ADs drinking al fresco at The Sleeping Swans

[BogRollBOGOF]

ADs, grab your thermals, long johns and winter woolies, we're finally off to drown our sorrows at the Sleeping Swan!

@MercyBooth

Oh *@AcornAutumn* im sorry.

Thank you I managed not to cry, whisky helped. Film is really bad though!

apple.news/AcWkNgp9PT0276dkbUjFqMw

Thought this was an interesting article. It’s a reminder of how shit the NHS was before covid 19, and how shit it will be again. But I bet the headlines won’t tell that story when it happens.

@AcornAutumn or anyone else really who has any thoughts. I live in the London boroughs doing the surge testing and I have to say I automatically booked myself and my husband in for tests this afternoon. I’m starting to think it through now though and is it the right thing to do? We’re both in our thirties, healthy, and my husband has been vaccinated already due to his job.

Also - how genuinely worrying is the cluster? I’m so fed up of being bashed round the head with ‘scary’ statistics, which when you actually look at them, turn out to not be that scary.

Sorry to ask all this but this is the only thread I feel comfortable asking these questions on!

@Worldgonecrazy The NHS is shit...rather a blanket statement ?

Did you read the article?

[quote Hiphopopotamus]@AcornAutumn or anyone else really who has any thoughts. I live in the London boroughs doing the surge testing and I have to say I automatically booked myself and my husband in for tests this afternoon. I’m starting to think it through now though and is it the right thing to do? We’re both in our thirties, healthy, and my husband has been vaccinated already due to his job.

Also - how genuinely worrying is the cluster? I’m so fed up of being bashed round the head with ‘scary’ statistics, which when you actually look at them, turn out to not be that scary.

Sorry to ask all this but this is the only thread I feel comfortable asking these questions on![/quote]
Realistically, how exposed have you been to other people?

With my lifestyle, I wouldn't because the chances of exposure have been very low. The only indoor space I've been to has been a quiet supermarket shortly before closing time a week ago, and a couple of 5 min visits to a convenience shop. I've seen other people outside and it's been windy. DCs have been off school 10 days. DH WFH.

If we'd had more indoor exposure to others then that would be different because there is a more credible chance.

Clusters are usually attached to institutions with prolonged close contact. Hopefully less of the hospitals and care homes now. Prisons still causing clusters. Workplaces where social distancing isn't viable. Prolonged indoor socialising without ventilation and close contact.

While the vaccine has reduced efficacy against SA compared to domestic strains, it still has a good level of efficiency. We don't want it to become the dominant strain, but there is hyperbolising going on.

I can see the point of targeted testing where there is a specific chance of exposure, but all people in the area are not at equal chance of that.

Yes I did read it. To say it's shit is simplistic. I know that the care I and my colleagues give isn't shit. Agreed that aspects of it don't work and need a rethink. A/E is particularly abused/misused because of issues down the line.

[quote Hiphopopotamus]@AcornAutumn or anyone else really who has any thoughts. I live in the London boroughs doing the surge testing and I have to say I automatically booked myself and my husband in for tests this afternoon. I’m starting to think it through now though and is it the right thing to do? We’re both in our thirties, healthy, and my husband has been vaccinated already due to his job.

Also - how genuinely worrying is the cluster? I’m so fed up of being bashed round the head with ‘scary’ statistics, which when you actually look at them, turn out to not be that scary.

Sorry to ask all this but this is the only thread I feel comfortable asking these questions on![/quote]
It's my belief that asymptomatic transmission is vanishingly rare
When they are offering £750 a day to someone to encourage asymptomatic people to take the test, it isn't about an illness

findajob.dwp.gov.uk/details/5585948

Today I've discovered the existence of the NHS Confederation as it has a new Chief Exec. It covers leadership and fuck knows what the salary is.

I cannot believe I defended the NHS for years. i feel a right fool.

@Juliettbravo

Yes I did read it. To say it's shit is simplistic. I know that the care I and my colleagues give isn't shit. Agreed that aspects of it don't work and need a rethink. A/E is particularly abused/misused because of issues down the line.

My dad was NHS

I gather there were more attendees at a senior director (non clinical) weekly meeting than staff in A&E.

I do know about that stuff but recently it's been turned into something else completely. I do know how hard the important staff work but there's a lot of senior mgmt playing with blue sky thinking etc.

Saying the NHS is shit is not the same as saying the people who work within it are shit. I’m sure that most are doing their best (though my local hospital seems to treat everyone equally as inconveniences rather than patients). If I say McDonald’s is shit do you take that to mean everyone that works there is shit? I’m guessing most people wouldn’t, yet for some reason criticism of the NHS is taken as a personal affront. I used to work for the NHS as did both my parents who spent their entire careers working in the service, one frontline and one managerial, and both despairing of the way the NHS has been abused by various governments.

Pre COVID 8 hour waits and patients in corridors for days, was seen as acceptable. Rather than spend time addressing root causes of illness, targets and quotas have meant that everything gets a metaphorical sticking plaster just to be seen to be getting things done. It is shit. And we put up wit it because (a) it’s so broke no one knows where to start fixing it, and (b) we are constantly told how good it is.

I’m old enough to remember when GPS had time for patients, and who would know those patients. Now it’s all massive surgeries with 30 GPs, if you can get past the receptionists, who have become a stereotype in themselves, and the GP will see you a week next Friday if you’re lucky. A&E at the weekend is full of drunks and alcohol related injuries, the mentally ill and a handful in need. A&E is itself one of those metaphorical sticking plasters I mentioned. Rather than addressing the misuse of alcohol and what we can do to tackle it as a nation, we accept the level of deaths and injuries and make jokes about gin being ‘mummy’s little helper’. The same goes for obesity and lack of exercise, when we know that exercise is one of the simplest and best things we can do for long term health. Breastfeeding gets a ton of money spent on posters but very little on training health visitors and specialist feeding nurses.

As with many things in life, being seen to be doing something has become more important than actually doing something.

Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant, but it irks me that criticism of the NHS is always taken as a criticism of the staff rather than the institution.

twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1381923308443144194?s=20

I find this very worrying. Absolutely being nudged towards another lockdown in the Autumn. Also vaccines now no longer the saviour and cause of reduction in deaths, it’s all due to lockdown. So why the push for vaccinations and accompanying vaccination papers?

Bloody conspiracy theorists and their predictions coming true (again!)

@Worldgonecrazy

twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1381923308443144194?s=20

I find this very worrying. Absolutely being nudged towards another lockdown in the Autumn. Also vaccines now no longer the saviour and cause of reduction in deaths, it’s all due to lockdown. So why the push for vaccinations and accompanying vaccination papers?

Bloody conspiracy theorists and their predictions coming true (again!)

World - AFAIC it's an ongoing lockdown with varying degrees of horror. "Stay at home" will be back sooner than autumn IMHO.

Also they are preparing "evidence" for the hospitality court case next week, so they will certainly argue more for lockdowns. They won't lose the case anyway but this is how they will defend it.

One of the main problems I've experienced with the NHS with me and my family members is the consultants not working effectively with each other and basically saying "no, not the problem of my speciality" and bouncing you back to the GP ad infinitum to start all over again until a) you find out what the problem is; b) you give up and just live in misery; c) it gets worse and you end up in A&E; or d) you die.

Octogenerian DM is finding the NHS shit. Shunted around departments to balance the paperwork on waiting lists (if physio wasn't helping a few years ago, it's pretty past it now). Surgery cancelled the evening before due to beds... then having the medical team phoning up to check why she's not there because they hadn't been informed. Not able to access the GP herself because it's an online based system and they no longer have phone access. Conditions left to deteriorate for years to the detriment of general health. "Too young" for a knee replacement and strung along until she's "too old"

I'm no NHS expert and it's a long time since I worked in it in the backrooms with its archaric DOS based system and reams of green stripy printer paper which was a blast from the past back then, but quite simply there is a need for quality community based care for routine needs and too much relience on super-hospitals, long term lack of investment in training and retaining staff, too much tinkering to deal with political targets which causes inefficiency rather than dealing with issues before they deteriorate into more complex, expensive issues, and lack of capacity to deal with seasonal pressures.

Broadly the problems are the same headlines that I'd put to education. The main problems are political rather than personality. Underfunding is an issue, but chucking money around is not a guarenteed solution.

Blind adulation is not the answer.

@Worldgonecrazy see I actually agree with you in many respects. My experience as a patient has been abysmal but that was more to do with the ineptitude of the consultant rather than inherent faults of the system. And yes A/E is a joke, full of the worried well who can't get a consultation with the gp.
Your comment about gp receptionists was spot on. Ours ask 'is it an emergency?' if you have the temerity
to ask for an appointment . Sadly it's the system that's broken but I don't know the answer ....

And the bloody paperwork...or rather the cheap computer system that crashes constantly and takes twice as long to use (paperwork eliminated in nov 2019 then reinstated in 2020 because the bloody system was too unwieldy to use when you've got a pandemic )

Your comment about gp receptionists was spot on. Ours ask 'is it an emergency?' if you have the temerity to ask for an appointment

This isn't really the fault of GP receptionists, yes there are more and less helpful individuals, but they work within the system that the GPs and practice managers set up, they can't make appointments appear from nowhere.

I thought A/E was for emergencies ? That was the whole point.

I find this very worrying. Absolutely being nudged towards another lockdown in the Autumn

Im not having the vaccine. And when i get called for it i shall tell them why. They were supposed to end the lockdowns.

unherd.com/thepost/boris-johnson-needs-a-lesson-in-communication/

Phew - I found you all. I was having a bit of a panic there for a minute. I agree wholeheartedly re. The NHS is shit comment. There are some phenomenal individuals within the system but the system itself is broken. However, to state this in polite company is basically the same as saying you’d sell your maiden aunt into prostitution.

I've seen a little harbinger of normality... a learner driver pulled up outside the house

Our area is good for "nursery roads". My stretch of road is a through route and one of the rare bits straight enough for learners to pull up without obstruction for some tuition/ swapping driver. They're constantly pulling up there through the day. It was good when they came back last May.

Yeah DD starts her lessons again this week, now she's trying to get a test before the summer, hers was moved from February to July.

graziadaily.co.uk/life/in-the-news/soho-crowds-shaming-young-people/