Marseille's Covid-19 hospital beds 'close to saturation'

[user1497207191]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54151281

Not looking good is it? We're about 2 weeks behind France.

I wonder if all the covid deniers would like to comment - you know, the ones who were saying the daily rise in infections isn't a problem because hospitalisations and deaths are low. Well, hospitalisations and deaths were low in France too, a couple of weeks ago!

@hamstersarse

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/saturday-interview-karol-sikora-zr3qxsn6f

Look up Professor Karol Simons, former head of oncology for the WHO

It’s not something much of the MSM are talking about as they are obsessed with COVID, as are many on MN, but we really need to get some perspective

Karol Sikora is not an infectious diseases expert, nor is he an epidemiologist.

@WiseUpJanetWeiss

Well, no, he’s an oncologist. There are other areas of medicine

It is a disaster for cancer but I am not really sure anyone is to blame. Arguably the NHS should have reopened more quickly after it became clear that it wasn’t gong to overwhelmed by Covid cases. So maybe we can blame whoever failed to take that decision earlier.

@notevenat20

It is odd how often people cling to the hope that cases can go up hugely without hospitalisations following close behind. In my view, if cases go up a lot, it is absolutely inevitable that hospitalisations will follow. The only question is when.

This depends on the age of the people getting Covid. If many are over 50, say, then this happens a week or two after. If they are largely “young” then what happens is that those young people don’t get very ill. But after a bit there are so many infected young people in the community that older people start getting it and they do get very ill. In other words it just delays the hospitalisations by a few weeks.

Or you get community immunity.

It’s not exponential growth when a lot of people have had it already. Doesn’t work like that.

It’s estimated you need 20% immunity to stop the exponential growth

New York and London, as well as Sweden obviously, seem to be cases of this

Is someone has cancer, they were on the shielding list, so if they caught Covid and died, the narrative (from some quarters, including on MN) was 'they were going to die anyhow'

We need to sort out how much we value lives, include people living with cancer.

Because if the assumption is going to be that they were going to die anyhow, then suspending screening doesn't matter.

But if, like me, you think that actually an increasing number of people with cancer are looking at long term survival with excellent quality of life, and that cancer can strike at any age; then perhaps it's time to counter the worst of the narrative about the (recently) shielded, and to comply with transmission control measures (even when they seem faintly ridiculous) - because low transmission is the only way we get any Sen plan envisages of normality back.

People always seem so excited at the prospect of any drama. You know there's more to life than covid right? We don't need to sit and watch every other country, or our own country 24/7.
Take whatever precautions you feel you want to, and carry on with life. Otherwise what, you'll sit there waiting for all this doom and gloom to happen and miss out on everything else.
Furthermore, there is other illnesses to life than covid.... They also need treating and if they're not people will die of them as well!... Why are people still sitting and counting down the clock until....well we don't know what is going to happen?

Or you get community immunity. It’s not exponential growth when a lot of people have had it already. Doesn’t work like that. It’s estimated you need 20% immunity to stop the exponential growth New York and London, as well as Sweden obviously, seem to be cases of this

I fear this may be wrong. There is no good scientific reason to believe in this 20% figure and it is contradicted by the current rise in numbers in London

@SquirmOfEels

Well yes, we could have used the time to establish separate hospitals for covid, but why bother when you can just cancel everything else and become the national covid service

London has "clean" and "hot" hospitals (as well as zones within hospitals) as a plan for the Marsden to take over all cancer care, private hospitals to be used for 'clean' procedures etc.

Excellent news. No need for posters to worry any more about other services stopping next wave then. We might well run out of icu beds for covid patients. We sometimes ran out of icu beds pre covid. Such is an underfunded healthcare service. Triple lock pensions have to be paid for somehow.

Furthermore, there is other illnesses to life than covid.... They also need treating and if they're not people will die of them as well!

Absolutely. Unfortunately they won't get treated if hospitals are overwhelmed with Covid patients, or their staff are sick or quarantining due to Covid, or the prevalence of Covid in the community renders medical treatment unsafe - chemo or surgery for example. So it's important to keep community levels of Covid down so that medical treatment for all other conditions can continue

I don't think many people think we need to keep levels of covid high!
Some of us are more 'flatten the curve' via Sweden type measures rather than 'eliminate via a year in isolation'

[quote hamstersarse]@WiseUpJanetWeiss

Well, no, he’s an oncologist. There are other areas of medicine[/quote]
He’s an oncologist who was spouting a good deal of misinformation about Covid-19.

@SheepandCow stop trying to make 'close the borders' happen, it's not going to happen!

On every bloody thread.

I thought they had decided that cancer patients are not as at risk from Covid as they first thought, and that with hindsight they shouldn't have stopped so many cancer treatments, because doing that has already led to the early deaths of some people. Obviously hindsight is a wonderful thing and they did what was best at the time, but it will be interesting to see if it is different this time around?

It was on that Panorama and the accompanying You, Me, Big C podcast a few weeks ago.

I keep seeing people wanting another lockdown, or home learning for kids, and saying parents will just have to adapt - adapt to no job? No home? Being housed by the council somewhere (unlikely given the thousands of families who would lose their homes within a few weeks of eachother) or adapt to homelessness maybe? For what? It's all well and good for SAHM's with husbands on 100k to spout off about adapting to another lockdown or home learning but I don't think they have a clue tbh.

@Bol87

Up to 50,000 people a year die of flu & we don’t bat an eyelid

In the UK? When?

2018 IIRC

Of course there are always going to be local outbreaks- these can be managed locally.

The figure we should be focusing on today is 695,000. That is the number of people who have come off payrolls since March. There are many more to come.

Up to 50,000 people a year die of flu & we don’t bat an eyelid

I don't think this makes sense as a line of argument for a few reasons.

First, the normal number is closer to 10 or 20 thousand a year. This is an inferred number and should be compared to the more than 60,000 deaths from covid that is sensibly inferred already this year.

Then recall two things.

a) 60,000 have died from covid despite shutting the whole country down followed by extensive restrictions.
b) We already have a flu vaccine. Every year there is a national campaign to vaccinate millions of people.

We might be 2 weeks behind Belgium, who are seeing a levelling off of cases.

What caused Belgiums levelling off, do you know? Have they imposed extra restrictions?

@NationalBust

Of the 50,000 excess deaths in that winter (the year of the Beast from the East), only 1/3 were due to respiratory illnesses, of which influenza would have been a very significant, though not the only, factor.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/excesswintermortalityinenglandandwales/2017to2018provisionaland2016to2017final

So that’s about 17,000 flu deaths in a bad flu winter, without any social distancing or other measures whatsoever.

Marseille is a very interesting city from a social and demographic POV. The living conditions, the poverty, working conditions et al.

It’s not representative of France as a whole.

What caused Belgiums levelling off, do you know? Have they imposed extra restrictions?

Yes. They have a rule of 5 and probably other things I don't know about. Restrictions really work.

@Stinkyguineapig

We might be 2 weeks behind Belgium, who are seeing a levelling off of cases.

What caused Belgiums levelling off, do you know? Have they imposed extra restrictions?

Yes, the imposed new restrictions a few weeks ago. Witty mentioned it in his presentation at last week's Covid press conference. He showed a graph showing Belgium covid cases increases which levelled off after the new restrictions were imposed. He superimposed a graph showing UK infections following the same trajectory but 2 weeks behind. Hence us imposing similar restrictions to Belgium in the hope that we can get our infection numbers to level off in the same way.

@InsaneInTheViralMembrane

Marseille is a very interesting city from a social and demographic POV. The living conditions, the poverty, working conditions et al.

It’s not representative of France as a whole.

Yep, Marseille and some of the other larger conurbations such as Bordeaux are a cause for concern but other than that the distribution of the virus across the country seems to be as variable as it is in the UK..

geodes.santepubliquefrance.fr/#c=indicator&i=sp_ti_tp_7j.tx_pe_gliss&s=2020-08-31-2020-09-06&t=a01&view=map2

@notevenat20

What caused Belgiums levelling off, do you know? Have they imposed extra restrictions?

Yes. They have a rule of 5 and probably other things I don't know about. Restrictions really work.

Interestingly it has to be the same people each time, so mixing with different people on different days.

@NationalBust

I'd be interested to see your source for 50,000 flu deaths in the UK in 2018.