Sending London patients to Yorkshire

[DeRigueurMortis]

It's been reported that due to capacity issues in London there is a proposal to send patients to Yorkshire.

London has more beds per capita than anywhere else in the country.

The nightingales have been dismantled.

In Yorkshire the rates have been high but (depending on north/south/east/west) brought into control though harsh lockdown. Those in tier 2 have been buggered by being inundated by Covid tourism and will be tier 3/4.

So Yorkshire is on the verge of it's own disaster with less beds per person than London and being overwhelmed by London cases before the local community can get a bed in their hospital.

Is it right that this should happen?

@DeRigueurMortis

You questions smacks a bit of ‘local shops for local people’, OP.

Not at all. I asked a question and it's a difficult one that I wanted opinions on.

I find it abhorrent that people might die as a result of a lack facilities in their area,

I equally find it abhorrent that the solution is to move those people to areas that are on the verge of the same stress but have less facilities per head to accumulate the influx.

This isn't levelling up the North is it?

I've no skin in the game other than finding this idea utterly ridiculous given the stress on all hospitals.

Honestly I find this a bit bizarre.

I can understand this train of thought in normal times.

This is a global pandemic. I'm no supporter of our current Govt and realise decades of underfunding has not helped but...

In a global pandemic it's reasonably likely that some areas that are badly hit won't have capacity for all of the people who need care.

Northern Italy has one of the best funded healthcare systems and even they ran out of beds.

ICU beds (and staff more importantly) can't just be created out of thin air.

I have said from the start that government policies on covid were based on NHS capacity. It has become apparent, that that capacity is much less in the North than it is in London for e.g. That is truly unfair and should be addressed. It's no wonder that people are angry to be honest.

I do think it's a bit nasty though to blame Londoners for that disparity. There are multiple issues at play here.

London voted for Labour. We got a Tory Government.
London voted to Remain. We got Brexit.

It's a democracy, but it appear that it's a divided nation. I don't know how we get people to sing from the same hymn sheet.

@ObviouslyIgnorant

It isn't the North's fault that Brexit and Tory government happened.

I find it impossible to believe that, in the same position, no Londoners would have an issue with Northern people being transferred to hospitals. Not after how much they whinged when Northern museums were allowed to borrow the diplodacus skeleton.

IMO, people outside of London seem to view the Government who are based in Westminster, London as being the voice of London. It rarely is! They are elected representatives from your area too!
Just because the seat of parliament is in London, doesn't mean that people living in London align themselves with government thinking.
Parliament is voted for and elected by all regions. Yes - we even allow Yorkshire to vote.
London voting in fact seems to be at odds with government to be honest.

@Fieldofyellowflowers

I find it impossible to believe that, in the same position, no Londoners would have an issue with Northern people being transferred to hospitals. Not after how much they whinged when Northern museums were allowed to borrow the diplodacus skeleton.

The diplodacus skeleton?

Yes, I remember the outrage. I joined the protest outside No. 10.

What on earth is the diplodacus skeleton?? Did he die from Covid? The London version?

This is why resentment grows and people are starting to think fuck it. Yorkshire has been punished for the governments failure to invest in our infrastructure, it’s free market ideals that it is wrong for governments to intervene. I live in Yorkshire and let me tell you people here were not happy that we were put under much stringent lock down restrictions than those in London. One of the major reasons for this was due to lack of hospital beds. The hospital serving my region has been over the years, reduced to the status of a lumbering white elephant. The maternity part has closed, the A&E capacity reduced and so on. The same is true of another Yorkshire hospital which serves another part of Yorkshire. Now these are not hospitals serving a few hundred villagers, oh no they served hundreds of thousands. So now everyone is shoved into a another major hospital and that hospital is on its knees. The infection rate where I live was not higher than that of London and yet Londoners, through no fault of there own, were given far more liberties and were indeed free to go out to cafes and restaurants etc whilst we were not. So you can hardly blame people if they feel annoyed at the outcome can you?
I don’t begrudge anyone a hospital bed but the chances of my area where people have done nothing except go to work and come home again for most of the year, getting out of a high tier are rapidly diminishing and for what?
To help those who have had relative freedom. I can’t see people tolerating this for much longer. We were punished because we are in a labour run council, do the research yourself. It’s not my fault that my local hospital has been made useless. London has far more hospitals than we do here. It’s no surprise that Londoners are becoming infected, they were all allowed to go out and mix, it’s not rocket science.

Dippy isn't even a skeleton. It's fake. A model.

emilybrontescorsett

Disparity in the ratio of beds SHOULD be addressed. You know how to vote next time, don't you?

The infection rate in London NOW, is not due to us gallivanting freely. It is due to a new highly infective strain of the virus which is believed to have started in Kent and spread to London.

Slough another labour strong hold, the only one in that area put in tier 3.
I won’t be reporting anyone for breaking lock down rules, I’m done. Not that anyone here does. Nothing to do and nothing to see.

Why did London vote Labour in the last election? I'm sure, if we felt that we were getting the best that there is to offer, we'd have voted Tory surely? Please don't equate government seated in London with the views of Londoners.

@EttaG

Nonsense. We went through the same lockdown as the rest of the nation in March and we've been Tier 4 I saw the photos of you all sitting in pubs leading up to Christmas, while we weren’t allowed to go out.

Wow, a few photos of people in pubs while the capital was still in Tier 2 – they shut the second we went into Tier 4 – and you've taken that as meaning London hasn't been subjected to the same measures that have curtailed the entire nation's freedoms. You really, really hate London, don't you! It's rather sad and pathetic, frankly.

London went into Tier 2 after the November lockdown for about 2 weeks. We were then swiftly put into Tier 4.

@EttaG You are completely deluded. When London and Essex went into tier 2 in October, my family in Derbyshire had three times as many cases as the area that I live in Essex but they were still in tier 1. I did not hear one person direct any anger towards “Northerners”. London and the South had lower cases, that’s why we were originally in a lower tier. Cases then skyrocketed and we were moved to tier 3 and then 4. Again, I have not heard one person complain about being in a higher tier than the North despite this meaning that we couldn’t spend Christmas with our families. What is your real issue with London? Are you racist? As a Northerner I have witnessed a lot of racist comments about London. Do you think everyone is better off because they earn more?! Another argument that I have heard from fellow Northerners which is a complete load of bullshit. In fact, in the area that I live in there is no London weighting so you get paid the same as someone in the North but pay twice as much for accommodation.

@EttaG

Nonsense. We went through the same lockdown as the rest of the nation in March and we've been Tier 4 I saw the photos of you all sitting in pubs leading up to Christmas, while we weren’t allowed to go out.

I haven’t sat in a pub since February.

I’ve always known how to vote. Read my post, I don’t live in a Tory run area, that is partly why my local hospital is virtually closed. That is why the other hospital I wrote about is virtually closed. No maternity units, no A&E of any use. All transferred to one hospital now. Infection rates here are not particularly high. The reason we were in tier 3 was because the NHS would not cope if our infection rates did increase due to lack of hospital beds. Governments fault. I do feel sorry for Londoners who seem to get blamed for this governments behaviour. Utter shambolic. We have cases of babies dying because the parents now live too far away from ‘the local hospital’ one materernity unit serving what must be over one million patients, just one that’s all.

@emilybrontescorsett

This is why resentment grows and people are starting to think fuck it. Yorkshire has been punished for the governments failure to invest in our infrastructure, it’s free market ideals that it is wrong for governments to intervene. I live in Yorkshire and let me tell you people here were not happy that we were put under much stringent lock down restrictions than those in London. One of the major reasons for this was due to lack of hospital beds. The hospital serving my region has been over the years, reduced to the status of a lumbering white elephant. The maternity part has closed, the A&E capacity reduced and so on. The same is true of another Yorkshire hospital which serves another part of Yorkshire. Now these are not hospitals serving a few hundred villagers, oh no they served hundreds of thousands. So now everyone is shoved into a another major hospital and that hospital is on its knees. The infection rate where I live was not higher than that of London and yet Londoners, through no fault of there own, were given far more liberties and were indeed free to go out to cafes and restaurants etc whilst we were not. So you can hardly blame people if they feel annoyed at the outcome can you? I don’t begrudge anyone a hospital bed but the chances of my area where people have done nothing except go to work and come home again for most of the year, getting out of a high tier are rapidly diminishing and for what? To help those who have had relative freedom. I can’t see people tolerating this for much longer. We were punished because we are in a labour run council, do the research yourself. It’s not my fault that my local hospital has been made useless. London has far more hospitals than we do here. It’s no surprise that Londoners are becoming infected, they were all allowed to go out and mix, it’s not rocket science.

No, it's not your fault that your hospital has been made useless, but how is it the fault of Londoners right now that Yorkshire doesn't have enough beds for its population and that your NHS services have, sadly, been decimated? PP (not you, you've said you don't begrudge it) want to punish seriously ill Covid patients for Tory policies that London didn't actually vote for, because we are overwhelmingly a Labour stronghold! Plus, many millions of Londoners have stuck to the rules and limited contact and have worked from home from March, so this idea that we've been flitting about here and there and with hell to the consequences is plain wrong. Yes, some people have flouted the rules or pushed the Tier restrictions to their limits, but that's been going on all over the UK, not just in London.

I saw the photos of you all sitting in pubs leading up to Christmas, while we weren’t allowed to go out.

What a dick!

Article in the Telegraph yesterday about how thousands of medical staff can’t work due to red tape. Surely the government should focus on allowing them to work.

@Bubblemonkey

They can keep their own patients. I’m fairly certain if we wanted to send ours there, they wouldn’t allow it.

Can we apply that logic to the tax paid in London too? Absolutely disgusted by this attitude, People from all over the country are sent to certain London hospitals, shall we turn them all away?

I think the bed availability per capita should be uniform across the United Kingdom. It does appear that some areas are not nearly on a par with other areas. This needs to change.

I'm surmising as to why this isn't the case, but an outbreak in London will become catastrophic faster than it would in a different area? I don't know. I don't work in government, nor in the NHS. I don't know why there is such disparity.

Please get angry with the government, not Londoners.

One of the multifaceted reasons London is struggling and transferring is because they have taken diverts and transfers from Kent. Medway is in an horrific situation and London have tried desperately to provide support. Now they too are being overwhelmed.

It really isn't as simple as the number of beds per local population. London has struggled far worse than the north and south west from Brexit staffing losses. Lots of recruitment of highly skilled staff from the EU has dried up because of the referendum outcome. That reduces their ability to stand up additional surge beds.

Then there are the specialist ITU areas that are now managing Covid10 patients. Highly specialist services that service a national population - the tertiary centres rather than district general hospitals.

There are, for example only eight centres offering ECMO treatment across the UK; three of those are in London and one in Scotland. It isn't needed in every region or every DGH but people may need access from anywhere and have to be moved to where the treatment is offered. Some Covid19 patients need ECMO where ventilation is insufficient; they need to be transferred to one of the national centres.

@DeRigueurMortis

It's been reported that due to capacity issues in London there is a proposal to send patients to Yorkshire.

London has more beds per capita than anywhere else in the country.

The nightingales have been dismantled.

In Yorkshire the rates have been high but (depending on north/south/east/west) brought into control though harsh lockdown. Those in tier 2 have been buggered by being inundated by Covid tourism and will be tier 3/4.

So Yorkshire is on the verge of it's own disaster with less beds per person than London and being overwhelmed by London cases before the local community can get a bed in their hospital.

Is it right that this should happen?

Yes it’s right - we are all in the same country we can’t start dividing it up and refusing to help others what is the alternative leaving Londoners to die just in case need in other hospitals are needed ? This has been a similar way nicu beds have always been dealt with some babies get transferred hundreds of miles it’s how things are dealt with and shouldn’t be any different for covid

how is it the fault of Londoners right now that Yorkshire doesn't have enough beds for its population
Because Londoners are being shipped up north and filling them all?