Is the cost of nurses salaries really only £8.4bn? Out of a total NHS budget of £145bn? 5.8% of the NHS budget on nurses? Really?
The figures being quoted by the Minister on the Today program last week were that every 1% increase in nurses' pay costs between £700-800m. I think that the variation arises from the fact that there are ancillary staff who would expect to get the same increase. This would indicate that the total cost of nurses salaries are more like £70bn than £8.4bn. .
£70bn doesn't make sense. It would imply there are something like 1.2m nurses in the NHS. I think the NHS in total employs that number.
That implies that every nurse also earns £60,000 a year which equally isn’t likely. Many are part time so I suspect the average pay is half that
The cost of keeping them employed is not the same as their salary and that would include overtime and other expenses.
Between pensions, maternity, sickness rights, Employers NI etc I would suspect that not much more than half the cost goes into actual wages.
Yeah, I've been told by HR and similar people in several different fields that the cost to the employer of employing someone is, as a rule of thumb, double their headline salary.
I often see that figure used in the context of permanent v temporary staff and it always makes little sense without the context for the rational. For instance to get to that figure you need to add things like dedicated office space per worker, management costs. Other attempts will use hourly rates as that allows you to factor in holiday pay as part of the hourly rate.
But it really doesn’t make much sense here as the question was how much would a 19% pay rise for nurses cost and £1.ton looks right based on both the figures I’ve pulled from sources and @rcs1000 ’s independent attempt.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
Why? There's a tsunami of illness out there at the moment. How is the NHS is supposed to be immune (short of every member of the NHS spending 24 hours a day in a biohazard suit)?
It’s not normal for the NHS to withdraw GP services, though is it? And the problem is not simply a peak in illness. That happens every year.
GP services have been withdrawn in lots of surgeries for the past 2 1/2 years
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
Why? There's a tsunami of illness out there at the moment. How is the NHS is supposed to be immune (short of every member of the NHS spending 24 hours a day in a biohazard suit)?
It’s not normal for the NHS to withdraw GP services, though is it? And the problem is not simply a peak in illness. That happens every year.
GP services have been withdrawn in lots of surgeries for the past 2 1/2 years
Fascinating article on how we avoided a lockdown last December. Ministers did not trust Sage, did their own research and prevented lockdown. Maybe some of them read PB at the time!
Very interesting read. The deafening silence from SAGE and the modellers after their models failed in January was very noticeable. When presented with the evidence it's now clear that they were pushing the lockdown agenda. The continual ignoring of data from South Africa points to an agenda, happily the Cabinet found the will to ignore our own government scientists and listened to the banks and other private research suggesting it wasn't as bad as 6000 deaths per day.
Yes, it's clear many individuals were actively keen on lockdowns, and wanted to find justification for them. The interesting question is why. Masochism? A mystical belief that if only we deny ourselves enough we will be rewarded? A reluctance to let Boris take any credit for anything? A need to be centre stage? Because it is very difficult to read as 'because the balance of evidence showed they were needed'.
Maybe just "If we lock down the cost to me is minimal, if we don't and it really *does* go to sh*t, then that's very bad for me. Let's lock down!"?
Yes. Also the Politicians Sylogism at work
- We must do something - This is something - Therefore we must do this
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
Oh it will be impossible to reach a consensus on what replaces it.
The problem is that you start from the principle of universal free healthcare at the point of use. Any change you make means it’s no longer strictly universal and in some instances will no longer be free at the point of use. So whichever way you go it looks like a downgrade, even if it improves outcomes in the areas that remain under the NHS umbrella.
Fascinating article on how we avoided a lockdown last December. Ministers did not trust Sage, did their own research and prevented lockdown. Maybe some of them read PB at the time!
"ministers spotted a common refrain from those in Sage: any bad news from South Africa (such as faster transmission) was modelled and reported in an instant. But any good news – even hugely good news – was either ignored, or placed in the ‘too early to say’ category."
Worth remembering Starmer was pushing for a lockdown then too. It can be put in the "he'd be a shit PM" column.
There is such a thing as the precautionary principle. It's wise to take bad news more seriously in such a case. So [edit] the principle quoted here doesn't work.
It's the technicalities that resolve the issue, and ministers are not epidemiologists.
SAGE were not exhibiting that precautionary principle. For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians.
It is to pb.com's eternal credit that the good news from South Africa was pushed front and centre. If it had a role in informing our own MPs, then it performed a valuable role. Sometimes easy to forget how much brilliant data was being presented here.
I remember watching a John Campbell video (before he went ... a bit funny) looking at the S.A data and actually talking to medics on the ground. And the real bafflement all round as to why we were still being presented with 'everyone's going to die! (probably, maybe)' from The Important People in government circles.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
Why? There's a tsunami of illness out there at the moment. How is the NHS is supposed to be immune (short of every member of the NHS spending 24 hours a day in a biohazard suit)?
It’s not normal for the NHS to withdraw GP services, though is it? And the problem is not simply a peak in illness. That happens every year.
GP services have been withdrawn in lots of surgeries for the past 2 1/2 years
You mean during Covid?
Partly and partly when all Covid restrictions have been removed, it is impossible to see a GP at my local surgery. The surgery in the neighbouring village has been open as normal throughout.
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
It also seems to hold that those who dislike the principle of universal healthcare are also the ones who could afford the alternatives and don't need to worry about how the new system would work.
The principle of universal healthcare free at the point of delivery is one shared by many European countries. But they are all grown up enough to understand that the one size fits all system which shuns private investment is a sure route to failure. We should be copying some of the systems used in Europe by countries like France and Germany where the private sector plays a much bigger part in front line health care but is very strictly regulated and where employers and employees are forced to pay for private medical insurance.
It works there very well and could work here if both sides get over their hangups.
Fascinating article on how we avoided a lockdown last December. Ministers did not trust Sage, did their own research and prevented lockdown. Maybe some of them read PB at the time!
"ministers spotted a common refrain from those in Sage: any bad news from South Africa (such as faster transmission) was modelled and reported in an instant. But any good news – even hugely good news – was either ignored, or placed in the ‘too early to say’ category."
Worth remembering Starmer was pushing for a lockdown then too. It can be put in the "he'd be a shit PM" column.
There is such a thing as the precautionary principle. It's wise to take bad news more seriously in such a case. So [edit] the principle quoted here doesn't work.
It's the technicalities that resolve the issue, and ministers are not epidemiologists.
SAGE were not exhibiting that precautionary principle. For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians.
It is to pb.com's eternal credit that the good news from South Africa was pushed front and centre. If it had a role in informing our own MPs, then it performed a valuable role. Sometimes easy to forget how much brilliant data was being presented here.
"For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians."
Perhaps the fact that one of the members of SAGE was an actual fucking communist should have been a clue?
If SAGE started pushing policy in an anti-Semitic direction and it was revealed that one of it's members was Alfie Goebbels, policy advisor to the Hitler Institute, I don't think you'd have such trouble identifying the problem
"Social distancing and face masks should stay FOREVER says Communist SAGE committee member Professor Susan Michie"
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
Why? There's a tsunami of illness out there at the moment. How is the NHS is supposed to be immune (short of every member of the NHS spending 24 hours a day in a biohazard suit)?
It’s not normal for the NHS to withdraw GP services, though is it? And the problem is not simply a peak in illness. That happens every year.
It’s not the nhs - it’s an individual partnership of say 5-10GPs. If a few are off ill and other local surgeries are in the same boat they probably have no choice but to do what they have done - probably at vast cost to the partnership given how much a 111 referred emergency appointment costs my surgery (I saw the bill for my emergency appointment last time I was there). I’ve seen lawyers charge way less.
Fascinating article on how we avoided a lockdown last December. Ministers did not trust Sage, did their own research and prevented lockdown. Maybe some of them read PB at the time!
"ministers spotted a common refrain from those in Sage: any bad news from South Africa (such as faster transmission) was modelled and reported in an instant. But any good news – even hugely good news – was either ignored, or placed in the ‘too early to say’ category."
Worth remembering Starmer was pushing for a lockdown then too. It can be put in the "he'd be a shit PM" column.
There is such a thing as the precautionary principle. It's wise to take bad news more seriously in such a case. So [edit] the principle quoted here doesn't work.
It's the technicalities that resolve the issue, and ministers are not epidemiologists.
SAGE were not exhibiting that precautionary principle. For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians.
It is to pb.com's eternal credit that the good news from South Africa was pushed front and centre. If it had a role in informing our own MPs, then it performed a valuable role. Sometimes easy to forget how much brilliant data was being presented here.
I remember watching a John Campbell video (before he went ... a bit funny) looking at the S.A data and actually talking to medics on the ground. And the real bafflement all round as to why we were still being presented with 'everyone's
going to die! (probably, maybe)' from The
Important People in government circles.
Indeed. I think Dr Angelique Coetzee (sp?) did at least four interviews in the UK press over a period of a fortnight plus. She was growing increasingly frustrated. What drove it home to me at the time was that Coetzee was not an anti-lockdown ultra - far from it in fact - she was IIRC one of most strident warners of the earlier strain (Delta).
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
Why? There's a tsunami of illness out there at the moment. How is the NHS is supposed to be immune (short of every member of the NHS spending 24 hours a day in a biohazard suit)?
It’s not normal for the NHS to withdraw GP services, though is it? And the problem is not simply a peak in illness. That happens every year.
GP services have been withdrawn in lots of surgeries for the past 2 1/2 years
YOU could see patients from 8 in the morning to 8 at night and it still wouldn't be enough," said Andy Mcintosh.
As a locum GP based in the Borders, Mcintosh sees nearly all his patients face-to-face.
He says his surgery overall is probably carrying out around 50 to 70 per cent more consultations with patients now than before the pandemic, yet appointments "disappear in the blink of an eye".
He said: "There's no capacity to meet demand. I wouldn't swap being a GP - but it's falling apart."
I know locally getting an appointment is impossible but the e-consultation means out surgery is handling way more consultations than before Covid - the issue is demand is higher.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
Why? There's a tsunami of illness out there at the moment. How is the NHS supposed to be immune (short of every member of the NHS spending 24 hours a day in a biohazard suit)?
But we elect a government every so often to deal with major problems on our behalf. The problem is that the present lot are more interested in feathering their own nests.
Fascinating article on how we avoided a lockdown last December. Ministers did not trust Sage, did their own research and prevented lockdown. Maybe some of them read PB at the time!
"ministers spotted a common refrain from those in Sage: any bad news from South Africa (such as faster transmission) was modelled and reported in an instant. But any good news – even hugely good news – was either ignored, or placed in the ‘too early to say’ category."
Worth remembering Starmer was pushing for a lockdown then too. It can be put in the "he'd be a shit PM" column.
There is such a thing as the precautionary principle. It's wise to take bad news more seriously in such a case. So [edit] the principle quoted here doesn't work.
It's the technicalities that resolve the issue, and ministers are not epidemiologists.
SAGE were not exhibiting that precautionary principle. For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians.
It is to pb.com's eternal credit that the good news from South Africa was pushed front and centre. If it had a role in informing our own MPs, then it performed a valuable role. Sometimes easy to forget how much brilliant data was being presented here.
"For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians."
Perhaps the fact that one of the members of SAGE was an actual fucking communist should have been a clue?
If SAGE started pushing policy in an anti-Semitic direction and it was revealed that one of it's members was Alfie Goebbels, policy advisor to the Hitler Institute, I don't think you'd have such trouble identifying the problem
"Social distancing and face masks should stay FOREVER says Communist SAGE committee member Professor Susan Michie"
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
Why? There's a tsunami of illness out there at the moment. How is the NHS is supposed to be immune (short of every member of the NHS spending 24 hours a day in a biohazard suit)?
It’s not normal for the NHS to withdraw GP services, though is it? And the problem is not simply a peak in illness. That happens every year.
GP services have been withdrawn in lots of surgeries for the past 2 1/2 years
YOU could see patients from 8 in the morning to 8 at night and it still wouldn't be enough," said Andy Mcintosh.
As a locum GP based in the Borders, Mcintosh sees nearly all his patients face-to-face.
He says his surgery overall is probably carrying out around 50 to 70 per cent more consultations with patients now than before the pandemic, yet appointments "disappear in the blink of an eye".
He said: "There's no capacity to meet demand. I wouldn't swap being a GP - but it's falling apart."
I know locally getting an appointment is impossible but the e-consultation means out surgery is handling way more consultations than before Covid - the issue is demand is higher.
Heaven help you if you have a niggling headache that is in fact cancer.
It’s chilling to realize that racism is so powerful that the royal family would ruin what is for now the one opportunity they were given to reach the hearts and minds of the very people who make their lives possible. They had a gift: In Meghan Markle they had a woman who is intelligent, poised and largely able to live in the public eye, play the role of princess and give the best of herself in service of something bigger than herself.
… Harry and Meghan both say they would have worked on behalf of the monarchy for the rest of their lives if the royal family extended them a modicum of consideration and safety. They wanted the royal family to embrace Meghan’s role in Harry’s life and to use it — to use her — to the crown’s advantage. Instead, the family did the exact opposite time and time again.
The Sussexes were incredibly popular in Britain, in Australia, in South Africa and throughout the Commonwealth. Had they stayed in the monarchy, they may have become more and more of a threat.
I actually saw a bit of the Netflix doco last night (Mrs Anabob is well into the royals, loves the soap opera, fashion and the goss).
It wasn’t what I was expecting at all! It was actually pretty good, interesting even.
Clearly it’s very much from Meg’s standpoint but nevertheless is far superior to most of the cap doffing royalist trash that pollutes the telly.
No it was a whingefest from their $10 million mansion in sunny California paid for by Netflix millions directed at Americans while Brits face the cold and rising cost of living. Meghan really doesn't care that much about us or the Commonwealth. She cares about becoming A list in the US, witness her squeal of delight when Beyonce tweeted her.
The idea they would ever have moved to New Zealand or Canada over California or New York City (where Harry was filmed in a pal's apartment in Manhattan) is laughable
Out of interest have you been watching it? I haven't and I don't know anyone who has. Is it popular?
We have watched all of it bar the last episode, it was clearly scripted and orchestrated by Meghan, Harry is just her puppet she used for social advancement.
In a few years once he is no longer useful she probably dumps him for a tech billionaire rather than end up a latter day Wallis Simpson
You're a bit like the Daily Mail online on this. Every day they have an article saying "Why We Should Ignore Meghan and Harry!". This is followed by another 30 articles about, er, Harry and Meghan.
But the comparison is strikingly apt. Edward and Mrs Simpson were massive news in the English speaking world for years - as Harry and Meghan are now. But then the world moved on - war! - and their glamour faded fast. And their salience fell away
The same will happen to H&M
Indeed, the Princess of Wales is also the strongest royal now the Queen has passed and will deal with the Duchess of Sussex as the Queen Mother dealt with the Duchess of Windsor, ignore her but ensure they both fade into obscurity in exile abroad while the royal family focuses in on her husband and children as William prepares to take the throne
How much can she bench press?
I'd suggest something like 40-45kg as part of a workout, and somewhat more as a 1 rep maximum.
Based on her reportedly doing HIIT and weighing just under 9 st.
There were some truly moronic posts on PB at the time, one classic idiotic claim was that the South Africans were comparing their Omicron experience with our Delta experience. As such their views should be ignored: apples with pears.
They never were, of course, they were comparing their Omicron experience with THEIR Delta experience. A point I had to remind this forum of multiple times. One particular poster stands out. No names mentioned…
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
It also seems to hold that those who dislike the principle of universal healthcare are also the ones who could afford the alternatives and don't need to worry about how the new system would work.
The principle of universal healthcare free at the point of delivery is one shared by many European countries. But they are all grown up enough to understand that the one size fits all system which shuns private investment is a sure route to failure. We should be copying some of the systems used in Europe by countries like France and Germany where the private sector plays a much bigger part in front line health care but is very strictly regulated and where employers and employees are forced to pay for private medical insurance.
It works there very well and could work here if both sides get over their hangups.
I know so little about the economics of medical provision and do understand that people prefer some form of private involvement. How do you imagine the French or German style will improve medical care in the UK?
It’s chilling to realize that racism is so powerful that the royal family would ruin what is for now the one opportunity they were given to reach the hearts and minds of the very people who make their lives possible. They had a gift: In Meghan Markle they had a woman who is intelligent, poised and largely able to live in the public eye, play the role of princess and give the best of herself in service of something bigger than herself.
… Harry and Meghan both say they would have worked on behalf of the monarchy for the rest of their lives if the royal family extended them a modicum of consideration and safety. They wanted the royal family to embrace Meghan’s role in Harry’s life and to use it — to use her — to the crown’s advantage. Instead, the family did the exact opposite time and time again.
The Sussexes were incredibly popular in Britain, in Australia, in South Africa and throughout the Commonwealth. Had they stayed in the monarchy, they may have become more and more of a threat.
I actually saw a bit of the Netflix doco last night (Mrs Anabob is well into the royals, loves the soap opera, fashion and the goss).
It wasn’t what I was expecting at all! It was actually pretty good, interesting even.
Clearly it’s very much from Meg’s standpoint but nevertheless is far superior to most of the cap doffing royalist trash that pollutes the telly.
No it was a whingefest from their $10 million mansion in sunny California paid for by Netflix millions directed at Americans while Brits face the cold and rising cost of living. Meghan really doesn't care that much about us or the Commonwealth. She cares about becoming A list in the US, witness her squeal of delight when Beyonce tweeted her.
The idea they would ever have moved to New Zealand or Canada over California or New York City (where Harry was filmed in a pal's apartment in Manhattan) is laughable
Out of interest have you been watching it? I haven't and I don't know anyone who has. Is it popular?
We have watched all of it bar the last episode, it was clearly scripted and orchestrated by Meghan, Harry is just her puppet she used for social advancement.
In a few years once he is no longer useful she probably dumps him for a tech billionaire rather than end up a latter day Wallis Simpson
You're a bit like the Daily Mail online on this. Every day they have an article saying "Why We Should Ignore Meghan and Harry!". This is followed by another 30 articles about, er, Harry and Meghan.
But the comparison is strikingly apt. Edward and Mrs Simpson were massive news in the English speaking world for years - as Harry and Meghan are now. But then the world moved on - war! - and their glamour faded fast. And their salience fell away
The same will happen to H&M
Indeed, the Princess of Wales is also the strongest royal now the Queen has passed and will deal with the Duchess of Sussex as the Queen Mother dealt with the Duchess of Windsor, ignore her but ensure they both fade into obscurity in exile abroad while the royal family focuses in on her husband and children as William prepares to take the throne
How much can she bench press?
I'd suggest something like 40-45kg as part of a workout, and somewhat more as a 1 rep maximum.
Based on her reportedly doing HIIT and weighting just under 9 st.
Have you thought of doing a column for Viz on celebrity fitness regimes?
I’ve often wondered how long Gloria Hunniford can plank and it strikes me you probably have the answer.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
Why? There's a tsunami of illness out there at the moment. How is the NHS supposed to be immune (short of every member of the NHS spending 24 hours a day in a biohazard suit)?
But we elect a government every so often to deal with major problems on our behalf. The problem is that the present lot are more interested in feathering their own nests.
Not really, the bigger problem is that the alternative doesn't have a clue what to do either (any possible solution is "politically impossible").
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
Why? There's a tsunami of illness out there at the moment. How is the NHS is supposed to be immune (short of every member of the NHS spending 24 hours a day in a biohazard suit)?
It’s not normal for the NHS to withdraw GP services, though is it? And the problem is not simply a peak in illness. That happens every year.
GP services have been withdrawn in lots of surgeries for the past 2 1/2 years
YOU could see patients from 8 in the morning to 8 at night and it still wouldn't be enough," said Andy Mcintosh.
As a locum GP based in the Borders, Mcintosh sees nearly all his patients face-to-face.
He says his surgery overall is probably carrying out around 50 to 70 per cent more consultations with patients now than before the pandemic, yet appointments "disappear in the blink of an eye".
He said: "There's no capacity to meet demand. I wouldn't swap being a GP - but it's falling apart."
I know locally getting an appointment is impossible but the e-consultation means out surgery is handling way more consultations than before Covid - the issue is demand is higher.
How is that counted?
My local surgery has perhaps done 15k COVID jabs this year, that were not in data a couple of years back.
Do these count as "consultations".
They are also doing a significantly higher % of phone appointments, as are the local hospital.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
Why? There's a tsunami of illness out there at the moment. How is the NHS is supposed to be immune (short of every member of the NHS spending 24 hours a day in a biohazard suit)?
It’s not normal for the NHS to withdraw GP services, though is it? And the problem is not simply a peak in illness. That happens every year.
GP services have been withdrawn in lots of surgeries for the past 2 1/2 years
YOU could see patients from 8 in the morning to 8 at night and it still wouldn't be enough," said Andy Mcintosh.
As a locum GP based in the Borders, Mcintosh sees nearly all his patients face-to-face.
He says his surgery overall is probably carrying out around 50 to 70 per cent more consultations with patients now than before the pandemic, yet appointments "disappear in the blink of an eye".
He said: "There's no capacity to meet demand. I wouldn't swap being a GP - but it's falling apart."
I know locally getting an appointment is impossible but the e-consultation means out surgery is handling way more consultations than before Covid - the issue is demand is higher.
It's almost as if cutting people off from healthcare for the best part of two years might possibly have negative consequences.
Fascinating article on how we avoided a lockdown last December. Ministers did not trust Sage, did their own research and prevented lockdown. Maybe some of them read PB at the time!
"ministers spotted a common refrain from those in Sage: any bad news from South Africa (such as faster transmission) was modelled and reported in an instant. But any good news – even hugely good news – was either ignored, or placed in the ‘too early to say’ category."
Worth remembering Starmer was pushing for a lockdown then too. It can be put in the "he'd be a shit PM" column.
There is such a thing as the precautionary principle. It's wise to take bad news more seriously in such a case. So [edit] the principle quoted here doesn't work.
It's the technicalities that resolve the issue, and ministers are not epidemiologists.
SAGE were not exhibiting that precautionary principle. For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians.
It is to pb.com's eternal credit that the good news from South Africa was pushed front and centre. If it had a role in informing our own MPs, then it performed a valuable role. Sometimes easy to forget how much brilliant data was being presented here.
"For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians."
Perhaps the fact that one of the members of SAGE was an actual fucking communist should have been a clue?
If SAGE started pushing policy in an anti-Semitic direction and it was revealed that one of it's members was Alfie Goebbels, policy advisor to the Hitler Institute, I don't think you'd have such trouble identifying the problem
"Social distancing and face masks should stay FOREVER says Communist SAGE committee member Professor Susan Michie"
The odious Michie’s views weren’t far from a fair slice of the population. I seem to recall a YouGov poll revealing approx 20% of the population thought nightclubs should be closed forever. A scary, harrowing time, when authoritarianism was en vogue.
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
I'm no NHS cheerleader. But it does have one undeniable benefit over its counterparts elsewhere, which is that it is cheap. Whether it is good value is more debatable, but my view is that it is (at the risk of falling into the trap of setting the American model up as the only alternative, the American model is awful, awful value for money; incentives are set up to introduce things which patients don't value.)
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
My local surgery has just texted me (and thousands of others, presumably) stating that they are going into emergency measures and turning off e-consult due to unprecedented demand and staff sickness.
Only options it now gives are to call 111 or 999.
This is very serious.
This must be denting the confidence of even the most senile of pensioners who make up Tory voting share.
Why? There's a tsunami of illness out there at the moment. How is the NHS is supposed to be immune (short of every member of the NHS spending 24 hours a day in a biohazard suit)?
It’s not normal for the NHS to withdraw GP services, though is it? And the problem is not simply a peak in illness. That happens every year.
GP services have been withdrawn in lots of surgeries for the past 2 1/2 years
YOU could see patients from 8 in the morning to 8 at night and it still wouldn't be enough," said Andy Mcintosh.
As a locum GP based in the Borders, Mcintosh sees nearly all his patients face-to-face.
He says his surgery overall is probably carrying out around 50 to 70 per cent more consultations with patients now than before the pandemic, yet appointments "disappear in the blink of an eye".
He said: "There's no capacity to meet demand. I wouldn't swap being a GP - but it's falling apart."
I know locally getting an appointment is impossible but the e-consultation means out surgery is handling way more consultations than before Covid - the issue is demand is higher.
What I mean is my local surgery refuses to see anyone and refers them to A & E or 111. If you need a blood test they refuse to do it and you have to go to Southampton Hospital which is 8 miles and has no direct buses. Your age does not matter. A neighbouring surgery has never changed its working practices, other than masks etc, so has seen people face to face throughout. That surgery regularly has spare appointments.
The increase in demand has been caused by GPs refusing to see people
Watching the Liason Committee, it seems to be a logic fencing match between pols trying to identify specifics - any specifics - on things where the Govt has declared there are no specifics.
We may be about to see what happens when a nation of 1.4bn experiences the near- collapse of its health system, as happened in Hong Kong
Hong Kong has experienced 11,000 deaths in a province of 7.4m, about 0.14% of the population (intriguingly close to the proposed IFR of Latest Covid: 0.1%)
There are differences: Hong Kong is rich, which China is not, it has an excellent health system (which nearly broke down); China's health system is much sketchier. But China has had ample time to prepare, and it has seen what happened in Hongkers
If 60-70% of Chinese get Covid this winter we should expect 3-4 million people to die, following the pattern of Hong Kong - but the Chinese are forewarned
We may be about to see what happens when a nation of 1.4bn experiences the near- collapse of its health system, as happened in Hong Kong
Hong Kong has experienced 11,000 deaths in a province of 7.4m, about 0.14% of the population (intriguingly close to the proposed IFR of Latest Covid: 0.1%)
There are differences: Hong Kong is rich, which China is not, it has an excellent health system (which nearly broke down); China's health system is much sketchier. But China has had ample time to prepare, and it has seen what happened in Hongkers
If 60-70% of Chinese get Covid this winter we should expect 3-4 million people to die, following the pattern of Hong Kong - but the Chinese are forewarned
Could get quite hairy
Reporting on deaths will no doubt be like the Russian reporting on their military casualties in Ukraine.
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
I'm no NHS cheerleader. But it does have one undeniable benefit over its counterparts elsewhere, which is that it is cheap. Whether it is good value is more debatable, but my view is that it is (at the risk of falling into the trap of setting the American model up as the only alternative, the American model is awful, awful value for money; incentives are set up to introduce things which patients don't value.)
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
I remember hearing an interview with an elderly French political grandee (possibly ex-ambassador) saying "The great problem with the British is their difficulty in seeing the difference between 'a bargain' and 'cheap'."
It keeps coming back to mind when I think of government services, housebuilding, energy storage, etc etc etc depressing etc etc.
It’s chilling to realize that racism is so powerful that the royal family would ruin what is for now the one opportunity they were given to reach the hearts and minds of the very people who make their lives possible. They had a gift: In Meghan Markle they had a woman who is intelligent, poised and largely able to live in the public eye, play the role of princess and give the best of herself in service of something bigger than herself.
… Harry and Meghan both say they would have worked on behalf of the monarchy for the rest of their lives if the royal family extended them a modicum of consideration and safety. They wanted the royal family to embrace Meghan’s role in Harry’s life and to use it — to use her — to the crown’s advantage. Instead, the family did the exact opposite time and time again.
The Sussexes were incredibly popular in Britain, in Australia, in South Africa and throughout the Commonwealth. Had they stayed in the monarchy, they may have become more and more of a threat.
I actually saw a bit of the Netflix doco last night (Mrs Anabob is well into the royals, loves the soap opera, fashion and the goss).
It wasn’t what I was expecting at all! It was actually pretty good, interesting even.
Clearly it’s very much from Meg’s standpoint but nevertheless is far superior to most of the cap doffing royalist trash that pollutes the telly.
No it was a whingefest from their $10 million mansion in sunny California paid for by Netflix millions directed at Americans while Brits face the cold and rising cost of living. Meghan really doesn't care that much about us or the Commonwealth. She cares about becoming A list in the US, witness her squeal of delight when Beyonce tweeted her.
The idea they would ever have moved to New Zealand or Canada over California or New York City (where Harry was filmed in a pal's apartment in Manhattan) is laughable
Out of interest have you been watching it? I haven't and I don't know anyone who has. Is it popular?
We have watched all of it bar the last episode, it was clearly scripted and orchestrated by Meghan, Harry is just her puppet she used for social advancement.
In a few years once he is no longer useful she probably dumps him for a tech billionaire rather than end up a latter day Wallis Simpson
You're a bit like the Daily Mail online on this. Every day they have an article saying "Why We Should Ignore Meghan and Harry!". This is followed by another 30 articles about, er, Harry and Meghan.
But the comparison is strikingly apt. Edward and Mrs Simpson were massive news in the English speaking world for years - as Harry and Meghan are now. But then the world moved on - war! - and their glamour faded fast. And their salience fell away
The same will happen to H&M
Indeed, the Princess of Wales is also the strongest royal now the Queen has passed and will deal with the Duchess of Sussex as the Queen Mother dealt with the Duchess of Windsor, ignore her but ensure they both fade into obscurity in exile abroad while the royal family focuses in on her husband and children as William prepares to take the throne
Kate (along with Meghan) is going to fade into obscurity in exile abroad? Very noble of her to let the royal family focus on her husband and children, but not sure she needs to exile herself!
It’s chilling to realize that racism is so powerful that the royal family would ruin what is for now the one opportunity they were given to reach the hearts and minds of the very people who make their lives possible. They had a gift: In Meghan Markle they had a woman who is intelligent, poised and largely able to live in the public eye, play the role of princess and give the best of herself in service of something bigger than herself.
… Harry and Meghan both say they would have worked on behalf of the monarchy for the rest of their lives if the royal family extended them a modicum of consideration and safety. They wanted the royal family to embrace Meghan’s role in Harry’s life and to use it — to use her — to the crown’s advantage. Instead, the family did the exact opposite time and time again.
The Sussexes were incredibly popular in Britain, in Australia, in South Africa and throughout the Commonwealth. Had they stayed in the monarchy, they may have become more and more of a threat.
I actually saw a bit of the Netflix doco last night (Mrs Anabob is well into the royals, loves the soap opera, fashion and the goss).
It wasn’t what I was expecting at all! It was actually pretty good, interesting even.
Clearly it’s very much from Meg’s standpoint but nevertheless is far superior to most of the cap doffing royalist trash that pollutes the telly.
No it was a whingefest from their $10 million mansion in sunny California paid for by Netflix millions directed at Americans while Brits face the cold and rising cost of living. Meghan really doesn't care that much about us or the Commonwealth. She cares about becoming A list in the US, witness her squeal of delight when Beyonce tweeted her.
The idea they would ever have moved to New Zealand or Canada over California or New York City (where Harry was filmed in a pal's apartment in Manhattan) is laughable
Out of interest have you been watching it? I haven't and I don't know anyone who has. Is it popular?
We have watched all of it bar the last episode, it was clearly scripted and orchestrated by Meghan, Harry is just her puppet she used for social advancement.
In a few years once he is no longer useful she probably dumps him for a tech billionaire rather than end up a latter day Wallis Simpson
You're a bit like the Daily Mail online on this. Every day they have an article saying "Why We Should Ignore Meghan and Harry!". This is followed by another 30 articles about, er, Harry and Meghan.
But the comparison is strikingly apt. Edward and Mrs Simpson were massive news in the English speaking world for years - as Harry and Meghan are now. But then the world moved on - war! - and their glamour faded fast. And their salience fell away
The same will happen to H&M
Indeed, the Princess of Wales is also the strongest royal now the Queen has passed and will deal with the Duchess of Sussex as the Queen Mother dealt with the Duchess of Windsor, ignore her but ensure they both fade into obscurity in exile abroad while the royal family focuses in on her husband and children as William prepares to take the throne
Kate (along with Meghan) is going to fade into obscurity in exile abroad? Very noble of her to let the royal family focus on her husband and children, but not sure she needs to exile herself!
We may be about to see what happens when a nation of 1.4bn experiences the near- collapse of its health system, as happened in Hong Kong
Hong Kong has experienced 11,000 deaths in a province of 7.4m, about 0.14% of the population (intriguingly close to the proposed IFR of Latest Covid: 0.1%)
There are differences: Hong Kong is rich, which China is not, it has an excellent health system (which nearly broke down); China's health system is much sketchier. But China has had ample time to prepare, and it has seen what happened in Hongkers
If 60-70% of Chinese get Covid this winter we should expect 3-4 million people to die, following the pattern of Hong Kong - but the Chinese are forewarned
Could get quite hairy
Reporting on deaths will no doubt be like the Russian reporting on their military casualties in Ukraine.
Yes, for sure
I reckon Xi and the CCP have realised: Right, we can't go on with Zero Covid, it's destroying the economy and stoking civil unrest - and also unsustainably pointless, as Nu Omicron has an infectivity of R18, it is possibly the most infectious disease mankind has encountered. It cannot be contained
But that infectivity is also an advantage. If you relax all mitigations the disease will rip through the entire population in a few short months - maybe weeks - and then you are on the other side, with lots of natural immunity
So the CCP has to get to the other side. The idea now is to persuade everyone Omicron is just a cold, push the population through a hellish winter of infection, lie to everyone about the scale of deaths and cases, so no one panics, then China can rejoin the world
TBH it might actually be the best policy for them ruthless but fair, mendacious but judicious. In the meantime they will ramp up vax as much as possible (tho this seems weirdly impossible for them)
It is, however, causing great confusion to communist China lovers on Twitter, who have been full of praise for the socialist excellence of Zero Covid - so much better than the West- but now watch as China belatedly copies the West and learns to live with the virus. A lot of them are claiming China has been "tricked" into opening up
It’s chilling to realize that racism is so powerful that the royal family would ruin what is for now the one opportunity they were given to reach the hearts and minds of the very people who make their lives possible. They had a gift: In Meghan Markle they had a woman who is intelligent, poised and largely able to live in the public eye, play the role of princess and give the best of herself in service of something bigger than herself.
… Harry and Meghan both say they would have worked on behalf of the monarchy for the rest of their lives if the royal family extended them a modicum of consideration and safety. They wanted the royal family to embrace Meghan’s role in Harry’s life and to use it — to use her — to the crown’s advantage. Instead, the family did the exact opposite time and time again.
The Sussexes were incredibly popular in Britain, in Australia, in South Africa and throughout the Commonwealth. Had they stayed in the monarchy, they may have become more and more of a threat.
I actually saw a bit of the Netflix doco last night (Mrs Anabob is well into the royals, loves the soap opera, fashion and the goss).
It wasn’t what I was expecting at all! It was actually pretty good, interesting even.
Clearly it’s very much from Meg’s standpoint but nevertheless is far superior to most of the cap doffing royalist trash that pollutes the telly.
No it was a whingefest from their $10 million mansion in sunny California paid for by Netflix millions directed at Americans while Brits face the cold and rising cost of living. Meghan really doesn't care that much about us or the Commonwealth. She cares about becoming A list in the US, witness her squeal of delight when Beyonce tweeted her.
The idea they would ever have moved to New Zealand or Canada over California or New York City (where Harry was filmed in a pal's apartment in Manhattan) is laughable
Out of interest have you been watching it? I haven't and I don't know anyone who has. Is it popular?
We have watched all of it bar the last episode, it was clearly scripted and orchestrated by Meghan, Harry is just her puppet she used for social advancement.
In a few years once he is no longer useful she probably dumps him for a tech billionaire rather than end up a latter day Wallis Simpson
You're a bit like the Daily Mail online on this. Every day they have an article saying "Why We Should Ignore Meghan and Harry!". This is followed by another 30 articles about, er, Harry and Meghan.
But the comparison is strikingly apt. Edward and Mrs Simpson were massive news in the English speaking world for years - as Harry and Meghan are now. But then the world moved on - war! - and their glamour faded fast. And their salience fell away
The same will happen to H&M
Indeed, the Princess of Wales is also the strongest royal now the Queen has passed and will deal with the Duchess of Sussex as the Queen Mother dealt with the Duchess of Windsor, ignore her but ensure they both fade into obscurity in exile abroad while the royal family focuses in on her husband and children as William prepares to take the throne
How much can she bench press?
I'd suggest something like 40-45kg as part of a workout, and somewhat more as a 1 rep maximum.
Based on her reportedly doing HIIT and weighting just under 9 st.
Have you thought of doing a column for Viz on celebrity fitness regimes?
I’ve often wondered how long Gloria Hunniford can plank and it strikes me you probably have the answer.
Heh. I'll let you ghost-write it !
I'm just going to typical metrics for people doing HIIT. Bench press is around 60-70% of bodyweight, but rather more for a single rep.
There are actually tabloid numbers out there for Kate's planking skills, but this is probably beneath you .
I would not be surprised if Gloria H has an exercise video or two from when she was PB age, but perhaps it would be exercise bikes and walking the dog.
Yes, we are seeing a real time reminder of what an uncontrolled pandemic does in an unimmunised population not previously exposed population. Indeed China still has some lockdown measures as lockdown was never "all or nothing"
I expect it to be grim, but at least the current variants are not so likely to cause lung disease as the original and Delta were.
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
I'm no NHS cheerleader. But it does have one undeniable benefit over its counterparts elsewhere, which is that it is cheap. Whether it is good value is more debatable, but my view is that it is (at the risk of falling into the trap of setting the American model up as the only alternative, the American model is awful, awful value for money; incentives are set up to introduce things which patients don't value.)
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
I remember hearing an interview with an elderly French political grandee (possibly ex-ambassador) saying "The great problem with the British is their difficulty in seeing the difference between 'a bargain' and 'cheap'."
It keeps coming back to mind when I think of government services, housebuilding, energy storage, etc etc etc depressing etc etc.
I wonder how the Louisiana Purchase fits into that analysis.
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
I'm no NHS cheerleader. But it does have one undeniable benefit over its counterparts elsewhere, which is that it is cheap. Whether it is good value is more debatable, but my view is that it is (at the risk of falling into the trap of setting the American model up as the only alternative, the American model is awful, awful value for money; incentives are set up to introduce things which patients don't value.)
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
The NHS is cheap because it rations care by access through two bottlenecks (GP referrals and hospital waiting lists) to match workload to capacity. We are seeing what happens when those bottlenecks become obstructed.
Fascinating article on how we avoided a lockdown last December. Ministers did not trust Sage, did their own research and prevented lockdown. Maybe some of them read PB at the time!
"ministers spotted a common refrain from those in Sage: any bad news from South Africa (such as faster transmission) was modelled and reported in an instant. But any good news – even hugely good news – was either ignored, or placed in the ‘too early to say’ category."
Worth remembering Starmer was pushing for a lockdown then too. It can be put in the "he'd be a shit PM" column.
There is such a thing as the precautionary principle. It's wise to take bad news more seriously in such a case. So [edit] the principle quoted here doesn't work.
It's the technicalities that resolve the issue, and ministers are not epidemiologists.
SAGE were not exhibiting that precautionary principle. For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians.
It is to pb.com's eternal credit that the good news from South Africa was pushed front and centre. If it had a role in informing our own MPs, then it performed a valuable role. Sometimes easy to forget how much brilliant data was being presented here.
I have a different view. What was known[1] was that it was highly transmissible. What was not know but suspected was that it was less severe. If asked how to act to keep the country safe[2], which was pretty much the brief, then the answer has to be that the safe (against immediate Covid harm[3]) option was some more restrictions. Not imposing restrictions was a gamble with obvious upside but possibly (if omicron did turn out to be bad) a huge downside. Whether to take the gamble was the politicians' call, but SAGE were scientifically right not to effectively guarantee them that it was the correct choice. There are times in science when we all know the answer, but we wait for the actual evidence to be solid before saying it publicly. Because sometimes it turns out that the answer we all 'knew' was wrong.
All said as someone who thought the government did well at the end on 2021 on Covid, Starmer was wrong (and cynical about it, too). I believe I was posting on here that we probably should not lock down,[4] but that SAGE were doing the job they were asked to do on the hard evidence (not anecdote) available.
[1] due to the lag from infection to hospitalisation to death we knew much more about how infectious it was than how severe - docs on the ground had a better idea, for sure, but docs on the ground are often wrong too (see how many docs reported miraculous results with pharma X for Covid, only for proper trials to show it was a dud) [2] from immediate Covid harm, not the whole picture, sure [3] there are of course many harms from lockdowns [4] easy for me to say on here, much harder decision if I was PM
Your daily reminder that the man who waltzed off with the Parthenon marbles, on behalf of the British Empire, was Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine, born in Broomhall, Fife, Scotland
Don't let facts get in the way of racism,
@StuartDickson seems to be the only example of a pure, unabashed racist on PB. He fears, loathes and despises the English, simply because they are English, and it applies to all English people. He’s really not a great advert for Scottish Nationalism, yet his Nat friends all tolerate and encourage him, which is rather telling
The strange thing is, if you can somehow force Mr Dickson onto other subjects, he’s often quite interesting. The summer habits of the Swedes. Uses for snowberries. Involuntary nudism
Yet, also a racist. And unapologetic
Don't think he's ever unapologetically bigged up Nick Griffin, Tommy Robinson or Putin, or called for the internment of Muslims.
No one is saying he has. He has, however, openly stated his hatred of England and English people. Not all racists are the same.
Yep, but I'm saying someone has and all the HE DID A ANTI ENGLISH RAYZISM!!! types on PB don't give a fuck.
And yet again you are moved to defend your fellow Nat, come what may, and without a blink of shame
Perhaps because you share Stuart Dickson’s anti-English racism? But you are more domesticated, so you don’t let it show. He is feral. Gone to savagery in the wilds of Skane
On this occasion seems more like TUD is attacking you, rather than actually defending SD, who is obviously another idiot.
Well, I’ve just asked TUD if @StuartDickson is actually a racist. He seems close to admitting it, finally. The big question of the morning. Is @StuartDickson a racist
Let’s see what @Theuniondivvie says. Whether he can - belatedly - admit it
I suspect he isn't. I suspect you are.
Clear enough?
I'm actually in agreement with TUD here.
Because Stuart isn't a racist. There's no suggestion he despises people based on skin colour.
He's a xenophobe. He hates everyone except Scots and Swedes (and I'm not always sure about the latter). He especially hates the English, and can't understand why everyone else doesn't.
And it does affect his judgement really badly and lead him to make bizarre statements, such as claiming Scotland provides England with power or water, or that it's full of oil that's being stolen, or that English power bills are six times that of Europe, or that Britain uses more energy than Sweden.
Which is why any time he posts something that is even tangentially about England in particular, assume he's lying or wrong because he invariably is.
Yes, we are seeing a real time reminder of what an uncontrolled pandemic does in an unimmunised population not previously exposed population. Indeed China still has some lockdown measures as lockdown was never "all or nothing"
I expect it to be grim, but at least the current variants are not so likely to cause lung disease as the original and Delta were.
Is there any evidence that the latest variants of Covid (where are we now, BA7 sub-Omicron?!) are more or less likely to induce Long Covid?
If 1 billion Chinese get the bug in the next 6 months, and 50 million get Long Covid - ie 1 in 20 - and cannot work, that will be a huge blow to the global economy
It’s chilling to realize that racism is so powerful that the royal family would ruin what is for now the one opportunity they were given to reach the hearts and minds of the very people who make their lives possible. They had a gift: In Meghan Markle they had a woman who is intelligent, poised and largely able to live in the public eye, play the role of princess and give the best of herself in service of something bigger than herself.
… Harry and Meghan both say they would have worked on behalf of the monarchy for the rest of their lives if the royal family extended them a modicum of consideration and safety. They wanted the royal family to embrace Meghan’s role in Harry’s life and to use it — to use her — to the crown’s advantage. Instead, the family did the exact opposite time and time again.
The Sussexes were incredibly popular in Britain, in Australia, in South Africa and throughout the Commonwealth. Had they stayed in the monarchy, they may have become more and more of a threat.
I actually saw a bit of the Netflix doco last night (Mrs Anabob is well into the royals, loves the soap opera, fashion and the goss).
It wasn’t what I was expecting at all! It was actually pretty good, interesting even.
Clearly it’s very much from Meg’s standpoint but nevertheless is far superior to most of the cap doffing royalist trash that pollutes the telly.
No it was a whingefest from their $10 million mansion in sunny California paid for by Netflix millions directed at Americans while Brits face the cold and rising cost of living. Meghan really doesn't care that much about us or the Commonwealth. She cares about becoming A list in the US, witness her squeal of delight when Beyonce tweeted her.
The idea they would ever have moved to New Zealand or Canada over California or New York City (where Harry was filmed in a pal's apartment in Manhattan) is laughable
Out of interest have you been watching it? I haven't and I don't know anyone who has. Is it popular?
We have watched all of it bar the last episode, it was clearly scripted and orchestrated by Meghan, Harry is just her puppet she used for social advancement.
In a few years once he is no longer useful she probably dumps him for a tech billionaire rather than end up a latter day Wallis Simpson
You're a bit like the Daily Mail online on this. Every day they have an article saying "Why We Should Ignore Meghan and Harry!". This is followed by another 30 articles about, er, Harry and Meghan.
But the comparison is strikingly apt. Edward and Mrs Simpson were massive news in the English speaking world for years - as Harry and Meghan are now. But then the world moved on - war! - and their glamour faded fast. And their salience fell away
The same will happen to H&M
Indeed, the Princess of Wales is also the strongest royal now the Queen has passed and will deal with the Duchess of Sussex as the Queen Mother dealt with the Duchess of Windsor, ignore her but ensure they both fade into obscurity in exile abroad while the royal family focuses in on her husband and children as William prepares to take the throne
Kate (along with Meghan) is going to fade into obscurity in exile abroad? Very noble of her to let the royal family focus on her husband and children, but not sure she needs to exile herself!
Let the Sussexes fade into obscurity abroad
Amen to that. Although the same for the entire Windsor family would suit me, to be honest.
Btw, is Sussexes the correct plural? Can't help feeling it might be Sussexi or Sussexen or Sussexa, but I'm not classicist or whatever I should be to know these things. Just a bog standard local comp kind of guy
We may be about to see what happens when a nation of 1.4bn experiences the near- collapse of its health system, as happened in Hong Kong
Hong Kong has experienced 11,000 deaths in a province of 7.4m, about 0.14% of the population (intriguingly close to the proposed IFR of Latest Covid: 0.1%)
There are differences: Hong Kong is rich, which China is not, it has an excellent health system (which nearly broke down); China's health system is much sketchier. But China has had ample time to prepare, and it has seen what happened in Hongkers
If 60-70% of Chinese get Covid this winter we should expect 3-4 million people to die, following the pattern of Hong Kong - but the Chinese are forewarned
Could get quite hairy
Reporting on deaths will no doubt be like the Russian reporting on their military casualties in Ukraine.
Yes, for sure
I reckon Xi and the CCP have realised: Right, we can't go on with Zero Covid, it's destroying the economy and stoking civil unrest - and also unsustainably pointless, as Nu Omicron has an infectivity of R18, it is possibly the most infectious disease mankind has encountered. It cannot be contained
But that infectivity is also an advantage. If you relax all mitigations the disease will rip through the entire population in a few short months - maybe weeks - and then you are on the other side, with lots of natural immunity
So the CCP has to get to the other side. The idea now is to persuade everyone Omicron is just a cold, push the population through a hellish winter of infection, lie to everyone about the scale of deaths and cases, so no one panics, then China can rejoin the world
TBH it might actually be the best policy for them ruthless but fair, mendacious but judicious. In the meantime they will ramp up vax as much as possible (tho this seems weirdly impossible for them)
It is, however, causing great confusion to communist China lovers on Twitter, who have been full of praise for the socialist excellence of Zero Covid - so much better than the West- but now watch as China belatedly copies the West and learns to live with the virus. A lot of them are claiming China has been "tricked" into opening up
There never was any stopping Covid. The only option was to delay long enough to get good vaccines in place. Unfortunately China has not got good vaccines in place. You are right that it will now rip through China at break-neck speed and will overwhelm their health system. I think it is unlikely, but not impossible, that there will be political consequences.
Way Off Topic - AP: Caro still working away on fifth LBJ book, no pub date set
NEW YORK (AP) — The good news on Robert A. Caro’s long-awaited next book is that he knows the final words.
The bad news is that he’s known them for years and remains far from concluding his Lyndon B. Johnson series. Caro, who also wrote “The Power Broker,” has published four volumes of “The Years of Lyndon Johnson” over a period of 40 years. Volume 4, “The Passage of Power,” came out in 2012.
The fifth volume is expected to cover Johnson’s first full year as president, 1964, and continue through the end of his administration in 1969 and his death four years later.
“It is huge,” Caro says of the scale of the final book.
Measuring his progress is hard because he doesn’t work chronologically. Two years ago, Caro spoke of writing about the year 1967, a time of growing unrest in Black communities and rising opposition to the Vietnam War. Interviewed recently to promote “Turn Every Page,” a documentary about Caro and his editor Robert Gottlieb, the author said he is now deep into a section on health care for the elderly before Johnson signed the Medicare and Medicaid Act in 1965.
Caro has always thoughts of his books as not so much the portrait of a man, but of political power and its effects. Taken together, the already published Johnson volumes — which began with “The Path to Power” and include “Means of Ascent” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Master of the Senate” — exceed 4,000 pages and feature extended probes into everything from filibusters to the mechanics of a stolen election.
For the yet untitled Volume 5, the 87-year-old Caro hopes to write about the Vietnam War’s impact on a Vietnamese village and still plans to travel to Vietnam, a trip that has been postponed because of the pandemic. He has already worked on a less talked about moment in the Johnson presidency, when he sent more than 20,000 troops to the Dominican Republic in 1965 to prevent a feared communist takeover.
“I tell people he sent 23,000 Marines to the Dominican Republic and they say ‘What?’ No one remembers it,” Caro says.
The new documentary tells of Caro’s long and complicated relationship with Gottlieb, whose other authors have included the Nobel laureates Toni Morrison and Doris Lessing. The two Bobs have worked together since the early 1970s and, after battling fiercely in the early years, have forged what Caro calls a relatively smooth editing process, a “shorthand” that enables them to “go through manuscripts much faster.”
But, he adds, when asked why the books don’t come out more quickly: “You can’t speed up the research.”
Yes, we are seeing a real time reminder of what an uncontrolled pandemic does in an unimmunised population not previously exposed population. Indeed China still has some lockdown measures as lockdown was never "all or nothing"
I expect it to be grim, but at least the current variants are not so likely to cause lung disease as the original and Delta were.
Is there any evidence that the latest variants of Covid (where are we now, BA7 sub-Omicron?!) are more or less likely to induce Long Covid?
If 1 billion Chinese get the bug in the next 6 months, and 50 million get Long Covid - ie 1 in 20 - and cannot work, that will be a huge blow to the global economy
I had Omicron in February and was quite flattened by it for a few months afterwards, albeit some weeks were fine and others miserable with fatigue, headaches and palpitations. All seems back to normal now.
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
I'm no NHS cheerleader. But it does have one undeniable benefit over its counterparts elsewhere, which is that it is cheap. Whether it is good value is more debatable, but my view is that it is (at the risk of falling into the trap of setting the American model up as the only alternative, the American model is awful, awful value for money; incentives are set up to introduce things which patients don't value.)
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
I was in Germany when they introduced a EUR 10.00 fee for a doctor's appointment in 2004. In the end, though, it failed to achieve the stated aim of reducing superfluous visits to the doctor, but instead deterred poorer people from seeking necessary treatment. It also ended up costing more in administration than it brought in income and was abolished in 2013.
One thing on NHS (lack of) efficiency. Appointments. Been awaiting a referral since September and got the letter this week, with appointment on date that I'm out of the country. Phoned up to change, took several goes to get through and eventually a call back after leaving a message. Appointment cancelled, a new one (at some unknown date) will be issued by post.
This is nuts. A system, such as for vaccinations, in which you could get alerted when you're near the top of the queue and choose your own appointment would eliminate so much wasted time. Staff booking and re-booking appointments, having time on the phone answering and calling back, probably reduce missed appointments (if the person can choose something convenient, rather than making do with something they can probably make work as cancelling is such a hassle). Eliminate sending out appointments in post...
Small things, but it would also eliminate a lot of frustration on everyone's behalf.
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
I'm no NHS cheerleader. But it does have one undeniable benefit over its counterparts elsewhere, which is that it is cheap. Whether it is good value is more debatable, but my view is that it is (at the risk of falling into the trap of setting the American model up as the only alternative, the American model is awful, awful value for money; incentives are set up to introduce things which patients don't value.)
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
I remember hearing an interview with an elderly French political grandee (possibly ex-ambassador) saying "The great problem with the British is their difficulty in seeing the difference between 'a bargain' and 'cheap'."
It keeps coming back to mind when I think of government services, housebuilding, energy storage, etc etc etc depressing etc etc.
I wonder how the Louisiana Purchase fits into that analysis.
I suspect they would say 'occassionally, more by luck than judgement, they get a genuine bargain - but that it can also go horribly wrong - see Darian for a counterexample'
Your daily reminder that the man who waltzed off with the Parthenon marbles, on behalf of the British Empire, was Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine, born in Broomhall, Fife, Scotland
Don't let facts get in the way of racism,
@StuartDickson seems to be the only example of a pure, unabashed racist on PB. He fears, loathes and despises the English, simply because they are English, and it applies to all English people. He’s really not a great advert for Scottish Nationalism, yet his Nat friends all tolerate and encourage him, which is rather telling
The strange thing is, if you can somehow force Mr Dickson onto other subjects, he’s often quite interesting. The summer habits of the Swedes. Uses for snowberries. Involuntary nudism
Yet, also a racist. And unapologetic
Don't think he's ever unapologetically bigged up Nick Griffin, Tommy Robinson or Putin, or called for the internment of Muslims.
No one is saying he has. He has, however, openly stated his hatred of England and English people. Not all racists are the same.
Yep, but I'm saying someone has and all the HE DID A ANTI ENGLISH RAYZISM!!! types on PB don't give a fuck.
And yet again you are moved to defend your fellow Nat, come what may, and without a blink of shame
Perhaps because you share Stuart Dickson’s anti-English racism? But you are more domesticated, so you don’t let it show. He is feral. Gone to savagery in the wilds of Skane
On this occasion seems more like TUD is attacking you, rather than actually defending SD, who is obviously another idiot.
Well, I’ve just asked TUD if @StuartDickson is actually a racist. He seems close to admitting it, finally. The big question of the morning. Is @StuartDickson a racist
Let’s see what @Theuniondivvie says. Whether he can - belatedly - admit it
I suspect he isn't. I suspect you are.
Clear enough?
I'm actually in agreement with TUD here.
Because Stuart isn't a racist. There's no suggestion he despises people based on skin colour.
He's a xenophobe. He hates everyone except Scots and Swedes (and I'm not always sure about the latter). He especially hates the English, and can't understand why everyone else doesn't.
And it does affect his judgement really badly and lead him to make bizarre statements, such as claiming Scotland provides England with power or water, or that it's full of oil that's being stolen, or that English power bills are six times that of Europe, or that Britain uses more energy than Sweden.
Which is why any time he posts something that is even tangentially about England in particular, assume he's lying or wrong because he invariably is.
So race is just skin colour? How about anti-Semitism against Ashkenazi Jews, is that therefore not racism? The pale Jews who died in Belsen, were they not the victims of racism?
Absurd
If you despise someone simply because of their nationality/culture/origin, that is a species of racism. Despising people because of their skin pigmentation is ANOTHER species of racism
Yes, we are seeing a real time reminder of what an uncontrolled pandemic does in an unimmunised population not previously exposed population. Indeed China still has some lockdown measures as lockdown was never "all or nothing"
I expect it to be grim, but at least the current variants are not so likely to cause lung disease as the original and Delta were.
Is there any evidence that the latest variants of Covid (where are we now, BA7 sub-Omicron?!) are more or less likely to induce Long Covid?
If 1 billion Chinese get the bug in the next 6 months, and 50 million get Long Covid - ie 1 in 20 - and cannot work, that will be a huge blow to the global economy
I had Omicron in February and was quite flattened by it for a few months afterwards, albeit some weeks were fine and others miserable with fatigue, headaches and palpitations. All seems back to normal now.
I was moderately shagged by my very first bout of Covid in early 2020. Looking back it went on for months, tho I wasn't really aware of it as it happened. I had all these weird symptoms - brain fog, confusion, deep fatigue, breathlessness after minor exertion - yet I ascribed them to the weirdness of the time: early lockdown
I had no such lingering problems with later infections, they came and went. Tho by then of course I was vaxxed
We may be about to see what happens when a nation of 1.4bn experiences the near- collapse of its health system, as happened in Hong Kong
Hong Kong has experienced 11,000 deaths in a province of 7.4m, about 0.14% of the population (intriguingly close to the proposed IFR of Latest Covid: 0.1%)
There are differences: Hong Kong is rich, which China is not, it has an excellent health system (which nearly broke down); China's health system is much sketchier. But China has had ample time to prepare, and it has seen what happened in Hongkers
If 60-70% of Chinese get Covid this winter we should expect 3-4 million people to die, following the pattern of Hong Kong - but the Chinese are forewarned
Could get quite hairy
Yes, although it's easy to get blinded by the sheer numbers of Chinese people that there are. That would be equivalent to 150,000 - 200,000 British people dying. Which is pretty much what happened. Obviously bad, but not as bad as bad as 3-4 million sounds.
One thing on NHS (lack of) efficiency. Appointments. Been awaiting a referral since September and got the letter this week, with appointment on date that I'm out of the country. Phoned up to change, took several goes to get through and eventually a call back after leaving a message. Appointment cancelled, a new one (at some unknown date) will be issued by post.
This is nuts. A system, such as for vaccinations, in which you could get alerted when you're near the top of the queue and choose your own appointment would eliminate so much wasted time. Staff booking and re-booking appointments, having time on the phone answering and calling back, probably reduce missed appointments (if the person can choose something convenient, rather than making do with something they can probably make work as cancelling is such a hassle). Eliminate sending out appointments in post...
Small things, but it would also eliminate a lot of frustration on everyone's behalf.
I think I've ranted here before that it does my head in that I can order a cheap bit of Chinese-made tat from Amazon or Ebay and get all sorts of information, choices to make, automated updates about my order, and finally tracking of the delivery vehicle to the doorstep, but the NHS as a whole is still moving vast amounts of paper and heavily reliant on phone calls for things that in many cases could require little to no human involvement. It wouldn't suit every patient but it is bonkers how the NHS operates.
Fascinating article on how we avoided a lockdown last December. Ministers did not trust Sage, did their own research and prevented lockdown. Maybe some of them read PB at the time!
"ministers spotted a common refrain from those in Sage: any bad news from South Africa (such as faster transmission) was modelled and reported in an instant. But any good news – even hugely good news – was either ignored, or placed in the ‘too early to say’ category."
Worth remembering Starmer was pushing for a lockdown then too. It can be put in the "he'd be a shit PM" column.
There is such a thing as the precautionary principle. It's wise to take bad news more seriously in such a case. So [edit] the principle quoted here doesn't work.
It's the technicalities that resolve the issue, and ministers are not epidemiologists.
SAGE were not exhibiting that precautionary principle. For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians.
It is to pb.com's eternal credit that the good news from South Africa was pushed front and centre. If it had a role in informing our own MPs, then it performed a valuable role. Sometimes easy to forget how much brilliant data was being presented here.
I have a different view. What was known[1] was that it was highly transmissible. What was not know but suspected was that it was less severe. If asked how to act to keep the country safe[2], which was pretty much the brief, then the answer has to be that the safe (against immediate Covid harm[3]) option was some more restrictions. Not imposing restrictions was a gamble with obvious upside but possibly (if omicron did turn out to be bad) a huge downside. Whether to take the gamble was the politicians' call, but SAGE were scientifically right not to effectively guarantee them that it was the correct choice. There are times in science when we all know the answer, but we wait for the actual evidence to be solid before saying it publicly. Because sometimes it turns out that the answer we all 'knew' was wrong.
All said as someone who thought the government did well at the end on 2021 on Covid, Starmer was wrong (and cynical about it, too). I believe I was posting on here that we probably should not lock down,[4] but that SAGE were doing the job they were asked to do on the hard evidence (not anecdote) available.
[1] due to the lag from infection to hospitalisation to death we knew much more about how infectious it was than how severe - docs on the ground had a better idea, for sure, but docs on the ground are often wrong too (see how many docs reported miraculous results with pharma X for Covid, only for proper trials to show it was a dud) [2] from immediate Covid harm, not the whole picture, sure [3] there are of course many harms from lockdowns [4] easy for me to say on here, much harder decision if I was PM
I'm broadly on the same page, with one major exception. I don't believe (and I may be wrong) that anyone on SAGE was considering the downsides of lockdowns on health, mental health and the economy. They were meeting the remit of how to respond to the situation with omicron, in the face of limited information - it was obviously rapidly spreading, but seemed to be milder (with lots of caveats on the later). My feeling at the time was it was going to be ok without drastic measures - we were well vaccinated in the UK at that point. If asked to minimise risk of omicron to the nations health then putting in restrictions would be the natural step.
I also strongly suspect that most members of SAGE would have found lockdown mostly ok - living in nice houses with gardens, able to work from the home office etc. Much easier to impose conditions on peoples lives if those conditions are not that personally onerous. See also those who wanted to permanently close nightclubs... I don't imagine any of those ones ever wanted to go to a nightclub!
One thing on NHS (lack of) efficiency. Appointments. Been awaiting a referral since September and got the letter this week, with appointment on date that I'm out of the country. Phoned up to change, took several goes to get through and eventually a call back after leaving a message. Appointment cancelled, a new one (at some unknown date) will be issued by post.
This is nuts. A system, such as for vaccinations, in which you could get alerted when you're near the top of the queue and choose your own appointment would eliminate so much wasted time. Staff booking and re-booking appointments, having time on the phone answering and calling back, probably reduce missed appointments (if the person can choose something convenient, rather than making do with something they can probably make work as cancelling is such a hassle). Eliminate sending out appointments in post...
Small things, but it would also eliminate a lot of frustration on everyone's behalf.
What you describe is a system known as "partial booking" which we have done for years.
It has some advantages, but a couple of disadvantages
1) Demand for appointments exceeds capacity so all the slots go to the fastest fingers, with none left.
2) Some groups of patients respond poorly to such systems, so never make contact. This is particularly so for those with mental health issues, learning disabilities, non-english speakers, techno-illiterates, frail elderly etc. These are groups already with worse health outcomes.
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
I'm no NHS cheerleader. But it does have one undeniable benefit over its counterparts elsewhere, which is that it is cheap. Whether it is good value is more debatable, but my view is that it is (at the risk of falling into the trap of setting the American model up as the only alternative, the American model is awful, awful value for money; incentives are set up to introduce things which patients don't value.)
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
I was in Germany when they introduced a EUR 10.00 fee for a doctor's appointment in 2004. In the end, though, it failed to achieve the stated aim of reducing superfluous visits to the doctor, but instead deterred poorer people from seeking necessary treatment. It also ended up costing more in administration than it brought in income and was abolished in 2013.
This is it. Has to be small. Has to have exceptions for the poor, probably for those with long term conditions and genuine frequent need. Those exceptions cost money. Benefits are far from certain.
Would be very interesting to know if there are studies looking at unecessary GP appointments. Many of course are actually not needed, but in how many cases does the GP think the person should not have turned up?
One thing on NHS (lack of) efficiency. Appointments. Been awaiting a referral since September and got the letter this week, with appointment on date that I'm out of the country. Phoned up to change, took several goes to get through and eventually a call back after leaving a message. Appointment cancelled, a new one (at some unknown date) will be issued by post.
This is nuts. A system, such as for vaccinations, in which you could get alerted when you're near the top of the queue and choose your own appointment would eliminate so much wasted time. Staff booking and re-booking appointments, having time on the phone answering and calling back, probably reduce missed appointments (if the person can choose something convenient, rather than making do with something they can probably make work as cancelling is such a hassle). Eliminate sending out appointments in post...
Small things, but it would also eliminate a lot of frustration on everyone's behalf.
What you describe is a system known as "partial booking" which we have done for years.
It has some advantages, but a couple of disadvantages
1) Demand for appointments exceeds capacity so all the slots go to the fastest fingers, with none left.
2) Some groups of patients respond poorly to such systems, so never make contact. This is particularly so for those with mental health issues, learning disabilities, non-english speakers, techno-illiterates, frail elderly etc. These are groups already with worse health outcomes.
One thing that is hard for non-Americans (and even many Americans) ot understand is that there is no "American model" of health care.
Instead, there are a bunch of different systems, which can be understood historically, but do not together make a single system as, for example, the NHS does.
First, there is private insurance for workers, usually paid by employers, though there are still a few plans run by unions. (This became important during WW II, when wage controls kept employers from competing in the usual way for scarce workers.) The plans vary -- to put it mildly. A few are so generous that the Obama administration wanted to penalize these "Cadillac" plans.
Second, there is the immense Medicare single-payer system for old folks, with its parts A, B, C, and D*.
Third, there are 52 (50 states, Puerto Rico, and DC) Medicaid single-payer systems for poor folks. (Some, of course, are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.)
Fourth, there is the Veteran's Adminstration system, which is something like your NHS, in that doctors and nurses are employees of the government,
Fifth, there is the Indian Health Service, where the doctors and nurses are, like the VA and NHS, employees of the government.
Sixth, there are health savings accounts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_savings_account (When governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels set these up for state employees. They have been very popular there, appear to have cut medical expenses, and, if anything, improved outcomes. They might not do as well with a less educated population.)
And, there are other smaller ones.
I say this, not to defend all these systems -- which I don't -- but to ask you to understand the complexity, and perhaps even learn from our mistakes.
(*Full disclosure: I am enrolled in parts A and C of Medicare.)
One thing on NHS (lack of) efficiency. Appointments. Been awaiting a referral since September and got the letter this week, with appointment on date that I'm out of the country. Phoned up to change, took several goes to get through and eventually a call back after leaving a message. Appointment cancelled, a new one (at some unknown date) will be issued by post.
This is nuts. A system, such as for vaccinations, in which you could get alerted when you're near the top of the queue and choose your own appointment would eliminate so much wasted time. Staff booking and re-booking appointments, having time on the phone answering and calling back, probably reduce missed appointments (if the person can choose something convenient, rather than making do with something they can probably make work as cancelling is such a hassle). Eliminate sending out appointments in post...
Small things, but it would also eliminate a lot of frustration on everyone's behalf.
I had a great extreme examples of this a few years ago all NHS.
Go to NHS dentist for routine appointment, you need a tooth removed. Ok, can you remove it. No, you need to book another appointment with a different dentist. Ok, booked, x-ray, examination, etc etc etc, no I can't remove it, you need to be referred to a hospital. Hmm Ok. Letter in the post, do you want to book an appointment, erhhh yes, ring this number, and I book an appointment, another letter in the post...ok come for a consultation, another x-ray, examination, etc etc etc, oh yes that's a tricky one (but I had that at the dentist, couldn't you have got those sent over?). So you going to remove it, not today, you need to book another appointment, can't you schedule it, no, at the reception desk, no, you need to ring this number. Hmmm ok, have to ring, I need to appointment for a removal, ok, you will be sent an appointment in the mail. Turn up for removal, oh no we can't do that one, that too tricky, we need specialist equipment for that....and back round for the same more ringing, more letters, before finally having it removed.
Implant...same NHS dentist, can I have an implant, sure I will do it private. You need an MRI, logs into computer, books me an appointment at a local clinic. Get MRI, they automatically send it to my dentist via internet, who texts me they received all necessary info and please come on such and such a date to start the procedure. Job done.
Yes, we are seeing a real time reminder of what an uncontrolled pandemic does in an unimmunised population not previously exposed population. Indeed China still has some lockdown measures as lockdown was never "all or nothing"
I expect it to be grim, but at least the current variants are not so likely to cause lung disease as the original and Delta were.
Is there any evidence that the latest variants of Covid (where are we now, BA7 sub-Omicron?!) are more or less likely to induce Long Covid?
If 1 billion Chinese get the bug in the next 6 months, and 50 million get Long Covid - ie 1 in 20 - and cannot work, that will be a huge blow to the global economy
Broadly yes, and considering we've all had covid now (well I haven't that I know, but estimates are pretty high) and the incidence of long covid isn't increasing with this.
Its tricky because long covid is an umbrella for lots of things, some of which can be easily diagnosed (organ damage for instance) some less so. The idea that each time you get covid you are playing Russian Roulette with getting long covid is likely nonsense. Generally the population has antibodies which are protecting against serious disease in the main, and that will follow for complications too, I think.
We may be about to see what happens when a nation of 1.4bn experiences the near- collapse of its health system, as happened in Hong Kong
Hong Kong has experienced 11,000 deaths in a province of 7.4m, about 0.14% of the population (intriguingly close to the proposed IFR of Latest Covid: 0.1%)
There are differences: Hong Kong is rich, which China is not, it has an excellent health system (which nearly broke down); China's health system is much sketchier. But China has had ample time to prepare, and it has seen what happened in Hongkers
If 60-70% of Chinese get Covid this winter we should expect 3-4 million people to die, following the pattern of Hong Kong - but the Chinese are forewarned
Could get quite hairy
Yes, although it's easy to get blinded by the sheer numbers of Chinese people that there are. That would be equivalent to 150,000 - 200,000 British people dying. Which is pretty much what happened. Obviously bad, but not as bad as bad as 3-4 million sounds.
Yes, 10 million people die every year in China, so 3m dead in a winter is horrible but not Black Death horrible. China will cope with the deaths
The problem is the potential for collapsing healthcare, and all that will follow from that
China apparently has a poor GP system, so people generally go to hospitals for almost anything. That could be a nasty pinchpoint
One thing on NHS (lack of) efficiency. Appointments. Been awaiting a referral since September and got the letter this week, with appointment on date that I'm out of the country. Phoned up to change, took several goes to get through and eventually a call back after leaving a message. Appointment cancelled, a new one (at some unknown date) will be issued by post.
This is nuts. A system, such as for vaccinations, in which you could get alerted when you're near the top of the queue and choose your own appointment would eliminate so much wasted time. Staff booking and re-booking appointments, having time on the phone answering and calling back, probably reduce missed appointments (if the person can choose something convenient, rather than making do with something they can probably make work as cancelling is such a hassle). Eliminate sending out appointments in post...
Small things, but it would also eliminate a lot of frustration on everyone's behalf.
What you describe is a system known as "partial booking" which we have done for years.
It has some advantages, but a couple of disadvantages
1) Demand for appointments exceeds capacity so all the slots go to the fastest fingers, with none left.
2) Some groups of patients respond poorly to such systems, so never make contact. This is particularly so for those with mental health issues, learning disabilities, non-english speakers, techno-illiterates, frail elderly etc. These are groups already with worse health outcomes.
Aye, good points. Would be useful though to have the ability to rebook yourself after the initial appointment is set. I can, thanks to your points, see the value in initially assigning appointments rather than relying on the user (some of my work is around transition to adult care for chronic conditions - well known issues in that group about users not being proactive in booking appointments).
Fascinating article on how we avoided a lockdown last December. Ministers did not trust Sage, did their own research and prevented lockdown. Maybe some of them read PB at the time!
"ministers spotted a common refrain from those in Sage: any bad news from South Africa (such as faster transmission) was modelled and reported in an instant. But any good news – even hugely good news – was either ignored, or placed in the ‘too early to say’ category."
Worth remembering Starmer was pushing for a lockdown then too. It can be put in the "he'd be a shit PM" column.
There is such a thing as the precautionary principle. It's wise to take bad news more seriously in such a case. So [edit] the principle quoted here doesn't work.
It's the technicalities that resolve the issue, and ministers are not epidemiologists.
SAGE were not exhibiting that precautionary principle. For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians.
It is to pb.com's eternal credit that the good news from South Africa was pushed front and centre. If it had a role in informing our own MPs, then it performed a valuable role. Sometimes easy to forget how much brilliant data was being presented here.
I have a different view. What was known[1] was that it was highly transmissible. What was not know but suspected was that it was less severe. If asked how to act to keep the country safe[2], which was pretty much the brief, then the answer has to be that the safe (against immediate Covid harm[3]) option was some more restrictions. Not imposing restrictions was a gamble with obvious upside but possibly (if omicron did turn out to be bad) a huge downside. Whether to take the gamble was the politicians' call, but SAGE were scientifically right not to effectively guarantee them that it was the correct choice. There are times in science when we all know the answer, but we wait for the actual evidence to be solid before saying it publicly. Because sometimes it turns out that the answer we all 'knew' was wrong.
All said as someone who thought the government did well at the end on 2021 on Covid, Starmer was wrong (and cynical about it, too). I believe I was posting on here that we probably should not lock down,[4] but that SAGE were doing the job they were asked to do on the hard evidence (not anecdote) available.
[1] due to the lag from infection to hospitalisation to death we knew much more about how infectious it was than how severe - docs on the ground had a better idea, for sure, but docs on the ground are often wrong too (see how many docs reported miraculous results with pharma X for Covid, only for proper trials to show it was a dud) [2] from immediate Covid harm, not the whole picture, sure [3] there are of course many harms from lockdowns [4] easy for me to say on here, much harder decision if I was PM
I'm broadly on the same page, with one major exception. I don't believe (and I may be wrong) that anyone on SAGE was considering the downsides of lockdowns on health, mental health and the economy. They were meeting the remit of how to respond to the situation with omicron, in the face of limited information - it was obviously rapidly spreading, but seemed to be milder (with lots of caveats on the later). My feeling at the time was it was going to be ok without drastic measures - we were well vaccinated in the UK at that point. If asked to minimise risk of omicron to the nations health then putting in restrictions would be the natural step.
I also strongly suspect that most members of SAGE would have found lockdown mostly ok - living in nice houses with gardens, able to work from the home office etc. Much easier to impose conditions on peoples lives if those conditions are not that personally onerous. See also those who wanted to permanently close nightclubs... I don't imagine any of those ones ever wanted to go to a nightclub!
Yes, FWIW, I agree. The makeup and remit of SAGE was too narrow, I think. There should have been more people representing other interests so that there was a more rounded picture being presented to politicians. As it was, politicians had to make that more rounded case themselves, or with the help of less expert civil servants.
There's an element (not quite so simple, of course) of SAGE gave the right answers, but the wrong questions were asked.
One thing on NHS (lack of) efficiency. Appointments. Been awaiting a referral since September and got the letter this week, with appointment on date that I'm out of the country. Phoned up to change, took several goes to get through and eventually a call back after leaving a message. Appointment cancelled, a new one (at some unknown date) will be issued by post.
This is nuts. A system, such as for vaccinations, in which you could get alerted when you're near the top of the queue and choose your own appointment would eliminate so much wasted time. Staff booking and re-booking appointments, having time on the phone answering and calling back, probably reduce missed appointments (if the person can choose something convenient, rather than making do with something they can probably make work as cancelling is such a hassle). Eliminate sending out appointments in post...
Small things, but it would also eliminate a lot of frustration on everyone's behalf.
What you describe is a system known as "partial booking" which we have done for years.
It has some advantages, but a couple of disadvantages
1) Demand for appointments exceeds capacity so all the slots go to the fastest fingers, with none left.
2) Some groups of patients respond poorly to such systems, so never make contact. This is particularly so for those with mental health issues, learning disabilities, non-english speakers, techno-illiterates, frail elderly etc. These are groups already with worse health outcomes.
In this era of Amazon and Uber and working from home is there a reason why we don't see more old-school travelling GPs?
The world of retail has figured out it can be more efficient for one van to drive around all day delivering things than for hundreds of people to get in cars and go to a shop. Would a GP with essential equipment (and some common standard-dosed prescription drugs) doing the same with flexible hours help to overcome the constraints of overbooked surgeries?
I've had several experiences after hours where we've needed either to head across town to the one late night surgery available, or failing that ended up in A&E for something fairly minor like a cut finger needing a stitch or bad tonsilitis. I felt at the time that one or two doctors with a car or even a deliveroo-style bike could have come and sorted us in a fraction of the time and then moved on to the next patient.
One thing on NHS (lack of) efficiency. Appointments. Been awaiting a referral since September and got the letter this week, with appointment on date that I'm out of the country. Phoned up to change, took several goes to get through and eventually a call back after leaving a message. Appointment cancelled, a new one (at some unknown date) will be issued by post.
This is nuts. A system, such as for vaccinations, in which you could get alerted when you're near the top of the queue and choose your own appointment would eliminate so much wasted time. Staff booking and re-booking appointments, having time on the phone answering and calling back, probably reduce missed appointments (if the person can choose something convenient, rather than making do with something they can probably make work as cancelling is such a hassle). Eliminate sending out appointments in post...
Small things, but it would also eliminate a lot of frustration on everyone's behalf.
What you describe is a system known as "partial booking" which we have done for years.
It has some advantages, but a couple of disadvantages
1) Demand for appointments exceeds capacity so all the slots go to the fastest fingers, with none left.
2) Some groups of patients respond poorly to such systems, so never make contact. This is particularly so for those with mental health issues, learning disabilities, non-english speakers, techno-illiterates, frail elderly etc. These are groups already with worse health outcomes.
Do you not just hold back X% for those people?
It isn't obvious who they are from the referral information, so not that easy.
In my service we have a team failsafe checking those who don't book an appointment, particularly those at high risk. By their very nature these are not easy people to contact, and it is time consuming to do so. Our booking team get a lot of verbal abuse, which doesn't help staff retention.
One general difference between the US and UK; In the US, nurses and pharmacists administer most vaccine injections, not doctors. My first two COVID shots (or, if you prefer, "jabs") were given by nurses; the later ones by pharmacists. (When I mentioned this to pharmacists here, they were surprised and, I thought, one of them seemed a bit amused.)
One thing that is hard for non-Americans (and even many Americans) ot understand is that there is no "American model" of health care.
Sixth, there are health savings accounts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_savings_account (When governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels set these up for state employees. They have been very popular there, appear to have cut medical expenses, and, if anything, improved outcomes. They might not do as well with a less educated population.)
This is much what I proposed as an alternative funding scheme to private health insurance in my PB header:
It’s chilling to realize that racism is so powerful that the royal family would ruin what is for now the one opportunity they were given to reach the hearts and minds of the very people who make their lives possible. They had a gift: In Meghan Markle they had a woman who is intelligent, poised and largely able to live in the public eye, play the role of princess and give the best of herself in service of something bigger than herself.
… Harry and Meghan both say they would have worked on behalf of the monarchy for the rest of their lives if the royal family extended them a modicum of consideration and safety. They wanted the royal family to embrace Meghan’s role in Harry’s life and to use it — to use her — to the crown’s advantage. Instead, the family did the exact opposite time and time again.
The Sussexes were incredibly popular in Britain, in Australia, in South Africa and throughout the Commonwealth. Had they stayed in the monarchy, they may have become more and more of a threat.
I actually saw a bit of the Netflix doco last night (Mrs Anabob is well into the royals, loves the soap opera, fashion and the goss).
It wasn’t what I was expecting at all! It was actually pretty good, interesting even.
Clearly it’s very much from Meg’s standpoint but nevertheless is far superior to most of the cap doffing royalist trash that pollutes the telly.
No it was a whingefest from their $10 million mansion in sunny California paid for by Netflix millions directed at Americans while Brits face the cold and rising cost of living. Meghan really doesn't care that much about us or the Commonwealth. She cares about becoming A list in the US, witness her squeal of delight when Beyonce tweeted her.
The idea they would ever have moved to New Zealand or Canada over California or New York City (where Harry was filmed in a pal's apartment in Manhattan) is laughable
Out of interest have you been watching it? I haven't and I don't know anyone who has. Is it popular?
We have watched all of it bar the last episode, it was clearly scripted and orchestrated by Meghan, Harry is just her puppet she used for social advancement.
In a few years once he is no longer useful she probably dumps him for a tech billionaire rather than end up a latter day Wallis Simpson
You're a bit like the Daily Mail online on this. Every day they have an article saying "Why We Should Ignore Meghan and Harry!". This is followed by another 30 articles about, er, Harry and Meghan.
But the comparison is strikingly apt. Edward and Mrs Simpson were massive news in the English speaking world for years - as Harry and Meghan are now. But then the world moved on - war! - and their glamour faded fast. And their salience fell away
The same will happen to H&M
Indeed, the Princess of Wales is also the strongest royal now the Queen has passed and will deal with the Duchess of Sussex as the Queen Mother dealt with the Duchess of Windsor, ignore her but ensure they both fade into obscurity in exile abroad while the royal family focuses in on her husband and children as William prepares to take the throne
Kate (along with Meghan) is going to fade into obscurity in exile abroad? Very noble of her to let the royal family focus on her husband and children, but not sure she needs to exile herself!
Let the Sussexes fade into obscurity abroad
Amen to that. Although the same for the entire Windsor family would suit me, to be honest.
Btw, is Sussexes the correct plural? Can't help feeling it might be Sussexi or Sussexen or Sussexa, but I'm not classicist or whatever I should be to know these things. Just a bog standard local comp kind of guy
Sussex is good Anglo Saxon - the good folk are just the south saxons. Sussexes is fine.
One general difference between the US and UK; In the US, nurses and pharmacists administer most vaccine injections, not doctors. My first two COVID shots (or, if you prefer, "jabs") were given by nurses; the later ones by pharmacists. (When I mentioned this to pharmacists here, they were surprised and, I thought, one of them seemed a bit amused.)
Nearly all are done by nurses here too. I think it is Germany that restricts it to doctors.
A entire nation forced itself into OCD weirdness. All those beautiful faces and smiles not being seen
Tbf mask-wearing was rife amongst east Asian countries even before Covid.
No it wasn't. Jeez. You do know who you are talking to?!
I've travelled all over Asia, I go to Thailand every winter (plague allowing), I lived in Japan for a few months. I know Asia REALLY well - better than any continent outside Europe
At most during a cold winter with lots of bugs you would see 5% of people wearing masks, or maybe 10% during epic pollution
Now Japan is 99% mask wearing, all the time, everywhere. It is a tragic situation
Fascinating article on how we avoided a lockdown last December. Ministers did not trust Sage, did their own research and prevented lockdown. Maybe some of them read PB at the time!
"ministers spotted a common refrain from those in Sage: any bad news from South Africa (such as faster transmission) was modelled and reported in an instant. But any good news – even hugely good news – was either ignored, or placed in the ‘too early to say’ category."
Worth remembering Starmer was pushing for a lockdown then too. It can be put in the "he'd be a shit PM" column.
There is such a thing as the precautionary principle. It's wise to take bad news more seriously in such a case. So [edit] the principle quoted here doesn't work.
It's the technicalities that resolve the issue, and ministers are not epidemiologists.
SAGE were not exhibiting that precautionary principle. For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians.
It is to pb.com's eternal credit that the good news from South Africa was pushed front and centre. If it had a role in informing our own MPs, then it performed a valuable role. Sometimes easy to forget how much brilliant data was being presented here.
I have a different view. What was known[1] was that it was highly transmissible. What was not know but suspected was that it was less severe. If asked how to act to keep the country safe[2], which was pretty much the brief, then the answer has to be that the safe (against immediate Covid harm[3]) option was some more restrictions. Not imposing restrictions was a gamble with obvious upside but possibly (if omicron did turn out to be bad) a huge downside. Whether to take the gamble was the politicians' call, but SAGE were scientifically right not to effectively guarantee them that it was the correct choice. There are times in science when we all know the answer, but we wait for the actual evidence to be solid before saying it publicly. Because sometimes it turns out that the answer we all 'knew' was wrong.
All said as someone who thought the government did well at the end on 2021 on Covid, Starmer was wrong (and cynical about it, too). I believe I was posting on here that we probably should not lock down,[4] but that SAGE were doing the job they were asked to do on the hard evidence (not anecdote) available.
[1] due to the lag from infection to hospitalisation to death we knew much more about how infectious it was than how severe - docs on the ground had a better idea, for sure, but docs on the ground are often wrong too (see how many docs reported miraculous results with pharma X for Covid, only for proper trials to show it was a dud) [2] from immediate Covid harm, not the whole picture, sure [3] there are of course many harms from lockdowns [4] easy for me to say on here, much harder decision if I was PM
I'm broadly on the same page, with one major exception. I don't believe (and I may be wrong) that anyone on SAGE was considering the downsides of lockdowns on health, mental health and the economy. They were meeting the remit of how to respond to the situation with omicron, in the face of limited information - it was obviously rapidly spreading, but seemed to be milder (with lots of caveats on the later). My feeling at the time was it was going to be ok without drastic measures - we were well vaccinated in the UK at that point. If asked to minimise risk of omicron to the nations health then putting in restrictions would be the natural step.
I also strongly suspect that most members of SAGE would have found lockdown mostly ok - living in nice houses with gardens, able to work from the home office etc. Much easier to impose conditions on peoples lives if those conditions are not that personally onerous. See also those who wanted to permanently close nightclubs... I don't imagine any of those ones ever wanted to go to a nightclub!
Yes, FWIW, I agree. The makeup and remit of SAGE was too narrow, I think. There should have been more people representing other interests so that there was a more rounded picture being presented to politicians. As it was, politicians had to make that more rounded case themselves, or with the help of less expert civil servants.
There's an element (not quite so simple, of course) of SAGE gave the right answers, but the wrong questions were asked.
Other interests weren't allowed to be considered. That was "killing grannies".
One general difference between the US and UK; In the US, nurses and pharmacists administer most vaccine injections, not doctors. My first two COVID shots (or, if you prefer, "jabs") were given by nurses; the later ones by pharmacists. (When I mentioned this to pharmacists here, they were surprised and, I thought, one of them seemed a bit amused.)
Nurses generally administer them here. 2 of my covid shots were from Nurses, one from a volunteer. Pharmacists often give flu jabs too - just rock up to Boots and get one. So I don't think there's much difference and I'm surprised by your pharmacists' reaction.
Fascinating article on how we avoided a lockdown last December. Ministers did not trust Sage, did their own research and prevented lockdown. Maybe some of them read PB at the time!
"ministers spotted a common refrain from those in Sage: any bad news from South Africa (such as faster transmission) was modelled and reported in an instant. But any good news – even hugely good news – was either ignored, or placed in the ‘too early to say’ category."
Worth remembering Starmer was pushing for a lockdown then too. It can be put in the "he'd be a shit PM" column.
There is such a thing as the precautionary principle. It's wise to take bad news more seriously in such a case. So [edit] the principle quoted here doesn't work.
It's the technicalities that resolve the issue, and ministers are not epidemiologists.
SAGE were not exhibiting that precautionary principle. For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians.
It is to pb.com's eternal credit that the good news from South Africa was pushed front and centre. If it had a role in informing our own MPs, then it performed a valuable role. Sometimes easy to forget how much brilliant data was being presented here.
I have a different view. What was known[1] was that it was highly transmissible. What was not know but suspected was that it was less severe. If asked how to act to keep the country safe[2], which was pretty much the brief, then the answer has to be that the safe (against immediate Covid harm[3]) option was some more restrictions. Not imposing restrictions was a gamble with obvious upside but possibly (if omicron did turn out to be bad) a huge downside. Whether to take the gamble was the politicians' call, but SAGE were scientifically right not to effectively guarantee them that it was the correct choice. There are times in science when we all know the answer, but we wait for the actual evidence to be solid before saying it publicly. Because sometimes it turns out that the answer we all 'knew' was wrong.
All said as someone who thought the government did well at the end on 2021 on Covid, Starmer was wrong (and cynical about it, too). I believe I was posting on here that we probably should not lock down,[4] but that SAGE were doing the job they were asked to do on the hard evidence (not anecdote) available.
[1] due to the lag from infection to hospitalisation to death we knew much more about how infectious it was than how severe - docs on the ground had a better idea, for sure, but docs on the ground are often wrong too (see how many docs reported miraculous results with pharma X for Covid, only for proper trials to show it was a dud) [2] from immediate Covid harm, not the whole picture, sure [3] there are of course many harms from lockdowns [4] easy for me to say on here, much harder decision if I was PM
I'm broadly on the same page, with one major exception. I don't believe (and I may be wrong) that anyone on SAGE was considering the downsides of lockdowns on health, mental health and the economy. They were meeting the remit of how to respond to the situation with omicron, in the face of limited information - it was obviously rapidly spreading, but seemed to be milder (with lots of caveats on the later). My feeling at the time was it was going to be ok without drastic measures - we were well vaccinated in the UK at that point. If asked to minimise risk of omicron to the nations health then putting in restrictions would be the natural step.
I also strongly suspect that most members of SAGE would have found lockdown mostly ok - living in nice houses with gardens, able to work from the home office etc. Much easier to impose conditions on peoples lives if those conditions are not that personally onerous. See also those who wanted to permanently close nightclubs... I don't imagine any of those ones ever wanted to go to a nightclub!
Yes, FWIW, I agree. The makeup and remit of SAGE was too narrow, I think. There should have been more people representing other interests so that there was a more rounded picture being presented to politicians. As it was, politicians had to make that more rounded case themselves, or with the help of less expert civil servants.
There's an element (not quite so simple, of course) of SAGE gave the right answers, but the wrong questions were asked.
SAGE is a Scientific advisory group. It is up to politicians taking wider advice to decide what to do with the scientific advice compared to economists etc.
A entire nation forced itself into OCD weirdness. All those beautiful faces and smiles not being seen
Tbf mask-wearing was rife amongst east Asian countries even before Covid.
No it wasn't. Jeez. You do know who you are talking to?!
I've travelled all over Asia, I go to Thailand every winter (plague allowing), I lived in Japan for a few months. I know Asia REALLY well - better than any continent outside Europe
At most during a cold winter with lots of bugs you would see 5% of people wearing masks, or maybe 10% during epic pollution
Now Japan is 99% mask wearing, all the time, everywhere. It is a tragic situation
Masks are still required on Vienna’s public transport system And the take up was far higher than I expected it to be.
A entire nation forced itself into OCD weirdness. All those beautiful faces and smiles not being seen
Tbf mask-wearing was rife amongst east Asian countries even before Covid.
No it wasn't. Jeez. You do know who you are talking to?!
I've travelled all over Asia, I go to Thailand every winter (plague allowing), I lived in Japan for a few months. I know Asia REALLY well - better than any continent outside Europe
At most during a cold winter with lots of bugs you would see 5% of people wearing masks, or maybe 10% during epic pollution
Now Japan is 99% mask wearing, all the time, everywhere. It is a tragic situation
The difference being that mask wearing was at least a thing in the far east, whereas it was not here. And notably it is now very few people here who are still wearing masks.
We were asked to mask up for my wife's latest scan last week. I have no issue with this. Healthcare settings are disease central anyway (hospitals, no matter how well cleaned, are not healthy places).
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
I'm no NHS cheerleader. But it does have one undeniable benefit over its counterparts elsewhere, which is that it is cheap. Whether it is good value is more debatable, but my view is that it is (at the risk of falling into the trap of setting the American model up as the only alternative, the American model is awful, awful value for money; incentives are set up to introduce things which patients don't value.)
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
I was in Germany when they introduced a EUR 10.00 fee for a doctor's appointment in 2004. In the end, though, it failed to achieve the stated aim of reducing superfluous visits to the doctor, but instead deterred poorer people from seeking necessary treatment. It also ended up costing more in administration than it brought in income and was abolished in 2013.
There is no national healthcare system in Sweden, it is organised on a regional basis. Fees vary from region to region, but a visit to the GP is 100kr to 300kr (£7.90 to £23.70) and a visit to a consultant is 200kr to 400kr (£15.80 to £31.60).
It is fairly easy to get a GP appointment, especially for children (who are free), but you might have to wait a few days if it’s not urgent. Nearly all contact is electronic, made easy by the national id system. Repeat prescriptions are super easy.
In addition to the public services, there is a plethora of private providers, mostly online but increasingly concessions at the entrances to big supermarkets. Mental healthcare online is huge, as are holiday/flu/whatever vaccinations down at the supermarket.
Your daily reminder that the man who waltzed off with the Parthenon marbles, on behalf of the British Empire, was Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine, born in Broomhall, Fife, Scotland
Don't let facts get in the way of racism,
@StuartDickson seems to be the only example of a pure, unabashed racist on PB. He fears, loathes and despises the English, simply because they are English, and it applies to all English people. He’s really not a great advert for Scottish Nationalism, yet his Nat friends all tolerate and encourage him, which is rather telling
The strange thing is, if you can somehow force Mr Dickson onto other subjects, he’s often quite interesting. The summer habits of the Swedes. Uses for snowberries. Involuntary nudism
Yet, also a racist. And unapologetic
Don't think he's ever unapologetically bigged up Nick Griffin, Tommy Robinson or Putin, or called for the internment of Muslims.
No one is saying he has. He has, however, openly stated his hatred of England and English people. Not all racists are the same.
Yep, but I'm saying someone has and all the HE DID A ANTI ENGLISH RAYZISM!!! types on PB don't give a fuck.
And yet again you are moved to defend your fellow Nat, come what may, and without a blink of shame
Perhaps because you share Stuart Dickson’s anti-English racism? But you are more domesticated, so you don’t let it show. He is feral. Gone to savagery in the wilds of Skane
On this occasion seems more like TUD is attacking you, rather than actually defending SD, who is obviously another idiot.
Well, I’ve just asked TUD if @StuartDickson is actually a racist. He seems close to admitting it, finally. The big question of the morning. Is @StuartDickson a racist
Let’s see what @Theuniondivvie says. Whether he can - belatedly - admit it
I suspect he isn't. I suspect you are.
Clear enough?
I'm actually in agreement with TUD here.
Because Stuart isn't a racist. There's no suggestion he despises people based on skin colour.
He's a xenophobe. He hates everyone except Scots and Swedes (and I'm not always sure about the latter). He especially hates the English, and can't understand why everyone else doesn't.
And it does affect his judgement really badly and lead him to make bizarre statements, such as claiming Scotland provides England with power or water, or that it's full of oil that's being stolen, or that English power bills are six times that of Europe, or that Britain uses more energy than Sweden.
Which is why any time he posts something that is even tangentially about England in particular, assume he's lying or wrong because he invariably is.
So race is just skin colour? How about anti-Semitism against Ashkenazi Jews, is that therefore not racism? The pale Jews who died in Belsen, were they not the victims of racism?
Absurd
If you despise someone simply because of their nationality/culture/origin, that is a species of racism. Despising people because of their skin pigmentation is ANOTHER species of racism
Official definitions of racism, used in the U.K. and elsewhere include prejudice against nationality.
So, if someone abuses a Polish man for being Polish, that is counted as a racism.
The most damaging part is not the strikes themselves, it's the fact they shine a light on how broken the health service and particularly emergency care are currently.
I think this is a good point. Seemingly every year of my adult life I've been hearing about how the NHS is going to collapse, and about scandal after scandal, but also about how great everything is because of more money coming in etc etc, and neither has been entirely accurate.
For the first time, the doomsayers are not just making traction, which has happened before, it seems to be accepted as true, it's just the solution people argue about.
A entire nation forced itself into OCD weirdness. All those beautiful faces and smiles not being seen
Tbf mask-wearing was rife amongst east Asian countries even before Covid.
No it wasn't. Jeez. You do know who you are talking to?!
I've travelled all over Asia, I go to Thailand every winter (plague allowing), I lived in Japan for a few months. I know Asia REALLY well - better than any continent outside Europe
At most during a cold winter with lots of bugs you would see 5% of people wearing masks, or maybe 10% during epic pollution
Now Japan is 99% mask wearing, all the time, everywhere. It is a tragic situation
The difference being that mask wearing was at least a thing in the far east, whereas it was not here. And notably it is now very few people here who are still wearing masks.
We were asked to mask up for my wife's latest scan last week. I have no issue with this. Healthcare settings are disease central anyway (hospitals, no matter how well cleaned, are not healthy places).
But in general life? No thanks.
The Japanese are at least debating their madness. But they are mad
"At "Beethoven's 9th with a Cast of 10,000" in #Japan, most of the choir wore face masks and sang with fans around their necks. It is shameful that Japan is the only country in the world that does such an abnormal thing."
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
I'm no NHS cheerleader. But it does have one undeniable benefit over its counterparts elsewhere, which is that it is cheap. Whether it is good value is more debatable, but my view is that it is (at the risk of falling into the trap of setting the American model up as the only alternative, the American model is awful, awful value for money; incentives are set up to introduce things which patients don't value.)
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
I remember hearing an interview with an elderly French political grandee (possibly ex-ambassador) saying "The great problem with the British is their difficulty in seeing the difference between 'a bargain' and 'cheap'."
It keeps coming back to mind when I think of government services, housebuilding, energy storage, etc etc etc depressing etc etc.
That is a very good way of looking at it.
At the moment of course we pay a lot (in overall tax) for crap service and outcomes across the board, with few highlights. And now we're so deep into the mire we cannot afford to get out of trap of spending more for worse.
On face masks and snakes. When I was growing up on a farm, I was afraid of snakes -- which were impossible to avoid completely.
I realized when I was about twelve years old that my fear was mostly irrational. So I went out looking for a snake, and found a garter snake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garter_snake
I captured it, studied it, and carried it around for a half hour or so. And after that experience, I found I had lost most of my fear of snakes.
A psychiatrist should be able to devise a similar treatment for someone who had an irrational aversion to, for example, medical face masks.
Fascinating article on how we avoided a lockdown last December. Ministers did not trust Sage, did their own research and prevented lockdown. Maybe some of them read PB at the time!
"ministers spotted a common refrain from those in Sage: any bad news from South Africa (such as faster transmission) was modelled and reported in an instant. But any good news – even hugely good news – was either ignored, or placed in the ‘too early to say’ category."
Worth remembering Starmer was pushing for a lockdown then too. It can be put in the "he'd be a shit PM" column.
There is such a thing as the precautionary principle. It's wise to take bad news more seriously in such a case. So [edit] the principle quoted here doesn't work.
It's the technicalities that resolve the issue, and ministers are not epidemiologists.
SAGE were not exhibiting that precautionary principle. For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians.
It is to pb.com's eternal credit that the good news from South Africa was pushed front and centre. If it had a role in informing our own MPs, then it performed a valuable role. Sometimes easy to forget how much brilliant data was being presented here.
I have a different view. What was known[1] was that it was highly transmissible. What was not know but suspected was that it was less severe. If asked how to act to keep the country safe[2], which was pretty much the brief, then the answer has to be that the safe (against immediate Covid harm[3]) option was some more restrictions. Not imposing restrictions was a gamble with obvious upside but possibly (if omicron did turn out to be bad) a huge downside. Whether to take the gamble was the politicians' call, but SAGE were scientifically right not to effectively guarantee them that it was the correct choice. There are times in science when we all know the answer, but we wait for the actual evidence to be solid before saying it publicly. Because sometimes it turns out that the answer we all 'knew' was wrong.
All said as someone who thought the government did well at the end on 2021 on Covid, Starmer was wrong (and cynical about it, too). I believe I was posting on here that we probably should not lock down,[4] but that SAGE were doing the job they were asked to do on the hard evidence (not anecdote) available.
[1] due to the lag from infection to hospitalisation to death we knew much more about how infectious it was than how severe - docs on the ground had a better idea, for sure, but docs on the ground are often wrong too (see how many docs reported miraculous results with pharma X for Covid, only for proper trials to show it was a dud) [2] from immediate Covid harm, not the whole picture, sure [3] there are of course many harms from lockdowns [4] easy for me to say on here, much harder decision if I was PM
I'm broadly on the same page, with one major exception. I don't believe (and I may be wrong) that anyone on SAGE was considering the downsides of lockdowns on health, mental health and the economy. They were meeting the remit of how to respond to the situation with omicron, in the face of limited information - it was obviously rapidly spreading, but seemed to be milder (with lots of caveats on the later). My feeling at the time was it was going to be ok without drastic measures - we were well vaccinated in the UK at that point. If asked to minimise risk of omicron to the nations health then putting in restrictions would be the natural step.
I also strongly suspect that most members of SAGE would have found lockdown mostly ok - living in nice houses with gardens, able to work from the home office etc. Much easier to impose conditions on peoples lives if those conditions are not that personally onerous. See also those who wanted to permanently close nightclubs... I don't imagine any of those ones ever wanted to go to a nightclub!
Yes, FWIW, I agree. The makeup and remit of SAGE was too narrow, I think. There should have been more people representing other interests so that there was a more rounded picture being presented to politicians. As it was, politicians had to make that more rounded case themselves, or with the help of less expert civil servants.
There's an element (not quite so simple, of course) of SAGE gave the right answers, but the wrong questions were asked.
But isn't the whole job of a politician to make the rounded case themselves with the help of less expert civil servants?
That is narrow or vested interests make cases to the government, who consider eveything in context and make a call.
Now, in the early days of Covid it would be a brave PM and politician who would have gone against the Sage advice - not that it stopped people claiming the government was doing that when they were not - and yet we know they did push back on some things later.
On face masks and snakes. When I was growing up on a farm, I was afraid of snakes -- which were impossible to avoid completely.
I realized when I was about twelve years old that my fear was mostly irrational. So I went out looking for a snake, and found a garter snake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garter_snake
I captured it, studied it, and carried it around for a half hour or so. And after that experience, I found I had lost most of my fear of snakes.
A psychiatrist should be able to devise a similar treatment for someone who had an irrational aversion to, for example, medical face masks.
Perhaps they could get a snake to wear a face mask?
Your daily reminder that the man who waltzed off with the Parthenon marbles, on behalf of the British Empire, was Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine, born in Broomhall, Fife, Scotland
Don't let facts get in the way of racism,
@StuartDickson seems to be the only example of a pure, unabashed racist on PB. He fears, loathes and despises the English, simply because they are English, and it applies to all English people. He’s really not a great advert for Scottish Nationalism, yet his Nat friends all tolerate and encourage him, which is rather telling
The strange thing is, if you can somehow force Mr Dickson onto other subjects, he’s often quite interesting. The summer habits of the Swedes. Uses for snowberries. Involuntary nudism
Yet, also a racist. And unapologetic
Don't think he's ever unapologetically bigged up Nick Griffin, Tommy Robinson or Putin, or called for the internment of Muslims.
No one is saying he has. He has, however, openly stated his hatred of England and English people. Not all racists are the same.
Yep, but I'm saying someone has and all the HE DID A ANTI ENGLISH RAYZISM!!! types on PB don't give a fuck.
And yet again you are moved to defend your fellow Nat, come what may, and without a blink of shame
Perhaps because you share Stuart Dickson’s anti-English racism? But you are more domesticated, so you don’t let it show. He is feral. Gone to savagery in the wilds of Skane
On this occasion seems more like TUD is attacking you, rather than actually defending SD, who is obviously another idiot.
Well, I’ve just asked TUD if @StuartDickson is actually a racist. He seems close to admitting it, finally. The big question of the morning. Is @StuartDickson a racist
Let’s see what @Theuniondivvie says. Whether he can - belatedly - admit it
I suspect he isn't. I suspect you are.
Clear enough?
I'm actually in agreement with TUD here.
Because Stuart isn't a racist. There's no suggestion he despises people based on skin colour.
He's a xenophobe. He hates everyone except Scots and Swedes (and I'm not always sure about the latter). He especially hates the English, and can't understand why everyone else doesn't.
And it does affect his judgement really badly and lead him to make bizarre statements, such as claiming Scotland provides England with power or water, or that it's full of oil that's being stolen, or that English power bills are six times that of Europe, or that Britain uses more energy than Sweden.
Which is why any time he posts something that is even tangentially about England in particular, assume he's lying or wrong because he invariably is.
So race is just skin colour? How about anti-Semitism against Ashkenazi Jews, is that therefore not racism? The pale Jews who died in Belsen, were they not the victims of racism?
Absurd
If you despise someone simply because of their nationality/culture/origin, that is a species of racism. Despising people because of their skin pigmentation is ANOTHER species of racism
Official definitions of racism, used in the U.K. and elsewhere include prejudice against nationality.
So, if someone abuses a Polish man for being Polish, that is counted as a racism.
I wonder how "coloured" you have to be for @ydoethur before you can be an acceptable victim of racism? Mahogany brown? Middle beige? Ecru? Pale tan?
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
I'm no NHS cheerleader. But it does have one undeniable benefit over its counterparts elsewhere, which is that it is cheap. Whether it is good value is more debatable, but my view is that it is (at the risk of falling into the trap of setting the American model up as the only alternative, the American model is awful, awful value for money; incentives are set up to introduce things which patients don't value.)
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
I was in Germany when they introduced a EUR 10.00 fee for a doctor's appointment in 2004. In the end, though, it failed to achieve the stated aim of reducing superfluous visits to the doctor, but instead deterred poorer people from seeking necessary treatment. It also ended up costing more in administration than it brought in income and was abolished in 2013.
There is no national healthcare system in Sweden, it is organised on a regional basis. Fees vary from region to region, but a visit to the GP is 100kr to 300kr (£7.90 to £23.70) and a visit to a consultant is 200kr to 400kr (£15.80 to £31.60).
It is fairly easy to get a GP appointment, especially for children (who are free), but you might have to wait a few days if it’s not urgent. Nearly all contact is electronic, made easy by the national id system. Repeat prescriptions are super easy.
In addition to the public services, there is a plethora of private providers, mostly online but increasingly concessions at the entrances to big supermarkets. Mental healthcare online is huge, as are holiday/flu/whatever vaccinations down at the supermarket.
I believe I am right in saying you also have to pay a % of the cost of any prescription drugs (up to a yearly cap) and also there is a fee per day for hospital stay.
I always find it interesting that left leaning people in the UK for many years have pointed to Sweden as a model of how the UK should do public services, but I have a feeling the same people would be totally against implementation of this element of the Swedish system (in fact we see it when the idea of GP fees / fines for appointments are ever raised here).
The "debate" immediately defaults to NHS vs US system comparisons, rather than the multitudes of other very successful healthcare systems out there.
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
I'm no NHS cheerleader. But it does have one undeniable benefit over its counterparts elsewhere, which is that it is cheap. Whether it is good value is more debatable, but my view is that it is (at the risk of falling into the trap of setting the American model up as the only alternative, the American model is awful, awful value for money; incentives are set up to introduce things which patients don't value.)
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
I remember hearing an interview with an elderly French political grandee (possibly ex-ambassador) saying "The great problem with the British is their difficulty in seeing the difference between 'a bargain' and 'cheap'."
It keeps coming back to mind when I think of government services, housebuilding, energy storage, etc etc etc depressing etc etc.
That is a very good way of looking at it.
At the moment of course we pay a lot (in overall tax) for crap service and outcomes across the board, with few highlights. And now we're so deep into the mire we cannot afford to get out of trap of spending more for worse.
The ideal solution would be to develop a time machine, go back a few decades and not vote for "more services for less tax by sweating the assets harder". Since that option isn't open to us, it's going to be painful.
Fascinating article on how we avoided a lockdown last December. Ministers did not trust Sage, did their own research and prevented lockdown. Maybe some of them read PB at the time!
"ministers spotted a common refrain from those in Sage: any bad news from South Africa (such as faster transmission) was modelled and reported in an instant. But any good news – even hugely good news – was either ignored, or placed in the ‘too early to say’ category."
Worth remembering Starmer was pushing for a lockdown then too. It can be put in the "he'd be a shit PM" column.
There is such a thing as the precautionary principle. It's wise to take bad news more seriously in such a case. So [edit] the principle quoted here doesn't work.
It's the technicalities that resolve the issue, and ministers are not epidemiologists.
SAGE were not exhibiting that precautionary principle. For whatever reason, pushing whatever private agenda, they were caught out not being epidemiologists, they were being politicians.
It is to pb.com's eternal credit that the good news from South Africa was pushed front and centre. If it had a role in informing our own MPs, then it performed a valuable role. Sometimes easy to forget how much brilliant data was being presented here.
I have a different view. What was known[1] was that it was highly transmissible. What was not know but suspected was that it was less severe. If asked how to act to keep the country safe[2], which was pretty much the brief, then the answer has to be that the safe (against immediate Covid harm[3]) option was some more restrictions. Not imposing restrictions was a gamble with obvious upside but possibly (if omicron did turn out to be bad) a huge downside. Whether to take the gamble was the politicians' call, but SAGE were scientifically right not to effectively guarantee them that it was the correct choice. There are times in science when we all know the answer, but we wait for the actual evidence to be solid before saying it publicly. Because sometimes it turns out that the answer we all 'knew' was wrong.
All said as someone who thought the government did well at the end on 2021 on Covid, Starmer was wrong (and cynical about it, too). I believe I was posting on here that we probably should not lock down,[4] but that SAGE were doing the job they were asked to do on the hard evidence (not anecdote) available.
[1] due to the lag from infection to hospitalisation to death we knew much more about how infectious it was than how severe - docs on the ground had a better idea, for sure, but docs on the ground are often wrong too (see how many docs reported miraculous results with pharma X for Covid, only for proper trials to show it was a dud) [2] from immediate Covid harm, not the whole picture, sure [3] there are of course many harms from lockdowns [4] easy for me to say on here, much harder decision if I was PM
I'm broadly on the same page, with one major exception. I don't believe (and I may be wrong) that anyone on SAGE was considering the downsides of lockdowns on health, mental health and the economy. They were meeting the remit of how to respond to the situation with omicron, in the face of limited information - it was obviously rapidly spreading, but seemed to be milder (with lots of caveats on the later). My feeling at the time was it was going to be ok without drastic measures - we were well vaccinated in the UK at that point. If asked to minimise risk of omicron to the nations health then putting in restrictions would be the natural step.
I also strongly suspect that most members of SAGE would have found lockdown mostly ok - living in nice houses with gardens, able to work from the home office etc. Much easier to impose conditions on peoples lives if those conditions are not that personally onerous. See also those who wanted to permanently close nightclubs... I don't imagine any of those ones ever wanted to go to a nightclub!
Yes, FWIW, I agree. The makeup and remit of SAGE was too narrow, I think. There should have been more people representing other interests so that there was a more rounded picture being presented to politicians. As it was, politicians had to make that more rounded case themselves, or with the help of less expert civil servants.
There's an element (not quite so simple, of course) of SAGE gave the right answers, but the wrong questions were asked.
But isn't the whole job of a politician to make the rounded case themselves with the help of less expert civil servants?
That is narrow or vested interests make cases to the government, who consider eveything in context and make a call.
Now, in the early days of Covid it would be a brave PM and politician who would have gone against the Sage advice - not that it stopped people claiming the government was doing that when they were not - and yet we know they did push back on some things later.
So it seems to me it worked as intended.
Yes, it is. But you'd perhaps have a more rounded analysis from SAGE taking into account wider societal things that were not in their remit (or, e.g. have an Economic Advisory Group on Emergencies) so that there was good (as good as possible) evidence across the whole picture on which the politicians then make a judgement.
As I said, I do think the government did well last December to take the gamble and hold their nerve.
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
I'm no NHS cheerleader. But it does have one undeniable benefit over its counterparts elsewhere, which is that it is cheap. Whether it is good value is more debatable, but my view is that it is (at the risk of falling into the trap of setting the American model up as the only alternative, the American model is awful, awful value for money; incentives are set up to introduce things which patients don't value.)
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
I remember hearing an interview with an elderly French political grandee (possibly ex-ambassador) saying "The great problem with the British is their difficulty in seeing the difference between 'a bargain' and 'cheap'."
It keeps coming back to mind when I think of government services, housebuilding, energy storage, etc etc etc depressing etc etc.
That is a very good way of looking at it.
At the moment of course we pay a lot (in overall tax) for crap service and outcomes across the board, with few highlights. And now we're so deep into the mire we cannot afford to get out of trap of spending more for worse.
The ideal solution would be to develop a time machine, go back a few decades and not vote for "more services for less tax by sweating the assets harder". Since that option isn't open to us, it's going to be painful.
Just watched Back to the Future Part II on ITV! The original was on yesterday!
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
It also seems to hold that those who dislike the principle of universal healthcare are also the ones who could afford the alternatives and don't need to worry about how the new system would work.
The principle of universal healthcare free at the point of delivery is one shared by many European countries. But they are all grown up enough to understand that the one size fits all system which shuns private investment is a sure route to failure. We should be copying some of the systems used in Europe by countries like France and Germany where the private sector plays a much bigger part in front line health care but is very strictly regulated and where employers and employees are forced to pay for private medical insurance.
It works there very well and could work here if both sides get over their hangups.
Effectively, in my local area at least, as of today that service is not available.
I would be obliged to pay a private GP £170 (or more) for an appointment and I suspect they are experiencing a surge in demand too.
Just make sure you don't get ill this Christmas. Not everyone will be that lucky.
Your daily reminder that the man who waltzed off with the Parthenon marbles, on behalf of the British Empire, was Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine, born in Broomhall, Fife, Scotland
Don't let facts get in the way of racism,
@StuartDickson seems to be the only example of a pure, unabashed racist on PB. He fears, loathes and despises the English, simply because they are English, and it applies to all English people. He’s really not a great advert for Scottish Nationalism, yet his Nat friends all tolerate and encourage him, which is rather telling
The strange thing is, if you can somehow force Mr Dickson onto other subjects, he’s often quite interesting. The summer habits of the Swedes. Uses for snowberries. Involuntary nudism
Yet, also a racist. And unapologetic
Don't think he's ever unapologetically bigged up Nick Griffin, Tommy Robinson or Putin, or called for the internment of Muslims.
No one is saying he has. He has, however, openly stated his hatred of England and English people. Not all racists are the same.
Yep, but I'm saying someone has and all the HE DID A ANTI ENGLISH RAYZISM!!! types on PB don't give a fuck.
And yet again you are moved to defend your fellow Nat, come what may, and without a blink of shame
Perhaps because you share Stuart Dickson’s anti-English racism? But you are more domesticated, so you don’t let it show. He is feral. Gone to savagery in the wilds of Skane
On this occasion seems more like TUD is attacking you, rather than actually defending SD, who is obviously another idiot.
Well, I’ve just asked TUD if @StuartDickson is actually a racist. He seems close to admitting it, finally. The big question of the morning. Is @StuartDickson a racist
Let’s see what @Theuniondivvie says. Whether he can - belatedly - admit it
I suspect he isn't. I suspect you are.
Clear enough?
I'm actually in agreement with TUD here.
Because Stuart isn't a racist. There's no suggestion he despises people based on skin colour.
He's a xenophobe. He hates everyone except Scots and Swedes (and I'm not always sure about the latter). He especially hates the English, and can't understand why everyone else doesn't.
And it does affect his judgement really badly and lead him to make bizarre statements, such as claiming Scotland provides England with power or water, or that it's full of oil that's being stolen, or that English power bills are six times that of Europe, or that Britain uses more energy than Sweden.
Which is why any time he posts something that is even tangentially about England in particular, assume he's lying or wrong because he invariably is.
So race is just skin colour? How about anti-Semitism against Ashkenazi Jews, is that therefore not racism? The pale Jews who died in Belsen, were they not the victims of racism?
Absurd
If you despise someone simply because of their nationality/culture/origin, that is a species of racism. Despising people because of their skin pigmentation is ANOTHER species of racism
Official definitions of racism, used in the U.K. and elsewhere include prejudice against nationality.
So, if someone abuses a Polish man for being Polish, that is counted as a racism.
I wonder how "coloured" you have to be for @ydoethur before you can be an acceptable victim of racism? Mahogany brown? Middle beige? Ecru? Pale tan?
Perhaps he has an actual colour chart
In your case, of course, they just have to be sort of lightly tanned.
Daft definition if Malmesbury is correct though, and merely proves governments are incapable of using language properly.
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
Part of the answer is some kind of insurance system which encourages healthy living. The NHS has more demand on it than other systems because there is no punishment for living a shitty lifestyle. All across Europe healthcare systems do take into account a person's life choices and ultimately poor ones are not shoved onto society at large to pay, there's much more personal responsibility.
That may make some people uncomfortable but the reality is the UK is a fat, unhealthy nation and that is a direct consequence of the NHS removing any economic downsides of becoming fat and unhealthy.
Everybody seems to think the NHS is unsustainable, but I doubt there’s any unity behind what might replace it.
I think the rather boring, awful answer is likely more money, but those figures I posted yesterday on the significant lack of capital expenditure versus peer systems points to a grand and systemic misallocation of funds.
I'm no NHS cheerleader. But it does have one undeniable benefit over its counterparts elsewhere, which is that it is cheap. Whether it is good value is more debatable, but my view is that it is (at the risk of falling into the trap of setting the American model up as the only alternative, the American model is awful, awful value for money; incentives are set up to introduce things which patients don't value.)
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
I was in Germany when they introduced a EUR 10.00 fee for a doctor's appointment in 2004. In the end, though, it failed to achieve the stated aim of reducing superfluous visits to the doctor, but instead deterred poorer people from seeking necessary treatment. It also ended up costing more in administration than it brought in income and was abolished in 2013.
There is no national healthcare system in Sweden, it is organised on a regional basis. Fees vary from region to region, but a visit to the GP is 100kr to 300kr (£7.90 to £23.70) and a visit to a consultant is 200kr to 400kr (£15.80 to £31.60).
It is fairly easy to get a GP appointment, especially for children (who are free), but you might have to wait a few days if it’s not urgent. Nearly all contact is electronic, made easy by the national id system. Repeat prescriptions are super easy.
In addition to the public services, there is a plethora of private providers, mostly online but increasingly concessions at the entrances to big supermarkets. Mental healthcare online is huge, as are holiday/flu/whatever vaccinations down at the supermarket.
I believe I am right in saying you also have to pay a % of the cost of any prescription drugs (up to a yearly cap) and also there is a fee per day for hospital stay.
I always find it interesting that left leaning people in the UK for many years have pointed to Sweden as a model of how the UK should do public services, but I have a feeling the same people would be totally against implementation of this element of the Swedish system (in fact we see it when the idea of GP fees / fines for appointments are ever raised here).
The "debate" immediately defaults to NHS vs US system comparisons, rather than the multitudes of other very successful healthcare systems out there.
Yep.
I think the NHS is shit but I've got precisely nowhere in advancing this argument for all my years on this planet, for the reasons you mention.
It's a religion and seems to trigger some inner British notion of perfect fair play.
Fair enough, you might say, but we experience worse health outcomes overall (and more deaths) as a result.
The most damaging part is not the strikes themselves, it's the fact they shine a light on how broken the health service and particularly emergency care are currently.
I think this is a good point. Seemingly every year of my adult life I've been hearing about how the NHS is going to collapse, and about scandal after scandal, but also about how great everything is because of more money coming in etc etc, and neither has been entirely accurate.
For the first time, the doomsayers are not just making traction, which has happened before, it seems to be accepted as true, it's just the solution people argue about.
It gets shovelled significant increases each year, usually in real terms, but always seems to be in crisis.
I've lost confidence that any amount of money would fix it.
We may be about to see what happens when a nation of 1.4bn experiences the near- collapse of its health system, as happened in Hong Kong
Hong Kong has experienced 11,000 deaths in a province of 7.4m, about 0.14% of the population (intriguingly close to the proposed IFR of Latest Covid: 0.1%)
There are differences: Hong Kong is rich, which China is not, it has an excellent health system (which nearly broke down); China's health system is much sketchier. But China has had ample time to prepare, and it has seen what happened in Hongkers
If 60-70% of Chinese get Covid this winter we should expect 3-4 million people to die, following the pattern of Hong Kong - but the Chinese are forewarned
Could get quite hairy
Yes, although it's easy to get blinded by the sheer numbers of Chinese people that there are. That would be equivalent to 150,000 - 200,000 British people dying. Which is pretty much what happened. Obviously bad, but not as bad as bad as 3-4 million sounds.
Yes, 10 million people die every year in China, so 3m dead in a winter is horrible but not Black Death horrible. China will cope with the deaths
The problem is the potential for collapsing healthcare, and all that will follow from that
China apparently has a poor GP system, so people generally go to hospitals for almost anything. That could be a nasty pinchpoint
Irony is we didn't have a collapsing healthcare system during Covid but arguably do now.
I think there's a good argument for HMG to Nightingale the next 3-5 years just to get on top of the backlog.
Comments
But it really doesn’t make much sense here as the question was how much would a 19% pay rise for nurses cost and £1.ton looks right based on both the figures I’ve pulled from sources and @rcs1000 ’s independent attempt.
- We must do something
- This is something
- Therefore we must do this
The problem is that you start from the principle of universal free healthcare at the point of use. Any change you make means it’s no longer strictly universal and in some instances will no longer be free at the point of use. So whichever way you go it looks like a downgrade, even if it improves outcomes in the areas that remain under the NHS umbrella.
It works there very well and could work here if both sides get over their hangups.
Perhaps the fact that one of the members of SAGE was an actual fucking communist should have been a clue?
If SAGE started pushing policy in an anti-Semitic direction and it was revealed that one of it's members was Alfie Goebbels, policy advisor to the Hitler Institute, I don't think you'd have such trouble identifying the problem
"Social distancing and face masks should stay FOREVER says Communist SAGE committee member Professor Susan Michie"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9672347/Social-distancing-stay-FOREVER-says-Communist-supporting-SAGE-Covid-scientist-Susan-Michie.html
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/5417fec8-25ec-408a-aa54-caf4857ac5a4
Now they are apparently doing it again
"Dec 18, at #Beijing Chuiyangliu Hospital (北京垂杨柳医院), patients and bodies stayed in the same room.
#chinalockdown #ZeroCOVIDpolicy
#CCPChina #COVID19 #CCPVirus #AmazingChina #COVID #ZeroCovid
#lockdown #XiJinping #CCP #China"
https://twitter.com/jenniferzeng97/status/1605198379621007362?s=20&t=r1KWyWP4zjo_sk2IOIv1Vw
That looks unbelievably bad. Hellscape redux
YOU could see patients from 8 in the morning to 8 at night and it still wouldn't be enough," said Andy Mcintosh.
As a locum GP based in the Borders, Mcintosh sees nearly all his patients face-to-face.
He says his surgery overall is probably carrying out around 50 to 70 per cent more consultations with patients now than before the pandemic, yet appointments "disappear in the blink of an eye".
He said: "There's no capacity to meet demand. I wouldn't swap being a GP - but it's falling apart."
I know locally getting an appointment is impossible but the e-consultation means out surgery is handling way more consultations than before Covid - the issue is demand is higher.
And then lost SAGE's phone number.
Based on her reportedly doing HIIT and weighing just under 9 st.
(Afternoon all)
There were some truly moronic posts on PB at the time, one classic idiotic claim was that the South Africans were comparing their Omicron experience with our Delta experience. As such their views should be ignored: apples with pears.
They never were, of course, they were comparing their Omicron experience with THEIR Delta experience. A point I had to remind this forum of multiple times. One particular poster stands out. No names mentioned…
I’ve often wondered how long Gloria Hunniford can plank and it strikes me you probably have the answer.
My local surgery has perhaps done 15k COVID jabs this year, that were not in data a couple of years back.
Do these count as "consultations".
They are also doing a significantly higher % of phone appointments, as are the local hospital.
Is there a way of keeping the value for money while improving the quality? My view is that the way to do so would be to introduce notional charging, similar to the way we pay for prescriptions (I think this may be what the Irish do, but my understanding of this is slight). Free at the point of use isn't, in my view, supportable in the long term without adding increasing levels of tax burden to the working population. I'm very open to changing my mind on this however.
A neighbouring surgery has never changed its working practices, other than masks etc, so has seen people face to face throughout. That surgery regularly has spare appointments.
The increase in demand has been caused by GPs refusing to see people
If they offer to keep you overnight for observation, refuse unless they admit you.
Observation means they dedicate a nurse to monitor you (in theory) and charge you accordingly
A game of political SNAP.
Hong Kong has experienced 11,000 deaths in a province of 7.4m, about 0.14% of the population (intriguingly close to the proposed IFR of Latest Covid: 0.1%)
There are differences: Hong Kong is rich, which China is not, it has an excellent health system (which nearly broke down); China's health system is much sketchier. But China has had ample time to prepare, and it has seen what happened in Hongkers
If 60-70% of Chinese get Covid this winter we should expect 3-4 million people to die, following the pattern of Hong Kong - but the Chinese are forewarned
Could get quite hairy
It keeps coming back to mind when I think of government services, housebuilding, energy storage, etc etc etc depressing etc etc.
I reckon Xi and the CCP have realised: Right, we can't go on with Zero Covid, it's destroying the economy and stoking civil unrest - and also unsustainably pointless, as Nu Omicron has an infectivity of R18, it is possibly the most infectious disease mankind has encountered. It cannot be contained
But that infectivity is also an advantage. If you relax all mitigations the disease will rip through the entire population in a few short months - maybe weeks - and then you are on the other side, with lots of natural immunity
So the CCP has to get to the other side. The idea now is to persuade everyone Omicron is just a cold, push the population through a hellish winter of infection, lie to everyone about the scale of deaths and cases, so no one panics, then China can rejoin the world
TBH it might actually be the best policy for them ruthless but fair, mendacious but judicious. In the meantime they will ramp up vax as much as possible (tho this seems weirdly impossible for them)
It is, however, causing great confusion to communist China lovers on Twitter, who have been full of praise for the socialist excellence of Zero Covid - so much better than the West- but now watch as China belatedly copies the West and learns to live with the virus. A lot of them are claiming China has been "tricked" into opening up
I'm just going to typical metrics for people doing HIIT. Bench press is around 60-70% of bodyweight, but rather more for a single rep.
There are actually tabloid numbers out there for Kate's planking skills, but this is probably beneath you
I would not be surprised if Gloria H has an exercise video or two from when she was PB age, but perhaps it would be exercise bikes and walking the dog.
I expect it to be grim, but at least the current variants are not so likely to cause lung disease as the original and Delta were.
All said as someone who thought the government did well at the end on 2021 on Covid, Starmer was wrong (and cynical about it, too). I believe I was posting on here that we probably should not lock down,[4] but that SAGE were doing the job they were asked to do on the hard evidence (not anecdote) available.
[1] due to the lag from infection to hospitalisation to death we knew much more about how infectious it was than how severe - docs on the ground had a better idea, for sure, but docs on the ground are often wrong too (see how many docs reported miraculous results with pharma X for Covid, only for proper trials to show it was a dud)
[2] from immediate Covid harm, not the whole picture, sure
[3] there are of course many harms from lockdowns
[4] easy for me to say on here, much harder decision if I was PM
Because Stuart isn't a racist. There's no suggestion he despises people based on skin colour.
He's a xenophobe. He hates everyone except Scots and Swedes (and I'm not always sure about the latter). He especially hates the English, and can't understand why everyone else doesn't.
And it does affect his judgement really badly and lead him to make bizarre statements, such as claiming Scotland provides England with power or water, or that it's full of oil that's being stolen, or that English power bills are six times that of Europe, or that Britain uses more energy than Sweden.
Which is why any time he posts something that is even tangentially about England in particular, assume he's lying or wrong because he invariably is.
If 1 billion Chinese get the bug in the next 6 months, and 50 million get Long Covid - ie 1 in 20 - and cannot work, that will be a huge blow to the global economy
Source:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/224853/over-million-adults-england-have-long/
Btw, is Sussexes the correct plural? Can't help feeling it might be Sussexi or Sussexen or Sussexa, but I'm not classicist or whatever I should be to know these things. Just a bog standard local comp kind of guy
NEW YORK (AP) — The good news on Robert A. Caro’s long-awaited next book is that he knows the final words.
The bad news is that he’s known them for years and remains far from concluding his Lyndon B. Johnson series. Caro, who also wrote “The Power Broker,” has published four volumes of “The Years of Lyndon Johnson” over a period of 40 years. Volume 4, “The Passage of Power,” came out in 2012.
The fifth volume is expected to cover Johnson’s first full year as president, 1964, and continue through the end of his administration in 1969 and his death four years later.
“It is huge,” Caro says of the scale of the final book.
Measuring his progress is hard because he doesn’t work chronologically. Two years ago, Caro spoke of writing about the year 1967, a time of growing unrest in Black communities and rising opposition to the Vietnam War. Interviewed recently to promote “Turn Every Page,” a documentary about Caro and his editor Robert Gottlieb, the author said he is now deep into a section on health care for the elderly before Johnson signed the Medicare and Medicaid Act in 1965.
Caro has always thoughts of his books as not so much the portrait of a man, but of political power and its effects. Taken together, the already published Johnson volumes — which began with “The Path to Power” and include “Means of Ascent” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Master of the Senate” — exceed 4,000 pages and feature extended probes into everything from filibusters to the mechanics of a stolen election.
For the yet untitled Volume 5, the 87-year-old Caro hopes to write about the Vietnam War’s impact on a Vietnamese village and still plans to travel to Vietnam, a trip that has been postponed because of the pandemic. He has already worked on a less talked about moment in the Johnson presidency, when he sent more than 20,000 troops to the Dominican Republic in 1965 to prevent a feared communist takeover.
“I tell people he sent 23,000 Marines to the Dominican Republic and they say ‘What?’ No one remembers it,” Caro says.
The new documentary tells of Caro’s long and complicated relationship with Gottlieb, whose other authors have included the Nobel laureates Toni Morrison and Doris Lessing. The two Bobs have worked together since the early 1970s and, after battling fiercely in the early years, have forged what Caro calls a relatively smooth editing process, a “shorthand” that enables them to “go through manuscripts much faster.”
But, he adds, when asked why the books don’t come out more quickly: “You can’t speed up the research.”
I had Omicron in February and was quite flattened by it for a few months afterwards, albeit some weeks were fine and others miserable with fatigue, headaches and palpitations. All seems back to normal now.
This is nuts. A system, such as for vaccinations, in which you could get alerted when you're near the top of the queue and choose your own appointment would eliminate so much wasted time. Staff booking and re-booking appointments, having time on the phone answering and calling back, probably reduce missed appointments (if the person can choose something convenient, rather than making do with something they can probably make work as cancelling is such a hassle). Eliminate sending out appointments in post...
Small things, but it would also eliminate a lot of frustration on everyone's behalf.
Absurd
If you despise someone simply because of their nationality/culture/origin, that is a species of racism. Despising people because of their skin pigmentation is ANOTHER species of racism
I had no such lingering problems with later infections, they came and went. Tho by then of course I was vaxxed
If asked to minimise risk of omicron to the nations health then putting in restrictions would be the natural step.
I also strongly suspect that most members of SAGE would have found lockdown mostly ok - living in nice houses with gardens, able to work from the home office etc. Much easier to impose conditions on peoples lives if those conditions are not that personally onerous. See also those who wanted to permanently close nightclubs... I don't imagine any of those ones ever wanted to go to a nightclub!
It has some advantages, but a couple of disadvantages
1) Demand for appointments exceeds capacity so all the slots go to the fastest fingers, with none left.
2) Some groups of patients respond poorly to such systems, so never make contact. This is particularly so for those with mental health issues, learning disabilities, non-english speakers, techno-illiterates, frail elderly etc. These are groups already with worse health outcomes.
Would be very interesting to know if there are studies looking at unecessary GP appointments. Many of course are actually not needed, but in how many cases does the GP think the person should not have turned up?
Instead, there are a bunch of different systems, which can be understood historically, but do not together make a single system as, for example, the NHS does.
First, there is private insurance for workers, usually paid by employers, though there are still a few plans run by unions. (This became important during WW II, when wage controls kept employers from competing in the usual way for scarce workers.) The plans vary -- to put it mildly. A few are so generous that the Obama administration wanted to penalize these "Cadillac" plans.
Second, there is the immense Medicare single-payer system for old folks, with its parts A, B, C, and D*.
Third, there are 52 (50 states, Puerto Rico, and DC) Medicaid single-payer systems for poor folks. (Some, of course, are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.)
Fourth, there is the Veteran's Adminstration system, which is something like your NHS, in that doctors and nurses are employees of the government,
Fifth, there is the Indian Health Service, where the doctors and nurses are, like the VA and NHS, employees of the government.
Sixth, there are health savings accounts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_savings_account (When governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels set these up for state employees. They have been very popular there, appear to have cut medical expenses, and, if anything, improved outcomes. They might not do as well with a less educated population.)
And, there are other smaller ones.
I say this, not to defend all these systems -- which I don't -- but to ask you to understand the complexity, and perhaps even learn from our mistakes.
(*Full disclosure: I am enrolled in parts A and C of Medicare.)
Go to NHS dentist for routine appointment, you need a tooth removed. Ok, can you remove it. No, you need to book another appointment with a different dentist. Ok, booked, x-ray, examination, etc etc etc, no I can't remove it, you need to be referred to a hospital. Hmm Ok. Letter in the post, do you want to book an appointment, erhhh yes, ring this number, and I book an appointment, another letter in the post...ok come for a consultation, another x-ray, examination, etc etc etc, oh yes that's a tricky one (but I had that at the dentist, couldn't you have got those sent over?). So you going to remove it, not today, you need to book another appointment, can't you schedule it, no, at the reception desk, no, you need to ring this number. Hmmm ok, have to ring, I need to appointment for a removal, ok, you will be sent an appointment in the mail. Turn up for removal, oh no we can't do that one, that too tricky, we need specialist equipment for that....and back round for the same more ringing, more letters, before finally having it removed.
Implant...same NHS dentist, can I have an implant, sure I will do it private. You need an MRI, logs into computer, books me an appointment at a local clinic. Get MRI, they automatically send it to my dentist via internet, who texts me they received all necessary info and please come on such and such a date to start the procedure. Job done.
Its tricky because long covid is an umbrella for lots of things, some of which can be easily diagnosed (organ damage for instance) some less so. The idea that each time you get covid you are playing Russian Roulette with getting long covid is likely nonsense. Generally the population has antibodies which are protecting against serious disease in the main, and that will follow for complications too, I think.
The problem is the potential for collapsing healthcare, and all that will follow from that
China apparently has a poor GP system, so people generally go to hospitals for almost anything. That could be a nasty pinchpoint
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/12/e93b5f5e1270-feature-return-to-maskless-world-still-only-in-realm-of-fantasy-in-japan.html
A entire nation forced itself into OCD weirdness. All those beautiful faces and smiles not being seen
There's an element (not quite so simple, of course) of SAGE gave the right answers, but the wrong questions were asked.
The world of retail has figured out it can be more efficient for one van to drive around all day delivering things than for hundreds of people to get in cars and go to a shop. Would a GP with essential equipment (and some common standard-dosed prescription drugs) doing the same with flexible hours help to overcome the constraints of overbooked surgeries?
I've had several experiences after hours where we've needed either to head across town to the one late night surgery available, or failing that ended up in A&E for something fairly minor like a cut finger needing a stitch or bad tonsilitis. I felt at the time that one or two doctors with a car or even a deliveroo-style bike could have come and sorted us in a fraction of the time and then moved on to the next patient.
In my service we have a team failsafe checking those who don't book an appointment, particularly those at high risk. By their very nature these are not easy people to contact, and it is time consuming to do so. Our booking team get a lot of verbal abuse, which doesn't help staff retention.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/africa/64043612
Kenyans making state sponsored doping by Russia look a bit amateur level....60 athletes banned (so far).
https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2018/07/01/three-score-and-ten-has-the-nhs-reached-the-end-of-its-natural-life/
I've travelled all over Asia, I go to Thailand every winter (plague allowing), I lived in Japan for a few months. I know Asia REALLY well - better than any continent outside Europe
At most during a cold winter with lots of bugs you would see 5% of people wearing masks, or maybe 10% during epic pollution
Now Japan is 99% mask wearing, all the time, everywhere. It is a tragic situation
And the take up was far higher than I expected it to be.
We were asked to mask up for my wife's latest scan last week. I have no issue with this. Healthcare settings are disease central anyway (hospitals, no matter how well cleaned, are not healthy places).
But in general life? No thanks.
It is fairly easy to get a GP appointment, especially for children (who are free), but you might have to wait a few days if it’s not urgent. Nearly all contact is electronic, made easy by the national id system. Repeat prescriptions are super easy.
In addition to the public services, there is a plethora of private providers, mostly online but increasingly concessions at the entrances to big supermarkets. Mental healthcare online is huge, as are holiday/flu/whatever vaccinations down at the supermarket.
So, if someone abuses a Polish man for being Polish, that is counted as a racism.
For the first time, the doomsayers are not just making traction, which has happened before, it seems to be accepted as true, it's just the solution people argue about.
"At "Beethoven's 9th with a Cast of 10,000" in #Japan, most of the choir wore face masks and sang with fans around their necks.
It is shameful that Japan is the only country in the world that does such an abnormal thing."
https://twitter.com/dann_swano/status/1604028070855602176?s=20&t=4r6h1mZa0Ja4TmBljnopgg
"Japan has relaxed some of their crowd cheering restrictions starting at 1/4 for Wrestle Kingdom in the Tokyo Dome.
Masks are still required, you can cheer, boo, count along with the referee but not sing or yell too loud."
At the moment of course we pay a lot (in overall tax) for crap service and outcomes across the board, with few highlights. And now we're so deep into the mire we cannot afford to get out of trap of spending more for worse.
I realized when I was about twelve years old that my fear was mostly irrational. So I went out looking for a snake, and found a garter snake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garter_snake
I captured it, studied it, and carried it around for a half hour or so. And after that experience, I found I had lost most of my fear of snakes.
A psychiatrist should be able to devise a similar treatment for someone who had an irrational aversion to, for example, medical face masks.
That is narrow or vested interests make cases to the government, who consider eveything in context and make a call.
Now, in the early days of Covid it would be a brave PM and politician who would have gone against the Sage advice - not that it stopped people claiming the government was doing that when they were not - and yet we know they did push back on some things later.
So it seems to me it worked as intended.
Perhaps he has an actual colour chart
I always find it interesting that left leaning people in the UK for many years have pointed to Sweden as a model of how the UK should do public services, but I have a feeling the same people would be totally against implementation of this element of the Swedish system (in fact we see it when the idea of GP fees / fines for appointments are ever raised here).
The "debate" immediately defaults to NHS vs US system comparisons, rather than the multitudes of other very successful healthcare systems out there.
As I said, I do think the government did well last December to take the gamble and hold their nerve.
I would be obliged to pay a private GP £170 (or more) for an appointment and I suspect they are experiencing a surge in demand too.
Just make sure you don't get ill this Christmas. Not everyone will be that lucky.
Daft definition if Malmesbury is correct though, and merely proves governments are incapable of using language properly.
That may make some people uncomfortable but the reality is the UK is a fat, unhealthy nation and that is a direct consequence of the NHS removing any economic downsides of becoming fat and unhealthy.
I think the NHS is shit but I've got precisely nowhere in advancing this argument for all my years on this planet, for the reasons you mention.
It's a religion and seems to trigger some inner British notion of perfect fair play.
Fair enough, you might say, but we experience worse health outcomes overall (and more deaths) as a result.
I've lost confidence that any amount of money would fix it.
I think there's a good argument for HMG to Nightingale the next 3-5 years just to get on top of the backlog.