We've saved a lot of lives

[Nellodee]

I don't really know how to write this, I don't want it to come across as patronising. I was just struck by how hard this has been for everyone and how many changes we have made, for such a long time. How many sacrifices, how many decisions that were not for our benefit, but for the benefit of our society. It's been a massive concerted effort. We've all gone through a lot of hardships, for people we don't even know. We've saved a lot of lives.

It does sound patronising, I didn't mean it to, but it felt like something I hadn't really thought of in that way, how ... I can't find the right word... virtuous? good? kind? ... we've all been. I know we've all bickered about statistics, and politics, but we've all done it, changed our lives to protect the old and vulnerable. Whether or not you think we did the right thing, we all did it for the right reasons.

Yep. Although Scotland’s lockdown came de facto sooner as we were behind England by a couple of weeks and still half our deaths occurred there. It’s a travesty. And as well as the human cost which is obviously the main thing, it’s been economically horrendous for a lot of homes as well - a lot of residents dying very quickly and no ability to replace them.

Obviously evictions are a tragedy but firstly, that’s less bad than thousands more dead

Yeah I'm sure all those about to lose their homes will be comforted with that thought. FML.

Yeah over 40,000 waiting to go through on Monday, that’s just the start but let’s congratulate ourselves on saving lives 🙄

Beds in hospitals can be empty for a variety of reasons. The most important is frequently that they dont have any staff to look after people in them. Covid-19 patients admitted to hospital are often very sick - so they require more staff to look after them. Add to that that 20% of your staff are off sick either because they have the virus or because they have possible symptoms but cant get a test to show it isnt that. The NHS was deprived of PPE, so more staff fell ill, and deprived of tests so staff that were not really sick couldnt work.

Some of those going to lose their homes would have done so sooner without lockdown. They are not all being evicted because of Covid-19, they are being evicted because they werent paying rent before this, or were terrifying their neighbours.

Thinking that none of this would have happened without lockdown is naive.

@Derbygerbil

I don't agree with that. Some hospitals had icu capacity stretched at the peak. Medical wards were half empty at the peak though. Nightingale hospitals weren't needed at all

The NHS prepared for an even bigger surge than there was, which led to medical staff being transferred to support Covid response. In hindsight the NHS did more than the cases required, but it was impossible to predict beforehand. It was Covid that led to the NHS’s response, which was put/being put in place before lockdown.... If people are complaining that the capacity wasn’t needed, well, that was lockdown’s “fault”.

That's true. My comment was in response to the point who was implying NHS was overflowing with patients. In fact the opposite was true.

@alreadytaken

Beds in hospitals can be empty for a variety of reasons. The most important is frequently that they dont have any staff to look after people in them. Covid-19 patients admitted to hospital are often very sick - so they require more staff to look after them. Add to that that 20% of your staff are off sick either because they have the virus or because they have possible symptoms but cant get a test to show it isnt that. The NHS was deprived of PPE, so more staff fell ill, and deprived of tests so staff that were not really sick couldnt work.

Some of those going to lose their homes would have done so sooner without lockdown. They are not all being evicted because of Covid-19, they are being evicted because they werent paying rent before this, or were terrifying their neighbours.

Thinking that none of this would have happened without lockdown is naive.

Also not true. Staff were redeployed and apart from a few scattered outbreaks on wards which had to close, there weren't 20% off.

In my hospital 10% off for a while but this included non clinical staff too.

I've avoided coming back to this thread, because it's become about "Did lockdown save more lives that it wrecked" when actually I meant it to be about "This is the first time I have known so many people to do so much for society, rather than for their own personal benefit."

I wrote, "Whether or not you think we did the right thing, we all did it for the right reasons." I didn't mean to focus on the precise decisions of the NHS in cancelling services, or government decisions, but to think about what we have done - and I think for the vast majority of us, we followed all the rules, even when those in power were not. I thought we did that because we wanted to protect the vulnerable, even if we've now become disillusioned about our actions having the desired effect.

I see that I misjudged how angry many people are and how resentful they are about having had to go through lock down at all. There is an utter lack of belief in many quarters that it was necessary at all. People hold their view on whether lock down was right or wrong not because of any absolute evidence, but because of faith in a position, and most people see this in terms of black and white, allowing no room for honest curiosity or good faith debate. I wonder, was there ever a time, before Brexit, when people were not so angry and polarised, when we were not two sides pitted against each other. Have we always been like this, or is this something that has increased over the last five years?

@Nellodee You posted with the best of intentions, you are right, people re angry and polarised. Society has changed and not for the better. If people can't see any benefit to them, I think they view the restrictions as unnecessary, an over reaction or an excuse for the NHS not to treat.
There is very much anti nhs feeling at the moment (which we all knew in the nhs would come).
Tbh having been on a couple of NHS threads, I have much more sympathy for teachers

@Pomegranatepompom

Hospitals paused treatment so infection rates didn’t increase. It was to protect people.

Whilst allowing people to die prematurely due to lack of treatment; great protection that proved to be.

The total postponement of treatments/appointments available to patients should be a cause of national outrage - it's scandalous.

We didn’t lose any patients to covid or disease, we made the correct decision in my specialty. We’ve also not had any complaints and have communicated well with patients.

What speciality are you in if you don't mind me asking?

A family member had her cancer treatment delayed (was just going to be a surgery) and is now awaiting a scan (when she's deemed worthy enough of their time I suppose?) with baited breath, hoping it hasn't spread in the 8 months since she was last seen.

There's been numerous deaths, maybe not in your department, but elsewhere.

Doesn't take much searching to see thousands of other stories regarding this. From routine check-ups at the surgery, all the way up to specialist consultant appointments - cancelled.

I’ll have to name change I’ll put myself..., but honestly, we did not stop any care unless absolutely necessary. I look after a very vulnerable group of patients who if treatment fails, palliative care is the only option.

I’m sorry for people who have not received appropriate care, but some depts have continued pretty much as per normal. We still carried out surgery, scans, bloods, monitoring, admissions.

I just wanted to add before I give up on these types of threads. Pausing treatment is usual for us, we have to in non covid time’s for many reasons and there are measures you can take to protect the patients overall pathway/prognosis.

I'm that case, there may have not been any deaths, but how can you know that the delays in treatment won't cause premature death in your patients?
How do you know their condition hasn't worsened?

Honestly, I find your attitude quite shocking. 'We've had no deaths/no complaints, so it's fine' surely you don't believe it's a straightforward as that?

We monitor extremely carefully in many ways that. I perhaps can’t get across in a post. We care for our patients deeply.

I’ll leave this thread now.

Just to add we didn’t delay treatment as a covid precaution. I’ve already explained that.

Hospitals dont function without a mix of staff - they are teams. If one person is off then others have to step in. At the height of the pandemic it was common for staff to be working in other areas and taking on the work of absent staff. So if your medical ward was empty all the staff may have been in the Covid ICU. ICUs are intensive, they require more staff than an average ward.

Some Covid patients were going to die if they were not treated immediately. Quite a few died anyway. It's tough on the cancer patients but how do you choose which patient is going to die - the one dying in front of you or the one whose treatment can be delayed. The cancer patient may die awaiting treatment but again they may die anyway. Some lose a few months of life, the average Covid death has been estimated to have lost more than 10 years of life. wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75

Some cancer treatment did happen. The NHS is not resourced to have spare capacity in winter - and now we pay the price for that.

The point of lockdown was to flatten the curve. There was never an expectation that is would prevent everyone getting ill amd dying from Covid. That is something people have now latched onto but was not the reason for lockdown. It was not expected to stop the spread of a disease over which we had no control. It was to ensure that hospitals were not completely inundated with all the patients, as well as the normal load, at the same time. It was done so that our NHS could cope.

We did not know how bad it would be.

Nobody did. If they had not done lock down and half a million people had died people would most definitely have complained. There was no global taskforce with a plan. Every country tried to do the right thing to prevent as many deaths as they could. But honestly comparing a global travel hub with places like New Zealand is, in my opinion, ridiculous. New Zealand has 3.8 million tourists a year and a pop of less than 5 million @15 people per sq km. The UK has 40 million tourists a year and a population of over 65 million @ 275 people per sq km. NZ has around 170k people over 80. The UK has 3 MILLION. It is not the same thing.

Well OP, you are allowed to think whatever you want...thoughtcrime isn’t illegal. Yet.

Isn’t it wonderful that people are allowed to have their own thoughts and disagree with you.