The hospital I work in is so quiet

[QuietHospital]

London hospital.
Half empty. Some wards have less than a handful of patients, some wards are closed. Most staff have been moved to wards so are falling over selves. While their regular work goes undone.
A&E very quiet. I’ve sent patients there who are seen immediately. The heart attacks, strokes and appendicitis cases are presenting too late. People with covid are waiting too long to present. If you get breathless then for goodness sake come in. I’m so cross at the initial advice to stay home until struggling.
Had a look through covid ward lists and vast majority patients are aged over 70. Hardly any patients under 60, those who are have underlying health problems for the most part. Lots more men than women affected.
It’s just a snapshot but echoed by colleagues in other hospitals.
I think we can / should start to move back to normal life soon for the well young people among us. I fear for the short and longer term economic hit. It’s crazy to have all these young well people furloughed or made redundant.

Gruffawoah - not true, plenty on this thread, including the OP, are arguing exactly that. Read the last paragraph of the OP.

That's not to say that there aren't people making the valid argument that lockdown may lead to other deaths due to cancelled appointments/treatments.

The problem is that sending someone with eg advanced cancer or stroke to a hospital where coronavirus is rife is likely to mean they end up with the disease on top of whatever they originally went in with. It's not rocket science to work out that that is not in their best interest.

If we had had some proper planning, that could maybe have been (largely) avoided by keeping some hospitals as 'clean' for all illnesses that are not coronavirus-related, but that's too late now. And even then, given the disease's infectiousness, that might not have worked anyway.

Personally, if I had a relative with eg advanced cancer, I'd be doing whatever I could to ensure they went nowhere near a hospital at the moment.

@StopGo I’m so sorry to hear that, it’s awful. Fingers crossed for him and you.

Cleaned and unblocking my dishwasher 🥺🤮🤮🤮
Horrendous job
Been cooking, Shepherds pie, lemon pie & meatball bolognaise 😋😋😄

Forgot pics 😂

My hospital has had 2 deaths, my OH desperately needs an op. when NHS cancelled we went private with our savings the night before the Spire cancelled saying NHS had taken over. I cried knowing he would be permanently disabled, but he was sanguine saying for the greater good we had to bow to circumstances.

Do not insinuate that if we question the NHS that we are trolls parachuted in.

We have family nhs workers retired, offered to go back to work, my bloody aunt in a residential home wanted to help. she is over 80.

Gruffwoah, there was video on the News At Ten last night of hospitals run off their feet.

You know there are other sources of info than anonymous posters on a MN thread, right?

justasking - your hospital has 2 deaths, well that, as you must surely know, is not typical of hospitals generally.

My two nearest hospitals were shut on two successive weekends with critical incidents because they ran out of beds and out of oxygen, respectively.

Two nurses died in my local hospital of coronavirus, let alone patients.

I'm really sorry to hear about your husband, but would he have been better off going in to hospital and catching coronavirus? I have a severely ill relative whose appointment was unsurprisingly cancelled this month. If it hadn't been, we would have cancelled it ourselves as there is no way I would send someone who is supposed to be shielding to a hospital, where there is a high likelihood of catching coronavirus.

I genuinely don't understand why someone would want a very sick relative to take that risk.

effing, well seeing that the government appropriated our private hospital which is now empty, never seen a coronavirus case, nor a patient in four weeks, yes I am a bit miffed.

Two nurses died in my local hospital of coronavirus, let alone patients

Was this Wales?

I genuinely don't understand why someone would want a very sick relative to take that risk.

Because they may die from their condition if they don't get treatment, such as cancer patients who've had their treatments stopped?

no-one on here is identifiable

And that's why people can come on here and say that it's quiet in their areas. When the local newspaper contacted me I said no comment and kept to the party line about our hospitals being ready for an influx of covid19 patients. on here I can say that influx hasn't happened.

I'm not bothered if people believe me or not on here. If anyone wants to advance search me they will find my profession and also how I'm spending this pandemic. What they won't know is the area of the country where I'm working, so you either take my word for it that in SOME areas there are few hospital cases and the concern is for people needing help for other conditions and also covid patients not getting the help they need in the community, or you believe the people who say that every single hospital in the country is at capacity. Frankly, I don't care.

The problem is that sending someone with eg advanced cancer or stroke to a hospital where coronavirus is rife is likely to mean they end up with the disease on top of whatever they originally went in with.

What about younger people with TREATABLE cancer who are being denied that treatment??

bluebluezoo - no.

justasking111 - how do you know that your local private hospital is completely empty?

I don't get to wander all over hospitals even when there is no lockdown and even when my appointment hasn't been cancelled?

Effing a relative works there. We are in a low area of infection our own hospitals are not busy. As I said before this awful disease is regional.

You know there are other sources of info than anonymous posters on a MN thread, right?

And you know that there are better sources of information on Twitter than John O’Connell? He has his own agenda and he’s the same delightful guy linked to in the attached image where he responds to a horrible anti-Semitic trope with a virtual shrug.

Please, we have little way to verify everyone’s job and identity on here, although Advanced Search is your friend. So instead of attacking posters and shouting conspiracy just engage in a rational discussion. That’s a far better way to debunk anything you disagree with than evidence-light or unlinked-to assertions.

Kazzyhoward - it would be good if we could ensure they could get treatment and not catch coronavirus.

But we can't - and are you saying that a young person with cancer wouldn't be at a higher risk if they did catch coronavirus?

I think realistically it's about balancing risk - there is no perfect, risk-free option, but given that the coronavirus risk is hopefully short-term, it makes sense to lockdown sufficiently until the number of infectious people is very low and they are all quarantined, and we can then test and trace contacts of the very few cases that escape.

If we go out of lockdown before that point and before the testing capacity is in place, with the tests bought and waiting and the contact tracers trained and ready to go, all the lockdown so far will just have been in vain, as the second wave will be worse than the first and undo all our hard work.

Yes, it's hard to wait a few more weeks, but essential and in the long-term interests of people with critical illnesses. Exposing them to coronavirus now is not in their long-term interests.

Anyway it is all moot, just seen todays figures, double yesterdays so we are fucked for some time to come.873 even higher than last Tuesdays taking into account weekend lull.

Younger people with cancer treatable or not face the same risks as older cancer patients. It only takes one patient or staff member to unwittingly pass on Covid. It spread like wildfire in Italian hospitals. It's a no win situation. We can't tell the virus to stay away from non-covid wards or GP surgeries. It won't listen or care. People with cancer or any non Covid issue are in awful situations. All they and their doctors can do is balance the risks. The best all of us can hope for is a longer initial lockdown. That gives us a chance to contain the spread as much as possible with the hope that when we do start normal procedures again there's a lower chance of another wave - with the ensuing disruption to medical care (again) and worse economic chaos. As I said last night, we must remember more haste, less speed.

Possibly we could consider a regional approach to easing lockdown. Terrible for those of us in the more affected areas but perhaps worth considering. Those of you in the less affected areas, is that something you'd want to try?

Anyway it is all moot, just seen todays figures, double yesterdays so we are fucked for some time to come.873 even higher than last Tuesdays taking into account weekend lull.

How do you work out? I fully expected that number today, given the massive undercounting at the weekend.

@noraclavicle how dare you. I have read the thread properly and I’m not having a “knee jerk” reaction. I am also a front line NHS worker who goes out and puts her neck on the line by working with COVID positive patients.

In my opinion if we had not cancelled non essential work and discharged every bed blocking patient there would have been significantly more deaths. So yes it looks bad if wards are not running at full capacity but no one knew just how bad this was going to get.

I still don’t think some people are understanding that hospital is the place you are most likely to pick up COVID19. When paramedics see people in their homes unless they are requiring oxygen they deem it safer to stay there rather than come into hospital where if it turns out you didn’t have Covid once you’ve been in a cohort with people who do have it chances are you’ll get it.

I was under the impression that the medical team around any cancer patient was risk assessing the patient to achieve the best outcome, not arbitrarily stopping all oncology treatment. Is that not the case?

And I've read the entire thread over the course of several hours.

@Frompcat well last Tuesdays figures 778, so it would be rational to suppose after another week of lockdown that the figure would be lower instead of higher 873 is higher by nearly 100, do you not agree?

noraclavicle, I agree that John O'Connell has unpleasant anti-Semitic views. That doesn't mean he's wrong on this, though. It seems fairly clear that people from the DHSC have been creating fake Twitter profiles, with stolen photos from actual workers in the NHS in some cases, to spread a particular view.

A bit of healthy scepticism is good. But at least he posts under his own name, unlike anonymous MN posters, whose record we can have no idea of.

Maybe he is wrong and maybe the anonymous MN posters claiming coincidentally on the same day this story comes out that lockdown should end as everything is fine in the NHS are all genuine.

I'll leave the reader to decide.