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No, I'm saying that the NHS stopped treating other conditions. Whether it was actually overloaded from March 2020 onwards is another question - the publicly-av
by katkatkatkatket 4y ago
No, I'm saying that the NHS stopped treating other conditions.
Whether it was actually overloaded from March 2020 onwards is another question - the publicly-available patient data shows that the total patient occupancy was at about 70% of normal levels during the Covid years. It was also found (and relatively quickly) that Covid patients didn't need complex care - bed rest and low-flow oxygen was the best treatment, for those who didn't need forced ventilation (and there's a whole lot of discussion about how much damage that may to do a Covid patient anyway).
The argument that follows is that "we couldn't treat other conditions because that would have caused Covid to spread more widely", with the assumption that it's better to have this many untreated patients than for Covid to have spread more rapidly.
Time will tell, but I strongly believe that it will show that, like many other aspects of our response to Covid, the cure will be much worse than the disease.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoI see, sorry for the misunderstanding. I don't know enough about the UK response to make a well-reasoned reply, except it sounds like a very strange decision to me. I suppose it could have been a form of pre-emptive triage to avoid hospital overload? It's always been my view that lockdown was the only response sufficiently effective to actually stop the spread in its tracks, and that's been proven in countries that locked down earlier, like Norway(at least in the first wave). The problem is that stopping the pandemic globally would more or less require a globally coordinated lockdown, which was never going to happen because we're just not at that level of internation cooperation in general, and it only takes one reckless government like Trump's or Bolsonaro's so ruin it for everyone. And it would probably be untenable for economic reasons as well.
- katkatkatkatket 4y ago>it sounds like a very strange decision to me. I suppose it could have been a form of pre-emptive triage to avoid hospital overload? Yes, it is very strange. In March 2020, we were promised a global pandemic the like of which had never been seen before, with the young and old alike dropping dead in the street. Despite it very quickly becoming apparent that this was not the case, the general response, public messaging, and state of mind for many continues as if that were true. >would more or less require a globally coordinated lockdown It would also require borders to be sealed shut to allcomers, which is not something that most Western countries are used to enforcing.
- __alexs 4y agoWhy does the complexity of the care matter? There are only so many beds in the hospital.
- devilbunny 4y agoNurse (and respiratory care, and physical/occupational therapy, and everyone else):patient ratios. 1:4 is usual; 1:6 is rough, 1:8 is almost undoable. Low-complexity patients ease the per-patient workload, allowing the same number of nurses to cover more patients. In ICU/ITU, typical nursing ratio is 1:2, but some flexed to 1:3 and even 1:4, which is getting into danger territory. Many hospitals in the US closed wards during COVID because they didn't have the staff, not because they physically lacked space.
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- CydeWeys 4y ago"The number of beds in the hospital" is short-hand for the number of attended beds. The actual limit here is doctors and nurses, not the physical number of beds. It's easy to get more beds in an emergency (go to Ikea; I'm not joking). Not so easy to get more trained medical staff.
- __alexs 4y agoNHS staff were not immune from COVID either right? Presumably they had a lot of staff reductions from sickness.