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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » 28 Weeks Later: The Coronavirus Aftermath for the NHS and its
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » 28 Weeks Later: The Coronavirus Aftermath for the NHS and its Political Implications
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/16/llama-coronavirus-antibodies-study-benefits
It isn't just staff protection either. In an operating theatre 20 minutes of air exchange is regarded as sufficient for the aerosol to clear, but that is a higher airflow environment*. In a dental office 20 minute fallow time between consultations may not be quite long enough, depending on ventilation. Then there is cleaning time, so the environment is safe for the next patient.
Swabbing each dental patient a week in advance and getting them to self isolate would be impractical.
*operating theatres have positive pressure ventilation, so the air pressure is always a little higher. This means that when doors are opened, the airflow is outwards, to protect the patient. There are concerns that with AGPs, the aerosol could contaminate operating theatre suite corridors etc.
Surgery and the like must have gone through such considerations before, for example when the HIV crisis broke.
I am led to believe, from contacts I still have in NHS management, that second wave of viral infection. is expected in September. Elective surgery waits may well be pushed back beyond pre 2000 levels.
I felt like responding along the lines of, 'thank god I'm not under your nursing care.'
Germs, like viruses, weren't visible the last time I searched.
Perhaps we will see the emergence of specialist clinics who handle the difficult stuff?
If we can get a sensitive and specific rapid antigen test, that will make a lot of things possible.
On the NHS, I went to a hospital for the first time in years recently to help a family member get home. Really striking how run down and cramped the hospital looked.
I think it right to plan for a second wave, so we can implement the lessons from the first, but my own hunch is that it will be a single peak with a long fat tail.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/16/revolt-over-easing-lockdown-spreads-as-poll-slump-hits-prime-minister
We remain in the dark concerning where spread is really occurring, what is safe and what is not. I suspect half or more of our social distancing measures are pointless, the problem is that we do not know which half.
Non surgical specialities including mental health will be similarly affected, though these get less media attention.
You can't turn on the news these days without hearing about mental health. Sure enough, the Sky News presenter Niall Paterson has just said he's starting to suffer and they'll be discussing it on (I think) the Sophy Ridge show.
The new reality is that we can't see most of the people we love except through a screen, we can't do most of the things we enjoy, if we get sick with almost anything other than Plague, or something that can be solved with a simple prescription, then we're going to be made to wait years to be treated (or simply told to shuffle off into a corner, not waste anyone's time and die quietly,) and we're discouraged from travelling anywhere (and even if we do then there's nothing to do when we get wherever we're going but go for a circular walk and then go home again.)
Toss 25% unemployment into the mix and you've the perfect conditions for a tsunami wave of obesity, alcohol and narcotic abuse and mental illness. And can you blame people? This is a near-hopeless situation - there is no solution to it in sight, and no guarantee that one will ever be found - so what's the point in looking after yourself? Like I said last night, we're basically being told to slog back and forth to work (if we're lucky enough still to have a job) and otherwise live the remainder of our entire lives like an eternal boring Sunday in 1977, only plus Netflix and minus the opportunity to see any of our friends and family ever again. It's intolerable.
Doubt you'll hear about it on the MSM as it doesn't quite fit the trope.
I’m not very pleased with them.
https://twitter.com/andrew_adonis/status/1261919979919867905?s=21
Along with assorted TIAs, "minor" heart attacks, scalds, burns, cuts and goodness only knows what else that people tried to deal with themselves because they weren't absolutely forced to join you.
https://twitter.com/troovus/status/1261626792764456960?s=20
One solution to the equipment issues is to use staff who have antibodies to the virus for elective surgery including dental care and to prioritise patients who have the antibodies. Eventually this will have to be considered.
Mental health is another issue, as many people with mental health problems are self-harming or abusing alcohol and drugs. There are also people who are experience severe family problems arising from the lockdown. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52690931 for an example. COVID-19 is an unpleasant disease but for some people worrying about it will be a "high-class problem". This will be more and more the case as the lockdown goes on for longer.
Interestingly I ended up there via 1. An online e-consult at my GP's who then 2. instructed me to dial 111 at once who then 3. called me back urgently and 4. ordered me immediately to A&E.
They did pick up something with the heart: treatable I hope so all okay.
Couples who are already together will still be able to produce children and the birth rate might even go up in the short term because they are cooped up together.
But if we're not allowed to meet people we don't know, how are new couplings going to take place? and how are new babies going to be conceived after the initial baby boom?
Before the end of this week the government announces that R has increased to 0.8 - 1.1
Therefore it would be premature to reopen schools
Looking at what's happened abroad it looks like pretty well everyone screwed up when it came to care homes, but that doesn't make the failure any more excusable.
Perhaps there's a possibility that all our services will emerge from the aftermath of this much more fit-for-purpose, for the future with more joined-up thinking and fewer gaps for people to fall through. NHS, care services, dental health, mental health, housing ...... even supply chains.
Strangely enough, this virus is showing me to be much more of an optimist than I realised. I keep noticing myself offering a possible positive side to the negative aspects that so many people dwell on. In small things, of course; the big things like death, pain, fear & disaster don't lend themselves to optimism.
Good morning, everyone.
That is why we'd be crazy to tie ourselves to them in a fixed exchange rate system - as we found out to our cost in 1990-92.
By definition, they don't need to go to work (either retired or able to work remotely) so by moving away they're reducing the numbers milling about in the densely populated areas.
I think the lockdown restrictions on meeting friends and family will gradually break down over the next year or two as their impossibility becomes apparent.
It looks like covid 19, and especially the consequencies, is going to cause a huge change in so many areas we took for granted and will require enormous amounts of innovation and change which will make governing the country, no matter the party in power, a challenge of gigantic proportions
In unrelated news, I saw Stellaris is coming to the PS4 but, weirdly, the digital version has been out for over a year. It currently has a 50% discount (deluxe, which has a couple of DLCs and an expansion pack) on the digital store.
Also, Age of Wonders: Planetfall is available for just over a fiver on the Game website right now.
Trying to decide whether to bother buying stuff (or pre-ordering the physical copy of Stellaris, I'm not a fan of digital).
It's about six weeks until the F1 season is meant to kick off, and it seems like the Silverstone situation has been resolved, with two races behind closed doors. Nice to see that groups with wildly different opinions managed to negotiate and compromise for mutual benefit.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/695/cpsprodpb/5058/production/_112286502_optimised-fishing_quotas-nc.png
I have no idea what happens with off topic when I do this
I am hoping someone can clarify this
Thank you
Hospitals are familiar territory to me, and perhaps the most obvious problem, but similar issues arise across so many areas. Hotels, the travel industry, public transport, performing arts, sports,politics, schools, we are all struggling to try to think of a way back. It won't be the same place we left.
F1 brings in about a billion pounds a year. If it gets into serious trouble that will cost us a lot of money and a decent number of well-paying jobs.
If you tap it again it unflags too.
In Scotland, by 10th May:
More than four in 10 coronavirus deaths have now been in care homes (44.8%).
Jackson Carlaw ( TORY ) has been lying about Scottish figures
Also noted that in theory their insurance is invalid if they don't visit for over 60 days.
Just an anecdote, but I reckon more people will be spending weekends in their holiday homes and hoping not to get caught.
There are serious issues in care homes across all four corners of the UK and in others countries as per the guardian link
No one yet seems interested that Private Medical Practice has effectively been abolished. There may well be a lot of demand there when services are resumed. Single rooms, less crowding, long waiting lists could revitalise the sector, for those with a few bob.
At the moment my Private Secretary is operating a PP waiting list. Many insured patients are wondering what they are paying for.
For example you could compare it to how the UK changed between 1939 and 1945 and (say) 2014 - 2020. It seems these big events force societies out of their local minimums.
Krankie is feeling the pressure.
I don't know what the answer is but, crikey, they've got to be careful.
Malcolm can be funny. He can also occasionally be a dick.
They've been working hard and ensured supplies remained solid even when people were panic-buying, and their staff have been some of the few to be persistently in contact with the public on a daily basis.
Not sure why they should be subject to a pernicious tax on top of that.
Not a fan of windfall taxes generally but there's more of a case for one (or less of an argument against, to be precise) when it comes to online retailers.
Don't see why people doing business should be penalised. The money they make allows them to do helpful things like provide the public with food and the state with taxes.
I have a feeling this, more than anything, is responsible for the slump in Gov't support. I know that the shift from 'Stay at Home' to 'Stay Alert' has wobbled people, but there is something viscerally appalling about the way our elderly and most vulnerable have been, basically, seeded with Covid-19.
Heads should roll. I doubt they will.
Still shocking numbers mind. A tacit acceptance by the NHS that if they were over 80, there really was in all likelihood nothing that could be done for victims? Outcomes were proving very poor for the elderly taken into hospital - they just didn't respond. So let them die in the place they knew as home...
These corrupt sick lying no users deserve all the opprobrium they receive.
A close relative of mine who is also a doctor broadly agrees with your conclusions, particularly about the likely endemic future of the virus.
How would your projections of future long waiting lists change if there is a widely available vaccine in, say, a year?
She was excellent and is a loss to the HOC
Something far far wrong here.
Basically if you're under 60, in reasonable shape and you don't have a particular responsibility towards a vulnerable person then your incentive for obeying lockdown is very low. And once people start giving up on the restrictions and habitually meeting up in public or going round each others' houses for barbecues and playdates and dinners, then the rationale behind a blanket lockdown is removed and we might as well do a Sweden.
The problem with that is, of course, that the Government, public bodies, trades unions and the like are now all so completely obsessed with the threat of Covid-19 - to the exclusion of all other problems - that they're incapable of taking any approach that permits anything more than an infinitesimal degree of risk. It's what another poster described last night as the worst of all worlds: private citizens, whose movements are too diffuse and numerous for the police possibly to control, will visit each other, spread the illness and render the lockdown pointless, whilst we'll all still be forced to live through the rationing or outright withdrawal of healthcare and education, and the destruction of whole sectors of the economy, as those businesses and services whose activities can be more easily curtailed are pointlessly throttled to death. All because "something must be done."
bike shops operate on a very cyclical model
I was reminded of a cartoon by Kliban - "God gave us these bodies because he has better ones at home..."