An internal NHS report leaked to the Health Service Journal claims that hospitals and ambulances in London are “likely to become overwhelmed due to rising Covid demand in the next two to three weeks”.
This is despite the fact that, as NHS Providers Chief Chris Hopson points out: “The overall numbers remain relatively low compared to the January 2021 peak – 1,819 Covid patients currently in London versus 7,917 on January 18th 2021.”
Let’s bear in mind also that last winter an internal NHS briefing, again leaked to the Health Service Journal, claimed that under the “best” scenario London would have a shortfall of 1,515 general and acute beds by January 19th. Yet the briefing also stated London has 15,600 general and acute beds, which is almost double what turned out to be the peak Covid winter occupancy of 7,917 beds on January 18th.
Nationally, at the winter peak on January 18th there were 8,696 unoccupied beds, 26,902 beds occupied by Covid patients and 50,204 beds occupied by non-Covid patients.
It’s also worth remembering that the NHS has a beds crisis every winter, as this selection of Guardian headlines illustrates. (See also the image at the top of headlines from the 2017-18 winter crisis.)
Yet the NHS coped, just as it did last year when almost no one was vaccinated. If there are systemic capacity problems in the NHS which mean it can’t get through winter without cancelling elective procedures then those need to be addressed. But it should go without saying that this is no excuse to impose costly, illiberal restrictions on everybody.
Civil liberties should not be so deemed so dispensible that they may be suspended to make up for the failings of a poorly managed health service with insufficient resources committed to frontline services.
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if you don’t need a mechanical ventilator you should be at home in bed with a lemsip
One of the very few plus points of this total shit show is that it might have stopped the type of plonker who would have gone to A&E with a broken nail or a bit of wind. But then I suppose their places might have been taken up by the ludicrous hyperchondriacs who are clearly actually having propaganda-induced panic attacks rather than genuinely suffering from the deadly Covid. Many of my mates have had Covid (as have I), but only one still claims she ‘almost died’. Not surprisingly she’s a self-obsessed drama queen.
ha! yes – I think people should pay upfront for A&E or GP visit and get paid back if its not trivial
That was my conclusion when noting empty GP waiting areas during 3 appointments in the course of a week just over a month ago.
Absent the hypochondriacs with imaginary conditions who are most likely the same individuals still ‘shielding at home’ 12 months after the arrival of scary Covid.
I have a friend who talks on Facebook about her “recovery journey” after Covid. One step from “Covid survivor” type stuff.
She is a triathlete and had a high temp with increased heart rate during her infection. Had a check up and sent home.
Or given Ivermectin, dexamethasone, etc, to get them better faster and out of hospital. Or an asthma inhaler.
This PPE story is a diversion. Anecdotally, at my local hospital patients are being sent to Covid wards if they have respiratory symptoms, even if they test negative for the virus. They go in these wards without the virus, they come out with it. Sometimes in a box. Someone needs to get a proper investigative journalism hat on and actually uncover this outrage.
Last I remember reading (some months back) such was the scale of Government over-ordering of PPE that some Container docks were jammed solid with bulk containers full of PPE with nowhere to go.
But these findings were discovered by an international team of researchers, I’ll have you know!
Official guidelines.
Drawn up by “experts” presumably. Who’d have thought it?!
“The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine can give strong protection to children as young as 12, the two companies have announced following a trial.
In a small study involving 2,260 US volunteers aged 12 to 15, there were no cases of Covid-19 among those who have been fully vaccinated. Eighteen of those who received a placebo were infected.”
but how is their fertility?
How many of those infected had any symptoms?
If they don’t get symptoms, why do they need a vaccine?
If they don’t have symptoms, they don’t spread the virus, as illustrated in the article above, therefore they don’t need the vaccine.
Sushhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Quite a long time ago lockdownsceptics showed a chart that compared Covid deaths among working age people broken down by job type. It showed that health/care workers were no more likely to die from Covid than the working age population. This would appear to show that a supposed lack of PPE last spring was never a major problem despite all the media hype.