44 ms·

UK: Excess deaths in 2022 among worst in 50 years

143 points by open-source-ux 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
roenxi 4y ago
It'll still probably take a few more years to get the full picture of what the cost of the lockdowns was since it takes so long for the statistics to be collated. For example, turns out the lockdowns got one of my family members by making it difficult to get a diagnosis on what turned out to be a cancer. Hopefully the 6 months (approx) delay on getting it dealt with doesn't turn out to be important.
- atoav 4y ago
  I wish the best as well. But don't forget that at the same times all kind of other people had to move or cancel their treatment because the hospitals were full. What weighs heavier is for the statisticians to figure out.
sokoloff 4y ago
Headline> Excess deaths in 2022 among worst in 50 years Article> [2022] represents one of the largest excess death levels outside the pandemic in 50 years. Article> Though far below peak pandemic levels… 2022 is not even “the worst in 3 years” which would be a reasonable inference from their headline.
- kasey_junk 4y ago
  This is one of the most egregiously bad headlines I’ve seen.
  - cf141q5325 4y ago
    The difference is we knew where the excess death was coming from in these years.
- Clent 4y ago
  The keyword here is 'among'
pavelica 4y ago
[flagged]
- joxel 4y ago
  [flagged]
- WithinReason 4y ago
  Title of last paragraph: "No evidence of vaccine effect"
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    I didnt know BBC were data analysis experts and could be trusted to make final conclusions on this.
    - joxel 4y ago
      Because it’s so hard to understand the complicated math that is 50x — aka you’re 50x more likely to experience heart issues from catching Covid than getting the vaccine. If you think you can avoid getting Covid then you may have a point. But for any normal rational person living a normal rational life, the vaccine makes sense. I understand you may not fall into that group.
      - ekianjo 4y ago
        > aka you’re 50x more likely to experience heart issues from catching Covid than getting the vaccine. This is completely false, because it cherry picks the data from people who were hospitalized with severe COVID cases. Most people who recovered with very few symptoms after COVID did not end up with any heart damage.
        joxel 4y ago
        If that is "cherry picking" -- then your data is also cherry picked --- as people who have the vaccine are less likely to end up with severe Covid hospitalization
flipbrad 4y ago
Given how little covid testing is happening, is there a chance we're undercounting ongoing covid mortality?
- ekianjo 4y ago
  If people are dying so much from covid then the vaccines are completely useless since they were supposed to reduce mortality.
  - flipbrad 4y ago
    I don't think you are engaging very deeply in thought here. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-63548270 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-63548270
    - ekianjo 4y ago
      Notice the IF in the start of my sentence.
  - kdjkdjk 4y ago
    They do so successfully, but wane quite quickly. Few people are taking booster shots so their protection diminishes over time.
    - thinking4real 4y ago
      “The vaccines are a success… but you need to take more vaccines to be protected” Surely you can see that the goal posts have been shifted from the days of “the vaccine is our road back to normalcy” and similar mantras when they first were pushed? It was originally touted as the solution. Many people who were silenced, fired, or worse, were silenced from objecting with the idea that “this isn’t a solution, I’d rather not” And now we’re saying it was a rousing success, yet it isn’t enough at the same time… The doublespeak is astounding
- kdjkdjk 4y ago
  Yes and no. More people are also having more health issues because of a weakened immunse system (due to prior COVID infections). The "direct" link might not necessarily be made, but there's definite increased mortality as a consequence of COVID policies.
a_c 4y ago
Could covid be the last straw to the NHS that A&E can't serve patients in a timely manner? I have experience the 48 minutes ambulance wait second hand. A friend of mine was having heartache and called ambulance. He was told to wait for 45 minutes. His wife insisted to drive him straight to A&E instead. The moment he steps out of his car he crashed. That's was about 20 minutes after the emergency call. Had he waited longer he would be gone. On another occasion, I had simultaneously received a letter from NHS, telling me to return for minor operation, and a phone call from doctor, telling me no further follow up needed. I can't reach the doctor through phone call so I go for the consultation anyway. Turns out the hospital did schedule an appointment for me, a different doctor did prepare to perform a biopsy on me, upon further clarification, the doctors did discharge me. I wonder how much is it due to the system being overwhelmed, how much is just normal error.
- badcppdev 4y ago
  My 2 penny opinion on this debate is people should always refer to the UK government rather than the "NHS". The NHS is just a government department run by the health minister. Saying the NHS is in trouble means you're not pointing your finger at the people responsible. (Your opinion on this is very welcome)
  - hanoz 4y ago
    That's only the case for the NHS in England.
    - badcppdev 4y ago
      Are you talking about how NHS Scotland is run by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing based out of Holyrood? Please tell me you're not. It's not really very relevant to the discussion. My point was that it's the government running the health service. Name and shame the person responsible.
      - hanoz 4y ago
        I wasn't particularly thinking of Scotland, but since you mention it: "The NHS in Scotland is totally devolved to the Scottish Parliament and all policy and spending decisions are made in Scotland." https://www.gov.uk/government/news/facts-about-nhs-funding-in-scotland https://www.gov.uk/government/news/facts-about-nhs-funding-i...
dijit 4y ago
I read a paper in 2016 that was attempting to understand if there was a human cost to Austerity. They succeeded in finding a causal link between austerity measures and increased mortality. At the end of the paper they estimated that 120,000+ people have died as a result. Additionally: that the the rate of excess deaths was increasing year on year. There is an issue with highlighting this; For starters, many people are very likely to bury their heads in the sand: * "How do you know that it's related to Austerity" (not reading the paper) * "They would have died anyway" * "The world is different from the time period it is modelled from" (it corrects for this by comparing also to other roughly equivalent economies) * "The UK is different than other advanced economies!" The other issue is that it sounds so insane and conspiratorial. 120,000 is a large number. It's approximately the size of Stratford upon Avon. A follow up study puts the number now closer to 330,000, around the population of Coventry. Somehow people will blame the NHS for not being efficient, though evidence to the contrary exists throughout its history, often being one of the most cost effective healthcare systems in operation; or that COVID is a contributing cause to these figures. People are unwilling to hear this: This was a problem well before the pandemic. Source (2017): https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/7/11/e017722 https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/7/11/e017722 Source (2022): https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_885099_en.html https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_885099_en.html
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  120k is "meaningless" if you do not mention how large of a population and how long of a duration - and the comparison that you do use is basically "clickbait". And if you do not compare it with other causes of death, someone that doesn't deal routinely with these numbers (so, most people) still has no idea how much of a problem it is. (For instance I've been comparing war deaths in Ukraine to roadkills in Ukraine to gauge this.)
  - dijit 4y ago
    In percentages it's an excess mortality of approximately 7%. As in "7% of people who died, have died in excess of what we expect". It should be noted that in the years prior to this, excess deaths were falling precipitously. (10-20%) Eitherway, it's well documented in the studies.
open-source-ux 4y ago
"Data indicates pandemic effects on health and NHS pressures are among the leading explanations." Relevant charts from the BBC and FT (Financial Times) reveal the pressure on the UK's health service: - Annual changes in health spending in the UK (BBC): https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/16A6D/production/_128218729_optimised-healthcare-spending-annual-bars-nc-3.png.webp https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/16A6D/production... - Deep lasting cuts to UK health spending (FT): https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1606223936848629760/photo/1 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1606223936848629760/... - Waiting hospital lists (FT): https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1606223967903260673/photo/1 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1606223967903260673/... This twitter thread from FT journalist John Burn-Mordoch is an damning and eye-opening look at NHS statistics (Dec 2022): https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1606223922474627073 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1606223922474627073
- gadders 4y ago
  There have been no NHS funding cuts: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/bulletins/healthcareexpenditureukhealthaccountsprovisionalestimates/2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... "Nominal healthcare expenditure rose by 7.4% in 2021 and was £54 billion greater than spending in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic"
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - guilhas 4y ago
    > likely to have been driven in part by activities in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, such as testing and tracing services and the implementation of the vaccination programme So probably no increase, pandemic billions are gone and no one will see them again The rest service itself probably had a cut with the inflation, and increased processes and bureaucracy to manage
ekianjo 4y ago
> type of Covid vaccine has been linked to a small rise in cases of heart inflammation and scarring (pericarditis and myocarditis). But this particular vaccine side-effect was mainly seen in boys and young men, while the excess deaths are highest in older men - aged 50 or more. Alternative explanation. You only see the heart inflammation in young men because its unusual. In older people you already have it because of age so extra inflammation could go undetected.
- kenjackson 4y ago
  That’s not an explanation. That’s just making something up with no data to support it.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    Using as much data as BBC is using here which is none.
- kdjkdjk 4y ago
  and well, COVID being fundamentally a cardiovascular disease might be an actual alternative explanation :)
  - tremon 4y ago
    > https://www.healthline.com/health/covid-respiratory-or-vascular https://www.healthline.com/health/covid-respiratory-or-vascu... Why COVID-19 is considered to be a respiratory disease Medical professionals and researchers have been studying the link between COVID-19 and vascular symptoms since the beginning of the pandemic [..] These observations led to several hypotheses that COVID-19 was a vascular disease with respiratory symptoms and not a respiratory disease. Studies in 2020 and 2021 supported this theory. These studies concluded that although people with mild to moderate COVID-19 only had respiratory symptoms, COVID-19 was primarily a vascular disease. However, additional studies published later in 2021 and into 2022 have contraindicated these findings. New studies indicate that COVID-19 doesn’t attack the vascular system at all.
- 4y ago
vfclists 4y ago
Now that the BBC has mentioned it, is the Govt going to do a proper investigation of why and do something to fix it? Covid, Covid vaccines or not, excess deaths should be falling because the excess deaths of previous years should mean a deficit of excess deaths in the following years. Something has gone deeply wrong and the Govt is doing nothing and leaving the underlying causes to BBC speculation. These figures should also be analyzed properly by age group, something the BBC journalists are clearly not interested in even though they have the resources to do.
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  Hey, it's absolutely not true that the government is doing nothing. They're actively cutting the pay of Nurses, junior doctors, ambulance workers, and emergency services call handlers. This has resulted in a series of strikes further destroying the service as well as causing a recruitment crisis. In response the government is planning to pass legislation to ban strikes that will allow ministers to ban strikes in practically any profession - from tram drivers to the passport office to nurses to border guards. In response to this legislation there will be a general strike, probably causing the government to collapse.
kdjkdjk 4y ago
One day the world will wrap its head around the fact that having COVID affects your immune system long-term and as such is bad for future health outcomes. Welcome to my TED talk. Wear a mask.
- NDizzle 4y ago
  Never again in my life will I wear a mask.
- bitlax 4y ago
  This is exactly the level of rigor and arrogance I expect from a TED Talk.
- thinking4real 4y ago
  Yet with 80%+ (or so) of the population vaccinated, one would expect a drop in people dying from covid At least - that’s what they said when it came out and they demanded everyone take it. Plus with all the boosters, combined with the general trend of dwindling intensity of viruses in a population over time, one should expect this effect to be even more dramatic Yet here we are, talking about covid like it’s April 2020. How it’s so devastating of a virus, like we’ve gained nothing in fighting it since then Funny how literally any metric can be used to justify covid madness
cf141q5325 4y ago
I think the societal response to this implies that after 3 years of adapted behavior to limit risk of excess death, people are kind of done. There better be at least a decade until the next pandemic, at this point even the black death wouldnt convince people to go back into lock down.
- truculent 4y ago
  Have you read the article? "The difference in 2022 - compared with 2020 and 2021 - is that Covid deaths were one of several factors, rather than the main explanation for this excess" One of the other factors is the crisis in the NHS: "At the start of 2022, death rates were looking like they'd returned to pre-pandemic levels. It wasn't until June that excess deaths really started to rise - just as the number of people waiting for hours on trolleys in English hospitals hit levels normally seen in winter." So, I don't think people's propensity to go into lockdown is particularly relevant here.
  - cf141q5325 4y ago
    I didnt want to imply to go into lockdown, i was more pointing at the lack of interest in the current non covid excess mortality. This data has been out there for a while and not just in the UK. Could have worded it better.
spirit557 4y ago
Is this really a mystery still? Well we know we can't blame it on fats anymore, our governments have tried that completely failed trope for 70 years now. And looks where it's gotten us. Heart disease is killing western diet eaters like there's really no tomorrow. I think it's obvious that constantly high insulin is the biggest driver of vascular disease. Hyperinsulinemia precedes diabetes and is measurable 10-20 years before your a1c will detect pre diabetes. This drives virtually all diseases of "modern western man/person" - heart attacks, stroke, dementia, connective tissue diseases, diabetes. It's insulin! Low fat diets high in refined carbs disrupting the absorption of k, d, e, a. sugary beverages with zero fiber, 3 meals and 5 snacks a day so your insulin levels never come down even at night sometimes. Your body can never repair itself or stop storing fat instead of using them. 3 meals and 5 snacks a day= zero ability to distinguish cravings and real hunger. Being told to gobble 5+ fruits a day by every dietician. Fruits bear in the winter, we live in climate controlled buildings. Why are we gobbling so much fructose from 5+ fruits a day.
- ls15 4y ago
  Dietary fat just doubled in price this year
- smcl 4y ago
  You're leaping to a conclusion that this is a problem with individuals' dietary choices while missing that the NHS has to do more with less year on year. Importantly while the former may be an issue, it is near-impossible to fix - encouraging healthy eating has been a priority for decades. Whereas addressing the latter should be very doable if the major parties agreed that adequately funding the NHS (and other social services) was a priority - sadly both seem to believe that a public-private partnership and more austerity is the way forward :-/
  - nradov 4y ago
    The only healthcare services that deliver a significant improvement to life expectancy at the population level are vaccinations, antibiotics, and trauma care. And those services are cheap. Everything else is pretty marginal. Diet and exercise have a far larger impact than almost any healthcare interventions.
em1sar 4y ago
[dead]
bowsamic 4y ago
Last time I got heavily downvoted for this, but please if you're in the UK do not rely on the NHS. Indeed, you cannot rely on the NHS. There is no knowing whether or not they will have the capacity to save you.
- raesene9 4y ago
  Out of curiousity, what do you suggest as an alternative?
- gmac 4y ago
  You probably got downvoted because there is literally no alternative (except perhaps being airlifted to a different country). The NHS is basically the only provider of emergency care.
drooopy 4y ago
What a shitty article. No mention of the cuts to the NHS by the tories and the effect that had on its ability to serve the public but they make it seem like this is a side effect of the covid vaccines? What the actual fuck.
- gadders 4y ago
  There haven't been any cuts. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/bulletins/healthcareexpenditureukhealthaccountsprovisionalestimates/2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
  - noelwelsh 4y ago
    Spending on the NHS is increasing a rate that is below the rate of increase in demand (the gap is about 3% year on year IIRC). Informally you might say this is a cut. It's easier to communicate to an unsophisticated audience.
    - gadders 4y ago
      I guess you can restate "cut" to suit your point. I'd even accept "cut" if it was less money in real terms (i.e. after inflation). But I don't think you can define "cut" as "not giving the NHS all the money it asks for, even though it got more than last year".
      - noelwelsh 4y ago
        Spending is increasing at a slower rate than demand: https://nhsfunding.info/underfunded/is-the-nhs-underfunded/ https://nhsfunding.info/underfunded/is-the-nhs-underfunded/ You can pedantically argue whether this is a "cut" or not, but that's not the issue. Nor is the issue how much the NHS asks for. The issue is there is less money per health-care-incident to provide care.
  - DanBC 4y ago
    Please at least read the pages you quote. > this is likely to have been driven in part by activities in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, such as testing and tracing services and the implementation of the vaccination programme. Yes, if we include the many billions spent on faulty test and trace and broken PPE -the corrupt spending that went to pals of the Tory party- we see an increase in health spending. Guess what happens to the amount of health care funding if you ignore the corrupt spend on PPE?
spants 4y ago
[flagged]
- empthought 4y ago
  Anecdotes unsupported by research are not scientific evidence.
  - icare_1er 4y ago
    Well, in that case, the BBC article is "anecdote unsupported by research".
    - empthought 4y ago
      "Finally, figures up to June 2022 looking at deaths from all causes show unvaccinated people were more likely to die than vaccinated people. While this data on its own can't tell us it's the vaccine protecting people from dying - there are too many complicating factors - if vaccines were driving excess deaths we would expect this to be the other way around." It's simple math but anti vaxxers are consummate innumerates.
  - VLM 4y ago
    We call that journalism
  - TechBro8615 4y ago
    The flagged comments here have just as much a right to speculate on the cause as the BBC article does to definitively rule it out.
- truculent 4y ago
  What specifically in that section do you take issue with? Do you think excess deaths would be lower without vaccines?
- jphoward 4y ago
  If you mean Aseem Malhotra, he is an idiot and nobody in the entire region of London that he trained in thinks he has an IQ above 100. Pre-COVID he was unemployably bad as a doctor, and has never had a formal job in the NHS since he completed his training. He has latched on to vaccines hoping he can make a quick buck that way.
b3nji 4y ago
I know one thing that is certainly not responsible for this jump in excess death.
yardstick 4y ago
I looked into normalized deaths per capita a while back, sometime late/post pandemic. What was oddly fascinating for me to see is the figures in the early 90s were actually a tad worse than during the pandemic. But progressively since the 90s the death rates have been consistently improving, bar covid. Of course this data reflects the actual lockdowns experienced and not any what-if of the impact of death rates if we continued covid without lockdown. 1. https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathsintheukfrom1990to2020 https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  Smoking has dropped from around 55% of the population in the 60s to around 13% now. It was always one of the biggest killers, and as smokers died out and smoking became unfashionable life expectancy - unsurprisingly - stared to improve.
  - yardstick 4y ago
    Good point, I had completely forgot about smoking. What a difference!
slaw 4y ago
Sweden has no excess deaths in 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...
- Tarsul 4y ago
  The graph you linked shows that Sweden has ~70k deaths in 2022 up until September 30th, thus you'd have to add about a third (for Q4) which would result in 93k which would mean it's a little higher before the years before the pandemic. Anyway, one would have to wait to see the stats of Q4 to really talk about it (I think usually Q4's are higher than other quartals because of winter). As such, your point is moot.
  - aredox 4y ago
    Swedes are dying again of COVID in numbers. https://mobile.twitter.com/RiskeO/status/1614117492950966273 https://mobile.twitter.com/RiskeO/status/1614117492950966273
sfusato 4y ago
This is not just an UK phenomenon though. You can find reports from countries from all the continents, except for Africa. It seems they fared the best in the last 3 years notwithstanding all the apocalyptic news headlines in early 2020 predicting a blood bath once Covid reached them.
- 41amxn41 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - csomar 4y ago
    Another possibility is that Africans have better immunity due to, uhm, natural selection? The human body has its own mechanism in defense which is more sophisticated than any of medicines out there. Natural selection is also how we came out to be. I think it was foolish to think that we can do better than a hundred-million year of a refined process.
    - upsidesinclude 4y ago
      Except African Americans had far worse immunity
    - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
      The above comments are several dumb takes. Also, reports are not the same as actual outcomes. The buck stops with excess mortality. In my visits to Africa since the Pandemic started, they are taking COVID quite seriously, with lots of measures against it. And not ignoring it at all (1). Ironically for your assumptions, this may be a result of cultural selection: this isn't their first infectious disease to deal with as a public health issue in living memory. Not to say that there's no COVID there, people are still getting it, people that I know there have had it, varying number of times with varying severity. 1) YMMV, Africa is vast, I only visited one corner of it. Blanket statements about "Africa" are false somewhere.
      - 41amxn41 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tonguetrainer 4y ago
I'm surprised it's not fentanyl. I work at a homeless shelter and there isn't a week that goes by when I'm not either trying to recessitate a client who has overdosed or finding their dead body. It's an epidemic, and it's killing males and females who should be in the prime of their lives.
- marliechiller 4y ago
  Is this prevalent in the UK? I didnt even realise
hanoz 4y ago
It may be relevant and of interest to readers around the world to learn how we in Britain access the NHS, our envy-of-the-world National Health Service. The main way is via your allocated General Practitioner (GP). To see a GP you need to telephone the GP's place of work, known as a surgery, and to have any chance of getting a same day appointment you need to call at 8am precisely. Don't call at 7.59 because you won't be connected, and don't leave it until 8.01 because it will be far too late. Call within the first few seconds after 8am and you'll be informed that you're in a queue, behind several dozen earlier callers. After an hour of waiting you'll get through to a non-medical receptionist who will ask you about your symptoms, and make a judgement about whether or not you or your child is worthy of one of the few remaining appointments for that day. If you're a very pushy mother, or someone who really enjoys talking with GPs' receptionists (which most people don't) then you may have some success in this. If you're just a chilled out guy who doesn't like to fuss, you've got no chance. You'll then be informed that to make an appointment for a later date you need to try again for a same-day appointment the next day by repeating the process above the following morning. It is not possible to arrange an appointment for any time further in the future no matter how long you are prepared to wait. The only other means of accessing the NHS is by rocking up at the Accident and Emergency (A&E) department of your nearest large enough hospital. Unsurprisingly given the above, these are rather busy and you may be waiting for a day or so before you get seen. To avoid adding to this delay you should make you own way to A&E because ambulances routinely take several hours to reach you for the most urgent cases (heart attacks, stokes etc) or up to a few days for, say, a fallen elderly person, and on reaching the hospital you wont be able to leave the ambulance and enter the A&E department for up to another day. However, once you're in the system and being seen by a specialist then by all accounts you do get fairly well looked after, so putting in the hours at A&E or regularly playing the GP telephone lottery may well prove worth your while if you wish to make use of our envy of the world NHS.
- richij 4y ago
  You missed one important entry point: 111 can refer you to an Urgent Care Unit. There are growing numbers of these in town centres and hospitals. It's basically an extra GP resource.
- jhrozek 4y ago
pcthrowaway 4y ago
We've had 3 years of reduced exercise, and people are 'making up' for being cooped up by engaging in more activities that they couldn't before. Taking those road trips, going to that amusement parks, snowboarding, mountain biking, etc. Not to mention supply chain shortages in medical and medical-adjacent fields, paramedics, etc. at a time where some people have overlooked long COVID symptoms As well as an economic depression at a time where we're suffering a cultural PTSD from the previous few years. Even if COVID isn't found directly responsible for these deaths, I suspect it is indirectly responsible.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Mental health down the drain too. I know this will be an unpopular HN opinion but WFH has made me feel socially isolated. I can’t stand working alone all day anymore and I’ll be looking out for a job that has a real office where most people come in this year.
  - oliwarner 4y ago
    I don't think it'll be an unpopular opinion that WFH isolates you. I've worked from home for two decades and you spend a lot more time on your own and you have to do something about that. I think many people like working with other people some of the time. What may be unpopular is the idea that you need a workplace that enforces on-site working for remote-possible work being a requirement to get your daily social interactions done. You're essentially saying you're looking for an employer that cares more about their middle management than their workers. Just be careful what you wish for. If I were you, I'd join a club.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      The problem I have is that because I didn’t get social interactions at work anymore, I have to get them outside of work time. I can’t just enjoy a game alone anymore because I’ll end up having socialised with no one and feel depressed. So I’m left either deciding if social interaction or personal time is more important. While previously when working in the office I got both.
oliwarner 4y ago
It's been a terrible season for respiratory infections (RSV, Covid, Flu) and gastro bugs, the most vulnerable can't afford to eat, let alone turn on the heating, and social care availability has been in decline for a decade, worsening significantly in the past year, nuking front-door availability at hospitals, doctors and the transport they rely on. All of which I mean to say: No. Shit. Sherlock. It's all so painfully obvious to anyone paying attention. The doctors and nurses and care homes and mental health workers have all been screaming about this for a decade. Cuts upon cuts upon redirected funding upon private providers upon universal credit cutting benefits upon cuts and failures and all that before covid, all before inflation lowering everyone's incomes. We need to hire. We need to train. We need to retain. We need to build. We need to instill the fact that care home workers, pastoral carers for our elderly are such bloody important roles because without them helping people live outside hospital, nobody else gets seen. We need to pay them, we need to pay them to pick up shit and talked to dementia sufferers more than Jeff Bezos can pay them to pack boxes. If we can't do that… It's over. But we need to have a serious conversation about what we actually want to do with the infirm in this country. Letting them freeze to death in their own homes feels like state-mandated euthanasia without the "eu". Huh, a wild Brexit joke appeared. We need a General Election.
- vithlani 4y ago
  [dead]
- nivenkos 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - zimpenfish 4y ago
    That might be true if this wasn't a long-term issue going back at least a decade, if not two.
  - uxcolumbo 4y ago
    It’s not an either or. We can have both. Pay nurses more and help to fight back oppressors. Helping Ukraine is not charity, it’s ensuring Europe’s security and safety. But you are right, this government has shown how they value key workers.
Khaine 4y ago
My Great Aunt in Scotland had the flu, which was so bad she had chest pain. She went to her GP who told her to go to A&E. Even with her GP informing the hospital she was coming, and that she had chest pain it took her 14 hours to get a bed. Absolute madness. The system is bursting at the seams. It appears that the UK is breaking apart in so many different ways; the budget, health system, education, etc. I'm not sure a change of government will solve all of this.
dzonga 4y ago
something I keep seeing in the comments. is people blaming the gvt for not training more doctors. and yet keep forgetting that students have to incentivized to train as doctors i.e there has to be hope for better pay, better working conditions which are currently not on offer right now. so the smart kids, who might have chosen medicine chose other fields. economics at play - allocation of scarce resources. the only thing that keeps NHS humming in terms of doctors / nurses is due to those professions being recruited from 3rd world countries.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

It'll still probably take a few more years to get the full picture of what the cost of the lockdowns was since it takes so long for the statistics to be collated. For example, turns out the lockdowns got one of my family members by making it difficult to get a diagnosis on what turned out to be a cancer. Hopefully the 6 months (approx) delay on getting it dealt with doesn't turn out to be important.

atoav 4y ago
I wish the best as well. But don't forget that at the same times all kind of other people had to move or cancel their treatment because the hospitals were full. What weighs heavier is for the statisticians to figure out.

sokoloff 4y ago

Headline> Excess deaths in 2022 among worst in 50 years Article> [2022] represents one of the largest excess death levels outside the pandemic in 50 years. Article> Though far below peak pandemic levels… 2022 is not even “the worst in 3 years” which would be a reasonable inference from their headline.

kasey_junk 4y ago
This is one of the most egregiously bad headlines I’ve seen.
- cf141q5325 4y ago
  The difference is we knew where the excess death was coming from in these years.
Clent 4y ago
The keyword here is 'among'

pavelica 4y ago

[flagged]

joxel 4y ago
[flagged]
WithinReason 4y ago
Title of last paragraph: "No evidence of vaccine effect"
- ekianjo 4y ago
  I didnt know BBC were data analysis experts and could be trusted to make final conclusions on this.
  - joxel 4y ago
    Because it’s so hard to understand the complicated math that is 50x — aka you’re 50x more likely to experience heart issues from catching Covid than getting the vaccine. If you think you can avoid getting Covid then you may have a point. But for any normal rational person living a normal rational life, the vaccine makes sense. I understand you may not fall into that group.
    - ekianjo 4y ago
      > aka you’re 50x more likely to experience heart issues from catching Covid than getting the vaccine. This is completely false, because it cherry picks the data from people who were hospitalized with severe COVID cases. Most people who recovered with very few symptoms after COVID did not end up with any heart damage.
      - joxel 4y ago
        If that is "cherry picking" -- then your data is also cherry picked --- as people who have the vaccine are less likely to end up with severe Covid hospitalization

flipbrad 4y ago

Given how little covid testing is happening, is there a chance we're undercounting ongoing covid mortality?

ekianjo 4y ago
If people are dying so much from covid then the vaccines are completely useless since they were supposed to reduce mortality.
- flipbrad 4y ago
  I don't think you are engaging very deeply in thought here. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-63548270 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-63548270
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    Notice the IF in the start of my sentence.
- kdjkdjk 4y ago
  They do so successfully, but wane quite quickly. Few people are taking booster shots so their protection diminishes over time.
  - thinking4real 4y ago
    “The vaccines are a success… but you need to take more vaccines to be protected” Surely you can see that the goal posts have been shifted from the days of “the vaccine is our road back to normalcy” and similar mantras when they first were pushed? It was originally touted as the solution. Many people who were silenced, fired, or worse, were silenced from objecting with the idea that “this isn’t a solution, I’d rather not” And now we’re saying it was a rousing success, yet it isn’t enough at the same time… The doublespeak is astounding
kdjkdjk 4y ago
Yes and no. More people are also having more health issues because of a weakened immunse system (due to prior COVID infections). The "direct" link might not necessarily be made, but there's definite increased mortality as a consequence of COVID policies.

a_c 4y ago

Could covid be the last straw to the NHS that A&E can't serve patients in a timely manner? I have experience the 48 minutes ambulance wait second hand. A friend of mine was having heartache and called ambulance. He was told to wait for 45 minutes. His wife insisted to drive him straight to A&E instead. The moment he steps out of his car he crashed. That's was about 20 minutes after the emergency call. Had he waited longer he would be gone. On another occasion, I had simultaneously received a letter from NHS, telling me to return for minor operation, and a phone call from doctor, telling me no further follow up needed. I can't reach the doctor through phone call so I go for the consultation anyway. Turns out the hospital did schedule an appointment for me, a different doctor did prepare to perform a biopsy on me, upon further clarification, the doctors did discharge me. I wonder how much is it due to the system being overwhelmed, how much is just normal error.

badcppdev 4y ago
My 2 penny opinion on this debate is people should always refer to the UK government rather than the "NHS". The NHS is just a government department run by the health minister. Saying the NHS is in trouble means you're not pointing your finger at the people responsible. (Your opinion on this is very welcome)
- hanoz 4y ago
  That's only the case for the NHS in England.
  - badcppdev 4y ago
    Are you talking about how NHS Scotland is run by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing based out of Holyrood? Please tell me you're not. It's not really very relevant to the discussion. My point was that it's the government running the health service. Name and shame the person responsible.
    - hanoz 4y ago
      I wasn't particularly thinking of Scotland, but since you mention it: "The NHS in Scotland is totally devolved to the Scottish Parliament and all policy and spending decisions are made in Scotland." https://www.gov.uk/government/news/facts-about-nhs-funding-in-scotland https://www.gov.uk/government/news/facts-about-nhs-funding-i...

dijit 4y ago

I read a paper in 2016 that was attempting to understand if there was a human cost to Austerity. They succeeded in finding a causal link between austerity measures and increased mortality. At the end of the paper they estimated that 120,000+ people have died as a result. Additionally: that the the rate of excess deaths was increasing year on year. There is an issue with highlighting this; For starters, many people are very likely to bury their heads in the sand: * "How do you know that it's related to Austerity" (not reading the paper) * "They would have died anyway" * "The world is different from the time period it is modelled from" (it corrects for this by comparing also to other roughly equivalent economies) * "The UK is different than other advanced economies!" The other issue is that it sounds so insane and conspiratorial. 120,000 is a large number. It's approximately the size of Stratford upon Avon. A follow up study puts the number now closer to 330,000, around the population of Coventry. Somehow people will blame the NHS for not being efficient, though evidence to the contrary exists throughout its history, often being one of the most cost effective healthcare systems in operation; or that COVID is a contributing cause to these figures. People are unwilling to hear this: This was a problem well before the pandemic. Source (2017): https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/7/11/e017722 https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/7/11/e017722 Source (2022): https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_885099_en.html https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_885099_en.html

BlueTemplar 4y ago
120k is "meaningless" if you do not mention how large of a population and how long of a duration - and the comparison that you do use is basically "clickbait". And if you do not compare it with other causes of death, someone that doesn't deal routinely with these numbers (so, most people) still has no idea how much of a problem it is. (For instance I've been comparing war deaths in Ukraine to roadkills in Ukraine to gauge this.)
- dijit 4y ago
  In percentages it's an excess mortality of approximately 7%. As in "7% of people who died, have died in excess of what we expect". It should be noted that in the years prior to this, excess deaths were falling precipitously. (10-20%) Eitherway, it's well documented in the studies.

open-source-ux 4y ago

"Data indicates pandemic effects on health and NHS pressures are among the leading explanations." Relevant charts from the BBC and FT (Financial Times) reveal the pressure on the UK's health service: - Annual changes in health spending in the UK (BBC): https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/16A6D/production/_128218729_optimised-healthcare-spending-annual-bars-nc-3.png.webp https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/16A6D/production... - Deep lasting cuts to UK health spending (FT): https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1606223936848629760/photo/1 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1606223936848629760/... - Waiting hospital lists (FT): https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1606223967903260673/photo/1 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1606223967903260673/... This twitter thread from FT journalist John Burn-Mordoch is an damning and eye-opening look at NHS statistics (Dec 2022): https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1606223922474627073 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1606223922474627073

gadders 4y ago
There have been no NHS funding cuts: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/bulletins/healthcareexpenditureukhealthaccountsprovisionalestimates/2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... "Nominal healthcare expenditure rose by 7.4% in 2021 and was £54 billion greater than spending in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic"
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- guilhas 4y ago
  > likely to have been driven in part by activities in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, such as testing and tracing services and the implementation of the vaccination programme So probably no increase, pandemic billions are gone and no one will see them again The rest service itself probably had a cut with the inflation, and increased processes and bureaucracy to manage

ekianjo 4y ago

> type of Covid vaccine has been linked to a small rise in cases of heart inflammation and scarring (pericarditis and myocarditis). But this particular vaccine side-effect was mainly seen in boys and young men, while the excess deaths are highest in older men - aged 50 or more. Alternative explanation. You only see the heart inflammation in young men because its unusual. In older people you already have it because of age so extra inflammation could go undetected.

kenjackson 4y ago
That’s not an explanation. That’s just making something up with no data to support it.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  Using as much data as BBC is using here which is none.
kdjkdjk 4y ago
and well, COVID being fundamentally a cardiovascular disease might be an actual alternative explanation :)
- tremon 4y ago
  > https://www.healthline.com/health/covid-respiratory-or-vascular https://www.healthline.com/health/covid-respiratory-or-vascu... Why COVID-19 is considered to be a respiratory disease Medical professionals and researchers have been studying the link between COVID-19 and vascular symptoms since the beginning of the pandemic [..] These observations led to several hypotheses that COVID-19 was a vascular disease with respiratory symptoms and not a respiratory disease. Studies in 2020 and 2021 supported this theory. These studies concluded that although people with mild to moderate COVID-19 only had respiratory symptoms, COVID-19 was primarily a vascular disease. However, additional studies published later in 2021 and into 2022 have contraindicated these findings. New studies indicate that COVID-19 doesn’t attack the vascular system at all.
4y ago

vfclists 4y ago

Now that the BBC has mentioned it, is the Govt going to do a proper investigation of why and do something to fix it? Covid, Covid vaccines or not, excess deaths should be falling because the excess deaths of previous years should mean a deficit of excess deaths in the following years. Something has gone deeply wrong and the Govt is doing nothing and leaving the underlying causes to BBC speculation. These figures should also be analyzed properly by age group, something the BBC journalists are clearly not interested in even though they have the resources to do.

SilverBirch 4y ago
Hey, it's absolutely not true that the government is doing nothing. They're actively cutting the pay of Nurses, junior doctors, ambulance workers, and emergency services call handlers. This has resulted in a series of strikes further destroying the service as well as causing a recruitment crisis. In response the government is planning to pass legislation to ban strikes that will allow ministers to ban strikes in practically any profession - from tram drivers to the passport office to nurses to border guards. In response to this legislation there will be a general strike, probably causing the government to collapse.

kdjkdjk 4y ago

One day the world will wrap its head around the fact that having COVID affects your immune system long-term and as such is bad for future health outcomes. Welcome to my TED talk. Wear a mask.

NDizzle 4y ago
Never again in my life will I wear a mask.
bitlax 4y ago
This is exactly the level of rigor and arrogance I expect from a TED Talk.
thinking4real 4y ago
Yet with 80%+ (or so) of the population vaccinated, one would expect a drop in people dying from covid At least - that’s what they said when it came out and they demanded everyone take it. Plus with all the boosters, combined with the general trend of dwindling intensity of viruses in a population over time, one should expect this effect to be even more dramatic Yet here we are, talking about covid like it’s April 2020. How it’s so devastating of a virus, like we’ve gained nothing in fighting it since then Funny how literally any metric can be used to justify covid madness

cf141q5325 4y ago

I think the societal response to this implies that after 3 years of adapted behavior to limit risk of excess death, people are kind of done. There better be at least a decade until the next pandemic, at this point even the black death wouldnt convince people to go back into lock down.

truculent 4y ago
Have you read the article? "The difference in 2022 - compared with 2020 and 2021 - is that Covid deaths were one of several factors, rather than the main explanation for this excess" One of the other factors is the crisis in the NHS: "At the start of 2022, death rates were looking like they'd returned to pre-pandemic levels. It wasn't until June that excess deaths really started to rise - just as the number of people waiting for hours on trolleys in English hospitals hit levels normally seen in winter." So, I don't think people's propensity to go into lockdown is particularly relevant here.
- cf141q5325 4y ago
  I didnt want to imply to go into lockdown, i was more pointing at the lack of interest in the current non covid excess mortality. This data has been out there for a while and not just in the UK. Could have worded it better.

spirit557 4y ago

Is this really a mystery still? Well we know we can't blame it on fats anymore, our governments have tried that completely failed trope for 70 years now. And looks where it's gotten us. Heart disease is killing western diet eaters like there's really no tomorrow. I think it's obvious that constantly high insulin is the biggest driver of vascular disease. Hyperinsulinemia precedes diabetes and is measurable 10-20 years before your a1c will detect pre diabetes. This drives virtually all diseases of "modern western man/person" - heart attacks, stroke, dementia, connective tissue diseases, diabetes. It's insulin! Low fat diets high in refined carbs disrupting the absorption of k, d, e, a. sugary beverages with zero fiber, 3 meals and 5 snacks a day so your insulin levels never come down even at night sometimes. Your body can never repair itself or stop storing fat instead of using them. 3 meals and 5 snacks a day= zero ability to distinguish cravings and real hunger. Being told to gobble 5+ fruits a day by every dietician. Fruits bear in the winter, we live in climate controlled buildings. Why are we gobbling so much fructose from 5+ fruits a day.

ls15 4y ago
Dietary fat just doubled in price this year
smcl 4y ago
You're leaping to a conclusion that this is a problem with individuals' dietary choices while missing that the NHS has to do more with less year on year. Importantly while the former may be an issue, it is near-impossible to fix - encouraging healthy eating has been a priority for decades. Whereas addressing the latter should be very doable if the major parties agreed that adequately funding the NHS (and other social services) was a priority - sadly both seem to believe that a public-private partnership and more austerity is the way forward :-/
- nradov 4y ago
  The only healthcare services that deliver a significant improvement to life expectancy at the population level are vaccinations, antibiotics, and trauma care. And those services are cheap. Everything else is pretty marginal. Diet and exercise have a far larger impact than almost any healthcare interventions.

em1sar 4y ago

[dead]

bowsamic 4y ago

Last time I got heavily downvoted for this, but please if you're in the UK do not rely on the NHS. Indeed, you cannot rely on the NHS. There is no knowing whether or not they will have the capacity to save you.

raesene9 4y ago
Out of curiousity, what do you suggest as an alternative?
gmac 4y ago
You probably got downvoted because there is literally no alternative (except perhaps being airlifted to a different country). The NHS is basically the only provider of emergency care.

drooopy 4y ago

What a shitty article. No mention of the cuts to the NHS by the tories and the effect that had on its ability to serve the public but they make it seem like this is a side effect of the covid vaccines? What the actual fuck.

gadders 4y ago
There haven't been any cuts. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/bulletins/healthcareexpenditureukhealthaccountsprovisionalestimates/2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
- noelwelsh 4y ago
  Spending on the NHS is increasing a rate that is below the rate of increase in demand (the gap is about 3% year on year IIRC). Informally you might say this is a cut. It's easier to communicate to an unsophisticated audience.
  - gadders 4y ago
    I guess you can restate "cut" to suit your point. I'd even accept "cut" if it was less money in real terms (i.e. after inflation). But I don't think you can define "cut" as "not giving the NHS all the money it asks for, even though it got more than last year".
    - noelwelsh 4y ago
      Spending is increasing at a slower rate than demand: https://nhsfunding.info/underfunded/is-the-nhs-underfunded/ https://nhsfunding.info/underfunded/is-the-nhs-underfunded/ You can pedantically argue whether this is a "cut" or not, but that's not the issue. Nor is the issue how much the NHS asks for. The issue is there is less money per health-care-incident to provide care.
- DanBC 4y ago
  Please at least read the pages you quote. > this is likely to have been driven in part by activities in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, such as testing and tracing services and the implementation of the vaccination programme. Yes, if we include the many billions spent on faulty test and trace and broken PPE -the corrupt spending that went to pals of the Tory party- we see an increase in health spending. Guess what happens to the amount of health care funding if you ignore the corrupt spend on PPE?

spants 4y ago

[flagged]

empthought 4y ago
Anecdotes unsupported by research are not scientific evidence.
- icare_1er 4y ago
  Well, in that case, the BBC article is "anecdote unsupported by research".
  - empthought 4y ago
    "Finally, figures up to June 2022 looking at deaths from all causes show unvaccinated people were more likely to die than vaccinated people. While this data on its own can't tell us it's the vaccine protecting people from dying - there are too many complicating factors - if vaccines were driving excess deaths we would expect this to be the other way around." It's simple math but anti vaxxers are consummate innumerates.
- VLM 4y ago
  We call that journalism
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  The flagged comments here have just as much a right to speculate on the cause as the BBC article does to definitively rule it out.
truculent 4y ago
What specifically in that section do you take issue with? Do you think excess deaths would be lower without vaccines?
jphoward 4y ago
If you mean Aseem Malhotra, he is an idiot and nobody in the entire region of London that he trained in thinks he has an IQ above 100. Pre-COVID he was unemployably bad as a doctor, and has never had a formal job in the NHS since he completed his training. He has latched on to vaccines hoping he can make a quick buck that way.

b3nji 4y ago

I know one thing that is certainly not responsible for this jump in excess death.

yardstick 4y ago

I looked into normalized deaths per capita a while back, sometime late/post pandemic. What was oddly fascinating for me to see is the figures in the early 90s were actually a tad worse than during the pandemic. But progressively since the 90s the death rates have been consistently improving, bar covid. Of course this data reflects the actual lockdowns experienced and not any what-if of the impact of death rates if we continued covid without lockdown. 1. https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathsintheukfrom1990to2020 https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
Smoking has dropped from around 55% of the population in the 60s to around 13% now. It was always one of the biggest killers, and as smokers died out and smoking became unfashionable life expectancy - unsurprisingly - stared to improve.
- yardstick 4y ago
  Good point, I had completely forgot about smoking. What a difference!

slaw 4y ago

Sweden has no excess deaths in 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...

Tarsul 4y ago
The graph you linked shows that Sweden has ~70k deaths in 2022 up until September 30th, thus you'd have to add about a third (for Q4) which would result in 93k which would mean it's a little higher before the years before the pandemic. Anyway, one would have to wait to see the stats of Q4 to really talk about it (I think usually Q4's are higher than other quartals because of winter). As such, your point is moot.
- aredox 4y ago
  Swedes are dying again of COVID in numbers. https://mobile.twitter.com/RiskeO/status/1614117492950966273 https://mobile.twitter.com/RiskeO/status/1614117492950966273

sfusato 4y ago

This is not just an UK phenomenon though. You can find reports from countries from all the continents, except for Africa. It seems they fared the best in the last 3 years notwithstanding all the apocalyptic news headlines in early 2020 predicting a blood bath once Covid reached them.

41amxn41 4y ago
[flagged]
- csomar 4y ago
  Another possibility is that Africans have better immunity due to, uhm, natural selection? The human body has its own mechanism in defense which is more sophisticated than any of medicines out there. Natural selection is also how we came out to be. I think it was foolish to think that we can do better than a hundred-million year of a refined process.
  - upsidesinclude 4y ago
    Except African Americans had far worse immunity
  - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
    The above comments are several dumb takes. Also, reports are not the same as actual outcomes. The buck stops with excess mortality. In my visits to Africa since the Pandemic started, they are taking COVID quite seriously, with lots of measures against it. And not ignoring it at all (1). Ironically for your assumptions, this may be a result of cultural selection: this isn't their first infectious disease to deal with as a public health issue in living memory. Not to say that there's no COVID there, people are still getting it, people that I know there have had it, varying number of times with varying severity. 1) YMMV, Africa is vast, I only visited one corner of it. Blanket statements about "Africa" are false somewhere.
    - 41amxn41 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tonguetrainer 4y ago

I'm surprised it's not fentanyl. I work at a homeless shelter and there isn't a week that goes by when I'm not either trying to recessitate a client who has overdosed or finding their dead body. It's an epidemic, and it's killing males and females who should be in the prime of their lives.

marliechiller 4y ago
Is this prevalent in the UK? I didnt even realise

hanoz 4y ago

It may be relevant and of interest to readers around the world to learn how we in Britain access the NHS, our envy-of-the-world National Health Service. The main way is via your allocated General Practitioner (GP). To see a GP you need to telephone the GP's place of work, known as a surgery, and to have any chance of getting a same day appointment you need to call at 8am precisely. Don't call at 7.59 because you won't be connected, and don't leave it until 8.01 because it will be far too late. Call within the first few seconds after 8am and you'll be informed that you're in a queue, behind several dozen earlier callers. After an hour of waiting you'll get through to a non-medical receptionist who will ask you about your symptoms, and make a judgement about whether or not you or your child is worthy of one of the few remaining appointments for that day. If you're a very pushy mother, or someone who really enjoys talking with GPs' receptionists (which most people don't) then you may have some success in this. If you're just a chilled out guy who doesn't like to fuss, you've got no chance. You'll then be informed that to make an appointment for a later date you need to try again for a same-day appointment the next day by repeating the process above the following morning. It is not possible to arrange an appointment for any time further in the future no matter how long you are prepared to wait. The only other means of accessing the NHS is by rocking up at the Accident and Emergency (A&E) department of your nearest large enough hospital. Unsurprisingly given the above, these are rather busy and you may be waiting for a day or so before you get seen. To avoid adding to this delay you should make you own way to A&E because ambulances routinely take several hours to reach you for the most urgent cases (heart attacks, stokes etc) or up to a few days for, say, a fallen elderly person, and on reaching the hospital you wont be able to leave the ambulance and enter the A&E department for up to another day. However, once you're in the system and being seen by a specialist then by all accounts you do get fairly well looked after, so putting in the hours at A&E or regularly playing the GP telephone lottery may well prove worth your while if you wish to make use of our envy of the world NHS.

richij 4y ago
You missed one important entry point: 111 can refer you to an Urgent Care Unit. There are growing numbers of these in town centres and hospitals. It's basically an extra GP resource.
jhrozek 4y ago

pcthrowaway 4y ago

We've had 3 years of reduced exercise, and people are 'making up' for being cooped up by engaging in more activities that they couldn't before. Taking those road trips, going to that amusement parks, snowboarding, mountain biking, etc. Not to mention supply chain shortages in medical and medical-adjacent fields, paramedics, etc. at a time where some people have overlooked long COVID symptoms As well as an economic depression at a time where we're suffering a cultural PTSD from the previous few years. Even if COVID isn't found directly responsible for these deaths, I suspect it is indirectly responsible.

Gigachad 4y ago
Mental health down the drain too. I know this will be an unpopular HN opinion but WFH has made me feel socially isolated. I can’t stand working alone all day anymore and I’ll be looking out for a job that has a real office where most people come in this year.
- oliwarner 4y ago
  I don't think it'll be an unpopular opinion that WFH isolates you. I've worked from home for two decades and you spend a lot more time on your own and you have to do something about that. I think many people like working with other people some of the time. What may be unpopular is the idea that you need a workplace that enforces on-site working for remote-possible work being a requirement to get your daily social interactions done. You're essentially saying you're looking for an employer that cares more about their middle management than their workers. Just be careful what you wish for. If I were you, I'd join a club.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    The problem I have is that because I didn’t get social interactions at work anymore, I have to get them outside of work time. I can’t just enjoy a game alone anymore because I’ll end up having socialised with no one and feel depressed. So I’m left either deciding if social interaction or personal time is more important. While previously when working in the office I got both.

oliwarner 4y ago

It's been a terrible season for respiratory infections (RSV, Covid, Flu) and gastro bugs, the most vulnerable can't afford to eat, let alone turn on the heating, and social care availability has been in decline for a decade, worsening significantly in the past year, nuking front-door availability at hospitals, doctors and the transport they rely on. All of which I mean to say: No. Shit. Sherlock. It's all so painfully obvious to anyone paying attention. The doctors and nurses and care homes and mental health workers have all been screaming about this for a decade. Cuts upon cuts upon redirected funding upon private providers upon universal credit cutting benefits upon cuts and failures and all that before covid, all before inflation lowering everyone's incomes. We need to hire. We need to train. We need to retain. We need to build. We need to instill the fact that care home workers, pastoral carers for our elderly are such bloody important roles because without them helping people live outside hospital, nobody else gets seen. We need to pay them, we need to pay them to pick up shit and talked to dementia sufferers more than Jeff Bezos can pay them to pack boxes. If we can't do that… It's over. But we need to have a serious conversation about what we actually want to do with the infirm in this country. Letting them freeze to death in their own homes feels like state-mandated euthanasia without the "eu". Huh, a wild Brexit joke appeared. We need a General Election.

vithlani 4y ago
[dead]
nivenkos 4y ago
[flagged]
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  That might be true if this wasn't a long-term issue going back at least a decade, if not two.
- uxcolumbo 4y ago
  It’s not an either or. We can have both. Pay nurses more and help to fight back oppressors. Helping Ukraine is not charity, it’s ensuring Europe’s security and safety. But you are right, this government has shown how they value key workers.

Khaine 4y ago

My Great Aunt in Scotland had the flu, which was so bad she had chest pain. She went to her GP who told her to go to A&E. Even with her GP informing the hospital she was coming, and that she had chest pain it took her 14 hours to get a bed. Absolute madness. The system is bursting at the seams. It appears that the UK is breaking apart in so many different ways; the budget, health system, education, etc. I'm not sure a change of government will solve all of this.

dzonga 4y ago

something I keep seeing in the comments. is people blaming the gvt for not training more doctors. and yet keep forgetting that students have to incentivized to train as doctors i.e there has to be hope for better pay, better working conditions which are currently not on offer right now. so the smart kids, who might have chosen medicine chose other fields. economics at play - allocation of scarce resources. the only thing that keeps NHS humming in terms of doctors / nurses is due to those professions being recruited from 3rd world countries.