Coronavirus Thread

[Trumpet]

54 minutes ago, The whole world smiles said:

I'm glad you've mentioned Italy. 

 

As of 2017 Italy was one of the few eu-15 countries to spend less on health per capita per head than us. 

 

So the fact that they have also had severe problems dealing with covid points that there is a relationship between healthcare spending (or lack of it) and covid deaths. 

Mate, I admire you for trying but you’re arguing with someone that will defend this bunch of useless c**s to the death. 
 

Arguing that Italy has suffered the same without having our government is just weird. At least compare health care spending?!

[yorkie1999]

6 minutes ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

We will all of had it before long at that rate.

Is there any medical proof yet that, in general, once you catch it, you've got a certain level of immunity to it.

[Corky]

6 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

Hang on, correct me if i'm wrong, but i didn't see people putting the government in a difficult place by wanting a christmas, how would they do that. It was a case of being offered and accepting, which is all we can do.  Boris was the one who offered it!, in fact he promised 5 days but could only deliver 1. Nobody actually demanded they have a christmas, well no one i know anyway. 

Johnson himself mocked Starmer for wanting to cancel Christmas when he suggested it wasn't the best idea to allow families to meet up with the virus still strong.

 

There was a huge demand for a normal Christmas, not particularly helped by Johnson saying we'd be back to normal by then anyway.

[Paninistickers]

7 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

Hang on, correct me if i'm wrong, but i didn't see people putting the government in a difficult place by wanting a christmas, how would they do that. It was a case of being offered and accepting, which is all we can do.  Boris was the one who offered it!, in fact he promised 5 days but could only deliver 1. Nobody actually demanded they have a christmas, well no one i know anyway. 

Most people i know reacted with a mix of incredulity and laughter when the xmas rules were announced. Any same person knew the 5 day relaxation was suicide (or murder, dependent on your view)....but of course Johnson wanted popularity over public health advice 

[Dahnsouff]

1 minute ago, Paninistickers said:

Most people i know reacted with a mix of incredulity and laughter when the xmas rules were announced. Any same person knew the 5 day relaxation was suicide (or murder, dependent on your view)....but of course Johnson wanted popularity over public health advice 

Why was it? A personal acceptance that given this freedom they would be unable to exert social responsibility and abide by the designated guidelines?

[Mark 'expert' Lawrenson]

5 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

Is there any medical proof yet that, in general, once you catch it, you've got a certain level of immunity to it.

Nope not as far as I’m aware, I hope for all our sakes that there is! 

[yorkie1999]

Just now, Paninistickers said:

Most people i know reacted with a mix of incredulity and laughter when the xmas rules were announced. Any same person knew the 5 day relaxation was suicide (or murder, dependent on your view)....but of course Johnson wanted popularity over public health advice 

People i know reacted the same, but i don't one person who went out of there way to put pressure on the government, apart from writing to your mp and asking politely if he could persuade santa to come, how would you actually do it? 

[Unabomber]

24 minutes ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

There's been strong evidence to suggest that bed capacity has been a problem for years on end.

 

In Leicester,  the General reduced it's ICU capacity from 12 to 1 in 2018. From 2012, Glenfield Hospital - it was planned to close it's heart centre and only through controlled campaign it's remained there until 2021 when it goes over to an already over-subscribed, over-capacity Leicester Royal Infirmary. Again in 2018, the LRI was subject to four hour waits for a bed - the ICU had close in the same year due to staff shortages. The existing capacity has been poor for years - and it's continually been reduced. 

 

I found this out to my own sad personal circumstance.

 

My dying Mum called an ambulance on a Saturday morning and it was 24 hours before she was finally placed in a bed within a manned ward. Approximately nearly four hours awaiting the ambulance, followed by a three hour wait in the queue outside A&E of ambulance and then agonising wait within the building itself.

 

Now I could go in detail how simply the building itself was a cluster**** in terms of lack in space. Equally I could go on about in the last seven years, I have done condition surveys for about 350 to 400 buildings across the country in NHS trusts and continually spellbounds me how trusts, have either gave away land, allowed other hospital to literally mothball, worked it down so basically the repair bill is huge that it borders impossible to maintain. 

Sorry to hear about your situation mate. December 19 my mum was rushed to hospital (LRI) at about midnight, her situation was critical. I managed to get to the hospital about 2am and my brother from London about 3:30. It was an absolute shit show, even though it was critical there were no ICU beds at all. She never managed to get one and died without us while having a MRI at about 6am. Anyone who can say that the NHS is not underfunded needs to get in the real world. To think that was before Covid 19 too is scary. 

Edited 8 January 2021 by Unabomber

[Col city fan]

54 minutes ago, Izzy said:

Well when they do, the public cry off to the media saying jobsworth police hounded them when they met up for a walk.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-55560814

This is EXACTLY the problem in this country

Those two stupid women could have ‘walked’ from their front doors. I’m glad they were fined

Its time we had crackdown on this fookin nonsense. Look how many people are dying from Covid. This is DYING from this virus

Edited 8 January 2021 by Col city fan

[The whole world smiles]

34 minutes ago, FoxesDeb said:

And The US are fairing exceptionally well, aren't they? I think your graph proves my point very well, it doesn't matter how much you spend, people are dying anyway 

This is my last post on the matter because life is too short and we don't seem particularly close to changing each others mind. 

 

But as I'm sure your aware and just being belligerent but the US uses a completely different insurance based health care model to the other countries and have the most expensive drug and treatment prices in the world (sometimes 20 times more expensive than the UK) so they arent that relevant in the arguement. 

 

A better example would be Germany 2nd biggest spend per capita on health in Europe lowest excess deaths. Coincidence? Your gonna say yes. I'm gonna so absolutely not. So time to put a film on. 

 

Goodnight and up the city. 

[StanSP]

1 hour ago, FoxesDeb said:

So you think we should just have thousands of empty, but highly staffed beds, just waiting in case this happened? For years on end? Like I asked before, who is paying for that? 

I think you've missed the point.

 

NHS, or any proponent of, might not have wanted or begged for such extreme spare beds and equipment etc, but for years they've been batted away saying 'there's no money, sorry, deal with what you've got' (in effect). When you consider the literal billions that have been farmed off to Tory friends and acquaintances, it kinds of puts any excuse given to NHS in the last decade about there being no money pretty much null and void.

Like @Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot said - the money was always there, it was just chosen not to be used to at least help out NHS hospitals, even for short-term. I don't think the poitn was to go to one extreme and have 'thousands of empty beds' just sitting there. But it begs the question could some help have been given to NHS now that we know there was some money floating around...?

[CosbehFox]

40 minutes ago, Unabomber said:

Sorry to hear about your situation mate. December 19 my mum was rushed to hospital (LRI) at about midnight, her situation was critical. I managed to get to the hospital about 2am and my brother from London about 3:30. It was an absolute shit show, even though it was critical there were no ICU beds at all. She never managed to get one and died without us while having a MRI at about 6am. Anyone who can say that the NHS is not underfunded needs to get in the real world. To think that was before Covid 19 too is scary. 

Late November 2019 here. Sounds horrific that mate. 
 

I am sure we will have had similarities in the past twelve months in that not able to share in your grief with your nearest family and friends has been despairing 
 

Edited 8 January 2021 by Cardiff_Fox

[Otis]

25 minutes ago, Col city fan said:

This is EXACTLY the problem in this country

Those two stupid women could have ‘walked’ from their front doors. I’m glad they were fined

Its time we had crackdown on this fookin nonsense. Look how many people are dying from Covid. This is DYING from this virus

Totally disproportionate response from the police. Typical heavy handed response on an easy target. Several police cars and van ambushing 2 women who had gone out for a walk in a largely safe and deserted area. Virtually zero risk.

A quiet word would have sufficed. 

[Mark 'expert' Lawrenson]

30 minutes ago, Col city fan said:

This is EXACTLY the problem in this country

Those two stupid women could have ‘walked’ from their front doors. I’m glad they were fined

Its time we had crackdown on this fookin nonsense. Look how many people are dying from Covid. This is DYING from this virus

We actually don’t know the figures of people actually dying from COVID rather than with COVID.

Huge difference and unfortunately probably a figure we will never find out.

Annual excess death numbers will be the closest we come to knowing.

[Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot]

Exactly, how you can get me saying the NHS is/was badly underfunded to 'let's just have thousands of empty beds then' is beyond me really, it's an extreme and putting words in my mouth. It's stretched to if not beyond breaking point every winter and has been for years upon years. But yeah heaven forbid it be any fault of government. This I'll stick up for my team no matter the evidence or decency of not doing is quite literally beyond me, its almost as bad as what's going on across the pond. Bloody weird 

[Otis]

1 hour ago, FoxesDeb said:

So why do you think it's 'overwhelmed' every winter?

Funding going to the wrong areas? 

[Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot]

And also the idea that I meant ALL the money the government is using to combat this pandemic should have been preemptively put in to the NHS is also a joke, it just needed and needs funding adequately, which isn't too much to ask in a sustainable way, chances are it would actually have saved money in the long term. 

[Parafox]

3 minutes ago, Otis said:

So why do you think it's 'overwhelmed' every winter?

Funding going to the wrong areas? 

Every winter for the last however many years I can remember as a paramedic, winter pressures have increased in direct relation to cuts in funding. 6-8 years ago we never had 10-20 ambulances queuing at A&E. There is no excuse the gov can give, now that they (of both major parties) have been exposed as depriving the NHS of adequate funds.

[Leicester_Loyal]

2 hours ago, Phube said:

I’m not saying everyone who has caught COVID is to blame but if EVERYONE actually obeyed the rules this pandemic would die out pretty fast! And we could all get back to normal!!

How?

 

We could completely wipe it out and someone could end up bringing it over here and it'll start off again. Wasn't the lowest  R rate we had in the summer 0.6? But they reckon the varient discovered in September is about 0.7 higher in terms of R?

 

I'm not saying that people breaking rules aren't contributing to the spread of this disease, because they obviously are. But you can follow all the rules and this thing will still spread in schools, supermarkets, hospitals, care homes and in your own homes.

[Otis]

2 minutes ago, Parafox said:

Every winter for the last however many years I can remember as a paramedic, winter pressures have increased in direct relation to cuts in funding. 6-8 years ago we never had 10-20 ambulances queuing at A&E. There is no excuse the gov can give, now that they (of both major parties) have been exposed as depriving the NHS of adequate funds.

Yep. Given over the last 12 months they have picked hundreds of billions from the money tree.

[Leicester_Loyal]

I've said it plenty of times on here and I'll say it again.

 

It doesn't matter how much more money we give the NHS, it'll still gobble it all up. We could give it another 3 or 4 billion a year and it'll still find a way to spend it all, without drastically improving the service it provides. It needs stripping back to the bare bones and going again. If it was a private run company, the people running it would be fired every couple of years for wasting money.

 

I think exactly the same for other parts of the public sector and I've seen first hand the millions that are wasted every week.

[FoxesDeb]

10 minutes ago, StanSP said:

I think you've missed the point.

 

NHS, or any proponent of, might not have wanted or begged for such extreme spare beds and equipment etc, but for years they've been batted away saying 'there's no money, sorry, deal with what you've got' (in effect). When you consider the literal billions that have been farmed off to Tory friends and acquaintances, it kinds of puts any excuse given to NHS in the last decade about there being no money pretty much null and void.

Like @Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot said - the money was always there, it was just chosen not to be used to at least help out NHS hospitals, even for short-term. I don't think the poitn was to go to one extreme and have 'thousands of empty beds' just sitting there. But it begs the question could some help have been given to NHS now that we know there was some money floating around...?

The point I was responding to raised the question 'is our country prepared for a major health crisis', or something similar. The claim was that people have died from Covid purely because the NHS has been under funded. Whether or not that is true, and I haven't seen anything that proves it is, at least not directly, no health service in the world was completely prepared for thousands of extra patients, and no health service in the world could be, without having empty beds waiting for such an eventuality, at least not without great expense to the tax payer. 

 

There is a massive difference between paying for things you don't need for decades, just in case a once in a lifetime event happens to occur, and finding the money to help the country when they need it in the middle of a global crisis. 

 

There is of course an argument that other services have been affected by the influx of covid patients, I know first hand that they have been and continue to be so, my treatment has pretty much been at a standstill since March 2019, and also that more money could have been made available pre the pandemic, but that was not the discussion at the time of my response. 

 

 

[StanSP]

3 minutes ago, FoxesDeb said:

The point I was responding to raised the question 'is our country prepared for a major health crisis', or something similar. The claim was that people have died from Covid purely because the NHS has been under funded. Whether or not that is true, and I haven't seen anything that proves it is, at least not directly, no health service in the world was completely prepared for thousands of extra patients, and no health service in the world could be, without having empty beds waiting for such an eventuality, at least not without great expense to the tax payer. 

 

There is a massive difference between paying for things you don't need for decades, just in case a once in a lifetime event happens to occur, and finding the money to help the country when they need it in the middle of a global crisis. 

 

There is of course an argument that other services have been affected by the influx of covid patients, I know first hand that they have been and continue to be so, my treatment has pretty much been at a standstill since March 2019, and also that more money could have been made available pre the pandemic, but that was not the discussion at the time of my response. 

 

 

With all due respect that's not the post you directly quoted and not the point that poster was specifically making. 

 

The point was that some money could have been used to help the NHS, whether there was going to be a once in a lifetime event happening or not.

 

The fact there have been hundreds of billions pounds suddenly found (and disgustingly wasted) to help in that once in a lifetime event goes to show the money was there, or could have been found, at some point during the last decade. 

 

Therefore, the NHS has been under-funded and the way the government has spent money in the last 10 months emphasises that. 

[Fightforever]

49 minutes ago, Otis said:

So why do you think it's 'overwhelmed' every winter?

Funding going to the wrong areas? 

Too much middle management from what friends in the nhs have told me.

[Dahnsouff]

21 minutes ago, StanSP said:

With all due respect that's not the post you directly quoted and not the point that poster was specifically making. 

 

The point was that some money could have been used to help the NHS, whether there was going to be a once in a lifetime event happening or not.

 

The fact there have been hundreds of billions pounds suddenly found (and disgustingly wasted) to help in that once in a lifetime event goes to show the money was there, or could have been found, at some point during the last decade. 

 

Therefore, the NHS has been under-funded and the way the government has spent money in the last 10 months emphasises that. 

Wasn’t that money borrowed? Not a sustainable or desirable model in ‘peace time’ surely? Might be wrong of course.