Stay at home, protect the nhs, save lives

[Aesopfable]

AIBU to find this slogan annoying especially how it seems to prioritise protecting an organisation. The ‘save lives’ bit seems almost secondary to protecting the NHS. It is also dangerous and probably contributes to people avoiding going for treatment when they should be and thus leading the increase in deaths from other causes.

We shouldn’t be ‘protecting the NHS’ as though it is something sacred. It should be ‘Stay at home, save lives, don’t spread Covid’

A&E attendance fell by 50 percent. Unless you are of the opinion that all of those were frivolous timewasters, that means seriously ill patients, including heart attacks and strokes did not receive medical care

Surely though, anyone who has a Heart attack, Stroke etc isn't going to be self treating at home are they?

I'd have thought the reduction in AE is down to far less accidents, no fri/sat drunks and the overly anxious not turning because they've got a very minor injury?

Not a tory fan by any means but i think the slogan has worked very well, what hasn't worked is the decision to keep CV patients at home as long as possible and allowing CV patients from hospital back into the Care home system, 6% of their residents have died over and above historic norms.

My parents in law live in Brooklyn and from their house they could smell the rotting un-refrigerated bodies in a funeral home and outside of it in rental trucks.

That's why we are/were trying to protect the NHS. So our systems can cope.

It is dreadful if people have taken it absolutely literally and not sought treatment for non-Covid illnesses but I really can’t blame the govt or the slogan for that. If you had a heart attack or broke your leg, wouldn’t you go to A&E?

Why not blame the slogan? They are doing what the slogan tells them to; stay home, protect the nhs. We are not talking about broken legs but lumps, niggles, pains, weaknesses; all potential indicators of critical illnesses.

Of all the things to do with covid 19, I just can't get worked up about this. There are things that annoy me far more than the wording of a slogan e.g. neighbours breaking lockdown and having busy parties.

It means stop a mass influx of patients the NHS can’t handle my unit had to open 2 extra ICU wards had the numbers been higher the hospital wouldn’t have been able to cope , the idea is to stop everyone becoming ill at once this increasing the Chauncey if living and being able to get an ICU bed of you need one . I wish people would stop making out that the NHS has some self interest at heart only .

I don't think it matters what the "Protect the NHS" bit means, the point is that having a slogan about protecting an organisation in the face of something that is costing tens of thousands of lives is simply bizarre, especially when the slogan puts it ahead of saving lives.

It's also led to a mindset where people are quite blindly accepting of the risks of not getting medical care when you need it. Only recently, someone with a potentially life threatening illness who needed blood tests was being told on here by some people that, in effect, they aren't doing non-Covid blood tests, suck it up. The fact that some people have become conditioned to see nothing wrong with that "because NHS" is really quite worrying.

The key point being that it is the responsibility of the patient to protect the health care system rather than the other way round?

A lot of other European countries have been in lockdown and do not have a healthcare system like the NHS, most probably have a similar system to the one you are used to @BovaryX ?
This was never about protecting the NHS from an ideological stand point, there are plenty of people in the current Government who would like to see the end of it and a different system in place.
The slogan was designed by the Government to encourage people to adher to the rules around lockdown.
If the NHS had been overwhelmed, more people would have died and the Government would have been to blame, as they are ultimately responsible for the NHS, whether they like it or not

@JudyCoolibar I saw that thread and several people also commented that wasn't the case in their area and that bloods were still being taken and processed, as they are in my area.

BovaryX

I agree with you.

I don't even agree that the NHS wasn't overwhelmed. It was, totally. The only way it could function was to drop doing all other things, including essential healthcare.

So, to me, it was overwhelmed. You can't claim it wasn't if it can't actually carry on and treat corona, which is what has happened in other countries like Germany.

The NHS should be protecting us, not the other way around.

@LeafTea that’s sad and awful 🙁 the poor families of those people and for your pil.

I think we’ve been lucky and blessed so far it hasn’t got to that here. The images from around the world of bodies in refrigerated lorries (at best) because of the scale of death.

It’s fantastic that for the most, we’ve stuck to the rules and protected the nhs by not swamping it and god forbid, have stories like above of people smelling rotting bodies because they’re piling up to quickly to be handled in the normal way.

I think the majority of the reduction in A&E attendance is down to people being scared they will catch covid 19, not that they think not seeking help for a serious accident or emergency is protecting the NHS. It makes zero sense, after all, to conclude that you are protecting an accident and emergency department by not using it for an accident or emergency. Going to a mass rave, on the other hand, is not protecting the NHS or saving lives.

Thats interesting @Nearlyalmost50 , Germany as a country does seem to have managed the pandemic in a completely different way to the UK, are you saying that they didn't need to change anything at all in their healthcare system ? They seem to have had far fewer deaths from Covid , but were testing a lot earlier and in far greater numbers I think, I wonder if that has anything to do with it ?

And if people are more scared of covid 19 than a heart attack, I don’t think changing the message to stay at home, save lives, don’t get Covid is going to be remotely helpful!!!

While I understand the meaning - ‘Please be very careful so that for all our sakes the NHS isn’t overwhelmed‘ - I do think the wording is easily misinterpreted.

@Aesopfable I’m sure you’re right about lumps, niggles etc rather than a broken bone, but it’s still possible to get a dr appointment (at least it is at my surgery, I got a phone appointment with the nurse practitioner v easily the other day and the GP is seeing patients where necessary). It’s still possible to consult 111 for advice.

It’s very clear that ‘Stay Home’ doesn’t mean ‘you mustn’t leave your home for any reason whatsoever’. I really can’t blame the slogan for people not using their judgment about seeking medical treatment.

I do agree, though, that the NHS suspending screening programmes, etc, is the NHS being overwhelmed by Covid. Not screening for cervical cancer, or starting cancer treatments etc, because of covid 19, means a system that cannot cope. That’s why a lockdown was needed, in the hope the situation could come under sufficient control for proper testing and tracing, so as to enable proper healthcare as well as the economy to restart.

Mind you, if labs are overwhelmed with covid 19 tests to keep covid 19 under control, that still causes problems remother screening and testing programmes!

One criticism of the UK has been that it tried to keep testing centralised for too long, whereas Germany didn’t. Whatever, everyone is learning as they go along.

I'm guessing its difficult for some people to understand the role the health service plays in a population's health.

alrighty genius do you have a better slogan?

I totally agree with you, OP. My own mother nearly didn't seek much needed medical treatment for a non-Covid issue recently and was in a very bad way because of it.

As a slogan, it has been far too successful.

You know it was thought up and extensively tested by an advertising agency.It had to have the right mix of impact, meaning, length etc. This was the one that the test group liked the best.

Yes, it more than likely was.

Our Publicity Director at work said it certainly was snappy, but it's effectiveness was then diluted quite rapidly by the daily Press Briefings, because it was always wound into their speeches, so it was spoken too many times and people would get bored hearing it. He said Sunak was the worst offender in doing this.

Marketing and Publicity isn't my thing (yawn!!), but I can agree with what he's saying.

Just read a really interesting piece about something that happened or is still happening in Germany,

They call them corona taxis: Medics outfitted in protective gear, driving around the empty streets of Heidelberg to check on patients who are at home, five or six days into being sick with the coronavirus.

They take a blood test, looking for signs that a patient is about to go into a steep decline. They might suggest hospitalization, even to a patient who has only mild symptoms; the chances of surviving that decline are vastly improved by being in a hospital when it begins.

It’s as bad as needing a “reasonable excuse” instead if a “reasonable explanation”.

An excuse implies it’s a lie conjured up to get away with it....

There is something wrong with Matt Hancocks general narrative too “watch your tone!”

Not sure what’s going on in Downing Street but it feels like they were told to talk to us like naughty kids

frumpety as I understand it (and am no expert), Germany had a lot of spare capacity in ITU/ventilators already in the system, in fact, they have been criticised in the past for having such a large amount (doesn't fit with a JIT approach to healthcare). I am not sure everything has run as normal, if some people have been off with covid, but they didn't shut down most services, I have friends there and they got corona testing promptly as one of them works with vulnerable adults way before that was viable here.

This: don't bother the NHS at all costs has a cost.