Thankyou but please stop

[MingeofDeath]

Front line NHS worker here. Thank you for your amazing support, we are working unbelievably hard in extremely stressful conditions, so thankyou, thankyou, thankyou.
There is just one teeny little thing though; we are not heroes, just normal people going about our jobs. I don't want to see kids of NHS workers waving their pictures around on telly. I'm finding it a bit much. Please don't fetishise us
I know that AIBU

Tbh, the clapping now is actually clapping for the Conservatives - they’ve attempted to align themselves with the NHS and champion the cause.

My Boris voting (but he is funny, and he’s going to get Brexit done, Bunny) Daily Mail reading mother is horrified at my no longer joining in the clapping. She cannot see the irony. It’s like fucking Doublethink

"I can’t get a SALT to call me and dp has significant aphasia and has been discharged from hospital around 2 months early!"
I think each area differs, plus we've used the salt service for a few years now, so we know them as friends. We had sessions coming up that were cancelled.

" I have had no instructions as to how to help him speak or understand beside a website"

The only thing you can do is practice, practice, practice, also time is a good healer. I sat in on a lot of sessions with the Salts, so picked up tips from them. Partner has brain injury, so aphasia too. Try the Aphasia lite app, it might help. Sending best wishes to you, I know it's hard.

Can I just point out that many many Covid 19 patients are not in ITU. Last week our trust had approx 120 Covid positive patients and only 17 were in ITU. Staff on all wards are treating patients with Covid 19 and in fact, those on so called green wards were initially more at risk as they were not allowed to wear masks. That has now changed as patients were becoming symptomatic over last few weeks and having to be moved to red zones.
Having said that, I totally agree that those in A&E, ITU, respiratory wards and all red zones are taking the biggest risks, but as an AHP I want people to know that Occupational Therapists, Physios and other AHPS are also in these zones not just Doctors nurses and hcas.

I should clarify that when I say taking biggest risks, I mean, they are coming into greatest contact with Covid 19 and in most stressful working environments.

Yanbu.

How, where and why the clapping started is not really the issue is it?

It has become a kind of cult like activity that praises front line "heroes" while, at the same time, facilitating a collective mindset where people expect other human beings to risk their health and lives without question.

In the sheltered housing where I live many of my elderly neighbours were clapping and banging pots in support of the HNS.

The ones I know all love Boris Johnson, are enthusiastic Brexiteers and all are not complying with social distancing in one way or another.

The reasons that they voted for Brext and for Boris, as they told me, was that they think "the country is full up", "Enoch was right", "there are too many foreigners here", "they are coming here and taking our benefits / council houses /etc".

I moved here from London fairly recently and, while there are racist people everywhere, I have been shocked by just how hateful some of the narratives are here and how widely tolerated racist views are here.

Many of these elderly people, if they end up in hospital, will be cared for by the very foreigners that they are so angry about for "taking over the country."

They are hanging out of their windows clapping and banging pots in the evening and in the day time meeting with friends and relatives and putting themselves and others at risk.

I spoke to one woman who was clapping, she was at her window and I was outside. She explained that she was "self isolating". I didn't understand this as she had walked past me in the corridor, not adhering to SD, only a couple of days previously. Turns out she does not understand the difference between social distancing and self isolating. She also beleives that the 2 meter rule is only if someone is couging "because ordinary breath only travels for 2 feet".

and before anyone has a dig about me Tory bashing, I am deeply unimpressed with all the political parties and if I like what a politician is saying and doing I couldn't care less what party they belong to (within reason).

Why is acknowledging health (and support/retail/delivery/transport/waste/water/power/print and whoever anyone else wants to) associated with voting tory?

53% of voters at the last election didn't vote conservative - are none of them acknowledging their thanks?

The UK is being compared with Italy and Spain in other aspects of this pandemic - so is their acknowledgement of their health/key workers somehow different and acceptable because they have left wing/alliance governments? And the Spanish acknowledge their thanks every night!

I agree OP. I think the NHS is great (before, during and after Covid 19). But the NHS staff are doing their job, just like other people are doing their jobs. I'm not sure why that makes them a 'hero' and why there is clapping and fireworks every Thursday evening and bears and rainbows and candles in windows but I guess it gives people something to do? In my area it doesn't seem to be about the NHS it's people singling others out 'that neighbour clapped but that one didn't' drama and I wish the clapping would stop for that reason. Just because I am not setting off fireworks whilst banging a pot as hard as I can does not mean I do not value and appreciate the NHS (and everyone else that is working hard to get our country through this horrible situation)

@36degrees - ageed, of course we can all influence through voting, through our work, but my point was that posting on mums net is not an effective way to influence.

Thanks minge.

I agree, let key workers do their jobs in peace now. But the ‘thanks minge’ made me smile!

Yes, they are difficult issues and no one is saying everyo ne of teh 1.4million peiople who work for the NHS are angles. Sadly some as in all groups of 1m workers will be wicked, awful, lazy, skiving etc etc. However people like to show their appreciation.

It does not change the fundamentals - that we decided to destroy the lives of 60m people in the UK other than those with secure state jobs to save a relatively very small few compared with the 600,000 who die every year in a normal year. It was the wrong call and we should not even have shut the schools.

The only thing we ca now do to ensure we can afford to pay the wages of teachers and nurses next year will be to reopen schools on 1 May come what may.

My MP, the filibuster general has posted several photos/videos of him fervently clapping the NHS together with sycophantic posts gushing over “how great the carers are” 🙄

@Toddlerteaplease This may be the case in the healthcare setting that you work in. I'm a Phlebotomist at a very large hospital in Manchester and can assure you that our Covid-19 positive patients are not restricted to High Dependency and ICU wards, they are literally all over the hospital. Near enough every patient I have bled for the past fortnight has been ether positive or swabbed, and I don't work on HDU or ICU wards. None of us wish to be labelled 'saint's' or 'heroes' but credit where it is due please. We have phlebo's, domestics, physios, porters and countless other NHS staff who are working closely with Covid-19 positive patients every day. To say otherwise is misleading and insulting.

hoodathunkit, I for one would be very grateful if you did. I think that we've just got used to a bear-pit for wailing and chest-beating after the event... any event, rather than displaying any intelligence beforehand. The clapping is a huge distraction and it's exactly as PP has said, the hero worship makes a commodity of the NHS and nothing will be done.

You're absolutely right about the huge brain and experience pool that has been burnt out and is now being wasted. It needs to change.

The government needs to know that its voters demand proper funding and stabilisation of our essential services and once that decision is ratified, it should be enshrined in law and not up for the vote again, no matter who is in power.

I've worked for the NHS for 32 years and believe me, it WAS better when Labour was in power. In mental health at any rate. Far far better.

"It is very stressful. My neighbour works for the nhs but it's currently doing admin from home. She's constantly on social media and tells me she has very little to do. She also posted some Instagram stories yesterday saying she went to Aldi midday, saw the queue was huge and walked to the front where she explained to the guy at the entrance that she was an nhs worker and needed to get back to the ward. She was ushered straight in. It's infuriating but people do flout the rules, or use them in their favour and it's unfair in everyone else in the bloody queue"

Just taken from another thread.

The debate appears to have moved on whilst I’ve been writing this but II come from a long line of NHS workers and have no problem at all with the clapping on a Thursday, but I agree that the whole praise thing for those working in ITU has got out of hand now. Occasionally other key workers are mentioned - almost as an afterthought - but there are many of those who are risking their health equally, if not more.
This morning I watched a piece on Sky news filmed in a Nursing Home in Sheffield - and whilst the staff there were not dealing with patients on ventilators they were working in a home where the virus was rife. Their protective gear appeared nothing more than a plastic apron and a flimsy mask - even the reporter seemed to be wearing a mask that seemed more protective then theirs. Not only were they putting themselves at risk physically the emotional toll on them was enormous because they were having to care and comfort residents they had got to know well, and who they knew were unlikely to survive.
Without taking anything away from those working on ‘the frontline’ these workers, and others like them deserve to be genuinely recognised for what they are doing.

People vote Tory/other right wing governments because usually the cuts to services don’t effect them (or “boiling frog” with things like cuts to libraries etc) while they enjoy a few hundred quid more in their pocket each year form tax savings. But then in crisis you’re worse hit because the key public institutions have been (relatively speaking) starved of cash.

On other news the last Tory manifesto was pitiful on its commitments to tackling climate change. Lockdowns won’t help us when that shit starts smashing into the fan. Still, build those airports etc, and kick the can down the road while the sun shines.

I wonder if those posters who've made the connection with Boris in hospital (now thankful and appreciative of the NHS saving his life) with the lack of funding that Boris gives the NHS - and demand change.

Or, will they forget? Or think that if it can't be achieved with a 'clap' then it's too much like hard work/not worth doing, and put it out of their minds.

We have a responsibility too now, we always did but, if everybody's now awake then surely it can be done? Finally.

@TabbyMumz that's disgusting ☹️

@DrManhattan because he/she is trying to get a point across to the general public. We on MN are part of the general public. Unless we aren't a forum of thousand of adults, part of the general public, many of whom are based in the UK?

Millymae, you are right, carers in residential homes and in the community are having to deal with Covid patients, with less ppe and get much less recognition, as they are not employed by the nhs.

Most NHS clinical staff are actually working with covid patients, certainly that’s the case in London and other city hospital Trusts. Most wards in our large hospital are now covid wards. The few staff not deployed to covid wards are left behind to manage patients such as cancer patients, who are most certainly not unaffected by covid. The NHS admin staff are the ones working from home for the most part. There will be a percentage of NHS clinical staff shielding.

I often wonder if ICU nurses/staff get paid more because even before COVID19 they are 1:1 with patients and it's a very specialised job. Not taking away from all nursing staff but they do seem to have to train more? Or am I wrong?

I'm not sure why people keep blaming the Conservatives for the mess that the NHS is in? Wasn't it also in a pretty shoddy state under the Labour party?

As a nurse working in the NHS, I think the whole system needs an overhaul. It is a bottomless pit and unless we make some fundamental changes to how it operates, and how we as the general public use it, it isn't going to be around in the near future.

Oh and no, before anyone asks, I don't vote Tory. Or Labour.