Main points from today anyone?

[Yetiyoga]

Can someone give any info on what was said today? I don't know what to believe with media. I missed it

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow The heart attack victims will not get an ambulance if that ambulance is elsewhere dealing with the breathless Covid patient. I'm afraid that is a fact of life - there are not enough ambulances to get to every emergency call now and it will get worse this winter. So if you need to get to hospital and someone can drive you or you can afford a taxi you are better doing that.

If we pretend the NHS can cope when it cant the heart attack victim waits for the ambulance and dies when if they had made it to hospital they may have survived.

I'm not trying to scare anyone - I'm telling you the truth and you can live in unicorn land if you prefer but it wont help. Seeing as few people as you can, wearing your mask properly, sanitising your hands, taking your vitamin D supplements in winter will all increase the chance of people getting health care when they need it.

As for mental health - that will suffer. The anxious can take magnesium and practise breathing exercises, that will help a little. Fresh air and exercise help. Oily fish helps. But the biggest help of all - keeping Covid levels down so they can get treatment - because unless we actively kill off Covid patients the NHS is going to have less resources available for anything else.

After the war food and other goods were rationed
Now socialising is rationed

@alreadytaken

I think I'm agreeing with you that people need to abide by the relatively minor infringements on our lives that are being mandated now to avoid worse down the line.

What I don't agree with is any idea that we do 'whatever it takes' and keep being more stringent until it's another lockdown.

Hospitals were not overwhelmed last time and capacity has been built up more now.

We need to learn the lessons from last time. This means not leaving people too scared to call an Ambulance when they need one and not stopping mental health services overnight and leaving vulnerable people hanging by a thread.

We need to learn the lessons from last time

That includes making early difficult decisions. There was a SAGE scientist on radio 4 saying nothing has been learnt from last time. We are doing too little too slowly which will affect the economy more as the lockdown will have to be longer.

30,000 more people died at home since the start of all this because the hysteria has made them too scared to seek treatment or made it unavailable.

This is before the wave of deaths we're going to see from late diagnosis. We need to balance managing down Covid numbers without damage like this elsewhere.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/24/10000-more-deaths-than-usual-occurred-in-uk-homes-since-june?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

[quote ThinkAboutItTomorrow]@alreadytaken

I think I'm agreeing with you that people need to abide by the relatively minor infringements on our lives that are being mandated now to avoid worse down the line.

What I don't agree with is any idea that we do 'whatever it takes' and keep being more stringent until it's another lockdown.

Hospitals were not overwhelmed last time and capacity has been built up more now.

We need to learn the lessons from last time. This means not leaving people too scared to call an Ambulance when they need one and not stopping mental health services overnight and leaving vulnerable people hanging by a thread. [/quote]
Hospitals weren't overwhelmed with covid because they shut down almost everything else and diverted everything to covid. They can't do that again (they shouldn't have done it the first time!). Covid treatment will have to take it's place alongside the continuation of everything else this time. That means that some covid patients may not receive the treatment they need because ICU beds etc are being used for other people with other conditions.

The only reason hospitals were not overrun was because of lockdown. Northwick Park declared a critical incident - that means they had to send patients elsewhere because they are full. The hospitals they sent patients to would have done the same thing a day or two later had sensible people not voted with their feet and started doing things like working from home. It was, quite literally, saved by lockdown.

People should not be scared to call an ambulance if they cant get to hospital any other way but unless you are seen as life threatening you can wait 8 hours - happened locally for someone with probably broken bones. Another time the sole ambulance available in the area (because ambulance staff get Covid too) took 45 minutes to get to someone who was in the highest risk category - the ambulance was attending to another person in the highest risk category. If you have someone available to drive you to hospital drive there.

If cases continue to rise it's either another lockdown or staff collapse and people die on the streets or at home. You'd like to see Covid patients die rather then yourself - the NHS will treat the ones it thinks it can save.

How good do you think mental health will be with lots of preventable deaths and everyone who didnt comply with the restrictions knowing they directly contributed to that.

The Government estimates for deaths as a result of lockdown is 76,000:

Depressed A&E use: an extra 16,000 non-Covid dead. Early discharges and general Covid-induced hospital chaos: an extra 26,000 dead. Delays to surgery: 12,500 in the long run. Delays to cancer diagnosis and treatment: 1,500. And the economic collapse carries the biggest toll of all: an extra 18,000 dead in coming years. So: 74,000 souls in all, more than the current Covid-19 death toll. (From The Spectator)

I know it's impossible to know what would have happened without the lockdown but there has to be a better balance in wave 2 of closing down the deadly cases (ie among the most vulnerable) and not making the cure worse than the disease.

The thing is though, that there had been no lockdown, if hospitals had run more as normal, and the cancer patients had gone in and all got infected with coronavirus, there would also be a death toll with that.

And the estimated death toll of not locking down, especially if more vulnerable or older people got infected, ran into hundreds of thousands.

And also there would have been quite a downside to living in a dystopian nightmare where people are dying all around you and the overwhelmed health service is even less able to function than it was in the summer.

Not to mention an even worse long term staff shortage because so many health care professionals in this scenario would be severely ill, or well dead.

So it isn't as simple as protect people or treat people,

A

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow

30,000 more people died at home since the start of all this because the hysteria has made them too scared to seek treatment or made it unavailable.

This is before the wave of deaths we're going to see from late diagnosis. We need to balance managing down Covid numbers without damage like this elsewhere.

[[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/24/10000-more-deaths-than-usual-occurred-in-uk-homes-since-june?CMP=Share]]iOSAppp_Other

Some of those were also people dying of undiagnosed Covid as the article suggests. There was a limit on tests available to people in the community at that time (as opposed to being in hospital)