Article by paramedic in the Guardian

[mrssmiling]

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/06/covid-crisis-paramedics-nhs-overstretched

[quote mumwon]@TheDailyCarbunkle is this gentleman's case his daughter could have been an exception of being in a care bubble. It must of been so hard for his daughters - but it does sound like he was putting up barriers & was covid the only reason for this? Nonetheless it was tragic. Covid is the gift that keeps giving in the worst possible way on the individual & family.
I think the argument is not against people who are struggling with emotional or social problems (& recognising that people need them & should have them)but against people's ignorant or selfish attitudes.[/quote]
There are thousands of others like him - who are being made to feel that their needs aren't important, that covid is the one and only thing that matters.

On a basic level, the belief seems be that the human need for contact is immoral and wrong and that the genuine suffering people go through when they can't live their lives normally is irrelevant.

A person suffering due to lockdown isn't of less value than a person suffering from covid. A person who dies due to lockdown isn't any less dead than a person who dies from covid. But covid is the one and only thing that people are completely fixated on, like zombies.

It's madness.

I agree Op, and thanks for sharing. I am so sick of people using the 'well, they did it' as an excuse. Unfortunately, we are all standing in front of the dam and will all drown when it breaks.

I think you're giving Cummings one hell of an easy pass here

I think he should have been sacked immediately, probably prosecuted and BJ and the whole lecturn line-up should have condemned him as a selfish, law-breaking irresponsible idiot.

I also hold BJ responsible for his hypocritical lack of action.

But still don't think it excuses grown adults thinking that his behaviour was licence to follow suit. The reason that his behaviour was outrageous was the exact reason not to copy him.

www.lbc.co.uk/news/were-fighting-a-war-london-paramedics-struggling-to-cope/?fbclid=IwAR2XZx-wB4fVKSCFiPaJmDYP8haEXwwkMPnq9c7ozC5izGKz32Es7CI9sCc

This article is written less like a short story.

The reality is we are slowly imploding under the pressure.
I am a para in London.
Our control room dispatchers and allocators are in tears broadcasting into the ether for non existent ambulances as calls stack on the screen.
Often, average winter pressures would see maybe 200 calls pan London being held but demand would ebb and flow and we would clear the outstanding calls. At the moment, we are looking at an average of 400 calls holding at any one time, every day, spiking up to 700 calls holding. This has been sustained for 2 weeks now.
Ambulances stacking at hospitals is by no means a new thing but this, this is so different. Never have I ever in London blue lighted a patient in to be held on the back of an ambulance for hours like we are at the moment.
Usually a priority run in is a shoe in for a bed but not now.
Hospital staff making the difficult decisions about which patient gets in first - when a space becomes available.

Imagine apologising to every single patient and their families when you finally turn up. Every job. Several times a day. Apologising for mistakes made by others, people continuing to just do as they please.
The frustration of patient after patient that 'just wants to be checked over'. This is a triage fault with the system, it's so risk adverse and sensitive but it won't change.
People outright lie on the phone, and to our faces.

We don't test.
We don't vaccinate.

This surge is by far worse than the first, and there is seemingly no end in sight.
We got by the first time on goodwill, camaraderie and a sense of oneness.
(And some outstanding clapping.....)
We are all shot to shit now.

Staff truly are broken, but carry on. At what cost we will find out in time.
We naturally are a resilient bunch but this pushes us to darker limits.

I think you're giving Cummings one hell of an easy pass here Not really. He should have been sacked immediatey, held up and judged and maybe arrested, like the Scottish MP has been.

But much as I deplore the politicking around it I still don't think he was to blame for fully mature adults making the decisions they did!

On a basic level, the belief seems be that the human need for contact is immoral and wrong and that the genuine suffering people go through when they can't live their lives normally is irrelevant

Even those of us who had lost somebody, were made to feel like our grief wasn't important and our need to be together as a family to comfort each other was "selfish" in at lot of people's eyes. Not everyone is mixing just for shit's and giggles.

"D.C. was outrageous in what he did but it is no excuse for the lack of intelligence and integrity in copying him."

I think it was a little more than thar. DC was seem as one of those leading the response to Covid at the time.
If he could casually break the rules because it suited him, it brought the necessity of those rules into question. People don't like being taken for mugs.

It's no excuse, but it is a reason.

For many there are things to worry about, if you isolate and you aren't paid, will you admit to symptoms or use the NHS app? Probably not.

We need to support people properly to follow the rules, socially, mentally and economically.

SSP in this country is utterly woeful and needs to be changed.

People feel more responsible to the household they have to support than those in other homes.

It isn't always selfish fuckers who don't care, it is people making the least worse decision for themselves. Even if it is "wrong" to others.

FrankiesKnuckle

I'm sorry things are so shit for you right now.

Our control room dispatchers and allocators are in tears broadcasting into the ether for non existent ambulances as calls stack on the screen.

Many of us understand the current situation is different and are doing what we can to avoid being another call stacked on the screen.

I hope the nightmare ends for you soon but I suspect it's going to get worse before it gets better, no doubt this is apparent to you and your colleagues too. I'm so upset about where we are just a few months after we were clapping for the NHS. The applause seems somewhat meaningless now; we'll happily signal our virtue by clapping for you just as long as you soldier on and don't dare inconvenience us with reality.

Thank you and take care as well as you can.

@Ohbabybab

Dominic Cummings had a big impact on this. He broke the collective responsibility. People saw he made individual choices rather than sacrifices and it made them feel like mugs for putting themselves out.

Agreed. Although I still abided by the rules.

I'm thoroughly pissed off this time and just generally depressed to have conformation of what a selfish, ignorant population we have.

Ringing in my ears are all the defiant posts we've had on here the past year. 'no-ones going to stop me having coffee with my mum in her house' and the classic ' they're in a bubble at school anyway so why shouldn't they have sleepovers or parties, or share lifts?'

The reality is the NHS is on its knees. www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-55540701

I dont give a damn for any of the excuses, any rule breaker does have blood on their hands - as does Doris.

I wish people would stop saying it's like this every winter - it really isn't
Yes there are pressures in winter and emergency incidents where individual hospitals are overwhelmed for short periods of time but it's not this.
This is a large proportion of the country's hospitals and ambulance services running at surge capacity (that's normal capacity expanded to accommodate more as much as possible by repurposing areas, staff and reducing care levels to minimums not best) consistently for very long periods of time with the outlook getting worse not better
This is widespread and sustained and it means that we are getting to the point that public safety is compromised not just individuals. It's not just an NHS underfunded / incapable thing - no healthcare system can cope with this level of exponential growth of sick patients all needing the same intensive treatment.

@CheltenhamLady

DC should have been sacked immediately.

Yes that was the damaging thing. All the ministers lining up to defend him. Had he been out on his ear things would have been very different. DH showed me an article over the summer which had a graph showing public trust / compliance falling off a cliff at that point

@SallySouthLondon

The guardian often pursues its own agenda without giving the whole picture.

From an article before covid in 2019

Hospitals across the country are at “breaking point” as a winter surge threatens to overwhelm the NHS.

NHS trusts have been forced to cancel operations, divert ambulances and leave patients on trolleys as thousands wait for treatment.

In one hospital, four patients were left for at least an entire day before a space on a ward became available.

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-hospitals-boris-johnson-winter-crisis-emergency-beds-a9242961.html

Who do you think funds the NHS and what do you think will happen when there aren't enough tax payers due to the economy going down the drain to fund an organisation which is overstretched every year often running at 95% capacity?

What I find astonishing is that there was no anger or finger-pointing at people who essentially voted last December to say that they weren't willing to pay even a bit more tax to fund the NHS by voting for the party who were promising the least money to the NHS. No one called them murderers. But if people won't pay a bit more tax to save the NHS why is it at all surprising that they're getting fed up of having lived their lives under extraordinary levels of restrictions for nine months? They didn't care about other people's health or lives then, what I find surprising is how much people have been willing to sacrifice for the collective good since then, not how little.

D.C. was outrageous in what he did but it is no excuse for the lack of intelligence and integrity in copying him.
Its not about excuses its about cause and effect. Given that he was off months later anyway, not firing him on the spot was an atrocious decision.

A person suffering due to lockdown isn't of less value than a person suffering from covid. A person who dies due to lockdown isn't any less dead than a person who dies from covid. But covid is the one and only thing that people are completely fixated on, like zombies.

No one is suggesting that a person with covid is of more value than a person suffering from another condition. The problem is that if hospital beds are full of people with covid, what happens to the people who have heart attacks, asthma attacks, road accidents, cancer, appendicitis, etc.? People aren't 'fixated' on covid patients because they are 'zombies', it's because they want the NHS to continue to be able to treat all patients who need hospital care.

And FWIW, younger people are an issue in this. Older people and those who are clinically vulnerable are more likely to die, so, being mercenary, they free up beds fairly quickly; younger people who are admitted are more likely to survive, but also more likely to spend a long time in hospital taking up a bed.

I think Nigel Farage can take his share of blame, too:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/10/covid-lockdown-nigel-farage-brexit-national-panic

He's done enough damage already and now he's using the same tactics to stir up more trouble.

The stupidity of the "only covid matters" is so ridiculous I dont understand how anyone can say it, unless they are funded to do so. You treat those will die without your aid, when you can. The NHS is now at the stage where it cant even do that. And yes I'm angry with anyone who voted for the shower of shit in charge.

10:49SallySouthLondon

The guardian often pursues its own agenda without giving the whole picture.

From an article before covid in 2019

Hospitals across the country are at “breaking point” as a winter surge threatens to overwhelm the NHS.

NHS trusts have been forced to cancel operations, divert ambulances and leave patients on trolleys as thousands wait for treatment.

In one hospital, four patients were left for at least an entire day before a space on a ward became available.

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-hospitals-boris-johnson-winter-crisis-emergency-beds-a9242961.html

Who do you think funds the NHS and what do you think will happen when there aren't enough tax payers due to the economy going down the drain to fund an organisation which is overstretched every year often running at 95% capacity?

Totally agree, for years every winter NHS has been stretched to capacity, mainly with frail elderly patients who are then difficult to discharge safely due to a shortage of rehab beds or carers. This is not new! As poster above acknowledges, who is going to pay for a worse level of nhs care going forward as we will have higher unemloyment, higher taxes possibly.

We need to have serious conversations about what we want to fund the NHS for and a thorough analysis on how that money is spent. We are going to have more demands in the next twenty years due to the increasing obesity issue. People do need to be taking more personal responsibilty for that as well as their collective responsibility towards the NHS. There is no point in critisizing people now for individual choices so that they dont cause another statistical death, if all of us continue expecting the nhs to pick up the pieces for our own contribution to poor health or an early death. When you are taking up a hospital bed these days, you are likely stopping someone else getting one in a timely manner

I also agree that the DC debacle was handled so badly. A man who effectively was telling us to stay at home because this was a killer virus, then made his own rules up.

I dont think its comparable to the 'if such and such jumped off a cliff' argument either. He literally made it clear that maybe, just maybe, the rules were then open to interpretation. The government handling of it was appalling and had he been sacked on the spot, I think some - not all - people would have continued to take the rules more seriously

However if he could drive to see his family ...

@SaskiaRembrandt

A person suffering due to lockdown isn't of less value than a person suffering from covid. A person who dies due to lockdown isn't any less dead than a person who dies from covid. But covid is the one and only thing that people are completely fixated on, like zombies.

No one is suggesting that a person with covid is of more value than a person suffering from another condition. The problem is that if hospital beds are full of people with covid, what happens to the people who have heart attacks, asthma attacks, road accidents, cancer, appendicitis, etc.? People aren't 'fixated' on covid patients because they are 'zombies', it's because they want the NHS to continue to be able to treat all patients who need hospital care.

And FWIW, younger people are an issue in this. Older people and those who are clinically vulnerable are more likely to die, so, being mercenary, they free up beds fairly quickly; younger people who are admitted are more likely to survive, but also more likely to spend a long time in hospital taking up a bed.

I agree that if hospital beds are full of people with covid people with other conditions can't be treated.

But treating one problem by creating other problems isn't a solution. Preventing covid or other illness-related deaths while creating further illness via lockdown, isn't a solution, it just looks like a solution. I'm surprised people are so willing to embrace it.

it’s about a failure of personal responsibility and the effects that individual actions can have at a communal, societal level. Every time someone socialises outside their household, or visits a relative, or has a friend round, it’s as if they’re drilling a hole in the dam. Just a small hole: what difference could one visit make? But if enough people drill enough holes, what you’re left with is not a dam, but a colander – and a health service that simply cannot cope

I'd say this extends beyond covid. I'm a mental health nurse and we see the same frequent fliers (and I don't mean the genuinely mentally unwell) time and time again, taking no personal responsibility for own their mental health and landing in hospital for weeks at a time, expecting the NHS to wave a magic wand and make their lives better. I'm sure it's the same in other areas of healthcare, people choosing to make the wrong choices then and time again, knowing that they will always be provided for and taken under the NHS's wing when shit hits the fan again.

@CuriousaboutSamphire I haven’t stated any political allegiances and yes they are twats too. You can‘t be in a public role telling people what to do and then breaking the spirit, if not the rule of law you are asking people to follow. However the Tories are currently the Government in power and therefore they should be following everything they are telling us to do to the absolute letter.

@trulydelicious

it’s about a failure of personal responsibility and the effects that individual actions can have at a communal, societal level. Every time someone socialises outside their household, or visits a relative, or has a friend round, it’s as if they’re drilling a hole in the dam. Just a small hole: what difference could one visit make? But if enough people drill enough holes, what you’re left with is not a dam, but a colander – and a health service that simply cannot cope

^ This should be shouted from the rooftops

I agree. I know that our government could have handled it better, but blaming Boris for everything is pointless. The virus doesn't move by itself, and Boris isnt going around infecting everyone with it.

We absolutely must take personal responsibility - each and every one of us.

[quote Ohbabybab]@CuriousaboutSamphire I haven’t stated any political allegiances and yes they are twats too. You can‘t be in a public role telling people what to do and then breaking the spirit, if not the rule of law you are asking people to follow. However the Tories are currently the Government in power and therefore they should be following everything they are telling us to do to the absolute letter.[/quote]
I haven't said anything to the contrary. And I am not a Tory voter... I remain politically homeless due to the relentless growth of The Careerist Politician!

I just don't think that DC was the root cause of anything. He was just an excuse....