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

@thebellagio

My child had an op yesterday and was the only patient, they said no one else was in yesterday whatsoever.

My dad is having screenings for prostate cancer, so a colonoscopy and a CT scan every three months. He phoned the consultant to ask a question about a mole on his back, and was asked to come in the very next day. So in terms of being overwhelmed, my personal experience across children’s and adult wards is that they are empty in my local hospital…..

I work in Paeds. We are full to bursting with beds in our area currently. Surgery will be cancelled so we can use the beds. We are struggling for staff even on higher pay/agency. It’s a shit show. Far worse in adults. Our A&e has been ridiculously busy for months. Black alert is the normal these days. We already have no room for an influx of covid like last year. ( without cancelling)

But course we are all lying and sat having brews and chocolate I wish!

@GreyPurbeckMarble how is anyone being “manipulated by what [they] read”? These are all first and second hand stories from people working in hospitals.

Local hospital closed to allow for staff to be used to cover a larger hospital. Not good.

[quote 4pmwinetimebebeh]@julieca perhaps it’s a city thing, locally friends have had no issues and likewise friends in Manchester have been texted to book and had their jab within a few days. I wonder if there’s less availability if you’re more rural.[/quote]
My partner is struggling to book his in greater Manchester. Not for another ten days and not even that local. Hoping to find a walk in sooner. It’s different everywhere.

If omicron is actually three times more transmissible than delta and doubling every 2.5 days it seems unlikely that exponential growth would be prevented by lockdown. Previous lockdowns have barely got the R value below 1 with less transmissible variants and probably better compliance than we would see again. If the prediction re a million cases by the end of December is right (seems implausible to me but who knows), a very harsh lockdown from now might move that out to mid / late January. I can’t see plan b or c etc buying more than a few days (if they are effective at all).

But once you’re at 1m cases a day you’re not going to get much more doubling from there. The virus would actually run out of subjects.

South Africa is 5 x the size of the UK with 10 million less people and a much younger population - all key factors in the spread and seriousness of Covid.

But once you’re at 1m cases a day you’re not going to get much more doubling from there. The virus would actually run out of subjects.

Yes, surely by halfway through January everybody in the country would either have or have had covid? So bit of a shit month, but hey, immunity!

@spronstongreen21 I’m not saying you are lying at all. All I can tell you is my experience in my hospital. And that was yesterday we were the only people on our ward.

Currently our NHs trust which is two combined Large hospitals has a total of 62 covid patients across two sites. So my experience was that the hospital was calm. I fully appreciate other places are far more seriously affected.

*I work in Paeds. We are full to bursting with beds in our area currently. Surgery will be cancelled so we can use the beds. We are struggling for staff even on higher pay/agency. It’s a shit show. Far worse in adults. Our A&e has been ridiculously busy for months. Black alert is the normal these days. We already have no room for an influx of covid like last year. ( without cancelling)

But course we are all lying and sat having brews and chocolate I wish!*

My friend works in children's A&E and for her things have been bad for a while and look set to get worse. They have been dealing with cases that aren't being seen by GPs plus their own workload with minimal staff.
I find it worrying that services could be impacted further by a dramatic rise in cases.

South Africa is 5 x the size of the UK with 10 million less people and a much younger population - all key factors in the spread and seriousness of Covid

Apparently it also has far and away the worst epidemic of AIDS on the planet
This is way beyond my pay grade, but I wonder how much the disease - an immune deficiency after all - has affected the development and spread of the Covid variants?

The interaction with HIV is well-known - South African researchers have looked at this for some time and their working hypothesis is that omicron arose in an HIV positive person in Southern Africa with an impaired immune system who was infected with Covid for far longer than would be likely otherwise.

Ah - thank you PassingBy; that's another thing I genuinely didn't know

Hospitals are coping fine - no point in trying that as a scaremongering tactic, people.

I was at a & e/urgent care last weekend, not critical as such, just needed some antibiotics changing and it couldn't wait until Monday. I was done in 2hrs, including triaged by a nurse and then seen by a Dr who gave me a new prescription.
It was busy but not crazily so. Everyone had a seat in the waiting area and over half the seats had a red tape x on them so there was only half the amount of seats. Children's waiting room was empty when I walked past a couple times.
It doesn't seem like a&e is overwhelmed tbh 🤷🏼‍♀️

@Supersimkin2

Hospitals are coping fine - no point in trying that as a scaremongering tactic, people.

How do you know? Have you been round and checked. Some people need cancer treatment and other so we have to be mindful and not selfish

One thing people are overlooking is the staff isolation rate in hospitals.
You may not be admitting more patients just because of omicron however if more staff are testing positive, spreading it around etc, that leaves you with a significant staffing issue as increasing numbers of staff are at home isolating.

It's not as simple as how many people are going into hospital.

Would not be amazed. I have been diagnosed with stage 3 or stage 4 breast cancer at start of November and its so busy and they wont even let me book in to see the doctor there, and said I have to wait 10 days more then have a video from home with nurse, then at some point after that will see a doctor but they cant say when then after that 6 week waiting list for treatment to start, which is putting my life at risk and I have 2 kids who need me. When I said this just told there are big delays and if I need mental health support contact MacMillan. Looks like will have to spend 100k going private but wont be needing my pension with these delays, took 4 months before gp referred. Complaining but just get messages back delays on complaints.

@Silkieschickens I am so sorry to hear that, its really hard. Are you being seen within the set times in the cancer pathway? Unfortunately, things have never happened straight away, but there are target times that you should go through each stage within.

As a viruses evolve they tend to become more infectious and less deadly, this is because if a virus kills its host its harder for the virus to sustain itself long term

No idea what targets are but 4 months to be referred then a further 4 months before any treatment and its an advanced cancer and lump was same size in May. Have seen hospital doctors for about 10 mins so far. Just disposable to them. People must be dying with this and I could well go to stage 4 if not already there and my kids wont have a mother and noone else. I should not have to fight every day to get help.

There was a link on BBC yesterday where you could put in your postcode and it gave stats around waiting times for ambulances, in A&E, waiting for a bed etc as comparison between your local hospital and nationally . What I took from that was how very different the stats were between my local hospital health trust and a neighbouring one .

DS2 was here today saying they are waiting for a directive. Hasn’t enough staff at the moment but might not need them if they are told to shut. He has been covering where needed as well as doing his own job. He thinks he will lose staff permanently this time if they are told to close. Hospitality.

My niece went into hospital a few weeks ago with really bad bowel problem
She has already had a lot of serious surgery this year
After numerous scans they put her on a two week pathway for a urgent colonoscopy
She had that this week and got the results back the next day
Even at the end of last year when she was diagnosed with her initial problems she was in having major surgery within 3 months of being diagnosed this year

I work in Paeds. We are full to bursting with beds in our area currently. Surgery will be cancelled so we can use the beds. We are struggling for staff even on higher pay/agency. It’s a shit show. Far worse in adults. Our A&e has been ridiculously busy for months. Black alert is the normal these days. We already have no room for an influx of covid like last year. ( without cancelling)

Sounds horrible. I’m really sorry. Reading some of the threads on mumsnet today, I’m not surprised at all. So many people who really don’t give a shit, and think drinking Chardonnay unmasked on a train because if you get covid and die you were old enough anyway (at least 20 people have said that to me on mumsnet in the last hour)…

I really hope that it’s not the majority. As if it is we are fucked.

@Blinky21

As a viruses evolve they tend to become more infectious and less deadly, this is because if a virus kills its host its harder for the virus to sustain itself long term

That is true. However, the spanner in the works here is that Covid generally infects other people before symptoms become apparent, so there is little evolutionary pressure on not making the host seriously ill. Whereas for something where people become clearly unwell and infectious at the same time, it holds true that successful mutations tend to become more transmissible but less virulent.