Westminstenders: No pubs till Christmas?

[RedToothBrush]

Today the news has moved towards acknowledging covid-19 reality: Nicola Sturgeon has explicitly stated that some social distancing will carry on until the new year in all likelihood.

When Matt Hancock asked if this was true for England too, he refused to say yes but he said that Scotland was working from the same framework as England.

In case anyone does still need this spelling out, this means the outlook for the hospitality and leisure industries is bleak.

There are extremely unlikely to be many enjoying a holiday in the sun any time soon, whether it be in Devon or Spain.

We won't be celebrating birthdays in restaurants nor having a pint in the pub.

Conversations on the doorstep from a couple of metres away is as good as it gets.

That means if you can't adapt you may not survive.

To add into the mix changes to customs to those companies who are operating seems insanity. But that's a political not a scientific decision to be made.

Whether reality in this will kick in, in the next six weeks or so before EU budgetary decisions relating to an extension have to be made remains to be seen.

Until then, there is no news but covid-19.

Lockdown is not so much for care homes, but really to save those aged 20-75
with either bad luck,
or comorbities - some of which the younger folk would not have otherwise known they had for decades

Especially those aged 40-60, who have increased risks if they catch COVID,
but are still working, often in more senior or supervisory roles
Middle-aged men in particular are at higher risk

With lockdown, only a small % of this group have been hospitalised and an even smaller number died

If COVID were allowed to run wild and infect up to 80% instead of the estimated 4% of the UK population,
then this number would be multiples higher,
probably orders of magnitude higher if the NHS collapsed

Listening We are all going to die some day, but where do you draw the line at writing off people ?
60, 50 ?
A child with severe LDs ?

There is nothing dignified about dying when you could have been saved for a few years with some meds or some O2

We don't let elderly people die of pneumonia - or flu - when there are these not too dramatic memasures
We treat them

I am sorry but I cannot get worked up about the care home numbers

So you're perfectly happy that the government basically forgot about them?

I am a bit disturbed by your arguments about care home residents LQ. Flu, for example could easily carry them off, but we don't deny them the flu vaccine. Or not so far as I am aware.

What concerns me is the way that the needs of care homes haven't been considered; that until there was something of a public outcry, the Govt seemed to see care home residents as collateral damage - no surprise with Cummings at the helm. There seems to have been little attempt to keep covid-19 out of care homes, which ought to have been possible, since they are relatively closed places.

I see I have made something of a cross post with BigChoc there.

Frankie
THe Government forgot about care homes 20 years ago when they allowed them to be sold off to money grabbing tax havens.
THe ONS data always showed the real numbers
the daily press conferences were always virtue signalling crap

BigChoc
Everybody deserves medical care where it will enhance their life
measured by their personal gradient
that does NOT include ICU for many
but it does include appropriate GP and district nurse care - which has always existed at well run UK nursing and care homes

Covid has brought the issue to the fore but it has been going on for decades

I don't know if the German hospice system is any good,
but I know their health system is and treats everyone according to their needs, without rationing

Elderly people can be given meds and O2 for COVID, just as they are for other respiratory diseases
No need for dramatic interventions like ventilators on anyone of any age who is too fragile to benefit.

However, don't just leave elderly people to die untreated,
any more than you would walk away and leave a child with severe LDs to die of pneumonia. Or COVID

Talking about children with Learning Difficulties - that very much used to be the attitude, that they didn't matter. Parents were even told to dump them in homes and 'forget about them'. Treatments for e.g. heart conditions weren't offered, yet now someone with say Downs can live well into adulthood and live a relatively full life.

Yep, peregrina I think we both grew up in those days

Kids born with SN, LDs or even serious physical disabilities were put in an institution from birth,
or as soon as their disability became apparent,
shut away so noone need see them

The "care" was sometimes not very good

@ListeningQuietly

Is there any evidence that this happened ?

Two ‘damning’ policy documents published 19th March and 2nd April. Hospitals were told to transfer patients to care homes who had covid. And the care home death rate accelerated two weeks after that was published.

A Whitehall source is quoted as saying the policy was 'designed as a 'stiff broom' to free up capacity in hospitals.'

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/24/care-homes-ordered-take-patients-suspected-coronavirus-nhs-hospitals/

Nobody is immortal. Care homes are geared up to providing peaceful caring deaths in a home environment.

Wtf are you talking about? There are 1000s of OAPs who have many years of life ahead of them in care homes. They’re not death camps.

Even if you don't care that several thousand more of one particular group are dying,

it is a very bad precedent to ignore this sudden increase,
to let a govt ignore it and wash their hands of it, singing "Happy Birthday"

Next time, it might be a group you care about
Or that your loved ones belong to

And who is administrating this palliative care - because it's not happening in my area. People are dying at home , or in care homes of respiratory distress without any palliative care. Very few care homes have the staff or training to administer this.

Care homes are geared up to providing peaceful caring deaths in a home environment.

I think you are confusing them with hospices. I know quite a few old people who are no longer capable of the day to day tasks of cooking, shopping, washing etc. but are a long long way from death's door - or at least I hope so. They have gone into care homes so that they don't have to bother with these tasks. Or you think of someone like Mrs Thatcher, who ended her days in the Ritz - it used to be not uncommon for small private hotels to have residents like that.

Honestly listening - your in a parallel universe.

Yes some elderly people will die of this - but they discharged sick patients into care home, introducing Covid 19 into those homes. Some care homes have lost 50% of residents.

The staff had no PPE

One home I read about that would normally loose 2-3 residents a year - lost 11 in a fortnight.

Add to this the policy is not to take these patients to hospital - but let them die at "home" - but staff aren't trained and licensed to deliver morphine...... I do believe they have loosened the rules around that.

I nursed my mother dying of cancer - and yes she wanted to die at home , but that just wasn't possible , and she went to hospice. She died with dignity.

I am not advocating that they are ventilated - but the uk governments policy signed the death warrant of thousands of nursing home - by infecting residents. And then not allowing them a peaceful death.
A dog or cat is allowed more dignity.

If you would like I will talk you through the borrow of watching someone dying of respiratory distress - extremities turning blue - organs shutting down , the body fighting for oxygen - it is not peaceful , it is not calm - and my father had the benefit of ever increasing morphine to ease the worst of it.

You seem to be under the impression it's peaceful and they just slip away - that's NOT what happens.

a dog or a cat is allowed more dignity

x post @mrslaughan
Really quite shocked here.

@mrslaughan sorry to hear it x

I've just read that Cummings was the one that pushed for lockdown and wanted it to be sooner? If true that has really confused me.

Not that he should have been in a position to push for anything of course

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-28/top-aide-to-u-k-s-johnson-pushed-scientists-to-back-lockdown

Something for any gun toting disbelieving Republicans to chew on www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/04/coronavirus-death-toll-vietnam-war-cvd/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=social::src=facebook::cmp=editorial::add=fbp20200429history-coviddeathsvietnam::rid=&sf233344641=1&fbclid=IwAR2nvPXVq4nN0V8SE6s9q5g2KuaaR8pywxWh58ahNPjK1f3AJyrC3otmaDw

'care home numbers', those 'numbers' are someone's Mum, Dad, sister, brother or friend. They should not have been forgotten about in this crisis.

@MaxNormal trying to play on the SAGE members who wish to remain anonymous' silence to cover his own arse, more like.

Cummings rewriting history to make sure any blame lands elsewhere, not on him ?

However, my main concern here:

a SPAD misunderstanding the science and giving an incorrect report back to their minister or PM

King, the former government chief scientist:

"I also don’t like the idea that a spad could report independently of me back to a minister or the prime minister what their understanding – as a non-scientist – of a scientific discussion was.

That is a dangerous practice.”

Care home numbers are our fellow human beings, with the full rights of a human being,

even if they have no living close family or friends

care home numbers', those 'numbers' are someone's Mum, Dad, sister, brother or friend. They should not have been forgotten about in this crisis.

Family and friends to whom it makes a big difference whether they live another week, year, 5 years, 10 years.