Seems we are not unlocking.

MayBee70

Has anyone seen that footage of the Newsnight reporter being accosted by anti lockdown protesters in London? The police were doing nothing to help him. It was terrifying.

It made me think back to the people’s vote marches where there were thousands of people marching with no unpleasantness whatsoever

I am not shocked at all.
Dh and i said it wouldn`t go ahead,and i blame the idiots who still aren`t social distancing and the Government allowing planes from Asian countries to come and go,one plane had 57 Asians on it and they ALL tested positive with the Covid Indian variant.shock horror.

Has anyone seen that footage of the Newsnight reporter being accosted by anti lockdown protesters in London? The police were doing nothing to help him. It was terrifying.

MaizieD

Eloethan

Marxists How do you work that one out?

Eh?

Where's that come from Eloethan?

Mentioned at the start of the thread. Also was mentioned in parliament today: some Conservative MP’s having a go at SAGE and accused one of them for being a communist (I wasn’t watching it but DH has just told me…..

Clarification of my post 21.11 yesterday

oddly so do I

I was referring to Alegrias1 post where she said Casdon knew what she was talking about and I was agreeing.

On re-reading I must admit that it was not entirely clear that I agreed, and could have been miss interpreted.

Eloethan

Marxists How do you work that one out?

Eh?

Where's that come from Eloethan?

Often a chart conveys more than words and it is easy to look up said chart/google .

I do that and they still don't make any contribution to the debate.

Marxists How do you work that one out?

Thanks Alegrias1, it’s my specialist subject on Mastermind.
GrannyGravy13 here is a good if slightly dated paper which explains the dynamics around acute hospital bed challenges in the NHS - Covid has just worsened the issues.
www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs-hospital-bed-numbers
Averaged out, 7000 Covid patients is equivalent to a ward in each of 230 hospitals, and 7000 patients with other conditions who are not treated per week.
The chart you showed is ALL NHS beds, including psychiatry, maternity, paediatrics, cancer care, orthopaedic s etc. etc. these beds are occupied so not available for covid cases, or overspill medical cases who can’t be treated on medical wards because they are full of covid patients.

Alegrias1

Oh, then I will withdraw and leave the discussion to those who know better

Maybe you can share your knowledge instead of just posting random charts with no commentary? Up to you.

Often a chart conveys more than words and it is easy to look up said chart/google .

Oh, then I will withdraw and leave the discussion to those who know better

Maybe you can share your knowledge instead of just posting random charts with no commentary? Up to you.

Alegrias1

Its just a chart. ONS don't comment on the implications of their stats, only what the stats are.

I think Casdon knows what she's talking about.

Oddly so do I

Its just a chart. ONS don't comment on the implications of their stats, only what the stats are.

I think Casdon knows what she's talking about.

We have all stayed at home to protect the NHS, we have had vaccines which the end of trial date is 2023.

It’s time for the NHS to step up to all the other non Covid cases.

As it is a gov.u.k. chart I hazard a guess that they know the relevancy of the chart.

What does the chart prove GrannyGravy? That 1000 NHS beds are now occupied by a category of patients that didn’t exist before January 2020, and that will likely increase to 7000 in the next few weeks. Those beds take staff resources, change capacity availability, and reduce the number of beds available for other patients who need the NHS more than ever now - is that not an issue?

This

I think we're already at 1,000 a week for the whole UK. Graph from the UK government website. The peak seems to have been about 30,000 a week.

Very well made point about catching up with "missed" treatments, growstuff and Casdon

I found the data for admissions for PHE (sorry, couldn't find the other countries) and the average would appear to be slightly lower than 204,000, but I agree that Covid patients have only ever been a relatively small proportion.

Problems have been caused because there have been Covid-related staff shortages, patients have needed intensive nursing and beds have needed to be socially distanced, so capacity has reduced. Not only that, but patients usually stay in hospital for longer with Covid than they do for many other conditions.

1,000 extra patients a week or (heaven forbid) 1,000 extra a day would put considerable pressure on the NHS because it needs to catch up with elective and "non-life threatening" procedures. Even with improvements in treatment, it would be likely that deaths would be in three figures and that's before the effects of Long Covid are tackled.

The biggest problem is that the NHS was already under-resourced and on a knife edge.

M0nica

PippaZ tenyears to work it out of the system, yes, but I think the physical precautions against and incidence of the disease will drop much faster and it will just become an endemic respiratory disease within a couple of years

Covid isn't primarily a respiratory disease like flu. Unless there are serious efforts to eradicate it globally and to get on top of it domestically, it won't become just another endemic disease. It's much nastier than that.

I agree M0nica. But I think my fivish years will be what it takes for the majority to think of it as "past". We are already at 18 months if you were looking at it historically because we knew it was around in January 1920.

It will be fine - no need to fatten pigs in the back garden with a bit of luck and it could turn out to be the impetus that sends us flying forward.

PippaZ tenyears to work it out of the system, yes, but I think the physical precautions against and incidence of the disease will drop much faster and it will just become an endemic respiratory disease within a couple of years

MayBee70

growstuff

sandelf

Had been looking forward to a more relaxed summer, so I'm a bit down about this. In college in 1969 doing stats I learnt it is the direction of change you must pay attention to - the direction changed weeks ago and we did not change anything. The politicians are guilty. The 'experts' really, really do know this, but they can't just stalk off.

Kate Bingham was interviewed at the end of 2020 and said then that she didn't think that we'd be "back to normal" by this summer, but she was hopeful that people would be able to book holidays by 2022. Her caution then was dismissed as being negative, but it seems she was right. Let's hope she's right about 2022 too.

Oh I do hope so. I’m the worlds biggest pessimist but even I didn’t think it would be as bad as this .

I don't see it as pessimism but I have always said it would take us five to six years to get out of this completely. That is not what I think, however, - I just don't want to depress people. However, if you look back at the span of crises - global economic ones - they span about 10 years. I think if you look at the span of the rise towards the war and the recovery from it that would easily span 10 years too.

The art, as far as I am concerned, is just to get on and make the best of it. We have no option (but we could at some point change the government )

I went to read that report Casdon, I see its Nick Triggle who usually has a sensible outlook, I think. 1,000 a day is certainly different to 1,000 a week.

This is what it actually said in the BBC report.

‘Infections are currently climbing sharply and modellers believe this could lead to more than 1,000 hospital admissions a day later in the summer.
That is equivalent to what the NHS would face for all types of respiratory illness in the middle of a bad winter.’

With the backlog of non Covid cases this will undoubtedly have an impact on bed availability for other specialties (as the pressure of medical bed shortages does every winter), and will push waiting times further - it’s not good news- it’s not as bad as the second wave, but the NHS was unable to do much else for months as a result of that, whereas now the pressure is on for patients with other conditions too.