With no vaccination imminent, how long are we going to keep doing this?

[RubyandBen]

Disrupted education that will impact on some DC forever, sending perfectly healthy DC home from school for 2 weeks again and again, lockdown of university students who will only have mild symptoms (I know there's always one or two who suffer more but the vast majority won't), destroying whole industries hospitality, travel, retail, hundreds of thousands unemployed, huge recession. Not even going to mention the long term impact on all the OTHER non covid illnesses that have been shelved.
If there's no vaccination imminent what's the plan? Are we going to carry on in this horrible limbo that's going to destroy too much or admit defeat and realise people will die?
Before I'm accused of being a mass murderer, I've followed all the rules but don't know how much more I can take of this.

Scribbly those posts make me scream as well! I have been amazed at the service My family and I have been given by the NHS Over the past 6 months. When I see a post saying Hospitals, GPs and dentists are shut I think I must live in a parallel universe. Although a couple of appointments have been delayed, nothing has been cancelled completely

People saying society would cease to function if we don’t have lockdowns. If it got that bad have we not got a rapidly increasing amount of unemployed to call upon? Students? Recovered retirees? Society wouldn’t ‘implode’ as this disease mainly affects those above working age does it not? And there are a lot of asymptomatic cases out there.

Not saying the NHS wouldn’t be up against the cosh - it obviously would be - but this ‘society would completely implode’ is a little OTT imo.

And even society did ‘implode’, it would be over a lot quicker wouldn’t it? What happened after the 1918 pandemic? Did we carry on or completely implode?

all Char2015@ according to news this am Oxford don’t think there will be a vaccine until July.

Depends where you live, NaturalLight. I've been to the hospital, ds to the dentist.

My cousin in the north (in the thick of it) has had an operation repeatedly postponed, dentists closed, GP surgery not even taking phone calls.

I include the midlands in the north bit!!!

I’m really pissed off with ‘well there’s no cases near me’ on here. Really pissed off with it. The north AND the midlands are suffering, and all the government do is create a tier system where Boris decides who goes where. One of the papers described him as ‘the sorting test’ in this context.

Those pubs in tier 2 are having no custom as households can’t mix. They want to be in Tier 3 as at least there is some financial support in that tier.

Meanwhile in the low rate areas in the Tory uplands, schools aren’t closing, pubs and hospitality are open. The last lockdown was opened up when numbers were still high in the north. So again the south was more important.

Everyone is pissed off with this virus, but the north AND midlands especially. There is no equality. And not would you expect a pandemic to treat areas equally! But the north and midlands are being shafted by the government. I hope the red wall realise this.

@MummyPop00 I think you're right.

I guess we’ll keep doing it until someone thinks of a workable alternative.

If we just give up and let covid rip, then schools and hospitals will close for lack of staff. People over 45 will stop going out once the death rates get high so leisure and hospitality business will not make enough profit to stay open. So life worse than now but with more deaths.

A vaccine that stops 50% of cases given to the vulnerable and over-45s plus better treatments and faster tests will be enough.

Sorting twat!

[quote RubyandBen]@Rosehip10
And before someone says it "put all covid patients in the nightingales"
But why don't we? There's currently many areas in the NHS not working at full capacity. Transferable skills could be utilised and staff redeployed.[/quote]
Why don’t we put all Covid patients in the nightingales? That’s easy to answer, because there is no additional staff available to deploy to work in these great white elephants.

If the nightingales are used to care for patients requiring acute care/ventilator support then they require staff with specialist skills, gained over many years of training. That cohort of NHS staff are already working in ITU/HDUs. Pull theatre staff out of theatres to work in the nightingales? then you have minimal/ no staff working in theatres to care for patients who need urgent cancer, trauma, vascular surgery. There is simply no capacity within our current system to provide acute care for patients in hospitals and in the nightingales.

Use the nightingales for step-down/rehab/awaiting placement or packages of care? Again you hit the same problem with staffing. These types of patients (many of whom will be frail) also enquire staff with a highly specialised skill set. And guess what, they to are already stretched to breaking point managing their patients in the hospital.

The nightingales were a massive and expensive PR stunt.

MummyPop I’m not sure I want random unemployed people teaching my y11 child or running my younger child’s diabetes clinic.

One thing we know from the 1918 flu is that the economies of societies that quarantined and tried to keep a lid on the illness, did much better in the medium to long term. And yes, the 1920s were pretty grim for everyone apart from the very rich. No change there then.

@RubyandBen Not many spare emergency care, ICU and respiratory doctors and nurses and the vast numbers of other unseen staff needed in ICU type scenarios (for example, when ventilators and other advanced medical electronic type equipment is used, the hospital technical staff are vital.

Also - you think that the NHS have the ability to just order staff to move from say Exeter to Manchester? (They don't) What about their families and caring responsibilities?

But Scribbly, we can use students to look after critically ill people in the nightingales, and unemployed waiters on £6.45 an hour, it’ll be fiiiiine.

Exactly, I am in the NW. There are no dentist open for anything apart from phone call if its an emergency. Same with GPs, although I am getting my repeat prescriptions through. They stopped my B12 injection in March and won't do them, I have had to learn to do it myself after buying syringes off the internet from China. I am vulnerable and get the flu jab but apparently there is a shortage so they are not doing those.

DH was supposed to have an outpatient hospital appointment in June but God only knows what is happening with that.

Our local A&E was asking people not to attend last week, they are overloaded. This is my major worry over winter if one of us needs healthcare, we are just not going to get it, we are on our own. I am very scared

@IrmaFayLear

Unfortunately there was a piece in the DM today and an Oxford vaccine person has said that there is no vaccine until July 2021 at the earliest - and then it would take months to vaccinate enough people.

I live in a low incidence area - or at least I did. The figures in the last few days have soared.

I don't know what we can do. I don't think the government has handled things well (understatement) but every European country is in the same shit. The virus doesn't listen to plans, legislation or hope.

Read the DM again. This is not what it says. It says social distancing and masks will remain in place until at least July 2021. The vaccine will be ready way before then (if results are good - in which case many researchers on the programme have said it looks very promising).

@stairway

My solution would be to put all the medically fit patients into the nightingale hospitals, leaving the hospitals for acutely ill patients. The nightingales could then be staffed by less qualified/skilled staff who could be trained up quickly.

If only it were that simple!

Caring for patients who are medically fit for discharge but who are for whatever reason unable to return home is a hugely complex and skilled task which requires fully functioning teams of experienced nurses, therapists, pharmacists and social work staff.
While awaiting discharge the type of patients who we typically see in these wards frequently then become not medically fit for discharge. They fall, they develop chest and urine infections, they develop delirium, they become constipated, they require careful monitoring and management to prevent risk of developing pressure sores, they require complex pharmacological management as so many of our older population are on multiple drugs. I could go on. You can no more pull a nurse or HCA out of dermatology outpatients and expect them to support patients with complex frailty than you could shove them into ITU and expect them to crack on.

@Pixxie7

all Char2015@ according to news this am Oxford don’t think there will be a vaccine until July.

Where have you read that? All the news stories this morning are saying vaccine by Christmas or early next year, but masks and social distancing are likely to be needed until July. That’s actually quite good and means we are less than a year away from normality.

I agree, it's all crazy and it's all very different across the country.

Dentists here still not running (South Wales), mist hospital services significantly affected, I've been referred for an urgent scan on 3rd of August which I'll hopefully have on 19th of October and I was referred on the 2 week referral pathway on 1st September and I had an appointment for 23rd which is now cancelled. It's ridiculous. 5 hospitals have cases.

Schools are closing year groups regularly which is massively disruptive to education and working parents. Businesses closing constantly.

I prefer the idea of short circuit breakers, allow less restrictions overall and when cases raise have local or national 2 week lockdowns. It's disruptive but if it ties up with half terms it's less disruptive for schools and parents and businesses can function better knowing it's a short period and then back to normal.

We don't know all the answers, but the current system is ridiculously complicated and at least in this area the cases are raising or remaining very high.

It's only the I'm-alright-jack brigade that wants to return to lockdown. The rest of us have bills to pay ...

allRacoonworld I would wager my house we will not see a vaccine until the end of next year.

@Pixxie7

all Char2015@ according to news this am Oxford don’t think there will be a vaccine until July.

Read it again. This is not what the news is reporting. The lead on the Oxford was only saying social distancing and masks will need to be in place until at least July. He did not say anything about the vaccine being ready in July. The results are nearly in and it will then take a few weeks for evaluation to take place then approval.

Let’s say ca.10% of the UK pop have had it. 50,000 deaths.

So, roughly Imperial Colleges’ doom mongering would be broadly correct predicting 500,000 deaths.

Thing is, we are getting that ratio already, in slow motion.

Why? Because we are taking a pure punt on science coming up with a vaccine or treatment in the interim.

Problem is if they don’t, and we end up living like this for years, we’ve really got the worst of all worlds.

How many people can genuinely say they could live like this for a decade or so?

@IrmaFayLear

Unfortunately there was a piece in the DM today and an Oxford vaccine person has said that there is no vaccine until July 2021 at the earliest - and then it would take months to vaccinate enough people.

I live in a low incidence area - or at least I did. The figures in the last few days have soared.

I don't know what we can do. I don't think the government has handled things well (understatement) but every European country is in the same shit. The virus doesn't listen to plans, legislation or hope.

It wasn’t an ‘oxford vaccine person’. It was someone dealing with the vaccine for the government. They have absolutely no idea about the final oxford results although even they say it looks promising. Unless you hear it straight from a leader of the oxford vaccine trial just take it with a pinch of salt. Obviously everyone won’t be vaccinated this year but even if the programme starts late this year and into the start of next then things will be looking up. If the vaccine is shown to be effective there would be absolutely no reason that vaccination wouldn’t start until July 2021

I thought the nightingales were built specifically for intubated patients. So there aren't the facilities for people who are conscious - they won't have enough space, toilets, sinks, bathrooms for all the people they are meant to absorb.

The simple answer is that we can't carry on like this.

People will accept a few more months of this maybe but at that point compliance and society will break down.

There is a lot of naivety in thinking a vaccine will magically appear in the Spring and everything will go back to normal and I don't see how people keep swallowing the fairy tale that 'circuit breakers' or lockdowns have any effect beyond a temporary and artificial reduction.

I can't see the rational in putting an entire population under house arrest and removing everything that makes us human (such as interaction with others) for something that the majority of people can survive.

The general trashing of the economy, the mental health crisis and so on will kill more people than the virus will.

Shield the elderly and the vulnerable (although they should have a say in this too), the rest of us need to start living again.

There is no scenario here where no one dies. It is fantasy to believe otherwise.

@Worriedmum999

You are incorrect. The 'oxford vaccine person' poster is referring to is the leader of the trial. He is part of Oxford and not part of the government as you say. He will be liaising with people from the vaccine taskforce as the head of the trial and this is what you would expect.