Covid Inquiry

Also, don’t forget, flu has always killed 1000’s of elderly people each winter.

I don't think that is a consequence of a government decision not to do anything to prevent those deaths, is it?

Or am I imagining all those free flu jabs?

They stop calling you for breast and cervical screening but you can still request it and get it.

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Kandinsky

A NHS nurse treating my 83 year old Dad said to me ‘people are living too long’ - so it’s not just BJ who thinks elderly people should accept their fate.

But they are not the PM and in charge of the people’s welfare.

My question is, where does it stop?

What about the clinically vulnerable? Many of them are going to die.

What about the severely disabled? Many of them are going to die.

Remind you of another regime?

As I pointed out earlier - people agree with Johnson' stance.

I don't understand why they don't realise that once you 'open the gate' and go down that road, it will become a slippery slope.

Hmm. While I am happy to have a conversation with medical staff about my personal decision to DNR or not, I would be very unhappy for a government to make that decision for me. It smacks of state euthanasia which has been done before in other places. And never ends well

Kadinsky Most older people have paid into the NHS for at least 40 years and most of us have made little use of it until we get older. We have a right to expect proper treatment when we age- we have paid for it.

Screenings for cervical and breast cancer stop at a certain age because they are not effective - either the results produce too many false negatives or do not find things because of the changes in the composition of the older body.. NOT because we are not considered worth it.

You cannot make comparisons on treating people merely on age. What if the 88 year old is an active community worker and a small op means he can continue to be useful in the community for another 3 or 4 years. That happened to my father, he lived to be 92 and was still serving on village commitees. Supposing the 48 year old has a terminal cancer and the treatment will give him at best 6 months more (painful) life, or supposing he is a paedophile serving a life sentence.

These days older people are healthier and can contribute to society for much longer, for the sake of some pills taken daily or a minor procedure.

While we are living and ablewe should all be equally entitled to medical treatment. Decisions to reduce or remove treatmant from anyone should be on medical and welfare grounds, never on age.

Choices are never that simplistic.

Callistemon21

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Kandinsky

A NHS nurse treating my 83 year old Dad said to me ‘people are living too long’ - so it’s not just BJ who thinks elderly people should accept their fate.

But they are not the PM and in charge of the people’s welfare.

My question is, where does it stop?

What about the clinically vulnerable? Many of them are going to die.

What about the severely disabled? Many of them are going to die.

Remind you of another regime?

But they are not the PM and in charge of the people’s welfare
But that nurse was directly in charge of his welfare whilst he was a patient in his/her care.

But we are talking about decisions made about the covid issue by the government, not a nurse whose job is day to day care of her patient, not whether they should live or die!

Kandinsky

*Is that what you think yourself Kandinsky?*

Well I certainly think money should be spent on keeping younger people alive yes.
Choice between spending on a 48 year old or an 88 year old then there’s no contest - but maybe that’s what the NHS does anyway?
I know they stop breast & cervical screening at a certain age as they probably think older women aren’t worth it maybe?
But I do know the NHS has admitted an ageing population ( that medicine can now keep alive for so much longer ) is crippling them.
Also, don’t forget, flu has always killed 1000’s of elderly people each winter.

Who is to say how a person’s life should be valued? Age is one criteria, but there are many others. I don’t personally think current productivity to society is the be all and end all, certainly not in a society which is amongst the wealthiest in the world. The real fault was in having absolutely no plan, no contingency, and no willingness to be open with the public, and with a few exceptions, no empathy or compassion. That’s what is the most scary thing coming out of this inquiry.

Dominic Cummings is a disgrace and should be do 3 for constructive dismissal, how could anyone work for or with him, his found mouth is bad enough now in court, apart from the fact he is a liar, how much worse would he be to work with or for. Impossible. Has anyone forgotten how quickly our vaccinations were rolled out with the elderly getting priority, I don’t want a granny state, I knew the risks and how Covid was transmitted I’m in the vulnerable category , Spain they were cooped up for months on end and didn’t have financial help. Mistakes were made, by all governments I think apart from Bulgaria and Sweden I think who ignored Covid and had no rules, business as usual.

Dominic Cummings is an irrelevance to this Allsorts, the only power he had was in being the tool of Johnson.

I took from the fact that a DNR notice was put on my file, that if clinicians were to prioritise, and they did have to during the pandemic, then a younger, fitter person had a fighting chance.
I was told that in the event of me catching Covid (this was before the vaccination programme was in place), I would not be admitted to ICU, because I would most likely die from Covid.
It was brutal, but true, but we were in the middle of a pandemic, the like of which we had never seen before.

I really don't think the nurse for one moment was intending to be ageist.

Oh please don’t roll out the Sweden ignored covid and came out of it better than other countries. It’s just not true!

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Callistemon21

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Kandinsky

A NHS nurse treating my 83 year old Dad said to me ‘people are living too long’ - so it’s not just BJ who thinks elderly people should accept their fate.

But they are not the PM and in charge of the people’s welfare.

My question is, where does it stop?

What about the clinically vulnerable? Many of them are going to die.

What about the severely disabled? Many of them are going to die.

Remind you of another regime?

But they are not the PM and in charge of the people’s welfare
But that nurse was directly in charge of his welfare whilst he was a patient in his/her care.

But we are talking about decisions made about the covid issue by the government, not a nurse whose job is day to day care of her patient, not whether they should live or die!

No, Kandinsky mentioned the nurse and I was answering that.

She/he should not be expressing an opinion on whether or not people are living too long to a relative of an 83 year old she/he is nursing. Uncalled for and totally unprofessional.

Callistemon21

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Callistemon21

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Kandinsky

A NHS nurse treating my 83 year old Dad said to me ‘people are living too long’ - so it’s not just BJ who thinks elderly people should accept their fate.

But they are not the PM and in charge of the people’s welfare.

My question is, where does it stop?

What about the clinically vulnerable? Many of them are going to die.

What about the severely disabled? Many of them are going to die.

Remind you of another regime?

But they are not the PM and in charge of the people’s welfare
But that nurse was directly in charge of his welfare whilst he was a patient in his/her care.

But we are talking about decisions made about the covid issue by the government, not a nurse whose job is day to day care of her patient, not whether they should live or die!

No, Kandinsky mentioned the nurse and I was answering that.

She/he should not be expressing an opinion on whether or not people are living too long to a relative of an 83 year old she/he is nursing. Uncalled for and totally unprofessional.

🙂

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Callistemon21

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Callistemon21

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Kandinsky

A NHS nurse treating my 83 year old Dad said to me ‘people are living too long’ - so it’s not just BJ who thinks elderly people should accept their fate.

But they are not the PM and in charge of the people’s welfare.

My question is, where does it stop?

What about the clinically vulnerable? Many of them are going to die.

What about the severely disabled? Many of them are going to die.

Remind you of another regime?

But they are not the PM and in charge of the people’s welfare
But that nurse was directly in charge of his welfare whilst he was a patient in his/her care.

But we are talking about decisions made about the covid issue by the government, not a nurse whose job is day to day care of her patient, not whether they should live or die!

No, Kandinsky mentioned the nurse and I was answering that.

She/he should not be expressing an opinion on whether or not people are living too long to a relative of an 83 year old she/he is nursing. Uncalled for and totally unprofessional.

🙂

I agree it was unprofessional. However she had no influence at all. The government were responsible for decisions affecting the lives of millions.

Iam64

Kadinsky -was the nurse being inhuman?
There’s some truth in her comment. Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.

Do Not Recussitate has its place in a caring medical/family discussion

I agree Iam64.
My mother died at 94. Until one year before her death she was happy, and independent with our help and support. A cleaner came to clean her flat and she had carers to help her shower each morning, but she came out in the car with us, I took her shopping or got her shopping for her, and so on. After her fall when she broke her shoulder, from which she never recovered properly, she had to live in a care home. She deteriorated slowly and surely, and for six months at least, said she wanted to die. Every infection, every medical problem was treated and she was looked after so well, but her bowels stopped working properly, so hospital admission, repeated UTIs meant constant antibiotics, many days of being unwell and I could go on. After the last paramedic call out because her SATs were all over the place, but then settled, I said to the staff, please don’t send her into hospital. I knew they would poke her and prod her and fill her up with drugs, but the truth was my mother was slowly dying. Her body was giving up, her organs failing to work properly and she was just so tired. She died a week later, peacefully in her care home. But she would rather have not lived that last year of her life, being kept alive by constant interventions. Poor mum.

So yes, sometimes very old people are kept going for longer than they should be, and it happened even more so with both my parent in laws, but I won’t go into all that too.

Sorry, I’ve hijacked the thread a bit. So back to the delightful Mr Cummings. Not!

Funnily enough, as I watched this last night, I wondered how the Johnson defenders on GN would react. My main surprise is that anyone is surprised, anyone who did any reading of political columns, or even just went on gut instinct, knew that Johnson was completely unfit for the job. In fact, I did quote, many months back, that the Problem with Johnson is that he fancied the idea of being PM, liked the idea of the talks and books after being PM, it was the bit inbetween that he found difficult I remember being slated by the Johnson supporters for this, and my other points about him ( traitorous behaviour etc). Cummings language doesn't concern me, Johnson gave him the job because he got Brexit done....remember that? Be careful what you wish for.

maddyone

Iam64

Kadinsky -was the nurse being inhuman?
There’s some truth in her comment. Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.

Do Not Recussitate has its place in a caring medical/family discussion

I agree Iam64.
My mother died at 94. Until one year before her death she was happy, and independent with our help and support. A cleaner came to clean her flat and she had carers to help her shower each morning, but she came out in the car with us, I took her shopping or got her shopping for her, and so on. After her fall when she broke her shoulder, from which she never recovered properly, she had to live in a care home. She deteriorated slowly and surely, and for six months at least, said she wanted to die. Every infection, every medical problem was treated and she was looked after so well, but her bowels stopped working properly, so hospital admission, repeated UTIs meant constant antibiotics, many days of being unwell and I could go on. After the last paramedic call out because her SATs were all over the place, but then settled, I said to the staff, please don’t send her into hospital. I knew they would poke her and prod her and fill her up with drugs, but the truth was my mother was slowly dying. Her body was giving up, her organs failing to work properly and she was just so tired. She died a week later, peacefully in her care home. But she would rather have not lived that last year of her life, being kept alive by constant interventions. Poor mum.

So yes, sometimes very old people are kept going for longer than they should be, and it happened even more so with both my parent in laws, but I won’t go into all that too.

Sorry, I’ve hijacked the thread a bit. So back to the delightful Mr Cummings. Not!

But you can’t judge every old person by your own personal experience

I absolutely agree Maybee and I think I said sometimes old people are kept going for longer than they should be, sometimes being the operative word, so I wasn’t ever meaning every old person. So I hope you’re not cross or sad with me, I’m unsure of the meaning of that emoji. And you do have to remember I was speaking about my own mother who was nearly 95, and my parents in law who were 95 and 96. There is no comparison with a person in good health in their late 70s or early to middle 80s. I was hoping posters would understand that was what I meant.

My father lived to be 92 and was active in the community until the three month illness that led to his death.

My uncle had dementia and was in a care home when he was diagnosed with bladder cancer.

In neither case were there constant interventions or efforts to keep them alive, even though my father was fully mentally alert until the last second of his life, but it was recognised , in my father's case that other medical problems made dealing with the main problem impossible.

In my uncles case we decided that because of his dementia he should be spared any interventionist treatment like operations where the usual pain and tubes that go with operations would distress him and he would not understand them, but he would be medicated as needed.

These things need to be thought out in advance in principle and fine tuned when the moment arrives. Nothing could make my fathers death less than dreadful, although I wish I had asked if more sedation was possible, but my uncle just drifted out of life when at a certain point the cancer reached a stage where his body closed down, he was put on end of life care and died within 24 hours.

Anyone who thinks that Sweden 'ignored the rules' and did better than other countries needs to look at the chart accompanying this tweet.

twitter.com/Hossylass/status/1719269158972477602

Also:

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/15/swedish-pm-says-officials-misjudged-power-of-covid-resurgence

I am not sure I would support a lockdown again if I could go back in time but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I was a great supporter of lockdowns at the time.

I was always under the impression that Sweden fared less well than it’s immediate neighbours and not too much differently than the UK with it’s death rate. Had Sweden been as densely populated as Britain it’s possible that their death rate would have been higher, but I think they have very few cities, unless Britain.

Unlike…..

I didn’t read maddyone’s post as including all older people, she talked about her own direct experience.
As MOn8ca says, these things need to be thought out in advance and fine tuned when the time comes. We had LPA for my lovely husband, organised before the unexpected, devastating diagnosis. It meant collectively or individually our daughters and I could make decisions on health care if the tine came when he couldn’t. It was of course traumatic but it helped to know we knew what he would want.

It’s relevant to the pandemic because I suspect it had many of us looking at LPA and do not resuscitate.

Galaxy, I share your reflections on lockdowns. I’m CEV and kept to the rules and guidance. I would still have been very careful and kept distance from my children and grandchildren but I do feel it was hard on them. Families combining wfh with teaching their children - impossible. Children get so much from regular school attendance - they really missed out.

I accept any government would have made mistakes but the extent of chaos in Johnson’s government was every bit as bad as we believed. It was worse

Cummings might be foul mouthed but as least he did seem to care a little bit that people were dying, Johnson didn't seem to care at all.