Govt planning Oct lockdown if hospitalisations continue to rise

Harry Angstrom said:
Hospitals have always had more work than they can handle. I agree this is unprecedented but society cannot be closed down unless thousands were imminently in danger of death. Imho.
This wave is exactly what we need in the summer. Unless people wish to have a society restricted indefinitely.
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I see your point but it is a unprecedented level of demand. If the numbers of COVID patients coming through jeopardise progress against waiting lists and emergency care, how can we rationalise not locking down?
 


Frijj said:
I see your point but it is a unprecedented level of demand. If the numbers of COVID patients coming through jeopardise progress against waiting lists and emergency care, how can we rationalise not locking down?
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I cannot envisage a time when the numbers will be anywhere near the peak and the escalation anywhere near the past waves. We have defences and those waves happened when we still had a myriad of restrictions.
If Covid numbers meant there was going to be a collapse in the system and many would die unnecessarily then restrictions would be needed. I just cannot see how we would get to that stage with the protection the vaccine gives.
 
tunstallhill said:
Surely they've spent the last 18 months building more ICUs and increasing hospital capacity, so the threshold for the NHS 'coping' will be much higher ?
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We have steadily increased the number of critical care beds but that comes at a cost of other beds that are used for the routine admissions that we're trying to catch up with.
Non critical care beds have declined as wards have been changed for enhanced infection control measures. The NHS were struggling for staff before Covid with 43000 unfilled nursing posts.
Critical care beds have much higher staff to patient ratios and require specific skills. It's not a case of telling nurse Smith to move from ortho down to ICU and getting a Dr from gyno to go down to help out.
 
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Harry Angstrom said:
I cannot envisage a time when the numbers will be anywhere near the peak and the escalation anywhere near the past waves. We have defences and those waves happened when we still had a myriad of restrictions.
If Covid numbers meant there was going to be a collapse in the system and many would die unnecessarily then restrictions would be needed. I just cannot see how we would get to that stage with the protection the vaccine gives.
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With the success of vaccines I cannot see peak hospitalisations post-vaccine, reaching the Christmas 2020 peak.

However you could argue that demand on hospital services has cumulatively increased and any resource spent on COVID is not being spent tackling that built-up need.

I do not want to go back into lockdown but personally if the choice is keep the service sector open, or plough on with waiting lists, whilst both are necessary, the latter takes precedence from my perspective
 
tunstallhill said:
can't they simply offer better wages and better working conditions, and recruit more staff?
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I mean recruitment is very hard, a high number of our NHS are from countries we no longer allow into the country/ visa's are very hard to get. But I mean if we as a country decided to fully fund the NHS then we would be in a significantly better situation (or voted for a party where healthcare was a priority)
 
HarrogateMackem said:
I mean recruitment is very hard, a high number of our NHS are from countries we no longer allow into the country/ visa's are very hard to get. But I mean if we as a country decided to fully fund the NHS then we would be in a significantly better situation (or voted for a party where healthcare was a priority)
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What happens when they start demanding vaccination for all NHS staff ?
 
SAFCOldie said:
What happens when they start demanding vaccination for all NHS staff ?
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I imagine that a very very small minority are unvaccinated, certainly not a number for it to be a big deal. Do you agree they should be given a pay rise and we should allow immigration to attract new staff - for that is going to have a bigger impact numbers wise?
 
Frijj said:
With the success of vaccines I cannot see peak hospitalisations post-vaccine, reaching the Christmas 2020 peak.

However you could argue that demand on hospital services has cumulatively increased and any resource spent on COVID is not being spent tackling that built-up need.

I do not want to go back into lockdown but personally if the choice is keep the service sector open, or plough on with waiting lists, whilst both are necessary, the latter takes precedence from my perspective
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The restrictions would have to be very mild imho unless bodies were piling high. I think a public awareness campaign in the winter with a plea for people to moderate their behaviour will be the full extent of the restrictions.
But if there is a short term need to clear the Covid sick list I wouldn’t be too against it. I just cannot envisage a scenario where that will be necessary.
 
HarrogateMackem said:
I imagine that a very very small minority are unvaccinated, certainly not a number for it to be a big deal. Do you agree they should be given a pay rise and we should allow immigration to attract new staff - for that is going to have a bigger impact numbers wise?
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I think it is a fair few in the NHS that are unvaccinated and apparently some of the care home folk that didn't get vaccinated have joined the NHS as well, so could be an issue. We already allow immigration 🤷‍♂️
 
SAFCOldie said:
Have you got the graph of how many tests were taken per country over that period ?
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Number of tests adds nothing. The number wouldn’t affect the trend. The value maybe but not the trend.

Surely someone who does as much analysis and calculations as you would know this.

You would also be able to source it yourself, but you don’t even have a clue where to look, demonstrating that you were telling lies when trying to make us think you knew what you were talking about.
 
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Frijj said:
Number of tests adds nothing. The number wouldn’t affect the trend. The value maybe but not the trend.

Surely someone who does as much analysis and calculations as you would know this.

You would also be able to source it yourself, but you don’t even have a clue where to look, demonstrating that you were telling lies when trying to make us think you knew what you were talking about.
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It's a well known fact they UK does more tests than the rest of the EU therefore you obviously get more cases. Unless you are saying every single case has been identified in that graph it means very little.
 
Surely it’s a plan and nothing else, worse case scenario if numbers reach a tipping point.
I complain how Boris has managed this, but fully understand someone needs to have a contingency plan for future actions.
I’d prefer someone came out and admitted this was a possible action to reduce numbers before the winter arrived within the last school holiday break before Xmas.
 
SAFCOldie said:
It's a well known fact they UK does more tests than the rest of the EU therefore you obviously get more cases. Unless you are saying every single case has been identified in that graph it means very little.
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Did you deliberately ignore the bit about the trend in positives? That’s obviously not impacted by the disparity between level of testing between different countries.
 

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