The UK response to Covid-19 [MOD WARNING 1ST POST]

FVP3 wrote: »

Dominic Raab is continuously pushing news about getting people home. Why?

Tweets

Surely thats the least thing people care about.

That's one tweet a day - It's hardly 'continuously pushing it' as presumably he is tweeting about plenty of other stuff as well.

Regardless 'getting your people home' should be a medium-to-high priority of any government during this crisis, especially when a decent proportion of these people (not all admittedly) are relatively blameless in how they found themselves marooned abroad.

'Getting your people home' is especially a big thing in the UK mindset, with Dunkirk being one of their most referenced events. So the delay in getting people home is something that won't play well.

Scotland:
In hospital: 1,799 (n/c)
In ICU: 189 (-7)
Total confirmed cases: 7,409 (+307)
Total deaths with confirmed COVID-19: 837 (+58)

Therefore as it stands, there are a minimum of 1,231 (837+394) deaths in Scotland (confirmed and suspected)

Without favour or fear in the NHS? Really?

Boris Johnson and coronavirus: the inside story of his illness

Typically, Covid-19 patients in ICU are put on ventilators. This is an invasive and traumatic process. Some hospitals prefer to treat severe cases with a continuous positive airway pressure ventilator (Cpap). St Thomas’, however, favours full ventilation, believing this is how you save people, specialists say.

One source inside the hospital said Johnson was “very sick” when taken into ICU. “It was touch and go whether he would be put on a ventilator,” the source said.

The same source, however, wonders whether the PM really should have been in intensive care.

About 130 other patients were in critical care at the time, the vast majority hooked up to ventilators. At no point was Johnson on a ventilator. Nor did he receive Cpap, a less invasive form of treatment.

The source said: “Before the coronavirus crisis you could be in ICU without being on a ventilator but pretty much every bed is now taken by a coronavirus patient with a ventilator. I know people who work in ICU and I know the technicians who prepare all the equipment and they all say he was not put on a ventilator. He was taking up an ICU bed when he didn’t need it. The idea that you would put a patient who didn’t need a ventilator on an ICU bed is nonsense.”

So Johnson was able to get an ICU bed in a time of crises but he didn't need a ventilator nor did he have the second less invasive intervention of a CPAP treatment but given the normal oxygen. Also,

Photographs taken from a public footpath showed Johnson and Symonds walking with their dog in the grounds of Chequers, the PM bundled up in a duffle coat and gloves. He looked pale but well enough to go for a stroll. Most ICU patients leave hospital in a wheelchair. They suffer from exhaustion, muscle wastage and other chronic problems. The prime minister appears to be in much better shape.

He was so bad he needed to be in ICU, but now he is able to stroll around at home after his "near death" experience. No favour and no fear, right?

One specialist said he thought the PM had gilded the lily a bit – “I suspect there’s been an element of poetic licence there” – but at the same time stressed that he did need oxygen, albeit through a face mask rather than Cpap or full mechanical ventilation.

The specialist did not begrudge Johnson being put into ICU, reasoning “he’s the prime minister”, and “without that oxygen he would not have got better”.

And why all of this? I am sure they were concerned for his health. He is an fat 55 year old man who if he wasn't Johnson may have been told to stay at home and take paracetemol as his condition doesn't satisfy the criteria yet to be admitted to hospital. Well let's be cynical with this government and this man who lied his way to pretty much any position he has gotten to in life so far,

Johnson won the 2016 EU referendum by combining support for the NHS – the UK’s unofficial religion – with soft nationalism and Brexit.

Whatever mistakes have been made over the pandemic, Johnson now has another winning political formula to silence his critics: without the NHS I wouldn’t be here.

So any criticism of his performance will always be countered by, "did you not know he almost died? Have some sympathy for the man!"

I wouldn't over question how the NHS treated Boris. He is the PM and in terms of brownie points the NHS have shut the door on being sold off to the US in pieces.
May be good value for money. They seem to have brought in two highly skilled nurses for him. The Portuguese guy seemed to have been off duty.

It's great to see this announcement from the government that they're launching a major taskforce to go produce a vaccine. It's like somebody only came up with idea yesterday. The whole world will be sitting back on tenterhooks, waiting for the world leading british scientists to do their stuff.

It's a bit like scott heading out for the pole, they desperate to get their first.

robinph wrote: »

Absolutely no love for Johnson and what he's done to the country and how he's gone about it, and that is all prior to any virus related goings on. But unfortunately the UK is stuck with him in the position of PM and as such I have zero problem with the person holding that position being given all the favours necessary to ensure they get back into carrying out that role asap.

I don't think anyone else was denied treatment due to him being in ICU. Not heard anything about more hospitals breaking their capacity recently, just two brief instances of that several weeks ago thankfully.

I also don't mind that he got special treatment. Welcome to the real world where "important" people will get treated better than those who seem lower down the pecking order. But don't try to tell me that there is this wonderful system where Johnson will be treated like everyone else when we know that is not true.

I will refer again to the article I linked yesterday and the nurse that was apparently denied admission to the hospital by the the same system. So he gets admitted easily and gets an ICU bed, but others aren't admitted and dies at home? So there is my gripe, not the people working at those hospitals but the system that is in place.

meeeeh wrote: »

I don't care if Johnson needed to be in ICU but as far as I know London wasn't at the full icu capacity. Also uk numbers of people surviving icu are pretty poor, I know of another country where they said they prefer to move people into icu earlier to increase their chances of survival and the survival rate is better than 50%.

Maybe this really is part of big master plan to make Johnson a Corona martyr or maybe it's just clutching at straws. I'm far from Johnson fan but I really hope they have a bit more than conspiracy theories from anonymous sources.

Sure, but again as above why do we have stories if people dying at home when there seems to be spare capacity? I counted three cases of people who work in the NHS that died at home, so how many others are there out there not being reported on?

As for the rest, I don't think there is a big conspiracy that mandated he caught the virus and become a martyr, what I do think is they will milk what happened to him for every little bit they can and as long as possible if it means they avoid scrutiny a little longer. When it comes to this UK Government, yes I am that cynical.

Greysides posted this link about vaccine production on another thread and it's an excellent read.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-how-the-need-to-treat-and-prevent-covid-19-is-powering-forward-medical-progress-11974369

The Jenner Institute of Oxford are hopeful of having approval for a vaccine in the Autumn. The speed is due to the fact that they have already produced a coronavirus vaccine for MERS. This means a lot of the testing again can be skipped.

'In Britain, the ongoing shortage of tests means a return to any semblance of normal life could be far slower than other countries'. https://time.com/5823382/britain-coronavirus-response/?xid=tcoshare

Joe_ Public wrote: »

Watching Jeremy Hunt on C4 you can clearly tell how awkward all this is for him. Have strong feeling there's no love lost between himself and Hancock and he'd love nothing better than to stick it to his former front bench colleagues but he knows he cant do it because he was 7 years in health himself and handsomely contributed to the lack of preparation. Unfortunately for him nobody going to forget that.

yeah I thought that as well.
A lot of Tory cheerleaders seem to be slowly turning on the government, just listening to Andrew Pierce on LBC hes not happy at all with the government, a lot of his sort watch what way the public mood is going and then run on ahead of it

JP Liz V1 wrote: »

The clapping on the bridge, the crowds was ridiculous, no social distancing with police and front line workers also there

It beggars belief. It's like people have taken leave of their senses. The country is locked down, most of the economy is on pause, I know let's gather in big crowds to clap!! I 100% applaud the sentiment, of course I do, but it was bizarre.

To give a true like for like comparison the number of uk hospital deaths in the last 24 hours was 874.

The number of irish hospital deaths in the last 24 hours was 20.

That is a damning indictment of the uk health service, so anyone that ever say the NHS is better than our system (which has its flaws) can take a hike.

As I've had experience of being a NHS patient, this incompetence comes as no surprise whatsoever

cmac2009 wrote: »

You obviously carry some resentment towards the NHS, but to be celebrating our system over theirs when people are dying in such awful circumstances is abhorrent.

I'm not celebrating our system. But I got sick and tired of people who had never experienced the NHS putting the NHS on a pedestal.

I have experienced how badly run the NHS is and their handling of this might finally stop these fools cheering the NHS

I don't think current crisis is just reflection of quality of health services around the world. I roll my eyes at wonderful NHS statements. They are repeated because as Johnson realised they bring votes. Nhs or HSE or any other health system is as good as policies supporting it in this pandemic.

NHS is not as good as British think but it's not bad. Mainly they were let down by politicians.