I have an awful lot to say about coronavirus, but I am constrained by tiredness and anonymity and emotions and guilt and all sorts.
So the view from the frontline, in my large northern hospital... it is quieter than it has been in over 3 years. People are not coming to hospital. There is a lot of covid, and the people who do come are extremely sick, half the patients I saw today will not live the day, but most other stuff has stopped coming.
ITU is full, but we have spaceto expand because we have stopped so many other services, redeployed so many doctors and nurses from those stopped services. I hear the geriatrics wards and the resp wards are grim. I'm in A&E.
We are running low on PPE, but I haven't seen it run out mid shift yet. A local school has made us a load of visors, and we are rewashing things, but I don't think I'm going to come to harm. Maybe that's just the arrogance of the young & healthy.
We have been staff testing for a long time - we are way ahead of the curve in England for this. So we have absences, but then they tend to test negative and come back to work within a couple of days. I know some friends/colleagues who are in hospital. Not serious, not ITU. Not yet had that heartbreak.
I feel like - I should not complain. I certainly feel like I have worked much much harder in the last few years than I am working now. And M&S gave us easter eggs this weekend. Makes me feel like a fraud.
I'm sure tory bots, like the many on this thread, could just copy&pastewhat I've said so far and that would be fine for them. (My DP works in marketing and says it is well known that 60-70% of mumsnet chat forum is PAID CONTENT?!! Did you know this!!??? I feel astounded)
Working is scary, of course - it is scarier thinking about it at home than actually there inresus where there is stuff to do. I am not really worrried about myself. I am lucky enough to have a healthy young DP and healthy children (actually my daughter had cancer as a baby, but she's fine now, though that "had underlying health conditions" line really rankles with me, my baby should live a lifetime).
I am extremely worried about the fracturing society. I am not clever enough to understand the economic stuff. My DP works in marketing and says all Sunak's great sounding business bailouts are only helping a fraction of businesses and they are mainly going under. Foodbanks can't cope, poverty is grim. Are we the third world? How have we come to this? I am so deeply ashamed of my country.
Our ambulance service have been telling me - individually and I pulled the numbers today - that they normally see 3-4 cardiac arrests per day in our wider area - currently it's 15 per day. People are not accessing help. They are dying at home (this is separate from the care home issue). These things are complex, there will be health conditions that are better under lockdown - we are getting less trauma and less drunken idiocy - but that was never our main intake despite what the tabloids say - and then people are not coming in. With heart attacks and strokes. They are too scared to come. And they are dying. I think.
I'm uneasy and anxious. The summer, autumn is going to be bad. I think everyone will turn up with neglected conditions as soon as the lockdown is lifted. I don't even want to think about the 2 week wait cancer problem, endoscopy shut. I don't even want to think about next winter.
I'm angry. I worked unbearable understaffed shifts worsening every winter for the last 3 , 4 years or so. I've seen so much harm and so much death. I've seen so many wonderful colleagues leave, amazing experienced caring doctors and nurses going back to their own countries feeling unwanted after brexit, the young british doctors looking for better working conditions in other countries. We've run a health service on the brink for years and I said back in January/February the NHS is good at rallying for emergencies, but when you are already on a cliff edge, even if you stand and fight, after, what is left afterwards?
Also I don't understand how 900 deaths/day in Italy is an unbearable tragedy but 900 British deaths in a day is no biggie.
Sorry if that is muddled. I'm tired.