Off Topic Covid 19 restrictions have done one

I was there, zero lockdowns pubs, shops & restaurants remained open - the biggest restriction was max 10 people at a table.

Working from home was a big thing before Covid not a consequence from it!

 

If we behaved as the Swedes did we might have been able to manage. They don't have such densely populated areas as us but Japan is more congested and did well. Again maybe because they observe things like mask wearing etc...

 

They closed their borders and put up with a greater proportion of people dying from Covid than their neighbours who did lock down. No easy answers.

 

.

 

And???

 

No and maybe people on here questioning what we did shouldn’t be called ****jng idiots and morons and anti vaxxers for voicing an opinion?

 

But in reality nothing really changed…no masks, theatres & sporting venues stayed open, friends could still meet in bars.
Places of work remained open. Restaurants still open. Churches stayed open

Not even close to the restrictions we had, I never witnessed any measures at all apart from hand sanitizer stations that seemed to be ignored

 

Eh? When did I do that?!!

 

Not you specifically

 

I'm confused, is Sweden being held up as a success in Covid policy? Really? Try this:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95699-9

Comparing the responses of the UK, Sweden and Denmark to COVID-19 using counterfactual modelling

Scientific Reports volume 11, Article number: 16342 (2021)

'We explore how the timing and effectiveness of control measures in the UK, Sweden and Denmark shaped COVID-19 mortality in each country, using a counterfactual assessment: what would the impact have been, had each country adopted the others’ policies? ... We use two approaches to evaluate counterfactuals which transpose the transmission profile from one country onto another, in each country’s first wave from 13th March (when stringent interventions began) until 1st July 2020. UK mortality would have approximately doubled had Swedish policy been adopted, while Swedish mortality would have more than halved had Sweden adopted UK or Danish strategies. Danish policies were most effective, although differences between the UK and Denmark were significant for one counterfactual approach only.'

 

Much of the current COVID restrictions are again, to manage the numbers of ill people in hospital and keep the healthcare system staggering on. I'm not going to debate the rights and wrongs of them because they've been done to death already (but get your jabs and wash your hands you manky buggers).

Yes we need to protect the NHS so it will be there when we need it, but what I would like to see, nearly two years into this thing, is a bit more publicity about what's actually been happening to make the system a bit more robust and able to withstand the pressures. I do not work in the NHS but these things seem like common sense:

• Would have kept open the expensive Nightingale hospitals once we spent the money to build them and used them to relieve pressure on other facilities - things like walk-in centres, observation wards, even treatment wards for covid or non-covid cases, whatever suits the local needs.
• Build more temporary facilities at local hospitals like the one HRI recently opened.
• Increase the number of staff: look at anyone that has recently left clinical practice (and there are a lot) and do what you can to get them back up to speed, re-certified and working in a clinic setting, even 1 day a week is better than 0. Doctors, nurses, therapists, technicians, porters, pharmacists, paramedics, dentists - we need them all. Visa schemes if they returned home to another country. Increase investment in medical schools, nursing degrees, technician courses. Won't solve today's problem, but we've got another one looming tomorrow when the current staff all burn out, and anyway, the population is not getting larger and older - we'll always need medical staff. Re-organising of working practices so that medical staff spend more time on treating patients and less on admin and bureaucracy - get all the middle managers out into the wards as clerks so the nurses can, you know, nurse.

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point.

 

Some good points

yes those nightingale hospitals what happened to them

the nhs is at breaking point every winter it’s a political thing to get more money out of the government a lot of the time
Removing bursary’s for nursing degrees was ****ing moronic
Treating staff like **** is another

 

Doesn't this pandemic show that it needed money spent on it? More staff for a start?

Thing is, we spend very little on our healthcare system in this country compared to others. It's a miracle it manages the great results that it does, but as this pandemic has shown, it has operated very very close to the edge for years now. People look at the absolute amount of money spent on the NHS and the number of people it employs and assume it is too big and too much money is spent on it, because the figures are so massive. But by GDP terms it's not. Is it well spent? If anyone does work for the NHS, I'd love to know how much of the money goes directly to provision of medical services, support for staff and patients, and the provision and upkeep of facilities, and how much goes to administer internal markets, contracts for the boys, PFI and all the other "modern" business practices that have been introduced. It's not, and never should be, a business or run like one.

 

I take your point but the thing about the Nightingale hospitals is that they couldn't staff them. They did (I recall) have a campaign of re-recruiting qualified staff but that was always a very small pool. The running costs for them were also an issue. I think they cost about £200m to create and the running costs to end-2022 were estimated at around £250m. As they were set up in commercial premises, Excel centre, NEC etc, I don't imagine they were viable as permanent facilities even if staff could be found.

 

I'd argue the issue is more about how they organise what they have, and prioritise the various functions. I forget the figure, but a big percentage of the NHS budget is spent on non-medical staff.

 

I have no problem with non-medical staff in principle - someone has to administer the appointment systems, maintain the buildings and equipment, they'll need IT and HR and purchasing functions etc.

I'm probably being very naive, but I can't see why a GP needs to " share responsibility with the other partners for decision-making and the ultimate survival of the practice. This includes the financial aspects of keeping the business afloat and employing staff whilst ensuring the practice provides high quality care". Some of the things a GP partner does seems like wasting time that could be spent with patients. "Business functions such as financial management, practice strategy and policy, service development and recruitment are all part of the job" Get non-medical staff in to do all of that!! https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/ex...s/general-practitioner-gp/general-practice-gp

 

If they think the NHS is under pressure ... just wait until April when they start sacking people...

 

You can’t really believe that advice on behavioural psychology isn’t useful for an emergency?