Scots dementia expert says coronavirus outbreak could be 'quite useful' as it will kill off hospital bed blockers

Not sure what all the fuss is about. If it was me I'd rather go quickly through coronavirus than suffer years of dementia (and put my family through years of suffering, too).

Been sitting on my hands not to say that AllTheLs

AllTheLs

The ‘fuss’ is because she’s not talking about people with dementia.

And even if she were it’s still offensive and needless at this time.

Having seen far more than I would ever wish to of late-stage dementia, quite frankly I think that anything that finally lets them go would probably be a mercy. Instead, people with a pitifully poor quality of life are so often kept going just because it’s possible to do so.

Of course it’s not ‘done’ to say so, but I bet a good many people who’ve witnessed the same, would agree.
Feel free to flame me.

Hospital is in any case so often a terrible place for anyone with dementia, when they can’t understand what is going on or why, and so often pull drips and catheters out, or try to, over and over.

Why not just give them all a lethal injection AlltheLs if you think they'd probably prefer that?

A good solution to bed blocking and no need for nursing homes
It would solve so many problems.

How to discriminate though?
Old people who voted Brexit?
Old folks who don't believe in climate change?
Anyone who voted for Boris, whatever age?

That would sort out a lot of the world's problems, leaving more room for real criminals and warmongerers

That’s not what it’s about, though, AllTheLls. This is about someone gleefully anticipating your death, by whatever means. It’s also about the slippery slope. How about those with disabilities that require life-long support?

Goodness me SueDonim, easy peasy, just shut 'em all up in an airless room with someone (preferably old) who has the virus and leave them to it.

That'll sort the wheat from the chaff!!
No food or water will sort the rest.
Only the strongest should survive.

Witzend

She wasn’t actually talking about patients with dementia. Perhaps we should start to make wider judgments about who should live and die in order to free up health services during this approaching epidemic?

How about:
Smokers
Obese and overweight people
Older people over the age of 75
Children and babies with life limiting conditions
Adults with life limiting conditions
People with underlying health conditions
People who haven’t paid taxes at any point in their lives
Children with disabilities
Adults with disabilities
Anyone else?

Anyone remember the Hippocratic Oath ?

Calli ''Why not just give them all a lethal injection AlltheLs if you think they'd probably prefer that?''

perhaps many would, actually. For another thread- but what 10s fo 1000s would like, is proper advanced directives that give them a choice in this matter. And not to be trapped for years in a body without sense. But for another thread.

Again - Prof Andrews wasn’t talking about people with dementia

A FORMER Scottish Government official believes a coronavirus pandemic “would be quite useful” in clearing delayed discharge levels because “people would be taken out of the system”
“If you’re on the board of a care home company, a pandemic is one of things you think about as a potential damage to your business because of the number of older people it’s going to take out of the system.

“Curiously, ripping off the sticking plaster, in a hospital that has 92 delayed discharges, a pandemic would be quite useful because your hospital would work because these people would be taken out of the system.”

These are quotes from the article. There is no mention of people with dementia.
She is talking about all elderly people (that's us) who are otherwise healthy but who in the future might need care, but who might get coronavirus now.

In this context, the word 'useful' implies expediency and the expression 'taken out' has connotations of people being got rid of.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

jura yes, interesting for another thread.

But a health professional putting forward the hypothesis that the deaths of elderly patients (people!) would be useful is indeed chilling.

Why did someone who thinks like that ever go into nursing which is a caring profession?

Enough elderly people feel like they're a burden because they need care and can no longer live fully independently. Speeches like this just endorse that feeling. It's cruel to use the word useful in the same sentence as elderly people dying of coronavirus. What next, people thinking they're such a burden they "should" opt to alleviate the world and their family of their useless lives?
SirChenjin, if your list was to be implemented, could you please remove overweight as a criteria, I am trying, honestly

janipat I will take your name off that list

In all seriousness though, overall people who seriously overweight and obese utilise more services, have poorer disease prognosis, have a higher rate of certain diseases and conditions, have poorer outcomes for certain surgeries and require a higher level of intervention in both secondary and primary care. Can you imagine, however, if one of the senior dieticians or public health figures in the SG or national boards suggested that taking them out of health services would be quite useful?

I am left wondering whether this lady is autistic. What she says is absolutely accurate, but she fails to see the effect of what she says.

I make this suggestion very tentively. It is just I was reading an article about Chris Packham, whose autism wasn't identified until he was in his 40s, He has exactly the same straight line thinking, that fails to see the effect of just following a line of thought to a logical conclusion can have on people.

That crossed my mind immediately, M0nica.
We know someone like this, fearsomely intelligent but logical to the point of cruelty in what he says. Undiagnosed though, as far as we know.

The best doctor I ever had was like this,he had no filter whatsoever .I thought he was brilliant ,others were offended by him ,some just hated him .If we worry about everything anyone says in public we'd all go mad.This EX employee of the Scottish government has no power and little influence so dismiss her words.
There are far worse things to worry about ,WM is full of folk who think like this and they DO have power

You keep dismissing her as an ex-employee, paddyanne, and I hope you're right regarding her power and influence but I thought that she was an extremely influential adviser and her views were normally taken seriously not just in Scotland but internationally.

Perhaps she is very forceful and people feel obliged to listen!

Paddyanne this is how Prof Andrews is described in the article Prof Andrews is a former director of the Scottish Government’s Centre for Change and Innovation. She was also previously the Scottish Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing and the director of nursing at NHS Forth Valley

Rather more significant than your somewhat dismissive description of her as an ‘ex-NHS employee’.

She was addressing the Public Audit Committee at Holyrood. Perhaps that doesn’t give her power, but it certainly gives her influence.

I’m not sure what you’re implying by your remark about people at Westminster having power. As I understand it, the Scottish government has complete autonomy over health & social care provision in Scotland.

But the corollary of that I suppose is that we in England need not worry that we might be affected by her chilling opinions.

janea thank you.
That is a relief for those of us in Wales too if she is advising the Scottish Parliament, which is solely responsible for devolved health and social care.

I think there are easier ways to "off" expensive citizens, without torpedo-ing the world economy.

That is a true proposition. That she said it in public was impolitic of her and one does not know what she intended by it.

It was also perhaps unwise as it tends to justify involuntary euthanasia. Like most others I want voluntary euthanasia not involuntary killing by disease. however as an old person at the end of life I'd rather die of Covid19 than bowel cancer.