More stringent measures next week?

[AchillesLastStand]

From the Guardian just now:

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/10/stringent-uk-covid-measures-needed-within-a-week-leak-reveals

@jumpbounce again read my other posts. I'm not saying vulnerable people should be forced to lockdown, I'm saying they should be given a choice, instead to the whole country be forced into lockdown. How is that unreasonable?!

The Chief Medical Officer is an external appointment and is not appointed by the government

Not exactly, Whitty was an adviser for another Govt dept and had the approval of the Prime Minister, without that approval, he wouldn't have been made CMO

[quote Autumndays123]@jumpbounce again read my other posts. I'm not saying vulnerable people should be forced to lockdown, I'm saying they should be given a choice, instead to the whole country be forced into lockdown. How is that unreasonable?![/quote]
I would take the choice absolutely! So would many many others. The question still remains. Who do you think is teaching your children whenever we use our right to lockdown?

I don't advocate for lockdowns at all. I feel if everyone just made some smaller efforts we could avoid lockdown altogether. However some people don't want to test and isolate if they have covid, they don't want to wear masks, they don't want to distance from strangers they just want to ignore the whole thing and get on about their selfish ways.

You are saying giving vulnerable people a "choice" of personal lockdown or taking thier chances isn't asking them to do any sacrifice?

@OnwardsAndSideways1
I've thought this from the beginning. They key issue is lack of hospital capacity. We have spent billions (previously inconceivable amounts of money) on paying people to stay at home getting increasingly less happy and healthy whilst destroying their livelihoods and the economy in the process; taking children and young adults out of education for months; leaving people to die or spend their last months alone; forcing people to cancel key life events etc. These are really radical, impractical and destructive policies.

Yet the suggestion that we do anything to improve or change the NHS so that it can manage extra healthcare needs has barely been considered by government and is generally shut down on here.

You can't instantly produce extra doctors with 8 years training but in an emergency situation there are things you could do. You could take people ideally with relevant experience in an allied area and put them through fast track training to do some specific tasks under supervision; this frees up doctors and nurses to do tasks which only they have the training for; you use some of the billions you spent paying waitresses and gym instructors to stay at home to pay some kind of pandemic bonus to healthcare staff to try to improve morale or to attract nurses / doctors who aren't working in the NHS back or pay them to do extra shifts. You could double their pay for a fraction of what we have spent. We're talking mostly about healthcare to address one specific illness which was novel to existing healthcare staff anyway - I don't think you need to be trained in how to name all the bones in the foot etc. to do something useful to treat people with covid.

It isn't a perfect solution and using less highly trained staff would probably have an impact on quality of care but we have that anyway. We have millions of people waiting for important routine treatment. We have far more obesity, addiction issues, mental health issues than we did.

Probably too late now but it's so frustrating that anything, however damaging and expensive, will be contemplated to prevent covid spreading, even in a tiny temporary way, but nothing can be done to increase hospital capacity.

Teachers should firstly be able to teach from home. If a teacher wants to spend the rest of their lives shielding (as is their right) then I'm not sure why that impacts their ability to teach. However, irrespective of that, there are many, many NQT who are unable to secure anything more than zero hour contracts. I imagine the post of those teachers would get snapped up pretty quickly.

You say you don't want a lockdown, you just think people should stop being selfish and should wear masks etc. That will not do anything long term, people will still die. Do you seriously think wearing a mask is going to eradicate the virus that has gripped the whole world? Nope, it will still be here in 5 years and 10 years and unfortunately, people will die. Some will be vulnerable and some will not, but we need to start facing up to that because it's realistic, regardless of how horrible it is.

My original point was lockdowns and onerous restrictions are ruining millions of lives and are not sustainable. I stand by that point, we cannot continue to ruin society because some people may die. People who will likely die in the next wave, or the one after that, or the one after that. People need to take responsibility for their own health and if that includes shielding through choice, that is up to them.

That was to @jumpbounce

@bordermidgebite

You are saying giving vulnerable people a "choice" of personal lockdown or taking thier chances isn't asking them to do any sacrifice?

Absolutely that's what I'm saying. So you think the alternative being a forced lockdown for all is not sacrificing many many more?

@Chessie678 I can't agree with you more, people just seemed resigned that 'we can't increase NHS capacity' as if it's a fixed thing, of course you can, in multiple ways, especially if you are prepared to throw money at it. We might not get a perfect system, but stopping everyone leaving, training more people so in a couple of years there's more staff, and retraining and using people for social care would have been possible within a well-funded programme (like the money spent on Track and Trace). Instead we leaked doctors, nurses, social care staff and so on and as you say, we are back with 'lockdown' as a solution which is so incredibly destructive, including to NHS capacity as it just delays all the normal business leaving it backed up, hence more overloaded.

@Autumndays123

Teachers should firstly be able to teach from home. If a teacher wants to spend the rest of their lives shielding (as is their right) then I'm not sure why that impacts their ability to teach. However, irrespective of that, there are many, many NQT who are unable to secure anything more than zero hour contracts. I imagine the post of those teachers would get snapped up pretty quickly.

You say you don't want a lockdown, you just think people should stop being selfish and should wear masks etc. That will not do anything long term, people will still die. Do you seriously think wearing a mask is going to eradicate the virus that has gripped the whole world? Nope, it will still be here in 5 years and 10 years and unfortunately, people will die. Some will be vulnerable and some will not, but we need to start facing up to that because it's realistic, regardless of how horrible it is.

My original point was lockdowns and onerous restrictions are ruining millions of lives and are not sustainable. I stand by that point, we cannot continue to ruin society because some people may die. People who will likely die in the next wave, or the one after that, or the one after that. People need to take responsibility for their own health and if that includes shielding through choice, that is up to them.

And who supervises the class while the teacher teaches from home? Seriously? I provide 1 to 1 support for a child who was left without support while I was off sick a couple of weeks ago. Do you just suggest that we do that long term? But then again right enough those children probably aren't the concern of most because they aren't healthy anyways. We are closing classes left, right and centre as a result of being unable to obtain staffing but if you want to believe schools would carry on as usual and you could have your normal life and not need to stay at home to care for and homeschool your own children then I feel you are very short sighted.

Agree with @GoldenOmber and @Autumndays123

So for those proposing we lockdown for every new variant (there’ll be one every year from now on) you are basically proposing an endless cycle of lockdowns for the rest of time?

And we’re the crazy ones here.

It’s an awful situation. But it’s a pandemic therefore lots of people are unfortunately going to die. Apparently 100 deaths a day from Covid is completely unacceptable and we must annihilate our economies permanently to prevent this. Why these deaths are worse than the hundreds of other deaths is unclear. But they are to many on here.

Nobody is arguing the NHS is fit for purpose. And clearly there’s no easy answer. But any sane person must see endelsss lockdowns are not the answer. We have a huge backlog of missed operations at the moment and the rest. Missed cancer diagnoses. More lockdowns will only serve to perpetuate this situation.

Do we think we may need another plan?

At some point this will be endemic. We don’t know enough about natural immunity and t-cells but I’m guessing none of those figure in the worse case models.

People on here twist the reports in the media so much. The latest stats on vaccine efficiency are on infection not severe disease and death. We are not back to square one here.

Hospital admissions soaring? Well a high percentage of those were already in hospital and tested positive whilst there.

What I would like to see is some actual data. How many have died from Omnicon (not with from). How many are admitted with severe disease from Omnicon?

An NCT would last 6 lessons in my school…!

@Delatron "So for those proposing we lockdown for every new variant (there’ll be one every year from now on) you are basically proposing an endless cycle of lockdowns for the rest of time?"

But we don't. There are between umpteen variants identified this year, including some than have gone on to be classified as a variants of interest (Mu & Lamba). But this variant is so different as is so transmissible that it is a variant of concern.

Don't you get the difference? It's not 'every new variant' it's when there is a variant with attributes and features that make it a concern.

You think we should just ignore these and damn the consequences?

@ChequerBoard I meant VOC we’ve had a few now in two years. Do you think there won’t be any more?!

You are proposing we lock down for every variant of concern? So we had Delta in April and Omnicon on Nov. That’s just this year. But magically there won’t be any next year?

[quote Delatron]@ChequerBoard I meant VOC we’ve had a few now in two years. Do you think there won’t be any more?!

You are proposing we lock down for every variant of concern? So we had Delta in April and Omnicon on Nov. That’s just this year. But magically there won’t be any next year?[/quote]

That what a novel virus will do - continue to mutate. Therefore we need to monitor and respond appropriately. Not stick our heads in sand moaning that it's all too difficult.

And BTW I haven't mentioned lockdowns - you and your cronies keep banging on about that.

Ok @ChequerBoard what does responding appropriately look like?

Because wearing a mask as you walk in and out of a pub won’t really cut it and anything stronger will have a huge impact on the economy. And what are you buying time for exactly? Since most people are about to be triple vaccinated. What’s your end goal here and long term plan?

I think people are finding it difficult to accept that Covid is now here to stay. It’s a new disease that will cause thousands of deaths unfortunately in this country every year. However, as we learn more about it and it becomes endemic and not ‘novel’ then immunity should build and treatments should get better.

That’s the opposite of sticking ones head in the sand. It’s admitting your soft restrictions do little and are still harmful and harsher measures just prolong this process. We cannot continue to trash our economy year after year. We really won’t have any sort of health service then.

In many places the economy is being trashed by people exercising thier right to try and avoid infection

Is your plan to save the economy by forcing those people out at gunpoint ?

That's why this is so hard , there is no option to win , only to lose less badly

Nobody is arguing the NHS is fit for purpose. And clearly there’s no easy answer. But any sane person must see endelsss lockdowns are not the answer. We have a huge backlog of missed operations at the moment and the rest. Missed cancer diagnoses. More lockdowns will only serve to perpetuate this situation

Do we think we may need another plan?

In a non LD scenario, the NHS is packed full of ill CV patients, so it does little else.

The LD's didn't cause 6m to be on waiting list , the 10s of 1000s of CV patients who have filled the NHS since March 2020 did it..

We have had 2 years to build up capacity, so lets say a year to come up with a new funding/recruitment plan, we would now have 1000s of HCP's half way through their degree courses.
Plans drawn up to build new facilities, so fast track the planning and we'd have begun building.

What we actually did was nothing, we sat back and said "Freedom Day"

We need to treble NHS capacity and bring it up to French German levels of staff and facilities.

@bordermidgebite you mean people are too scared to go out shopping/ theatre etc and that is harming the economy?

I think the government messaging (work from home but do have your Christmas party) isn’t helping. And they put the fear of God in to many earlier in the pandemic to keep compliance high.

But I still think that’s a small number. When I went to London recently it was packed, bars busy and the theatres were packed. But no obviously people don’t have to go out of they don’t want to.

The government need to accept from now on every year we will have another disease that will put huge pressure on the NHS and we need to increase capacity/reform/look at what other countries are doing, to cope with that extra pressure.

Covid isn’t going to go away and endless restrictions aren’t the answer either. We need to think long term and not short term knee jerk reactions.

From reading around here , it's very variable

Went to a nearby town last week and was shocked how empty the restaurants were

Local event is offering cut price Christmas dinners tomorrow to use up where the food is already purchased abs people have cancelled ( no choice , just what's available)