Rant alert! How do those who want Lockdown to continue justify the suffering of everyone else?

[Thefrenchbaguette]

My 3 month old has been waiting for a hip scan to confirm her rather obvious DDH. She needs a harness, the GP already confirmed she will need one and put in an urgent referral at her 6 week review and still nothing because they're not doing them at all here! You can only use a harness up until 6 months and after that the treatment for DDH is an operation! My baby is going to have to have a completely unavoidable operation or suffer lifelong damage to her hips because the NHS is just not interested in anyone who doesn't have Covid19! There isn't even the option to pay for it to be done privately! I am furious and so sick of seeing countless threads and comments about how lockdown needs to be continued and even stricter! All very well with your comfortable house and perfectly secure income and no real risk to your overall well-being but what about everyone else who is suffering?!
A friend had an abnormal smear come back in January but the follow up has been indefinitely postponed! How many people are going to miss life saving diagnosis', life saving treatments! It's disgusting and I feel so unbelievably angry at what this country has come through so 90% of people can avoid getting what is essentially a bad cold!

@LillianBland

Even people who haven't tested positive have been included - people with "suspected" covid but a negative or not test.

Read that on Facebook, did you?

OP, I don’t care about your daughter needing an operation more than I care about my children dying. I have a 30yr old and a 24 with underlying conditions that will live a long life, unless they catch COVID19. The chances are that they could die from it. You’re effectively telling me and other parents like me, that you don’t care if our chosen die, so long as your child gets treatment for something that she won’t die from. Thanks for that.

Excuse me? Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance have said it, and my family personally know people who died of pneumonia, tested negative yet Covid got put on death certificate.

What was the alternative, given the bad state the NHS was in, and given the lack of PPE early on?

Bring your dd into a hospital full of Covid-19, as there would have been even higher community spread, fewer medics, medics with asymptomatic Covid-19 treating your child?

Hospitals have been (and still can be) sites of transmission for Covid-19. In what universe would you want your child to go into that environment until it was at least safe in terms of PPE and Covid-19 had been contained in certain hospitals/wards and others left safe.

Services are starting up again, and I totally understand your angst, given the time-dependent manner, but you are living in a fantasy world if you think we could have all just carried on, not locked down, not changed NHS practices, and treated your dd in a standard manner.

@cardibach

Lockdown hasn’t caused the delay to medical treatment, covid has. Without lockdown, hospitals would have been (and would still be) overwhelmed and you still wouldn’t be getting treatment for your baby. Issues with medical treatment are not caused by lockdown.

Exactly. All discussion on here seems to assume that lifting Lockdown will suddenly make hospitals able to run routine services again. It won't because people are still being treated for covid on large numbers, and the numbers will likely increase if Lockdown measures lift. Keeping restrictions on non essential things is actually the way to increase NHS services fastest.

Whole I have sympathy for your situation I do think easing is happening to quickly and I won't apologise for saying that . It's far to soon for schools to go back, it's far to soon for teachers to teach larger numbers. Open more shops is a huge risk. One of my kids was due a hospital appointment in March but we are more than happy to wait due to the very real risk still ongoing . It's not just saying cold 😠children have died, thousands have died. I really don't care if you are fed up of people saying the lockdown shouldn't end, I care about tne death number increasing.

@LillianBland actually I do know someone not tested who has corona on their death certificate. My uncle in a care home died of pneumonia in early april during lockdown. His lungs had been riddled with pneumonia for years and he has been in and out of hospital for the last 3 years maybe 4 times a year. It was always going to be the thing that got him. No cases of corona as yet in the care home. His death certificate has corona virus on it as well as pneumonia 'just in case' but he never had a test and staff at the home and family firmly believe he did not have corona virus.

This isn't about 'lockdown' (shops shut, people told to stay at home etc.), though. OP has used it as shorthand for the blanket cancellation of health services of any and all kinds that seems to be happening. A more thought-through and targeted reprioritisation of services, plus the strong message to all providers that urgent and/or time-critical issues (especially in children) must continue to be seen, would have avoided this happening while still not allowing the virus to overwhelm the NHS. As it is, the response seems to have had something of the headless chicken about it.

Cross posted, I agree with you. But it was a very poor shorthand, and with the real issue being the organisation of health care provision, the conflict about lockdown is a massive red herring.

@Thefrenchbaguette surely if this is so important they would be doing something ? Are you chasing it up ? You have to be your own cheerleader with the NHS I'm afraid .

If we had lockdowned earlier it would have been perfectly possible to care for all and no one be forced to wait

And if the NHS had not been so chronically under-resourced for 10 years, it would have been better placed to cope.

Maybe all the people complaining about not being able to get tests and treatment for themselves or their loved ones will bear that in mind next time they vote.

An example. I found out at the beginning of lockdown that I am likely to need extensive surgery on my foot (possibly also related, in a knock-on way, to the effects of the DDH, btw). I have my mobility and am not in pain. Nothing is going to deteriorate over the next few months to the point that I will have lifelong issues. I can wait. This child literally can't - plus she has twice as much life as me left in order to suffer with any issues that arise from her being denied treatment. Plus the discrepancy in cost of a harness followed by a couple of aftercare checks vs perhaps multiple surgeries, physio, orthotics, follow-ups etc. etc.

Your baby will not die from having a hip problem.

A lifetime of pain and disability for her is fine though? Which may well be the result of late treatment. Personally I would prioritise the OPs child over a ninety year old with covid.

Unfortunately we are where we are, there are no winners now, only losers. Be angry OP, we all should be. Covid is a failure of politicians and governments globally, (with a few notable exceptions) starting with China. If politicians around the world had acted quickly covid could have been extinguished completely, instead they sat on their hands and in our case even took two weeks off on holiday. This must never be allowed to happen again and we should stop making excuses for poor political decisions. This is their fault.

47% of deaths in people aged 85+. Sad for families but no so tragic in the grand scheme of things that its worth the damage being done to children

This is your hobby horse @formerbabe, with your continuous “think of the children” posts. Yes, children are important, however they’re the section of the population least likely to be infected with C19. Children are incredibly resilient if they’re allowed to be. It really pisses me off that you think it’s fine for older people to be collateral damage and their lives don’t matter.

For the record, I said for 90% of people it is a bad cold.... I never minimised the suffering of those very vulnerable groups who have died

I think you sort of did

Children are resilient and may recover. Dead people don’t resurrect

OP you are missing the point. The enemy isn't lock down, it's the virus. We need the numbers getting the virus to be manageable in order that necessary treatments for other conditions can continue. Getting rid of lock down isn't the answer, because more people will be infected. And yes, I do think that the NHS needs more support to help it deal with the pressing issues that aren't COVID 19. I say that as someone whose child's health has been compromised by the lockdown (serious medical condition and currently using a broken, out of warranty medical device that he needs to have working and attached to him 24 hours a day). I've also got a serious medical condition and have been unable to get any support. I understand your frustration but you need to shout louder to your GP rather than whining about COVID being a cold and delusionally thinking the answer if 10s of thousands more people dying because you haven't managed to advocate for the time sensitive treatment your baby needs.

'the conflict about lockdown is a massive red herring'

I agree; that's unfortunate, and part of why this thread has gone as it has.

What does amaze me in all this is the poor interpretation of messaging at the coalface (to avoid that awful 'frontline' terminology) level - those planning and providing (e.g.) healthcare services. I can only assume this is down to poor communication from the 'top'.

**TabbyMumz

"Speaking up for your daughter does not make you selfish."

Yes it does. Because her daughter is not the only individual in the world sho wants a life. There are other people and indeed other children. So she is being incredibly selfish. Also incredibly stupid and hurtful saying everyone else is old and should die anyway. What about all the mothers and fathers to young children, should they just die too?

Erm... When did I say this? When did I ever say this? I want my daughter to have her treatment, I don't see why her having her treatment would impact the people most at risk of Covid! I'm not asking to go have my hair done or be able to browse around John Lewis! And it is a fact that most people who have Covid do not die and do not require hospitalisation, it's not a crime to say that out loud though many of you calling me all the names under the sun seem to want it to be! So why can we not continue to be cautious and make more of an effort to focus on keeping those most vulnerable safe whilst also allowing everyone else to have their treatments also?

Where abouts are you based OP?

My daughter was the same, we had a scan at 6 weeks pre closure of everything and was told to put double nappies on her for 6 weeks thereafter with no further follow up.

I was concerned as to how to know if this will have corrected the problem so phoned my health visitor rather than the doctor who contacted the hospital and a consultant for me directly, who then called me back to arrange an appointment which is next week.

I also share your concern about how important it is to be treated before 6 months if it's picked up early so can appreciate your worry. Sorry to hear that outpatient appointments have been cancelled where you are.

I'm in the north west and in my town all appointments appear to have carried on as normal. It's a shame that some are being seen while others aren't.

Hope you manage to get something sorted soon.

Last time I looked the symptoms of a bad cold for most people were a stuffed up nose, sneezing, a chesty cough, feeling sorry for yourself and a bit of a headache. All made better by a day in bed, chicken soup,lemsip and overdosing on Netflix.

With Covid19 a bad cold can also lead to kidney failure, thrombosis, heart attack, stroke, being in intensive care for 48 days, intubation under anaesthetic, supervised recovery requiring intensive physical therapy and , oh yes, death for more than 40,000 in this country alone .

As long as people carry on thinking that Covid is a bad cold then we will have continued infection caused by street parties, illegal raves, social distance ignoring,

And yes, for the lucky ones the symptoms are equivalent to a bad cold , but increasingly it appears that for many this virus does not just attack the lungs, it has the ability to cause widespread damage in many different parts of the body, it is a puzzle, what it does to the blood is not understood, nor are its long term effects understood, for some people the effects will possibly be life limiting and permanent. It is not behaving like other viruses. Please do not dismiss how serious this virus is.

A bad cold? Whilst I'm sorry about your daughter you can fuck off with that comment.

Yep

It's disgusting and I feel so unbelievably angry at what this country has come through so 90% of people can avoid getting what is essentially a bad cold!

OR

It's disgusting and I feel so unbelievably angry at what this country has done so that 40,000 people have died who wouldn't have.

but hey, they're just old or disabled or fat or have other illnesses but who cares?

Fixed it for you

YABU so unreasonable I can't even

I do know people being treated in hospital for similar things (not a child) though, urgent surgical procedures, scans, so I don't know why some services are up and running and some are not. I would start harassing through any means possible- GP to phone consultant, consultant's secretary, MP, PALS, ask private providers and so forth. Explain the time-dependent issue and push push push. Use that anger, you might find the prospect of a negligence claim does focus the minds of the people that could restart this.

Delays to medical treatment are a result of the virus not lockdown, many hospitals suffered greatly and the virus moves quickly so all hospitals needed to be prepared,

Delays will be even worse if the NHS is overrun again by relaxing lockdown too soon

Have you tried a private referral? Just to get treatment started. I thought other services were kicking in again like the cancer ones?

"Not one person who has died with the virus (because let's not forget that they have never been able to differentiate from dying of and dying with) died because of a lack of access to treatment."

Link for that? I'd argue the woman who was told by paramedics that they wouldn't take her to hospital and who later died, died because of a lack of access to treatment. There may be many others who would have lived had they been treated earlier.

The enemy isn't lock down, it's the virus.

Nope.

The enemy is lockdown enthusiasts who want to suspend our society, and all its protective qualities, indefinitely using the pretext of a killer virus.

Let's hope an actual killer pandemic doesn't arise in the next few years, because we have well and truly blown our load on this one.