the care home phoned me and I arranged to meet him at the hospital ... we were both just over 20 miles away from the hospital, but in different directions. so usually arrived at the hospital at roughly the same time, however I always had to wait, sometimes more than an hour, once more than two hours, for him to be wheeled into A&E as the ambulance could not offload him as there was no space available in A&E and no spare staff to hand him over to. The hospital staff were so apologetic but there was nothing they could do ... that was around ten years ago.
Another example is that of my former colleague's daughter (Evie aged around 20) fell off her moped on her way to work ... her wheel slipped on greasy wet leaves under a tree. A passer by dialled 999 ... a qualified nurse from the care home where Evie worked came out and was very worried and called 999 again as she suspected a spinal injury ... Evie was lying on the cold wet hard road for three and a half hours before an ambulance arrived, put a collar on her and used a spinal board to put her in the ambulance and take her to hospital where it was found she had two cracked vertebrae and a fractured femur. This must've happened more than ten years ago as I've been retired ten years.
Yet another example from 10+ years ago is when my aged mother got out of bed in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. At that time she lived on her own as Pa was in the care home. She fell and couldn't get up ... she pressed her alarm button told the responder what had happened and they called an ambulance ... then she managed to reach her phone and rang my son who lived 14 miles away ... he rang me and then drove to his Grandma's ... I drove there too but I lived an hour away ... my son was unable to lift his Grandma as she was crying out in pain from her hip ... even with the two of us we couldn't lift her ... still no ambulance arrived ... we rang again and found that two ambulances had been sent to us but had been diverted to more serious accidents. Another would be sent as soon as possible ... we made hot water bottles and tried to keep Ma warm (flamin' storage heaters are useless). Poor Ma was desperate ... remember she'd woken as she needed to go to the bathroom ... she couldn't wait any longer ... we had to pad her with towels and this proud and dignified woman was subected to more humiliation. Eventually the ambulance came and the lovely paramedics were marvellous ... when she got to the hospital it was found that her hip was partially dislocated ... I'm not sure how many hours we were waiting for an ambulance ... but it was getting light when she was loaded into the ambulance ...
The NHS has been underfunded for years and years ... successive governments were dishonest with the voters about what it actually costs to run the NHS as we want it to be run ... now chickens have come home to roost ..
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
How can anyone make a decision when the info isn't there? If the scientists aren't getting the airtime anymore, all you end up with is the spun version. So people will mix, thinking that's what the science is saying because the gov has also got the mantra of 'we follow the science' into people heads - the gov says it's ok to party, ergo the science must as well.
Absolutely steveTu but in the absence of info then, bearing in mind what's been happening this past 2 years, common sense should prevail. We've been told often enough that this isn't going to go away in the foreseeable future and although we've now got vaccines and treatment is better than it was at the start we know jolly well that it's still a highly transmissible virus.
isn't it just numbers? If the NHS ran at, say, 90% pre covid and is still stretched regularly over winter, then taking up another 5% now is an obvious problem isn't it? And even though the numbers (5%) is no where near where it was last year, last year there wasn't an expectation of other winter respiratory illness that usually takes up the beds. So if even delta covid continued to grow because the 'jab' and mixing says it's no great issue to the vast majority, still a percentage of those infected do get hospitalised. Maybe, in the long term, that is always the case. But now, during the pandemic, it seems absolutely stupid to me to encourage mixing as if the system could cope with whatever came its way. IF it then also turns out that Omicron is no worse symptomatically to Delta, BUT spreads easier to a factor of 2..3..4 whatever, then blithely mixing is just totally imprudent. To make the call though, you need the info. Omicron we don't know yet, but I bet there are models already that map out the Delta peaks this winter,
I hear the comments here that we have been told about mixing and the risks and that this virus is a long term thing - but as I said in the opener that was way back. Since the jab and the relaxations in July (was it that long ago?), the joined up science/gov presentations have been noticeable by their absence.
It’s highlighted now @lyn because it is so much worse … over past years the NHS was made to trim back and trim back any spare facility it had in order that governments could get elected by lying about taxation needs.
Originally that spare facility was ‘built in’ to the system in order that the NHS could cope with fluctuations in demand … paring it away year after year removed any flexibility there was, and the engine was already running on empty when the pandemic struck.
A neighbour with a large piece of glass embedded in her foot waited in A&E 18 hours and didn't get seen. She ended up going home untreated.
A friend had a stroke and was lying on the pavement, attended only by passers, by for five hours in the rain waiting for an ambulance.
It's a shocking state of affairs.
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We have a govt culture that believes in non-intervention, free market, low tax, small bureaucracy, disregulation and each man for himself, and that is what we are getting: A victorian-charity / wild-west mash up.
Especially during the colder months, most asthmatics think mask wearing actually improves their breathing, by warming the air. The reality is there are very few medical reasons not to wear a mask.
Yeah I agree with that Punkdoc, as an asthmatic from childhood I always got my car heater going blowing hot air in my face as soon as I could on my drive to work as it seemed to help so much when the warm air filtered through the airways and when out walking I always wore a buff over my face. worked a treat.
My asthma improved significantly when I took up running 30 years ago despite as a child being told not to exercise for fear of triggering an attack. The running means I literally only use an inhaler very occasionally now.
'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.
Posts
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
Another example is that of my former colleague's daughter (Evie aged around 20) fell off her moped on her way to work ... her wheel slipped on greasy wet leaves under a tree. A passer by dialled 999 ... a qualified nurse from the care home where Evie worked came out and was very worried and called 999 again as she suspected a spinal injury ... Evie was lying on the cold wet hard road for three and a half hours before an ambulance arrived, put a collar on her and used a spinal board to put her in the ambulance and take her to hospital where it was found she had two cracked vertebrae and a fractured femur. This must've happened more than ten years ago as I've been retired ten years.
Yet another example from 10+ years ago is when my aged mother got out of bed in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. At that time she lived on her own as Pa was in the care home. She fell and couldn't get up ... she pressed her alarm button told the responder what had happened and they called an ambulance ... then she managed to reach her phone and rang my son who lived 14 miles away ... he rang me and then drove to his Grandma's ... I drove there too but I lived an hour away ... my son was unable to lift his Grandma as she was crying out in pain from her hip ... even with the two of us we couldn't lift her ... still no ambulance arrived ... we rang again and found that two ambulances had been sent to us but had been diverted to more serious accidents. Another would be sent as soon as possible ... we made hot water bottles and tried to keep Ma warm (flamin' storage heaters are useless). Poor Ma was desperate ... remember she'd woken as she needed to go to the bathroom ... she couldn't wait any longer ... we had to pad her with towels and this proud and dignified woman was subected to more humiliation. Eventually the ambulance came and the lovely paramedics were marvellous ... when she got to the hospital it was found that her hip was partially dislocated ... I'm not sure how many hours we were waiting for an ambulance ... but it was getting light when she was loaded into the ambulance ...
The NHS has been underfunded for years and years ... successive governments were dishonest with the voters about what it actually costs to run the NHS as we want it to be run ... now chickens have come home to roost ..
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/25/boris-johnson-conservatives-nhs-funding
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Yeah I agree with that Punkdoc, as an asthmatic from childhood I always got my car heater going blowing hot air in my face as soon as I could on my drive to work as it seemed to help so much when the warm air filtered through the airways and when out walking I always wore a buff over my face. worked a treat.
My asthma improved significantly when I took up running 30 years ago despite as a child being told not to exercise for fear of triggering an attack. The running means I literally only use an inhaler very occasionally now.
'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.
George Bernard Shaw'