10-14-2020, 08:27 AM
(10-14-2020, 08:20 AM)Protheroe Wrote:(10-14-2020, 08:02 AM)strawman Wrote: Wrong tense - was doing little else but Covid, and that was wrong, most 'covid' hospitals have now been split into covid and covid safe - in supposedly one of the worst hospitals in the country. I have had 2 consultant appointments, on time and admittedly by phone (although tests were arranged at a covid safe hospital) and my scan was also on time.
However if we go back to the virus spreading in the way it was and hospital admissions rising as they are now, then staff will have to be taken away from general testing and duties again and have to care for those that are dying or in ICU long term.
Therein lies the catch - allow more normality - hospital admissions rise, staff are redeployed from their normal duties to care for ICU patients even if they are dying and less younger and at less risk patients for covid are again delayed.
If you want to protect younger patients and allow them to get their tests etc on time then you need to protect those at risk so they require less care even if they are dying.
And if you think that basically imprisoning sections of the population at risk i(the old, diabetic, overweight) is the answer, then I suspect that will be as successful as trying to keep others from partying, protesting, going to beach etc
I need to go to a meeting in Birmingham now, but when I have a moment I'll post some stats, evidence and thoughts about what we're doing to ourselves. This is very close to home for me.
I'll leave you with the first stat: Average UK life expectancy 81.2 years - Average age of Covid death 82.4 years.
You're missing the point - it matters not what age they die at - what matters is that if you have considerable excess deaths, then you also have considerable excess hospital admissions, ICU requirements and staff to man that.
As we don't even have enough staff under normal circumstance - then staff have to be taken from their normal duties to care for the excess hospital admissions and the dying. The result - younger people requiring treatment have their appointments delayed.