Yes isn't really time this heralded NHS, is called out for what it really has become.
NHS is now the Gates' Vaccination Service
I got my pencil and fag packet out today and did a few sums. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if each city hospital in the UK had 100 beds held in quarantine for times such as this, or it would seem, for use every winter. I figured each bed would need around 10 sq mtr of real estate at circa £10k per sq. metre giving £100k per bed. This includes all the infrastructure, e.g. a separate building, services, etc. So a 100 bed isolation unit would cost £10M. Factor in some costs for ward medical equipment, etc. and you might arrive at £12M. This would provide a readily available facility should it be needed.
Of course the main issue is not infrastructure but people so recruit the necessary numbers of nurses and doctors to staff such a facility. Not sure how many nurses you need per bed, my experience suggests it’s about one per 6 beds but let’s say you need one nurse for every 5 beds and also one doctor for every 20 beds. Multiply by three for 24/7 care so you need 60 nurses and 15 doctors to cover 100 beds. Let’s say a nurse costs £50k per year and a doctor costs £100k per year. That’s £3M for nurses and £1.5M for doctors. These resources would not be needed most of the year but they could be deployed to improve the “normal” service and eliminate agency fees.
So for a rather modest initial outlay of around £12M and an annual running cost of circa £5M plus annual maintenance and renewal of say £2M gets you 4 spare wards. Multiply by 25 cities and your capital budget becomes £300M and annual revenue costs of £175M. Sounds like a bargain to me given the Nightingale’s cost £220M and they have been binned.
Lots of assumptions of course, e.g. the land is available in existing hospital grounds, staff are recruited over a five year period, buildings are modular, medics help with the specifications (and they are not changed once agreed), etc., but it seems to me building 25 identical units is a sure way to significantly reduce costs and timescales.
Sounds awfully cheap to me - does a bed cost more than £100k? Why has the NHS “winter problem” not been solved if this is all it takes. Even if it was £1Bn it is a fraction of what we have spent on the Covid fiasco. Anyway, that’s my thought for the day.
Missed it the first time. Catchy tune! I am embarrassed for them all.
NHS is now the Gates' Vaccination Service
No. The Oxford vaccine is not for profit. My advice, forget conspiracy theories, stay in the real world.
How about the following data. It suggests hospital ICU’s admissions and bed occupation are far higher than bad flu years?
https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1347200855376875523?s=19
