Protect the bloody NHS again

[bathsh3ba]

Is anyone else sick of hearing this? Maybe, if health systems everywhere are failing to manage this virus, we should start to accept that it's not feasible for a publicly funded health service to be all things to all people. It can't treat every ailment or save every life because there just isn't the money for the staff or beds or equipment to do that. Especially when the furlough bill comes home to roost.

[gypsywater]

I think some posters are clearly secretly (or not( in favour of just not offering any treatment to COVID patients if over a certain age

[Puzzledandpissedoff]

Cataract op was cancelled because bar is raised. Consultant said he could do the op Friday for £5k when asked!

Ah yes, another one of those. I've written on here before about a local doctor who's using the GP callback thing to offer appointments to those prepared to pay him - and that's on time he's supposedly using for NHS patients

Strange how so many "problems" disappear when there's money in it ...

[OhTheRoses]

We locked down in March for the NHS. Had the NHS locked out in June/July and made services to all more readily available I'd have a great deal more time for it now.

DD had an ADHD review in September when there were 8 cases per 100,000 here. Her MH facility was still closed. She got a telephone call arranged for between 9am and 5pm. No video call, no two hour time slot. The facility is completely closed and if you ring the number there is a recorded message advising to ring the main switch because the office is closed. Vulnerable people have to wait for admin to call them back the msg having been relayed by switch. It is a disgrace.

Steps cataract op was cancelled because bar is raised. Consultant said he could do the op Friday for £5k when asked!

Have also heard that rates of still birth have risen from 1 to 2 per 1000 to 9.4 per 1000 due to difficulties accessing ante-natal apts.

On of our neighbours is a consultant for necessary but non urgent surgery. He was at home throughout late March, April, May and much of June. Didn't seem to be picking up alternative work.

MH admin and consultant above presumably on full pay.

It is simply not good enough and significant questions will have to be asked when this is over.

Some people in the NHS have been flat out I appreciate. Others could have been utilised to deal with other issues whilst receiving full pay.

Appreciate front line staff should have had priority access to supermarkets etc but saw more than once office staff (and I know them to be office staff as have met them) pull out their NHS lanyards and March to the front of long queues.

What I really want to know is where is She Simon Stephens? Does anyone know?

The non front line element has not covered itself in glory although paradoxically my GP practice is 10 times better having got itself on-line having refused to do so in any helpful way over the last five or six years.

[TiersTiersTiers]

@bathsh3ba

So anyone that disagrees with you is a vulture.

Are you 6 years old?

[YouAreMySunshine123]

Boris is that you starting threads on Mumsnet again?

[SpuriouserAndSpuriouser]

Ok so I agree that the messaging around saving the NHS is strange and unclear, but surely you can see what it would mean?

Predictions for the next couple of weeks (freely available online, it was also included in the press conference last night, go and have a look) show that without drastic intervention, in many areas of the country we would pass a point where rationing emergency healthcare would become inevitable within the next week or so. We would blow through the surge capacity (including the nightingales) within a matter of weeks, and by Christmas in pretty much all areas of the country, we would have blown through the extra capacity created by cancelling routine operations and reducing non-Covid services by 50%. Just think about what that would look like for a moment. It would be horrific.

Then, outside of the NHS, things would also cease to function. I’m not even talking about deaths from the virus, even a mild case can knock you off your feet for a couple of weeks so staff sickness would mean that many services we rely on wouldn’t be able to continue. Things like the police, fire service, schools etc, if there’s large numbers of staff sickness they won’t be able to function. That might sound far-fetched by at the rate of growth we’re currently seeing, it’s not. This shit is serious!

[HitchikersGuide]

Agree OP.

[Bambooble]

Have they found staff for the Nightingale yet btw?

[Bambooble]

I've read some shit on here but this takes the biscuit.

Why? I know just 2 people who have died from covid, both caught it in hospital whilst in for minor ops- ie they would be alive if they hadn't gone to hospital. So what is your issue with posts like that? Here they were testing everyone who went into hospital, but there were so many asymptomatic people with broken legs etc that they couldn't find a way to effectively seperate them, ie the 'hot zones' effectively for show. So they can cancel ops for people, leaving their quality of life much lower or even delaying endangering their life, or you can go in and take your chances, but they should be honest about the risk imo.

[WiseUpJanetWeiss]

@Strawberrypancakes

Nightingale hospitals had about 6 people in them??

I am not listening to the government anymore.

Just have read of this thread, please.

I suspect most posters on here have very little good to say about the government.

[chickenyhead]

@1stevernamechange
Thank you.

Still in shock tbh.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

@southeastdweller

I'm interested to see if anyone can come up with a link that strongly indicates that the NHS is at risk of collapsing because of Covid - I've not seen that so far this year on Mumsnet.

Anyone follow Allison Pearson on Twitter? This afternoon she tweeted that of 21,000 hospitalised patients in the capital, just 8% of them have Covid.

There was a graph in the press conference tonight that showed both with and without the nightingales. It’s not pretty.

I’m sure if you google you’ll be able to find it.

I wouldn’t take anything Allison Pearson takes seriously. In this case she’s probably factually right but I doubt it means what she thinks it means.

[1stevernamechange]

@chickenyhead

My dad died a few days ago. He was discharged from hospital with "pneumonia". No medication, no appropriate hospital bed, no care plan. He died in extreme discomfort, the doctor refusing to visitandmake him more comfortable.

On the day he died the law changed, doctors no longer need to certify death, undertakers can.

So yeah, I guess the collapse of healthcare isn't so bad eh?

I really hope that you don't have to see your relatives die that way.

@chickenyhead sorry for you loss. You have been through a horrendous time 💐

[RainingBatsAndFrogs]

Of course you can have more capacity if you pay for it. Why keep saying it as if there's no solution to the problem of capacity

Yes, the NHS could and should be funded to build capacity.

But the OP thinks private healthcare would have more capacity. Same issue: more money would need to be pumped in to keep pace. By doubling the cost of the policies people buy, probably.

Few private hospitals have ICU. They are geared to elective procedures rather than emergencies and trauma.

[HeyBlaby]

'One can at least hope to not pick up Covid during a routine op. My family member just did. Days of breathlessness later prompted her to test, and a positive Covid test now means she's shit scared due to an underlying medical condition. She's 32 and has been isolating before the op as requested, and she's been shielding mostly due to her condition. Don't think it's a lot to ask that a minor, routine op can be Covid free?'

I've read some shit on here but this takes the biscuit.

[windturbines]

A lot of people don't 'get it'.

I follow Dr. Doireann O'Leary on Instagram (an Irish GP, worth a follow regardless for her enthusiasm for female health), and she really simply explained why you can't just magic up more beds overnight.

You need more ventilators, facilities and space. Even if you have those things, they aren't functional unless you have the staff to run them. Further to that, they are specially trained staff. And you need a lot of them- consultants, doctors, ICU nurses, physiotherapists, and so on. If you don't have the staff, or staff that are properly trained for ICUs, what can you do?

At the end of the day, the general public were given instructions- to socially distance, to wash hands regularly and to wear a mask when in an enclosed space. You might be lucky in your area if people typically complied, but plenty of people haven't.

A lockdown is the result. Some of us within the population are to blame for that. It's shit, but it is what it is. I wonder now if all the refusal to wear masks for ridiculous reasons (not including genuine, very rare cases of a genuine exemption) were worth it?

[Poppingnostopping]

Of course you can have more capacity if you pay for it. Why keep saying it as if there's no solution to the problem of capacity. Every year the NHS is nearly overwhelmed by flu and winter diseases, because it runs close to capacity and is underfunded per head of the population. Germany has much higher ITU capacity, so it has space to cope, to the extent that Belgium is now sending patients there. It's more expensive to run a system like that, you get what you pay for.

The other thing Germany has, IMO, which is critical to this is their testing system was up and running and delivering tests much quicker. Tests there in April/May were available to the general population when they were not here and they were coming back quicker. Here it can be days to get a test and days to get it back, by which time your contacts have spread it around asymptomatically or start to develop symptoms (or you may have got it from them in the first place and they are not alerted to this). Germany has a lower death rate compared with rate of infection in their population, good on them.

It's untrue that this is the best of all possible worlds!

[SheepandCow]

@RainingBatsAndFrogs

In a pandemic private hospitals would be overwhelmed too.

Private healthcare systems don’t have magical powers to suddenly double capacity on the same subs that people pay.

The OP makes no sense.

Also it's often the same doctors. Many consultants work in the NHS as well as private. The private hospitals can't magic up extra staff any more than the NHS can.

[CoffeeandCroissant]

"Anyone follow Allison Pearson on Twitter?"

No, I follow people who actually have qualifications and expertise in epidemiology, virology, immunology and public health as well as people who work in NHS intensive care.

None of which applies to Pearson who is a newspaper columnist with an agenda, who cherry picks information which suits that agenda and promotes pseudoscience.

Obviously numbers are currently lower in London than they are elsewhere, particularly in the North of England, so she cherry picks that as it suits her agenda.

[SheepandCow]

@southeastdweller

I'm interested to see if anyone can come up with a link that strongly indicates that the NHS is at risk of collapsing because of Covid - I've not seen that so far this year on Mumsnet.

Anyone follow Allison Pearson on Twitter? This afternoon she tweeted that of 21,000 hospitalised patients in the capital, just 8% of them have Covid.

Where did she get that figure from?

London doctors have been warning how they'll run out of capacity if the spread isn't contained. As they did in April.

It's spreading faster in London than anywhere else.

I'll trust the judgment of the London mayor over a right wing journalist. Sadiq Khan knows his city. He lives amongst it's people. He's been desperately fighting over the past few weeks for more restrictions. He knows how quickly it can (and will) get out of control in a densely populated city.

More people = quicker easier spread.

[Mumski45]

@southeastdweller
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-politics-54757446

It's not about the cases in hospital today but the exponential growth of cases that will come.

[Mumisnotmyonlyname]

I think some people have yet to work out that if the NHS is overwhelmed, then the entire medical system is.

[DameFanny]

Outsourced to Serco among others, oversight by Dido Harding of Talk Talk fame.

NHS trusts and universities offered to be part of designing and delivering test, track and trace and were turned down in favour of passing more cash to friends of the cabinet.

It's a fit up.

[RainingBatsAndFrogs]

In a pandemic private hospitals would be overwhelmed too.

Private healthcare systems don’t have magical powers to suddenly double capacity on the same subs that people pay.

The OP makes no sense.