The very nasty Laurence Fox

No we don’t need to privatise, we need everyone to pay a little more To fund the NHS

I didn’t see all your posts last night Grannyrose & am struggling to know which to respond to.
For now I’ll just reply to this
I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the Dr John you speak of
Dr John Campbell. He’s a retired nurse educator based in Carlisle & he makes YouTube videos about healthcare. Since the pandemic started he has posted daily updates on the latest research & epidemiology statistics & gives his interpretation of them. He makes sense of the data and has thousands of followers.
Here’s a link to a recent one

m.youtube.com/watch?v=4GQfPgaE4sA

And this
It's interesting that you report someone () as saying that ONLY 25% of the population have had the disease. This implies that it would be better if more of us had had it. In fact restrictions may have prevented the very spread of the disease that would have helped it to burn itself out more quickly.

Dangerous rubbish. Viruses only ‘burn themselves out’ when a high enough percentage of the population have developed immunity. This is through contracting the virus or receiving vaccination.
If more people had contracted the virus, many many more people would have died, many many more would have suffered long Covid. That’s why we have to have restrictions until the vast majority have been vaccinated.
Have you forgotten Prof Neil Ferguson’s original prediction that without intervention half a million people would die? He was doubted but it looks as though he was right after all.

I have always been proud of the fact that our country has medical treatment free at the point of use for everyone whatever their financial circumstances. But now realise that this just isn't sustainable, sad though that is. We are going to have to move to some form of privatised medicine, backed up by insurance. Hopefully not an American model, but something that delivers what we need when we need it. There must be a country somewhere in the world that has a system we could adapt.

I can tell you isolating and doing all these boring things like wearing masks DOES work. Ask any Australian. The problem with the uk is that it spread too far and the lockdowns were just a bit late. Better late than never though. As for attacking your wonderful NHS , how would you feel if you had to pay megabucks every time you got sick ?

sorry, my question re NHS, not to OP, but GrannyRose

do you favour privatisation of / in the NHS, OP ?

But I think there is a problem. We can equate the NHS with the thousands of dedicated people who work for it. These are the people who are on their knees and stretched beyond limit. Or we can regard the NHS as a monstrous self serving juggernaut. Unfortunately it is sometimes difficult to know which one a poster is referring to. In my case it was the latter. I certainly would not like you to think I was having a go at the troops at this very difficult time. But the organisation is badly in need of reform and I think many of those troops would agree with me.

Goodness knows

?

Callistemon

If you think my posts are just for effect why do you rise to them?

welbeck

I understand the rational too, but if one dose doesn't confer the immunity we are expecting we will have wasted precious time and vaccines.

but they are intending to give the second dose, just later on. i agree it would be better to keep to the planned schedule, but it's swings and roundabouts.
i can see the rationale for getting more people to have the first jab quickly.

GrannyRose15

Do you think the vaccine is going to work? There are reports from Israel today that suggest the the UK government has made a big mistake in not following the manufacturers' instructions for the vaccine. It may be that one dose of the PFizer jab only confers 33% of immunity. This is very worrying.

Clutching at straws now.

I admit that no-one is going to end the restrictions when the numbers are so high. But we didn't end the restrictions when numbers went right down in the summer

We did. Everything opened up including some theatres, we were encouraged to Eat out to help out, people were told to go back to work wherever possible, students started at university and the schools reopened.
What happened? As soon as society started mixing and functioning nearly normally again the numbers started to go up and then rocketed
QED

I certainly don't treat it as a religion but I do know that they are absolutely stretched to the limits of endurance - and beyond.
So many staff have died and are off sick, so many staff exhausted and still doing their utmost yet you say that they should have prepared better.

Actually, I think your posts are just for effect; no-one can really think like that.

Do you think the vaccine is going to work? There are reports from Israel today that suggest the the UK government has made a big mistake in not following the manufacturers' instructions for the vaccine. It may be that one dose of the PFizer jab only confers 33% of immunity. This is very worrying.

Callistemon

^But with ten months to plan for a winter surge it is really unforgivable that the NHS wasn't better prepared this time.^

Speechless, just speechless!

How dare you

Quite easily Callistemon, because I am not one of those who treats the NHS as a religion.

Inspite of having loads of really dedicated doctors, nurses, porters, cleaners etc etc the institution as a whole is not fit for purpose and it is about time we acknowledged it. It is ridiculous that we are already talking about restrictions next winter to "save the NHS". We need a system that can cope and not make us feel guilty for getting ill.

AFTER most people are vaccinated GrannyRose. To stop people from dying.

To anthropomorphise it, it is not in the virus's interest to kill its hosts. That it why it is continually mutating to find a way of reproducing that doesn't end up annihilating itself.

I admit that no-one is going to end the restrictions when the numbers are so high. But we didn't end the restrictions when numbers went right down in the summer.

We can't get rid of the virus altogether, it is endemic. When are people going to realise that? At some point we are going to have to come out of hiding and save the economy - the sooner the better. Otherwise we condemn ourselves and our children to life of poverty and fear. And who will save the NHS if no-one has any money?

There comes a time when you have to admit that the cure is worse than the disease
Not when there are over 30,000 new cases every day and an average of over 1200 people a day are dying of it. And that is not taking into account the very serious (and even fatal) long term effects of Long Covid..
In fact restrictions may have prevented the very spread of the disease that would have helped it to burn itself out more quickly

Another fallacy
Viruses are not light bulbs which “burn themselves out”. .oh it might recede when many hundreds of thousands (millions globally) more have died perhaps and it has run out of “hosts”? Are you prepared to see millions due?
The new variants we are seeing also cast serious doubt on the concept of herd immunity.
Sweden tried that road and has come to regret it.

But with ten months to plan for a winter surge it is really unforgivable that the NHS wasn't better prepared this time.

Speechless, just speechless!

How dare you

The fact remains that thousands of people are suffering because of lockdown, be it from mental health issues or financial hardship. There comes a time when you have to admit that the cure is worse than the disease.

I understand that the first lockdown was to stop us in the UK seeing scenes like those from Italy of people on the floor in corridors. But with ten months to plan for a winter surge it is really unforgivable that the NHS wasn't better prepared this time.

It's interesting that you report someone (I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the Dr John you speak of) as saying that ONLY 25% of the population have had the disease. This implies that it would be better if more of us had had it. In fact restrictions may have prevented the very spread of the disease that would have helped it to burn itself out more quickly.

And I don't have your faith in the efficacy of either lockdown or the vaccine. Restrictions have gone on long enough and although it is temping to say "it would have been far worse if they hadn't been put in place" the evidence is very shaky, and disputed. Governments do have a tendency to want to be seen to be doing something.

The other thing that is really worrying to me, though I know a lot on this site do not agree, is that the government hasn't done a cost/benefit analysis for lockdown

I’m not sure that a cost/benefit analysis of lockdown is even possible GrannyRose because there are so many variables and so many variations between different communities.
The new variant has thrown previous predictions & models off course anyway.
But the main aim of lockdown isn’t to save lives.
It’s to stop the NHS being overwhelmed, so that it’s actually able to save lives.
At the moment the pressure on staff is horrendous and there could be no justification in my view for easing restrictions & allowing transmission of the virus to increase.
I was listening to Dr John yesterday & latest figures suggest only 20 -25% of the population have been exposed to the virus.
Without vaccination and lockdown the situation would be unthinkable.

my doing so

Lucretzia

So, to those who think what Sumption said was wrong

Isn't it entirely natural to want our children/grandchildren to outlive us?

Wouldn't we agree that saving the life of a 2 year old is more important than saving a 93 year old?

Wouldn't the 93 year old say the same? Or 83 year old? 73 year old?

Didn't we admire/agree with this woman?

www.boston25news.com/news/trending/coronavirus-90-year-old-with-covid-19-says-no-ventilator-said-keep-it-younger-ones/OLIN2MUR4BBMLDBRZOXTMIWPDE/

The media , (Daily Mail) has reported this in its usual sensationalist fashion. I watched the programme. And on this I agreed with him.

I certainly don't agree with everything he says but in this he was spot on.

And I think we all know it.

I think I agree with you Lucretia and you shouldn't be made to feel bad about expressing your views. Jonathan Sumption was set up on that programme. Apparently, he and the lady in question had been in amicable correspondence with each other before they went live on TV.
But what surprises me is that very few people realise that putting a relative value on a life is inherent within our health service. Someone upthread mentioned DNRs. And the way drugs are both authorized and prescribed is dependent upon a cost/benefit analysis. The benefit of saving a life of someone who is going to live for twenty more years is more than that of someone who will live only five more years. The more resources we have the less important that calculation is.
The other thing that is really worrying to me, though I know a lot on this site do not agree, is that the government hasn't done a cost/benefit analysis for lockdown. The longer it goes on the more damage it will do to the economy and people's lives. I would have felt much happier being hidden away for a year if I had thought my doing meant that young people were able to get on with their lives and keep the economy going.

I am in Belgium and it is mandatory to wear a mask when outside your home at all times. From age 12 just now but going down to 10.