We’ve written a lot about the systemic failings in Government policy regarding care homes (see here, here and here).
However, a recent study on the transitions between hospitals and care homes caught our eye. The sort of study that bypasses the media: two care home providers with 20 to 40 care homes each in the South West and the North East of England participated, and 70 participants were interviewed.
The study exemplifies the impact hospital discharge policies had: “Hospitals just wanted patients out, regardless of Covid status. To be brutally honest, they weren’t interested; they just wanted people out. In those early days, you know, it was very traumatic.”
And how hospitals desperately enacted a policy to clear the decks: “We had a phone call from a nurse from the hospital to say that… this lady was lying beside somebody, less than two meters, who was Covid-positive.”
These instances highlight how thoughtless and reckless the Government policies were. Driven by error-strewn modelling along with a chronic lack of capacity in the NHS, panic set in: hospitals would be quickly overwhelmed. Something had to be done to free up capacity – an easy target was found: the elderly and the most vulnerable and brutally the least able to stand up for themselves.
Hospital discharge service requirements were first published on March 19th. On April 2nd, the guidance said: “Some of these patients [admitted from a hospital or a home setting] may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home if this guidance is followed.”
This policy, which saw discharges to care homes without testing, has been ruled unlawful by the High Court. In Gardner & Anor, R, Lord Justice Bean and Mr. Justice Garnham found that Government policy was “irrational” because it failed to consider the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from asymptomatic transmission.
It took until April 15th to recommend testing and 14 days of isolation for admissions to care homes. Before this, negative tests were not required prior to transfers and admissions into the care home.
The study interviews show that care homes became no-go zones:
GPs or other healthcare professionals or multidisciplinary, like, podiatrists, everyone has difficulty coming to see the residents as of high demand or they can’t come for whatever reason, so COVID-19. They used to come, now they are no longer able to.
The study also emphasises the inhumane practice of isolating vulnerable people:
Strong feeling that isolating care home residents went against usual practice and, for some, was very hard to endure, especially when they needed human contact and emotional support from family and friends following a period of hospitalisation.
We’ve written about ‘Confinement Disease’, which is likely more harmful than Covid in care homes.
Among long-term care residents in the Southern Ile-de-France region, more than 24 Covid deaths among 140 residents occurred in five days. None were due to acute respiratory distress syndrome, and death was mainly due to hypovolemic shock as residents were confined to their rooms for several days without assistance with eating and drinking.
Confinement leads to feelings of being in prison:
Rather than keeping them in hospital we would send them [to the COVID-19 unit], and then once they’re 14 days clear, I know it’s 10 now, but it was 14, then they would go back to their original care home. But it’s just been carnage, to say the least.
The study interviews also showed how degrading and impersonal confinement practices were:
So they couldn’t have their belongings until it had been left in a certain place and washed at a certain heat and 72 hours before you can have them back. You go in your room, and you can’t see anybody, and when you do, they’ve got masks and visors, and you cannot hear them, and you’ve got all of that.
Socially distancing and isolating the most vulnerable comes with costs. The practice of rapidly discharging patients is unlawful, yet is anyone interested at a Government level in how to better look after those in care?
Patients were discharged from high-resourced hospital settings – where some had time to do Tik-Tok dances – to low-resourced care homes, which worsened as staff went off in their droves — the opposite of what you need, as less care equates to more deaths. Then you isolate vulnerable people who can’t care for themselves – again, the polar opposite of what these people need, preventing much-needed personal care that can be life-saving. Even worse, at the end of life were the restrictions on who could share that moment, hold a person’s hand as he or she drew a last breath, and prevent compassionate care at one of the most important times.
The potential for harm is exceptionally high in care homes; with quarantining, physical and mental deterioration occurs rapidly, and renal failure occurs swiftly in the face of dehydration – the ultimate price to be paid is a lonely death.
Dr. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.
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The Tory’s demise has been telegraphed for a generation or more, probably since they knifed Thatcher and tried in the intervening years to accommodate the views of both extremes of the party rather than insist that they followed the common central line, or leave.
To blame Farage for precipitating their collapse is pointless, although thoroughly expected of a party that lacks the capacity for self-reflection. Reform has simply filled the void left by their implosion… it is a symptom, not a cause.
I do not recall much accommodation to Eurosceptic, freedom loving patriots. The running was by and for left wing globalists and deficit spending. Add in an enthusiasm for quangos and wokery with “vote blue get green”.
I think Brexit was the final straw. The one that broke the back of a party trying to maintain the fiction of unity when, at best, there were three or more factions tilting for supremacy.
Their eventual demise was inevitable, short of one side or other gaining sufficient dominance to expel the other. Which they were never actually going to do, in any case, as the trappings of power are too seductive.
Of course, Labour suffer from much the same issue, but possibly over an even wider spectrum, though they currently have both the MSM and Civil Service ‘on side’, for the time being.
Both of which are other factors in the equation, for the moment at least…
“If Farage succeeds in destroying the Tories,”
The Tories have done this to themselves.
“In the Telegraph, Annabel Denham argues that while Farage’s Reform is gaining momentum, his quest to obliterate the Tories might doom us to endless Left-wing rule.”
1) The Tories have obliterated themselves.
2) The Tories were and are left-wing.
3) Like any politician, Farage seeks to gain more support than rivals. Singling him out as being somehow to blame for “left wing rule” is a crock.
I think we have had left wing rule of various sorts for a very long time in the UK, with the occasional correction. A definition I like is to characterise the political left as having the “unconstrained vision” (see below for a summary of Thomas Sowell’s contrasting definitions) and the right as having the “constrained vision”. I think the unconstrained vision is what most people buy into and have done for a very long time, in most rich world “liberal democracies”.
In what he terms the “constrained vision,” man is by nature flawed, selfish, and limited. Under the constrained vision, man seeks to deal with his flaws and excesses by establishing institutions of restraint: the separation of powers, constitutions, etc. Those who employ the constrained vision see abuses of power by leaders like Napoleon Bonaparte as inevitable. For this reason, limitations must be placed on power and on the institutions themselves so that it is more difficult for any individual to abuse them. The idea is to decentralize power so that man’s flaws are not catastrophic.
The “unconstrained vision,” by contrast, sees abuses of power as being caused by not having chosen the right leaders or established the right kinds of institutions. “Implicit,” writes Sowell, “is the notion that the potential is very different from the actual, and that means exist to improve human nature toward its potential, or that such means can be evolved or discovered, so that man will do the right thing for the right reason rather than for ulterior psychic or economic rewards.” And central to the unconstrained vision is the notion that human beings are highly malleable; they can be trained in the service of some ideal.
That reminds me the so-called Tory Eurosceptic Tories said a Brexit referendum could not be won and dod their best to prove it.
I hope I am wrong about the voters
There’s a much better video of “my generation ” on the web:
https://youtu.be/qN5zw04WxCc?si=nqoDtBMBfFk1bbX-
A real time capsule of what we’ve lost.
Totally agree with June Slater’s comment here. Obviously I did not watch globalist King Charles’ speech but the sad reality is that Prince William is exactly the same.It’s evidently not just the cabinets that have been penetrated;
”Anyone using the word Diversity as a plus point in the description of anything and especially Christianity, shows which team they’re batting for, and it isn’t Britain, or our values, or Christianity.
The King’s speech was filled with references to diversity . His speech sent a shiver down my spine.
Sitting in a chapel, as a backdrop was a hopeful sign, alas it’s a ‘ former’ chapel, now as he describes it a vibrant community space.
Our churches aren’t supposed to be a vibrant community space. They’re supposed to be hallowed ground. The public have lost interest in the church because the church has lost interest in them . It’s a business and it’s spiritually no longer present.
It appears rotten from the head down.
I’m no Bible thumper, but it seems to me other religions are now promoted by The very head of our own. Do other faiths surrender their holy ground for vibrant community spaces?
Do the heads of other religions have leaders who sacrifice their system to incorporate others?
He inherited his job, he needs no tests to prove him worthy and it comes with abundant powers that need a hand with a light touch and a fair mind.
I see before me as a king, so far removed from the needs and concerns of his people he is merely an aloof presence, with a mind that can be easily manipulated by advisors in close proximity, whose goals are not a thriving British nation. You could be forgiven for thinking a very destructive force is at work that finds our needs and ambitions rather tiresome and tedious, and certainly no consideration of theirs.
We are merely a nuisanc, an obstacle, until enough people have been distracted whilst a massive influx of others are settled into place.
A new melee of individuals with no allegiance to anything we hold dear.
Their imported faith as alien to us as the languages they speak…
The King’s vocabulary would probably not be noticed in many households on a busy Christmas Day… His words rolled along his sanctimonious road with intervals of selfish concerns , interjected to display him as a warm being with problems similar to our own. It failed to warm me to him.
It simply filled my heart with foreboding.”
Joseph Robertson makes good comments and sound observations here. Yes it’s Cultural Marxism, and inconveniently for many here, neither Schwab nor Soros ( to name only two hugely powerful and destructive forces ) happen to be female ( 7mins );
”Patriots, a seismic shift has occurred!
Reform UK has now surpassed the Tories in membership. Is this the start of a peaceful revolution?
Watch this video to fully understand what we need to do in the battle for Britain’s soul.”
https://x.com/nero_returns/status/1872664143465267665
John O’Looney reiterating his theory about a ”standing army” being imported under the Trojan Horse guise of ”asylum seekers”;
”Your government is betraying you and mass importing UN troops.
This is Starmer’s already mentioned “standing army” ready for the next lockdown enforcement and any attempt to remove him from destroying this country from within.”
https://x.com/OlooneyJohn/status/1872691376661643724