WTAF... Did I just hear that??!!!

[Whattodowhattodooo]

Did George Eustice and Prof Dame Angela McLean admit to murder???

They just said that elderly WERE discharged to care homes whilst being asymptomatic in the "early days" Whilst we knew it was happening this is the first I've actually heard them admit to it.... They were in fucking hospital. Fucking test them you stupid fucking bastards 🤬🤬🤬🤬

You could also ask why care homes didn't isolate residents coming back from hospitals

Completely agree with this. I know a lady who was discharged from hospital because there was a case of covid in her ward. She went to a nursing home and three weeks later was tested positive for covid, shortly before dying. Did she bring it with her to the nursing home? It seems possible. The nursing home knew covid was in her ward and isolated her for just five days before letting her mix with residents whilst also allowing day respites to continue.

I don’t blame the hospital especially as they would discharge people to their homes as well as care or nursing homes. It’s the care and nursing homes, most privately run, that should have isolated residents, provided PPE and a suitable wage to their staff or else refused to accept them.

It’s weird how South Korea got its shit together so fast and adopted large-scale testing, which means they have a much lower death rate than the UK. Yet, the UK, which was affected much later than South Korea, was so underprepared, and now over 10,000 people are dead in care homes, but, golly gosh, we couldn’t possibly hold the UK government responsible for that.

The UK government, like the governments of some other counties, has a lot it should be taking responsibility for.

I think it also took people (not just in the UK) a while to twig that you could be asymptomatic and still have the virus. At the beginning a cough and temperature were considered to be inevitable, so if you didn't have those it was thought that you didn't have it.

Not that I'm defending the govt., I think there is a LOT that could have been done differently. However it was and is a fast moving situation, and while some of what they did seemed reprehensible even at the time, some of it is only clear with hindsight. And I wouldn't like to be the one who had to decide now which was which, for at least some of the actions, at the time rather than with what we know now.

Why would they test them if they were asymptomatic. That would be a complete waste of precious tests. It’s not murder. It’s absolutely right that old people who weren’t showing symptoms should be sent back to care homes, in order to free up beds.

Jeremy Hunt was just on R4 talking about this as one of the things he thinks they got wrong. He said even without tests, they could have followed Germany’s example of only discharging from hospital to care homes if the care home could guarantee isolation for 14 days after discharge. This is what happened in Germany ; if the care home couldn’t do this, elderly patients weren’t sent back there.

They may have caught it in hospital if they'd stayed there longer. Perhaps it was decided that they would be better off out than in.

So much hysteria on MN these days.

South Korea benefited from their experience handling SARS in the past.

@Whattodowhattodooo I absolutely understand the anger and upset, I understand the venting too.

I'm not sure that they actually were stupid effing bastards though. It's clear that at the start of the epidemic we had hugely limited testing capacity (a Public Health England responsibility by the looks of it) and likely very limited bed space as the epidemic was about to take hold. In those circumstances the non-stupid choice is hard. Do you test people without symptoms knowing that you can't then test people with symptoms later? Do you test everyone in hospital and then discharge uninfected people back to untested settings? Do you only test obviously ill people? Do you test everyone over 70? 60? 80?

That doesn't make the initial capacity issue a good thing, but both health care staff and the politicians have to work with what they have, not what they'd really like (serology tests and a vaccine would be great!).

Don't use such an evocative word such as 'murder' - for one thing it is an incorrect use - murder is 'the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another' and I don't think you can possibly apply this word to the current care home status.

Of course it is desperately sad, but posts such as this do not help to quell the hysteria.

@Whattodowhattodooo

((((Hug)))))) I'm so sorry to hear about your Grandmother🌷. You have every right to be absolutely furious & heartbroken.

I think it was as close as an admission as we will ever get. I expect they'll be in bother for what they said.

We all knew it, but sadly, nothing will happen

It's UTTERLY DISGRACEFUL the way carehome residents AND carers have been treat.

The powers that be can't win. If they didn't have symptoms and were otherwise well, why would they stay in hospital.

In normal times people are always complaining about "bed blocking". If someone has a care home place they can go back to, why wouldn't they go back to it?

It's easy to point the finger in hindsight and I bet none of the people saying how outrageous it is on this thread work in care homes or the senior wards of hospitals.

I'm not remotely a fan of this government and they've certainly made mistakes but sending people out of hospital without symptoms doesn't seem like the biggest of them.

And I happen to think that care homes charging ridiculous weekly fees for "care" should provide "care".

There are plenty of care homes out there which don't have covid. I don't believe that's anything to do with luck, and everything to do with taking proper precautions. And I'd hazard a guess that some of the privately owned care homes are the ones that are covid-free and the chains which exist only to make money are the ones that aren't, although I have no evidence to base that on, just prejudice.

My Fil was one of the first hospital Covid deaths in Wales. He went in for something else two weeks earlier. When he developed a fever and cough he was tested, found to be positive. He died a few days later without any of us present. Before he was tested he was days away from admission to a care home.

But even if they did test these people, they would of have to have waited 3/4/5+ days for the result. Who's not say that they could have caught it whilst waiting for test results?
It was an impossible situation

Hysteria?? Crying laughing emojis?? Has anyone said “Well, they were old so they would have probably died anyway” yet?? I need to fill my Bingo card.

There really is a lack of empathy here. Even the UK government admits that it handled the situation in care homes badly. Hong Kong was way ahead of the UK in terms of the virus and they had no deaths associated with care homes. I’m sure the policy makers in the UK can use Google, but the plan in the UK was “herd immunity”. Remember the whole speech about how many of our loved ones will die? Well, they did. And they really didnt need to have died. It was bad policy from the start as that cost many many lives.

Nohardsell- why should the OP calm down? My gran died in a care home from COVID. My grandad had looked after her for years at home. She was only in her 70's. She was having respite- he asked for 1 break. My grandad visited one day and was turned away at the front door. 3 weeks later and she died alone... with a shit funeral and no viewings. The fact that anyone can remain calm in the face of such tragedy that surely should have been anticipated and avoided is beyond me.

I think that the Government and the NHS should have been advising all residential and nursing homes to isolate anyone being discharged from hospital regardless of symptoms, it would have made sense to presume everyone was potentially positive.
Sorry to hear about your Grandmother

@Whattodowhattodooo very sorry for your loss, the way older people have been treated is ridiculous.

Back in February Dominic Cummins actually said that "if some pensioners die then, too bad" kind of summed up govt plans.

Unfortunately back in February/March we needed more beds, estimates were putting death numbers at 500,000, disaster was looming. The old were deemed unlikely to survive Covid19 and as a result were sacrificed to provide beds for people that were more likely to survive, its crazy that the people weren't tested before being moved.

The government still wont tell us the truth about Care Home deaths, they only count the deaths where Covid19 is confirmed via lab test! Very few are tested.

All govt figures are based on test results. When they say 100 new cases today, they mean 100 confirmed tests today. If they'd done more tests infected numbers would rise and death numbers would rise.

Unfortunately we've all been complacent in the care home death scandal. We all knew this was happening but we all wanted beds for ourselves, so I guess no one cared?

Keeping asymptomatic elderly people in hospital if there was somewhere else for them to go would have been wrong too

Wards were cleared because it was expected that we would have a deluge of infected patients.

Either way, the decision-makers could not win. As it turns out the deluge did not happen, but we didn't know that then

Short memories, we have

they wernt showing symptoms and at that point there probably wasnt a reliable test for it that they could get hold of

The did not have the capacity at all for testing.
I am sorry for your loss op.

Yes, its manslaughter.

eventually the care homes started refusing to take people without testing first.

I'm so sorry for your loss