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In the UK, 95% of the deaths are people over 60. There are more deaths for people over 90 than under 70. When are we going to start putting all these efforts a

In the UK, 95% of the deaths are people over 60. There are more deaths for people over 90 than under 70. When are we going to start putting all these efforts and resources into focusing on the vulnerable populations and not painting with a broad brush. We know that lockdowns are too blunt an instrument which is why most of Europe is having to engage in ever more draconian measures. We are mortgaging our future here, without questioning the cost. We don't need more of the same. It's not a question of willpower. It's a question of approach, and currently nobody is asking the hard questions. EDIT It seems downvote brigade has arrived to ensure that any contrarian opinion is snuffed out. No rebuttal with data, just downvotes.

spaetzleesser 6y ago
“nobody is asking the hard questions.” Maybe they have asked these questions and concluded that this is the best path? Seems most countries are following similar paths.
- matz1 6y ago
  >Seems most countries are following similar paths Doesn't mean it is the best path. Monkey see monkey do. As Desmond Swayne called it 'Herd Stupidity'
chacha2 6y ago
Hospitals are quickly filling up, young people need hospitals as much as anyone. What's your suggestion, allow elderly covid patients to die at home?
- qeternity 6y ago
  No they aren't. NHS occupancy in 2020 was lower than in 2019. We are currently 50% below our peak ventilator usage in April and the 7 day trend is very flat. This is just not true. Go look at the data instead of parroting headlines. EDIT Lol again downvotes but no replies. Does anyone want to bother educating me on this topic and showing me where hospitals are filling up? I would love to see it, because the NHS figures certainly don't show it.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    Go look at the data instead of parroting headlines. Or, even better, talk to anyone who works in a front-line NHS role, particularly in areas like A&E/intensive care. People who understand the context of the statistics and how they translate to real standards of patient care do not think everything is OK right now. As it happens, I've spent some time over the past few days travelling to and from various medical facilities. Every single one of them had heavy precautions in place. And on the radio in the car this afternoon, there was a whole series of medical and public health professionals talking about not only the current situation with the virus but also how damaging it is when people do exactly what you're doing right now. Remember, if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, they probably know something you don't.
    - qeternity 6y ago
      > Or, even better, talk to anyone who works in a front-line NHS role, particularly in areas like A&E/intensive care. People who understand the context of the statistics and how they translate to real standards of patient care do not think everything is OK right now. Yeah I know that, my best mates girlfriend is a doctor. But that's not at all proof of anything. There is a reason that wars aren't planned and architected by the foot soldier in the trench. They don't have perspective and the task at hand detracts from the bigger picture. I have the utmost respect for our NHS heroes but front line personnel are the last people you should ask. They have been put through hell over the past year and if I were in their shoes I would be ready to keel over. And that's exactly why these individuals shouldn't be calling the shots...they're just seeing one part of the puzzle.
      - CodeGlitch 6y ago
        So if the foot soldier in the trench keeps complaining that they don't have enough bullets, and saying that without bullets they can't fight and will loose the battle, they shouldn't be listened to? I think they are exactly the ones we should be listening to.
        6y ago
- iridium_core 6y ago
  Overflow hospitals in the UK have never been used: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid-patients-england-nightingale-hospitals-b538294.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid-patients-england-ni... The UK Government is arresting people who film empty hospitals: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13619752/moment-anti-covid-lockdown-activist-filmed-hospital-arrested/x https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13619752/moment-anti-covid-loc... Meanwhile less than 400 people under age 50 have died with/of COVID in the UK. The fundamental driver of this pandemic is the ill-health of the population - driven by sugar (obesity), coal and oil (air pollution), as well as Vitamin (D) deficiencies - but these factors receive no attention. Meanwhile in Sweden - without hard lockdown - deaths are up only 3.2% above 2018, and even then explained by mortality shifting from 2019 and 2021. Even Ukraine without hard lockdown over Winter has had far fewer deaths per Capita than the UK and has a much more rudimentary healthcare system. Lockdown seems to drive deaths, at huge social and economic cost, rather than prevent them.
  - CodeGlitch 6y ago
    > The fundamental driver of this pandemic is the ill-health of the population - driven by sugar (obesity), coal and oil (air pollution), as well as Vitamin (D) deficiencies - but these factors receive no attention I was saying this at the start of the pandemic. The UK is approaching US -levels of obesity, but now we have "fat shaming" whereby any mention of overweight people being unhealthy is socially unacceptable; and showing skinny people in adverts on the London Undergound causes "offence". I wonder if this particular world-view will reverse in the coming years?
  - xemoka 6y ago
    That 400 number seems off to me. Without more information on where you've pulled that number, what I can find is that there's ~74.7k deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death cert in England and Whales since January last year. They didn't seem to really start counting that until March, until that point they were just classified as respiratory diseases. Current statistics show that there's around 1'400 deaths of those under 50 with COVID-19 listed on their death registration, ( https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... ). Where's your data from? > Lockdown seems to drive deaths, at huge social and economic cost, rather than prevent them. This could easily be a reversed causality, that deaths drive lockdowns... which, on the surface seems to make sense as high deaths seem to force politicians to lockdown (either for reality or perception).
- matz1 6y ago
  Except they are not, vast majority of people infected with covid do not require hospitalization. If the hospital can't handle this virus then the health care system must be really bad in the first place. The solution is to fix and improve it, not lockdown. Lockdown measures is just cop out.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    If the hospital can't handle this virus then the health care system must be really bad in the first place. Any health system has finite resources available: facilities, equipment, trained staff, the money to pay for all of it, etc. If the NHS had already been set up to handle this once-in-a-century black swan event better, it would have been less effective at handling other conditions that have affected patients in the more than a century since the last outbreak of similar severity. I haven't been impressed by how our national government has handled this situation, but if you stop and think about what's happened in the past year or so, it's actually pretty amazing how quickly and effectively our NHS staff, scientific community and others playing supporting roles in our society have adapted. They are fixing and improving our healthcare system, and they're doing it right before our eyes in real time.
pageandrew 6y ago
Lockdowns trade away the life, health, mental health, education, and social development of children and young people for the safety of less than 1% of the population that are either aged or unhealthy as it is, and who can be protected in other ways. And even mentioning this cost, which is becoming quite extreme (look at youth suicidality numbers, and childhood depression rates), causes you to be accused of not caring about elderly people. The devastation that Covid lockdowns have caused will last far longer than the disease itself.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  Considering the vast number of excess deaths of old but healthy people and the human cost of the people who continue to show symptoms months after initial infection, I would say your calculations are just wrong.
  - qeternity 6y ago
    Excess deaths globally for 2020 will end up being about 2.5% Is that vast?
    - Daishiman 6y ago
      It's 13% higher in England, which yes, I would characterize as vast.
      - qeternity 6y ago
        I'm not sure you understand how excess mortality works. Excess mortality right now during the winter period is higher...it always is. And 13% is not panic numbers. Would you be surprised to learn that the 17/18 flu season resulted in more excess deaths than we are having right now? Surely you must have been freaking out then as well advocating for national lockdowns...right?
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
Daishiman 6y ago
Everybody is asking the hard questions and the hard answer is that it is downright impossible to isolate the most vulnerable from the general population. Tried and attempted in multiple places; turns out you only need one nurse, one doctor, one caretaker, one young kid in a large household to infect those people. Maybe, just maybe, the experts (and I mean the people who have spent their lifetimes studying the transmission of respiratory diseases) have already weighed in, their answers don't look that different from when things started, and their assessments turned out to be mostly correct?
- qeternity 6y ago
  > Tried and attempted in multiple places Really? Where was this tried at scale? Where did we spend a fraction of the cost that we incur locking down an entire population. This just isn't true. > Maybe, just maybe, the experts (and I mean the people who have spent their lifetimes studying the transmission of respiratory diseases) have already weighed in, their answers don't look that different from when things started, and their assessments turned out to be mostly correct? The hardest question is whether or not this is worth it, and nobody is asking that because politicians want to get reelected. You are missing the point entirely. Virology experts are not the people who should be making these decisions. It's not as if covid response is free, but they aren't tasked with consdering the costs. They aren't tasked with finding out what the right amount of death is. That's the unfortunate reality and this is what the great leaders throughout history have all understood: there are no good decisions in times like this, merely least worst decisions.
  - cygx 6y ago
    I'm always surspised that we're still arguing about this. Look at the excess mortality in Belgium: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&country=~BEL&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... Supposedly, that's with the percentage of Covid cases still in the single digits. It seems obvious that if you do not get a handle on this, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed eventually. No sane person wants to see that happen, hence the drastic measures...
uncledave 6y ago
That’s probably because the moment someone looks at it objectively someone posts a headline along the lines of ”8 year old dies of covid” or ”Tory MP says N is an acceptable death count”. Both are useless headlines as quoted but the entire political system is a shit media popularity contest and literally the only objective is to come out looking less bad than thy neighbour. So the hard questions are never asked for which we sacrifice a good chunk of our population to dwindling cancer care, mental health issues and economic decline. Those scandals can be written off statistically by the next lot. And yes I’ve had it. And yes I’ve lost three relatives to it. And quite frankly they were all circling the drain already.
- ubercow13 6y ago
  It's unclear how cancer and mental health patients would be any better off with less sacrifices, that would lead to the health care system being more overwhelmed, not less.
  - uncledave 6y ago
    I think you need to look at the future not just now. The overall side effects of burning care now may have a higher body count than covid. Case in point if you look at the austerity policy attributed deaths as a reference. I know someone who just got handed a guaranteed poor cancer outcome because her preventative surgery will only be done when it’s an emergency later on. These will be easy to write off as incidental deaths and poor health outcomes which is why they aren’t prioritised as high as covid outcomes. Honestly, staff have complained about this too, but when it comes to triage do you stick a 90 year old on a ventilator or do you reserve the ICU capacity for 10 cancer patients waiting for preventative surgery with a better outcome? That’s the hard decisions being burned for political capital. The real travesty is we have to choose and that is down to our politicians and the slow wind down of NHS funding and political tennis for the last 30 years.
    - ubercow13 6y ago
      All of that is bad, but I don't think avoiding lockdown or other measures would help with it. The images in the media of people dying in the street outside hospitals would just lead to more social/political pressure to deprioritise those cancer patients.
rbritton 6y ago
Consider the age group(s) for most of the world's politicians.
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  Why is ageism so widely parroted on HN?
rusk 6y ago
If you get a bad dose and you can’t get a respirator you’re in big trouble. Guess what happens when there are so many sick that respirators run out. What happens when hospitals are overrun with patients with ‘mild’ symptoms? We’ve been talking about this for nine months and you’re still at the marginal deaths stage of reasoning. Do you need a picture drawn for you or something?
- burnthrow 6y ago
  > Do you need a picture drawn for you or something? And Reddit clapped.
- qeternity 6y ago
  Brilliant logic there. And if I cross the street, I might get hit by a bus. Let's ban cars. You seem to be struggling that this is a hugely complex situation that might call for slightly more sophisticated logic than you're apparently capable of. > What happens when hospitals are overrun with patients with ‘mild’ symptoms? Um wow tough one. Maybe prioritize severe cases like we have been doing for the past 9 months which has worked so well that the Nightingale covid hospitals have never been used... > We’ve been talking about this for nine months and you’re still at the marginal deaths stage of reasoning. I'm sorry, what are you suggesting? Ultimately marginal deaths is what this is all about. That's ultimately why hospital capacity matters. Are you sure you've joined the right game here?
  - FartyMcFarter 6y ago
    > the Nightingale covid hospitals have never been used... Because there's no staff to use them: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55413831 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55413831 > "We are already 'diluting' our skilled ICU nursing staff with less-well-trained volunteers." > As well as staffing, some have argued there is just not the equipment available to treat the sickest patients > "In some there are not even appropriate toilet facilities. They were built in a rush because we were desperate." Based on that info, my guess is these hospitals will only be used as a very last resort, possibly staffed with vets or NHS staff moved from elsewhere in the country for a short period... This is not a scenario that we should encourage or count on.
bananapear 6y ago
This [1] is a useful summary of statistics comparing the current situation to that of Spring and earlier years. It’s interesting to see that the total number of hospitalised people and deaths are broadly in line with previous years, but the portion tagged as COVID is increasing. There’s lots of discussion around the issues with PCR testing (e.g. picking up old virus fragments & false positives). Difficult to know what to believe but there seems to be a lack of studies/data to back up the accuracy, and the NHS have recently switched to using Lateral Flow devices for regular staff testing due to the volume of asymptomatic staff being require to isolate. [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7cUVU6o28QeIil__fQyqntQcYKCUVmv/view?usp=drivesdk https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7cUVU6o28QeIil__fQyqntQcYK...
iso1210 6y ago
> When are we going to start putting all these efforts and resources into focusing on the vulnerable populations and not painting with a broad brush. We have been. That's why the vaccine is going out to them first. We have too many people in hospital. Even if all spreading stopped right this second, the number of people going into hospital will continue to increase for another 2 weeks. This is the busiest time of year for hospitals, and we already have more covid paitents than we did in April. If my child needs an ICU bed, I want one available, I don't want it filled with 80 year old covid patients.
Bailin 6y ago
You've made a lot of comments and mentioned many numbers and statistics, but I've yet to see any sources linked. Could you add them? And please don't say something like "do your own research," that doesn't help the conversation at all.

spaetzleesser 6y ago

“nobody is asking the hard questions.” Maybe they have asked these questions and concluded that this is the best path? Seems most countries are following similar paths.

matz1 6y ago
>Seems most countries are following similar paths Doesn't mean it is the best path. Monkey see monkey do. As Desmond Swayne called it 'Herd Stupidity'

chacha2 6y ago

Hospitals are quickly filling up, young people need hospitals as much as anyone. What's your suggestion, allow elderly covid patients to die at home?

qeternity 6y ago
No they aren't. NHS occupancy in 2020 was lower than in 2019. We are currently 50% below our peak ventilator usage in April and the 7 day trend is very flat. This is just not true. Go look at the data instead of parroting headlines. EDIT Lol again downvotes but no replies. Does anyone want to bother educating me on this topic and showing me where hospitals are filling up? I would love to see it, because the NHS figures certainly don't show it.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  Go look at the data instead of parroting headlines. Or, even better, talk to anyone who works in a front-line NHS role, particularly in areas like A&E/intensive care. People who understand the context of the statistics and how they translate to real standards of patient care do not think everything is OK right now. As it happens, I've spent some time over the past few days travelling to and from various medical facilities. Every single one of them had heavy precautions in place. And on the radio in the car this afternoon, there was a whole series of medical and public health professionals talking about not only the current situation with the virus but also how damaging it is when people do exactly what you're doing right now. Remember, if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, they probably know something you don't.
  - qeternity 6y ago
    > Or, even better, talk to anyone who works in a front-line NHS role, particularly in areas like A&E/intensive care. People who understand the context of the statistics and how they translate to real standards of patient care do not think everything is OK right now. Yeah I know that, my best mates girlfriend is a doctor. But that's not at all proof of anything. There is a reason that wars aren't planned and architected by the foot soldier in the trench. They don't have perspective and the task at hand detracts from the bigger picture. I have the utmost respect for our NHS heroes but front line personnel are the last people you should ask. They have been put through hell over the past year and if I were in their shoes I would be ready to keel over. And that's exactly why these individuals shouldn't be calling the shots...they're just seeing one part of the puzzle.
    - CodeGlitch 6y ago
      So if the foot soldier in the trench keeps complaining that they don't have enough bullets, and saying that without bullets they can't fight and will loose the battle, they shouldn't be listened to? I think they are exactly the ones we should be listening to.
      - 6y ago
iridium_core 6y ago
Overflow hospitals in the UK have never been used: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid-patients-england-nightingale-hospitals-b538294.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid-patients-england-ni... The UK Government is arresting people who film empty hospitals: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13619752/moment-anti-covid-lockdown-activist-filmed-hospital-arrested/x https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13619752/moment-anti-covid-loc... Meanwhile less than 400 people under age 50 have died with/of COVID in the UK. The fundamental driver of this pandemic is the ill-health of the population - driven by sugar (obesity), coal and oil (air pollution), as well as Vitamin (D) deficiencies - but these factors receive no attention. Meanwhile in Sweden - without hard lockdown - deaths are up only 3.2% above 2018, and even then explained by mortality shifting from 2019 and 2021. Even Ukraine without hard lockdown over Winter has had far fewer deaths per Capita than the UK and has a much more rudimentary healthcare system. Lockdown seems to drive deaths, at huge social and economic cost, rather than prevent them.
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  > The fundamental driver of this pandemic is the ill-health of the population - driven by sugar (obesity), coal and oil (air pollution), as well as Vitamin (D) deficiencies - but these factors receive no attention I was saying this at the start of the pandemic. The UK is approaching US -levels of obesity, but now we have "fat shaming" whereby any mention of overweight people being unhealthy is socially unacceptable; and showing skinny people in adverts on the London Undergound causes "offence". I wonder if this particular world-view will reverse in the coming years?
- xemoka 6y ago
  That 400 number seems off to me. Without more information on where you've pulled that number, what I can find is that there's ~74.7k deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death cert in England and Whales since January last year. They didn't seem to really start counting that until March, until that point they were just classified as respiratory diseases. Current statistics show that there's around 1'400 deaths of those under 50 with COVID-19 listed on their death registration, ( https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... ). Where's your data from? > Lockdown seems to drive deaths, at huge social and economic cost, rather than prevent them. This could easily be a reversed causality, that deaths drive lockdowns... which, on the surface seems to make sense as high deaths seem to force politicians to lockdown (either for reality or perception).
matz1 6y ago
Except they are not, vast majority of people infected with covid do not require hospitalization. If the hospital can't handle this virus then the health care system must be really bad in the first place. The solution is to fix and improve it, not lockdown. Lockdown measures is just cop out.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  If the hospital can't handle this virus then the health care system must be really bad in the first place. Any health system has finite resources available: facilities, equipment, trained staff, the money to pay for all of it, etc. If the NHS had already been set up to handle this once-in-a-century black swan event better, it would have been less effective at handling other conditions that have affected patients in the more than a century since the last outbreak of similar severity. I haven't been impressed by how our national government has handled this situation, but if you stop and think about what's happened in the past year or so, it's actually pretty amazing how quickly and effectively our NHS staff, scientific community and others playing supporting roles in our society have adapted. They are fixing and improving our healthcare system, and they're doing it right before our eyes in real time.

pageandrew 6y ago

Lockdowns trade away the life, health, mental health, education, and social development of children and young people for the safety of less than 1% of the population that are either aged or unhealthy as it is, and who can be protected in other ways. And even mentioning this cost, which is becoming quite extreme (look at youth suicidality numbers, and childhood depression rates), causes you to be accused of not caring about elderly people. The devastation that Covid lockdowns have caused will last far longer than the disease itself.

Daishiman 6y ago
Considering the vast number of excess deaths of old but healthy people and the human cost of the people who continue to show symptoms months after initial infection, I would say your calculations are just wrong.
- qeternity 6y ago
  Excess deaths globally for 2020 will end up being about 2.5% Is that vast?
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    It's 13% higher in England, which yes, I would characterize as vast.
    - qeternity 6y ago
      I'm not sure you understand how excess mortality works. Excess mortality right now during the winter period is higher...it always is. And 13% is not panic numbers. Would you be surprised to learn that the 17/18 flu season resulted in more excess deaths than we are having right now? Surely you must have been freaking out then as well advocating for national lockdowns...right?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]

Daishiman 6y ago

Everybody is asking the hard questions and the hard answer is that it is downright impossible to isolate the most vulnerable from the general population. Tried and attempted in multiple places; turns out you only need one nurse, one doctor, one caretaker, one young kid in a large household to infect those people. Maybe, just maybe, the experts (and I mean the people who have spent their lifetimes studying the transmission of respiratory diseases) have already weighed in, their answers don't look that different from when things started, and their assessments turned out to be mostly correct?

qeternity 6y ago
> Tried and attempted in multiple places Really? Where was this tried at scale? Where did we spend a fraction of the cost that we incur locking down an entire population. This just isn't true. > Maybe, just maybe, the experts (and I mean the people who have spent their lifetimes studying the transmission of respiratory diseases) have already weighed in, their answers don't look that different from when things started, and their assessments turned out to be mostly correct? The hardest question is whether or not this is worth it, and nobody is asking that because politicians want to get reelected. You are missing the point entirely. Virology experts are not the people who should be making these decisions. It's not as if covid response is free, but they aren't tasked with consdering the costs. They aren't tasked with finding out what the right amount of death is. That's the unfortunate reality and this is what the great leaders throughout history have all understood: there are no good decisions in times like this, merely least worst decisions.
- cygx 6y ago
  I'm always surspised that we're still arguing about this. Look at the excess mortality in Belgium: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&country=~BEL&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... Supposedly, that's with the percentage of Covid cases still in the single digits. It seems obvious that if you do not get a handle on this, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed eventually. No sane person wants to see that happen, hence the drastic measures...

uncledave 6y ago

That’s probably because the moment someone looks at it objectively someone posts a headline along the lines of ”8 year old dies of covid” or ”Tory MP says N is an acceptable death count”. Both are useless headlines as quoted but the entire political system is a shit media popularity contest and literally the only objective is to come out looking less bad than thy neighbour. So the hard questions are never asked for which we sacrifice a good chunk of our population to dwindling cancer care, mental health issues and economic decline. Those scandals can be written off statistically by the next lot. And yes I’ve had it. And yes I’ve lost three relatives to it. And quite frankly they were all circling the drain already.

ubercow13 6y ago
It's unclear how cancer and mental health patients would be any better off with less sacrifices, that would lead to the health care system being more overwhelmed, not less.
- uncledave 6y ago
  I think you need to look at the future not just now. The overall side effects of burning care now may have a higher body count than covid. Case in point if you look at the austerity policy attributed deaths as a reference. I know someone who just got handed a guaranteed poor cancer outcome because her preventative surgery will only be done when it’s an emergency later on. These will be easy to write off as incidental deaths and poor health outcomes which is why they aren’t prioritised as high as covid outcomes. Honestly, staff have complained about this too, but when it comes to triage do you stick a 90 year old on a ventilator or do you reserve the ICU capacity for 10 cancer patients waiting for preventative surgery with a better outcome? That’s the hard decisions being burned for political capital. The real travesty is we have to choose and that is down to our politicians and the slow wind down of NHS funding and political tennis for the last 30 years.
  - ubercow13 6y ago
    All of that is bad, but I don't think avoiding lockdown or other measures would help with it. The images in the media of people dying in the street outside hospitals would just lead to more social/political pressure to deprioritise those cancer patients.

rbritton 6y ago

Consider the age group(s) for most of the world's politicians.

CodeGlitch 6y ago
Why is ageism so widely parroted on HN?

rusk 6y ago

If you get a bad dose and you can’t get a respirator you’re in big trouble. Guess what happens when there are so many sick that respirators run out. What happens when hospitals are overrun with patients with ‘mild’ symptoms? We’ve been talking about this for nine months and you’re still at the marginal deaths stage of reasoning. Do you need a picture drawn for you or something?

burnthrow 6y ago
> Do you need a picture drawn for you or something? And Reddit clapped.
qeternity 6y ago
Brilliant logic there. And if I cross the street, I might get hit by a bus. Let's ban cars. You seem to be struggling that this is a hugely complex situation that might call for slightly more sophisticated logic than you're apparently capable of. > What happens when hospitals are overrun with patients with ‘mild’ symptoms? Um wow tough one. Maybe prioritize severe cases like we have been doing for the past 9 months which has worked so well that the Nightingale covid hospitals have never been used... > We’ve been talking about this for nine months and you’re still at the marginal deaths stage of reasoning. I'm sorry, what are you suggesting? Ultimately marginal deaths is what this is all about. That's ultimately why hospital capacity matters. Are you sure you've joined the right game here?
- FartyMcFarter 6y ago
  > the Nightingale covid hospitals have never been used... Because there's no staff to use them: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55413831 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55413831 > "We are already 'diluting' our skilled ICU nursing staff with less-well-trained volunteers." > As well as staffing, some have argued there is just not the equipment available to treat the sickest patients > "In some there are not even appropriate toilet facilities. They were built in a rush because we were desperate." Based on that info, my guess is these hospitals will only be used as a very last resort, possibly staffed with vets or NHS staff moved from elsewhere in the country for a short period... This is not a scenario that we should encourage or count on.

bananapear 6y ago

This [1] is a useful summary of statistics comparing the current situation to that of Spring and earlier years. It’s interesting to see that the total number of hospitalised people and deaths are broadly in line with previous years, but the portion tagged as COVID is increasing. There’s lots of discussion around the issues with PCR testing (e.g. picking up old virus fragments & false positives). Difficult to know what to believe but there seems to be a lack of studies/data to back up the accuracy, and the NHS have recently switched to using Lateral Flow devices for regular staff testing due to the volume of asymptomatic staff being require to isolate. [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7cUVU6o28QeIil__fQyqntQcYKCUVmv/view?usp=drivesdk https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7cUVU6o28QeIil__fQyqntQcYK...

iso1210 6y ago

> When are we going to start putting all these efforts and resources into focusing on the vulnerable populations and not painting with a broad brush. We have been. That's why the vaccine is going out to them first. We have too many people in hospital. Even if all spreading stopped right this second, the number of people going into hospital will continue to increase for another 2 weeks. This is the busiest time of year for hospitals, and we already have more covid paitents than we did in April. If my child needs an ICU bed, I want one available, I don't want it filled with 80 year old covid patients.

Bailin 6y ago

You've made a lot of comments and mentioned many numbers and statistics, but I've yet to see any sources linked. Could you add them? And please don't say something like "do your own research," that doesn't help the conversation at all.