UK Politics - Matt's Handcock

[Which Tyler]

2 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Your surname is 'Slag'?

You wound

 

You wound me deeply

[Pebble thats Stubby]

7 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I tried that and apparently there are 97676 of you, most commonly in Norwich.

ah ha   they have discovered we exist.   yep there are lots of Moore.   

[Denvek]

68,000, mostly in Liverpool. Absolutely no surprise there given that's where that side of the family first came to England.

[Xray the Enforcer]

6 hours ago, Hereward said:

146 of us, also mostly in Colchester. 

good christ. there's 187 of my people and they're all in NEWCASTLE

[Soylent Brown]

2 minutes ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

good christ. there's 187 of my people and they're all in NEWCASTLE

Ever had the urge to punch a horsey in the face? Yep, it's in your bones.

[Raja]

On 7/8/2021 at 10:12 PM, DaveSumm said:

I guess if they patch you up and send you on your way? Which doesn’t sound like a backlog of serious issues.

I will try not to generalize too much given that the NHS is a huge beast and what is true in one region might not be true in another region of the country, however A&E pressures and pressures on ambulances are high in lots of different regions of the UK so this is not an isolated thing affecting one region.

But, I do have some experience in the acute setting given that I worked in a Respiratory department through wave 2, which means I have seen *lots* of Covid ( and had Covid myself in August) & am currently working in A&E so I am happy to share my experience. With regards to your specific question, 'attendances' will be people coming to A&E and admissions will be people then subsequently admitted to the hospital. The A&E will admit some people, but the majority will be discharged ( this is true precovid as well) with either treatment being complete, close follow up with the hospital, or follow up with the GP, or no follow up at all.

400 odd thousand from a million plus people seems about right to me, but what people need to understand is that these 'attendances' require time, personnel, resources, doctors, nurses, porters, physio, occupational therapy - all of these healthcare workers can and will be involved in managing even those people that 'attend' but who won't be 'admitted'. So even 'attendances' and no admission will take time - for example, if I have a relatively healthy 40 year old person coming in with COVID that does not require oxygen but is there because they have some chest pain, there is still a lot I would need to do for them - I'd go see them, request some bloods, an xray, this will involve people doing the blood tests, me going to see & examine the patient, and if they're safe to discharge, I would discharge them. That's not a covid admission and will not show up in these graphs but will show up in A&E attendances and will take time away from a stretched workforce.

Now, you might ask why are healthy people that don't need to be admitted showing up to hospitals, but you have to realize that people generally have no clue how the body works and they are concerned about COVID, clots associated with covid, clots associated with the vaccine etc, you cannot blame people for showing up to A&E because they are concerned given that medicine has a huge information asymmetry between a healthcare provider and the patient and given that they have no other choice - it is not their fault that the system has failed them.

And this is just one example - people will show up to A&E because of a host of reasons that have been covered earlier, like Poobah stated above, GP appointments have been impossible for some people because of the pressure GPs are under so that makes A&E the only place these people can attend. In addition, delayed care, delayed operations, delayed surgeries, delayed outpatient appointments, delayed scans etc, they all have consequences and these are people showing up at the door.

Which is why it is so important that these delays do not keep occurring, but they are already  - as shown here in Raigmore

Quote

NHS Highland said Raigmore hospital had reached capacity and warned that emergency patients would face long waits with all non-urgent elective surgery and most outpatient appointments cancelled.

When you have a significant number of covid admissions, then you will invariably have some amount of cancellations given that staff will probably get the infection and then there will be gaps within the hospital, which means things will have to get cancelled. Or outbreaks will occur which will lead to cancellations.

This is all occurring in the backdrop of a system that is running at capacity & a workforce shortage - NHS hospitals run at 95%+ capacity, and even more so during the winter. There is no give in the system, which is a huge issue. No give in capacity, and no give in the workforce, especially if you have staff off sick - when you put all this together, the govt's idea of lifting all restrictions make no sense at all - I'm not saying we go back to a lockdown, but some form of social distancing & indoor masks should be encouraged, the plan to let it infect everyone is not a good one and an abdication of the public health duty of this government - and the farce of this plan is revealed in the things the CMO of England has said. We had a chance at track and trace too when cases were low, but that's again a dumpster fire now that we're looking at 30,000 cases everyday.

And the saddest part is that even after 18 months of this, we have posters going on about COVID and consistently trying to downplay it, stating unscientific and intellectually lazy things like 'With covid and not 'of' covid' - I wish I could drag these posters with me to my experience in the UK since July, and especially from the months of November to February, and make them see what life was like then both for people like me and the patients we looked after.

I wish they could be part of the 3am phone calls to family members telling them that they should come to the hospital because their loved one is about to pass away, or holding up phones/ ipads so that someone could hear their family through all the beeping and the tubes. I don't even have the energy to be angry anymore and have just resigned myself to the fact that there are some people who are just not decent and will take whatever opportunity to downplay covid that they can. And that is me being kind.

[Spockydog]

This is from an actual expert. Not some brainless Tory ghoul. An actual fucking expert.

#JohnsonVariant

[polishgenius]

Not enough of mine to appear, but that's not really surprising since it's a Polonised surname of German origin that is rare enough in Poland let alone in England where I know all six people (other than me) with that surname personally (albeit one, a more distant cousin, not very well even though she lives a few miles away from the hometown).

[john]

@Raja What a great post, thanks for that.

Re the English names thing, mine is apparently shared by 105,000 people mostly in Truro (I like to think we represent most of the population of that town of 18,000).

[dog-days]

I've got a Scottish surname. There are about three thousand of us with many concentrated in Blackpool, which interests me. I wasn't aware that Blackpool was a big destination for immigration from Scotland. Maybe a Mac-person moved there and had loads of kids. 

[BigFatCoward]

14 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

good christ. there's 187 of my people and they're all in NEWCASTLE

I knew you looked familiar. 

[Heartofice]

@Rajai appreciate the post and even if we do not agree on much and don’t like each other very much, I understand where you are coming from and why this is a personal subject for you.

Im pretty sure your comments were aimed specifically at me so i will briefly respond.

Im not ‘downplaying’ the virus. To be clear I know people in my extended family who have died from it, I know people who have been taken to hospital with it as well. I’m vaccinated and have been cautious due to having to protect family members this year and a half 
 

On the flip side I also have a lot of friends who have lost their jobs, lost businesses and face ruin and are in dire situations. There are also those in my own family who have deteriorated severely since lockdown being unable to see relatives or have daily contact with others. I also have family who have become virtual recluses who refuse to leave the house despite being double jabbed. 
 

My point here is that this whole situation is always about balancing a number of different issues and trying to see what the picture is as a whole.  

So yes if you or anyone else are going to post up things which I think need examination or explanation then I will question it, as I recognise you have your own biases, as I have mine. If we are seeing record numbers in June for the NHS then it’s important to know why, because just leaving that comment out there in relation to a Covid discussion is deceptive if Covid isn’t the cause . In the same way saying that excess deaths are higher than average for the first time this year  is deceptive if context isn’t added to that statement ( especially if it isn’t even true) or if there is a post about vaccines not working then we’d want to challenge that. 
 

My position is not as you say, downplaying the virus, it’s that I understand first hand the dangers of the virus, but also understand that it predominantly has high risks for certain demographics and so all focus should be on protecting them, and the good news is that the vaccines appear to have done that.
Also it’s that Lockdown isn’t a free lunch, it comes with costs, which a lot of us don’t appreciate because we are in lucky positions. As I say, it’s a balancing act it’s always been a balancing act, and as per Spockys above post, yes we have to accept a level of mortality in our society, of course we do, we do that all the time . That might sound uncaring but it’s the nature of reality. The question has always been about how to protect the NHS while also not damaging peoples lives in other regards. 
 

So I’m not downplaying anything, just responding occasionally to what are often one sided comments which are not as clear cut as some people seem to believe them to be.

 

Again, appreciate the work you and others  are doing.

[Spockydog]

16 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

My position is not as you say, downplaying the virus,

*almost chokes to death on morning coffee*

[mormont]

39 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Also it’s that Lockdown isn’t a free lunch, it comes with costs,

However, a point that you frequently don't acknowledge is that the majority of these costs would also apply if there were no lockdown. Businesses would still have failed: they'd have failed because their customers were sick, their staff were sick, and their supply chains would have collapsed. The alternative to lockdown was not an economy working as usual and a few more deaths: it was all the economic damage of lockdown plus exponentially more deaths.

[Heartofice]

5 minutes ago, mormont said:

However, a point that you frequently don't acknowledge is that the majority of these costs would also apply if there were no lockdown. Businesses would still have failed: they'd have failed because their customers were sick, their staff were sick, and their supply chains would have collapsed. The alternative to lockdown was not an economy working as usual and a few more deaths: it was all the economic damage of lockdown plus exponentially more deaths.

Am I saying we shouldn’t have locked down?

[Spockydog]

 

[SeanF]

On 7/10/2021 at 10:10 AM, Spockydog said:

This is from an actual expert. Not some brainless Tory ghoul. An actual fucking expert.

#JohnsonVariant

And governments have always tolerated a level of mortality and disability. The price of a year of life, according to NICE, is £20-30,000.

[Spockydog]

Just now, SeanF said:

And governments have always tolerated a level of mortality and disability. The price of a year of life, according to NICE, is £20-30,000.

Yes, this approach is entirely normal.

 

[Spockydog]

Honestly, what a shower of useless cunts.

Zahawi: Covid reopening going ahead on 19 July, but mask wearing ‘expected’

Quote

 

The government is to push ahead with the almost complete reopening of England from 19 July, the vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, has confirmed, while saying that updated guidance will say people are still “expected” to wear masks in enclosed spaces.

Zahawi dismissed reports that the minimum gap between first and second vaccination doses could be reduced from eight weeks to speed up the programme, saying clinical data showed this would be less effective.

Boris Johnson is scheduled to announce on Monday whether the government will push ahead with the final stage of coronavirus unlocking a week later, which would see virtually all remaining businesses reopen, plus an end to rules on distancing, capacity and mandatory mask use.

 

WTF is this shit?

[SeanF]

On 7/9/2021 at 4:54 PM, Hereward said:

146 of us, also mostly in Colchester. 

There are about 1,000 Fears in the UK, all of them related to each other, apparently.