The very nasty Laurence Fox

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Callistemon

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

Goodness knows

?

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.

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

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

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 ?

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 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.

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

I agree Iam, it is slowly being run into the ground by the selling off of services to private companies combined with lack of funding over many years.

nanna8 I can tell you isolating and doing all these boring things like wearing masks DOES work. Ask any Australian
I agree, Nanna8. My friend lives in Perth WA & life is just about normal there. They haven’t had a case for months.
What the Australians have done which we failed to do was impose & enforce strict quarantine regulations on people entering the country (2 weeks isolation in a hotel at your own expense, anyone?) with electronic tags to check on your movements.
That would have gone down like a lead balloon with all the Brits returning from Spain and Italy last year.
As MD wrote in Private Eye, the British psyche has a rebellious streak and some of us don’t take kindly to being told what to do, even when it’s in our own best interests.

Iam64

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

LOVE this. Yes. We do.

BUT also the government needs to stop diverting the National Insurance we pay to their mates for incredibly poor service / products.

janeainsworth

You didn't just quote Neil Ferguson at me did you? That attention seeking, charlatan. If he told me it was raining I'd have to go out and check.

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.

That’s what I said about Neil Ferguson GrannyRose.
Your vicious words say more about you than about him.