1000+ in ventilator beds already & school return with no household isolation

[RumblyMumbly]

Number of people in ventilator beds 1,014 on 31/08/21

It has been a steady / manageable rise since restrictions lifted in mid May when there were 125 patients in ventilator beds & while obviously awful for the people affected and their families this means the NHS has coped while there has been a lot of Covid cases

Does anyone else feel we may be at the tipping point? Schools in England mostly return this week for Autumn term.

If we compare with last years school return there were only 71 ventilator beds occupied on 31/08/20. Yes, we now have 64% of the total population double vaccinated which puts us in a far better situation than last year when the population had no protection. However, we had household isolations this time last year for positive cases, this year other household members of a positive case will be attending school and workplaces alongside everyone else and generally people will begin meeting indoors much more over the next few months.

Purpose of my post - nervousness about what will happen next...I don't want schools to close at all, children have already had 2 years of disrupted education. But to give my own personal experience - obviously other peoples differ - secondary remote learning can work if absolutely necessary (full schedule of lessons / homework) but primary remote learning (1hr lesson per day) did not work AT ALL & the vast majority of primary aged children are not ready to become independent learners while parents are in an impossible situation as they can't work and moonlight as a teacher.

I hope SAGE / the Government are watching the figures very closely and if we need a circuit breaker in October to keep the NHS manageable they act fast.

[quote Chillychangchoo]@sretcarahceromro3ebtsum

Whilst I fully accept what you’re saying, I don’t think there are “middle ground interventions” that aren’t incredibly disruptive to people’s lives.

Remote learning being one of them is not feasible for reasons that have been discussed many times on Mumsnet, but always fall on deaf and often privileged ears. The middle ground interventions heavily disadvantage the already disadvantaged, and are encouraged by people with lots of space at home and the luxuries of working from home etc. Also these interventions would need to be implemented long term, which again isn’t viable.[/quote]
I wouldn't class remote learning as a middle ground one either, unless we had done like some states in the US and allowed it as an option (so people without a good set up didn't do it). I would class middle ground ones as things like masks in certain situations, and wfh where possible (not enforced, but encouraged), continued testing so we know where covid is and the promotion of isolation for contacts. A huge national drive towards improving ventilation wherever we can, especially in schools. And maybe just a general acceptance that "living with covid means managing covid not ignoring covid", an attitude which accepts that not all the inconveniences can go yet, because they might still be necessary to head off the much worse situation of medical treatment being delayed and disrupted, possibly requiring actual lockdowns.

@sretcarahceromro3ebtsum
Agree.

Isolation for family members yes, but certainly not whole classes. My children did eleven rounds of isolation between them in the last academic year. It’s just not acceptable for them to do that, especially with incredibly poor remote learning provision (which was different depending on your school).

I have a fairly new job and we are all being encouraged to work from home this winter, this is despite us usually working a lot in the community with vulnerable groups so I do think there are still some middle ground restrictions unofficially in place.

[quote Chillychangchoo]@Babamamananarama

I’m sorry to hear about your diagnosis however even without covid in this world you were already incredibly vulnerable to many viruses which is incredibly shit for you, however I still stand by what I said in that we should absolutely not lockdown again and there are people refusing vaccines taking up beds who do not fit your criteria.

Do you think children’s education should be ruined for people who are clinically vulnerable then? Do we save them and not kids? What about the mental health of the nation? Does that not matter? My friends cancer treatment was delayed due to covid and she now probably will not live.

At what point does this ever have an end point?[/quote]
Mmm. I don't know why you assume there is an end point in the near future? Covid has changed the world; we adapt. We move into a slightly different version of the future to the one we imagined. Human life isn't any less precious. The measure of our society remains how we treat its most vulnerable members.

@agedmother

Exactly there is no end point, and many children are also vulnerable in our society but yet they too haven’t been treated well throughout this whole pandemic.

Chillychango no I'm not advocating for lockdowns or for school closures - I said neither of those things.

I'm asking people like you to stop speaking with callous disregard to the clinically vulnerable. 'People die, get over it'. Should my children get over it then, if my stem cell transplant fails like 50-60% do? Or if I catch covid from one of them and don't pull through?

What I am advocating is that we retain some of the measures that mitigate covid. That we at least TRY to manage the spread and protect the vulnerable. That we don't equate living with it with ignoring it. Unfortunately more people like your friend will die this year as the NHS is once again overwhelmed because - amongst other things - we are sending children back into schools with no mitigation measures whatsoever.

To be frank if the NHS isn’t capable of dealing with a few thousand covid patients, we need a new health system that can.

Covid isn’t going anywhere and will be with us now for the foreseeable future. We cannot continue living life with the sole objective being to protect the NHS.

@GreenLakes

To be frank if the NHS isn’t capable of dealing with a few thousand covid patients, we need a new health system that can.

Covid isn’t going anywhere and will be with us now for the foreseeable future. We cannot continue living life with the sole objective being to protect the NHS.

I agree our system is creaking with this and changing demographics

It’s not alone - just seeing other countries such as Aus getting fuller even with low cases etc we’ve done well to deal with onslaught of cases over 18 months.

Staff included. But yes I’m not against changes to model (not US version but other)

@GreenLakes

To be frank if the NHS isn’t capable of dealing with a few thousand covid patients, we need a new health system that can.

Covid isn’t going anywhere and will be with us now for the foreseeable future. We cannot continue living life with the sole objective being to protect the NHS.

So you are in favour of a life with an overwhelmed health service, where people die at home/in the streets from conditions that are otherwise treatable? Good luck with that.

Think most of us feel that a functioning NHS (warts and all) is one of the best things about this nation, and letting our public health care system collapse would be an abandonment of civilised values.

@GreenLakes

To be frank if the NHS isn’t capable of dealing with a few thousand covid patients, we need a new health system that can.

Covid isn’t going anywhere and will be with us now for the foreseeable future. We cannot continue living life with the sole objective being to protect the NHS.

Take it up with the Tories, it was their decision to reduce UK ICU beds to way way way below European standards.

Every time they get in power the Tories dismantle and destroy as much as they possibly can!

@GreenLakes no healthcare system in the world can cope with tsunami wave of covid patients as you suggest. We saw it happen. That’s why counties had to either do a lockdown or close their borders entirely to keep a lid on the situation.
And you if want private healthcare system instead of the nhs, please hop over to the USA or any other country that doesn’t have a similar system to the nhs and let me know how it goes.
I know from experience what it is like, and it is not pretty. People lose their homes and get in a massive debt to get treated. Do you want this here?

It's not a few thousand though is it? I think irrespective of NHS capacity, we should not be actively infecting a large sector of the community. There should be mitigations in school. Ventilation should have been put in ages ago. We should not be indirectly forcing people to deregister. Numerous scientists have said vaccines weren't enough on their own and other mitigations were required too.

@GreenLakes

To be frank if the NHS isn’t capable of dealing with a few thousand covid patients, we need a new health system that can.

Covid isn’t going anywhere and will be with us now for the foreseeable future. We cannot continue living life with the sole objective being to protect the NHS.

Maybe, it doesn’t really make much difference to the here and now though, we’ve got what we’ve got. Even private healthcare is struggling due to demand, it’s not like we can reassign the infrastructure we do have and everything would be ticketyboo.

Obviously more needs to be invested into the NHS and social care, too. Brexit hasn't helped with staffing issues, that's for sure.

But covid has been a different challenge because of the different need to keep covid patients separate from everyone else. Previously you could put someone who had heart surgery next to someone who had cancer surgery. But you can't put a covid patient on a ventilator on that same ICU ward. Many covid patients also spend weeks in hospital, that's very different from someone having a hip replacement and going home within 48 hours.

Anyway it's now not the capacity to treat covid that is the problem but the millions on waiting lists for surgery having to wait months and months.

It’s interesting that all these suggestions to reduce cumulative spread (masks and asking people to wfh if they can) are still mostly in place in Scotland and cases have gone through the roof in the last few weeks. They don’t work. Wearing masks inside clearly achieves close to bugger all as the teenagers are masked at school and it is rampant. None of these window dressing measures work with this delta strain.

There is no appetite for lockdown again and the economy would be ruined. Now most adults are vaccinated and children thankfully mostly unaffected by it there doesn’t seem to be any other option than to let this play out.

we'll get an idea soon enough if the 'window dressing' mitigations do make a difference when the English secondary schools are all back.

My DS was so worried about staffing levels with his colleagues not being able to see gps which means that they'll be off work longer he met with a private health insurance company this week. For £42 a month he now has cover for three staff. They're all delighted. I think we'll see more of this moving forward

"Now most adults are vaccinated and children thankfully mostly unaffected by it there doesn’t seem to be any other option than to let this play out."

Bangs head against wall

@VaccineSticker

The thing is that the US system is not the only alternative to the NHS.

The vast majority of developed countries do not have a wholly public health system and the vast majority also do not have a system akin to the US.

Ultimately covid isn’t going anywhere so we need to have a health system capable of handling the extra pressure without indefinite restrictions or lockdowns.

There will be no money left to fund any health system, never mind the NHS if we do not keep the economy and society open.

@mrshoho

we'll get an idea soon enough if the 'window dressing' mitigations do make a difference when the English secondary schools are all back.

Indeed. In Scotland cases went from something like 1 in 130 to 1 in 70.

In England they are at 1in 70 before schools restart.

Johnson is a reckless twat doing this to our kids.

It's not just school opening that has caused Scottish cases to rise so exponentially. As school goes back earlier and as Scotland was slower in lifting restrictions, the majority of these were lifted a week or so before schools went back.
It would probably have been more sensible - with the benefit of hindsight- to lift the other restrictions at the same time as England, but of course things have to be done differently here.

@Chillychangoo

It’s not callous but can appreciate it comes across that way. I’ve worked with many an old person during my career and those extra “9 years” are genuinely not of good quality. In fact we are now so obsessed with lengthening our lives we forget that actually the quality is often very poor. Not all modern medicine has been kind in that way. Many a time I’ve been driven to tears by extremely old service users who’s quality of life is utterly desperate. I wouldn’t even want to see my dog live in the way some elderly people do

I totally agree with this - well said. People who disagree could read '33 Meditations on Death' by David Jarrett, a geriatrician.
www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9637961/DR-DAVID-JARRETT-reveals-gently-good-night.html
It opened my eyes.

@rookiemere

It's not just school opening that has caused Scottish cases to rise so exponentially. As school goes back earlier and as Scotland was slower in lifting restrictions, the majority of these were lifted a week or so before schools went back. It would probably have been more sensible - with the benefit of hindsight- to lift the other restrictions at the same time as England, but of course things have to be done differently here.

Then you'd have just had higher cases when schools opened, surely?

@lannistunut yes but it might have spread it out a bit rather than creating a perfect storm - or not, who knows.

I just feel that it's lazy interpretation to attribute the Scottish high numbers entirely to schools going back and assume that England will be exactly the same. It's a different set of circumstances and hopefully the summer opening in England and the vast number of previous cases means the increase won't be so dramatic. But let's see.

My guess is the summer opening in England has made it worse, but we will have to wait and see. Unfortunately here in England we are sitting ducks with the worst PM in recent British history.

My guess is the unlocking plans were made pre-Delta and Johnson is incapable of adjusting to the increased transmission and decreased vaccine efficacy Delta has brought.