Coronavirus - worldwide breaking news, discussion, stats, updates and more

[Kevbad the Bad]

The NHS is completely broken already, this wave or any other makes no odds on that front.

What a load of crap. The NHS treats the entire country free of charge at the point of use, day in, day out. G.P.'s, cottage hospitals, A&E, ambulances, midwives, and all the major hospitals up and down the country. Treatment is available for every possible ailment and injury. Plus all the COVID treatment and vaccinations. Are there huge waiting lists? Yes. Is it underfunded? Yes. Do the Tories want to privatise it and make money out of other people's misery? Yes. But broken? No.

 

[elbows]

So far so good Incredible graphs showing the absolute triumph of the vaccine. Brilliant stuff

(Appreciate that given the incubation lag might be a little early, end of next week if the hospitalisation and death graphs still looking reasonably flat, what a great result).

View attachment 302245

Also feel the Gov have judged this wave pretty much bang on with the balance between living, livelihoods and civil liberties and protection against infectious disease. We’ll see what emerges over next few weeks mind.

The third wave was the Delta wave from the summer!

So you arent even looking at the current Omicron wave in those charts!

 

[Edie]

You really think that Edie? By that logic the whole pandemic has made no difference then? And you really think another wave as bad as the last makes not one bit of difference to the long term prospects of staff and the organisation, even in terms of having a load of people (inc. staff) with long term covid related conditions to manage? It's also not what most of the management etc. say is it? I can't work out is your position is hopefully optimistic or pessimistic!

I guess what I meant was that in the complete absence of the pandemic, the NHS had still stopped safely functioning. Not that the pandemic hasn’t accelerated the final decline.

I’m terribly pessimistic I’m afraid. My view is that the NHS- as a semi functional service- is at times more dangerous than no health service at all. As a grim analogy, if you don’t expect an ambulance to come you wouldn’t lie on the ground whilst dying.

Mental health services- more dangerous missing severe ED and self harm than if the patient had remained in primary care. Kids sitting for years on waiting lists with no treatment or support, or triaged out despite being desperately in need of help.

Primary care- essentially triaging the old, infirm and mentally ill out by setting such absurd obstacles to get one of the too few appointments.

Secondary care management of long term conditions- insufficient or incomplete monitoring inc of cytotoxic drugs such as methotrexate or monoclonal antibodies cos appointments get lost/dropped/can’t get phlebotomy.

Secondary care surgical- delay in procedures causing excess mortality in pretty much every specialty.

Ambulance service- effectively non operational, with exception of Cat As. Elderly patients triaged as Cat C lying for upwards of 6 hours with fractured neck of femur etc.

I don’t think the NHS can or should be resuscitated in it’s current form tho.

 

[Edie]

What a load of crap. The NHS treats the entire country free of charge at the point of use, day in, day out. G.P.'s, cottage hospitals, A&E, ambulances, midwives, and all the major hospitals up and down the country. Treatment is available for every possible ailment and injury. Plus all the COVID treatment and vaccinations. Are there huge waiting lists? Yes. Is it underfunded? Yes. Do the Tories want to privatise it and make money out of other people's misery? Yes. But broken? No.

NHS angels.

 

[two sheds]

NHS angels being worked into the fucking ground

You'd prefer the American model? Because that's where we're headed with the tories now.

 

[elbows]

It still saves a lot more people than it kills. Peaks of nasty pandemic waves just starts to hint at what level of mortality we could expect with no health service, and the effects on overall mortality figures under such conditions are not subtle. They would still be dwarfed by what the figures would actually look like with no health service though.

For sure specific patients do die as a result of service failings. And some ridiculous percentage of hospital admissions are caused by prescribed drugs. A case can also be made that plenty of people are left with less dignity intact than if there had been no NHS to treat them. But still, overall so much better than no health service existing.

Perfectly salvageable if the will, the funding and the time was allowed to bring the NHS up to scratch. Other parts of the state need fixing too though, so that everything isnt reduced to fire-fighting, where services end up dealing with people once its already too late, once they've already been failed by services that should have helped them long before the person reached the stage of acute crisis. We dont intervene early enough or effectively enough.

 

[cupid_stunt]

What has any of this to do with this, worldwide news, thread?

 

[Edie]

NHS angels being worked into the fucking ground

You'd prefer the American model? Because that's where we're headed with the tories now.

No of course not, the American model is wildly costly and results in excessive litigation despite damaging over investigation. And that’s the good side, the bad is of course people just dying due to not having money.

I’m in favour of the German system myself. What’s your view?

 

[Edie]

The third wave was the Delta wave from the summer!

So you arent even looking at the current Omicron wave in those charts!

Good job I’m not an epidemiologist!

 

[Doctor Carrot]

Should probably start an 'Is the NHS fucked?' thread complete with poll.

 

[two sheds]

No of course not, the American model is wildly costly and results in excessive litigation despite damaging over investigation. And that’s the good side, the bad is of course people just dying due to not having money.

I’m in favour of the German system myself. What’s your view?

The NHS has been underfunded, nurses and other staff have been underpaid and overworked for years.

We should be looking at how different countries deal better and get better results with specific treatments, particularly where it's underperforming like mental health and social care.

The main problem has been the underfunding though. A few years ago the NHS came out top of national health performance internationally. The tories want to run it into the ground so that people say "the NHS is broken we need to replace it with something else", and that something else isn't going to be the German system it's going to be sold off to American corporations which are going to bleed the system dry, preparing for the American privatized insurance system.

And I really don't think it helps to sneer at "NHS angels"

 

[Edie]

The NHS has been underfunded, nurses and other staff have been underpaid and overworked for years.

We should be looking at how different countries deal better and get better results with specific treatments, particularly where it's underperforming like mental health and social care.

The main problem has been the underfunding though. A few years ago the NHS came out top of national health performance internationally. The tories want to run it into the ground so that people say "the NHS is broken we need to replace it with something else", and that something else isn't going to be the German system it's going to be sold off to American corporations which are going to bleed the system dry, preparing for the American privatized insurance system.

And I really don't think it helps to sneer at "NHS angels"

We don’t disagree.

I wasn’t sneering at NHS angels. It was a comment about how the deification of the NHS is one of the political tools used by those in charge to prevent reasonable scrutiny and the population holding the service to account. Let’s just clap instead.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

NHS angels.

I presume you are being sarcastic here. My son works in the NHS and he's no angel. Nor are many others who work there. That's not the point. Mismanagement, top-down reorganisation, directives from the centre, partial privatisations, deliberately ignoring local and regional viewpoints, asset stripping. It's this sort of thing that undermines the health service. And it's no good saying it needs reorganising under this shambles of a government. If they reorganise the NHS they will privatise as much as they can get away with, and then when things get worse they'll privatise even more.

 

[elbows]

It is certainly true that 'dont criticse the NHS' attitudes are cynically used to hide a multitude of failures. Including failures during the pandemic. Plenty of those failures were due to a lack of capacity leading to desperate decisions. Infection control failures, failures to protect staff, treatment failures, failure to admit all those who required hospital care (especially in the first wave). Desperate management attempts to reduce bed-blocking led to many care home deaths.

In addition to bad flaws within the NHS itself, issues with the price of drugs and issues with the wider care system and an ageing population have pushed more and more problems into the path of the NHS. Likewise hospitals have to deal with increased pressure caused by failures in other parts of the health care system. One of the more obvious recent examples was failures with the GP system leading to much greater pressure on A&E this summer.

 

[kabbes]

I was assuming that the "NHS angels" response was a dig at the way that a hero narrative is used by government to subvert the need to properly fund the service. Just call them "angels" and "heroes" and then you don't need to treat the workers like everyday workers. In fact, you are actualising their angel and hero identities by creating the context within which they can perform them. It's not a dig at the NHS workers themselves.

 

[Edie]

When did you become a full on tory, Edie?

I’ve just spotted this, unluckily for you because your card is now marked son (yours too @l’Otters ) I’m not a full on Tory, I’m not even a part Tory. Unless you think healthcare free at the point of delivery is a right wing idea, which some Tories might argue and Liberals certainly would claim.

I’m also up for some robust debate and people challenging what they think and say, and the uninformed rubbish trotted out by Kevbad the Bad (lovely chap) is really symptomatic of the poverty of thought about healthcare in this country.

I also work insane hours on the wards so there’s that too. Does tend to colour your view when your employer is an exploitative fucking shitbag

 

[Edie]

I was assuming that the "NHS angels" response was a dig at the way that a hero narrative is used by government to subvert the need to properly fund the service. Just call them "angels" and "heroes" and then you don't need to treat the workers like everyday workers. In fact, you are actualising their angel and hero identities by creating the context within which they can perform them. It's not a dig at the NHS workers themselves.

This

 

[Sweet FA]

Dunno what Edie's said that's so outrageous tbh. The NHS is fucked and was fucked before covid.

 

[BristolEcho]

This

And all health and social care workers across the board. "You must get so much fulfillment from your job" yes I do, but fuck off.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

I’ve just spotted this, unluckily for you because your card is now marked son (yours too @l’Otters ) I’m not a full on Tory, I’m not even a part Tory. Unless you think healthcare free at the point of delivery is a right wing idea, which some Tories might argue and Liberals certainly would claim.

I’m also up for some robust debate and people challenging what they think and say, and the uninformed rubbish trotted out by Kevbad the Bad (lovely chap) is really symptomatic of the poverty of thought about healthcare in this country.

I also work insane hours on the wards so there’s that too. Does tend to colour your view when your employer is an exploitative fucking shitbag

I'm glad you think I'm lovely. But I'd like to know where my rubbish is uninformed.

 

[T & P]

Spain has made wearing masks outdoors mandatory again. I visited family in late October and even though it wasn’t mandatory then, easily two thirds of pedestrians of all ages were still wearing them.

Imagine trying to introduce a mandatory outdoors mask rule here, when a sizeable chunk of the population don’t even comply on buses or the Tube…

It also helps that the police there have a zero tolerance policy towards anyone spotted no wearing a mask, or even wearing it incorrectly. In here, you’d be an unlikely bastard if you don’t ever wear one, get seen by coppers every day, and get fined even just once a year.

 

[spring-peeper]

Canada never lifted the mask requirement.

Officials say that it would be mid March at the earliest.

 

[spring-peeper]

Bottom line - we are a different country!!!

Trudeau, Freeland push back at Biden on COVID-19 holiday gatherings

The Trudeau government pushed backed Wednesday at U.S. President Joe Biden's televised message to vaccinated Americans that they can gather safely for the holidays despite the spread of the Omicron variant.

www.cp24.com

The Trudeau government is pushing back at U.S. President Joe Biden's televised message to vaccinated Americans that they can gather safely for the holidays despite the spread of the Omicron variant.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and top health officials are urging Canadians to limit contacts during the holidays to control the spread of COVID-19 and ease effects on exhausted front-line health workers.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland says Canada is not the United States and has a lower death rate from COVID-19 than its neighbour.

In a televised address viewed far beyond the U.S. on Tuesday, Biden said Americans can safely celebrate the holidays with friends and loved ones if they are fully vaccinated, especially if they have a booster shot.

Biden also told unvaccinated Americans to get a COVID-19 shot, saying it was their patriotic duty to do so.

Biden said the arrival of vaccines means Americans are now protected from hospitalization and death, which was not the case at the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

 

[MrCurry]

The Swedish attitude to face masks makes no sense. They came out with fresh restrictions which start today which only include recommendations to use face masks on public transport “when crowded”. Nothing about shops or other public spaces.

FHM were asked by journalists why they don’t recommend face masks and the answer was a fairly lame “we don’t think they are as effective as keeping distance between people and avoiding public spaces”. It was pointed out that you can do both, and the response was “well for some people it’s difficult to use a mask”.

I mean they really are idiots. The statistics won’t tell the true story of how well the Swedish covid strategy fared because I see all over Facebook people complaining they can’t get tests. The testing capacity here is overwhelmed and the plentiful, free test kits you have in the U.K. just don’t exist. So they’re reporting low figures of cases but the truth is hidden.

I‘m staying home and keeping my head down.

 

[LDC]

I guess what I meant was that in the complete absence of the pandemic, the NHS had still stopped safely functioning. Not that the pandemic hasn’t accelerated the final decline.

I’m terribly pessimistic I’m afraid. My view is that the NHS- as a semi functional service- is at times more dangerous than no health service at all. As a grim analogy, if you don’t expect an ambulance to come you wouldn’t lie on the ground whilst dying.

Mental health services- more dangerous missing severe ED and self harm than if the patient had remained in primary care. Kids sitting for years on waiting lists with no treatment or support, or triaged out despite being desperately in need of help.

Primary care- essentially triaging the old, infirm and mentally ill out by setting such absurd obstacles to get one of the too few appointments.

Secondary care management of long term conditions- insufficient or incomplete monitoring inc of cytotoxic drugs such as methotrexate or monoclonal antibodies cos appointments get lost/dropped/can’t get phlebotomy.

Secondary care surgical- delay in procedures causing excess mortality in pretty much every specialty.

Ambulance service- effectively non operational, with exception of Cat As. Elderly patients triaged as Cat C lying for upwards of 6 hours with fractured neck of femur etc.

I don’t think the NHS can or should be resuscitated in it’s current form tho.

Would like to reply to that Edie, but yeah, not the right thread. There is an NHS specific one somewhere, might cut and paste this and reply there if can be arsed later today!

 

[teqniq]

Hmmmm, well here's hoping....

US Army Creates Single Vaccine Against All COVID & SARS Variants, Researchers Say

Within weeks, Walter Reed researchers expect to announce that human trials show success against Omicron—and even future strains.

www.defenseone.com

 

[cupid_stunt]

Hmmmm, well here's hoping....

US Army Creates Single Vaccine Against All COVID & SARS Variants, Researchers Say

Within weeks, Walter Reed researchers expect to announce that human trials show success against Omicron—and even future strains.

www.defenseone.com

The link with the US Army, would fuel the loons even more.

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

The link with the US Army, would will fuel the loons even more.

ftfy

 

[Supine]

.

 

[Badgers]

Fairly grim news in NYC