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Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

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Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#101

Post by kurthr »

mirekrusin wrote: post #76
kurthr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, luckily we have a completely controlled economy with no COVID. They only used to most ineffective (thus safe) vaccine! It's called China. Also the chairman has declared that there have been no deaths this year. (except you, if you contradict him)

> They only used to most ineffective (thus safe) vaccine! There are so many things wrong with this sentence: - placebo is more ineffective, so to say the most ineffective has been used is an absurd statement - ineffectiveness doesn't imply safety, cyanide is likely ineffective, yet not safe - they didn't use one vaccine etc.

You are correct! I was responding to the comedic parent.

However, both the Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines are very equivalent inactivated virus vaccines with comparable (low) effectiveness against any of the proliferating post Delta vaccines, and vaccination rates in the elderly are quite low.

Which makes my point that there really isn't a good controlled environment where all of this data is easily collected. Even the developing world has received significant vaccination at this point, while politics have made gathering and interpreting the causes of excess deaths challenging EVERYWHERE. Sweden? UK? US? France? Singapore? German? Russia? China? India? Africa?

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#103

Post by makomk »

heurisko wrote: post #60
lettergram wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another is the massive. underfunding of the NHS over the last decade. This has become much more evident post-covid thanks to the backlogs. If this were the true issue, the excess deaths would have been starting at peak Covid hospitalization. In fact the opposite is true… That said, particularly on any bureaucracy- more money doesn’t solve issues. In fact, more money often makes more bureaucracy. Obviously that’s no…

The UK has been spending less on healthcare as a percentage of GDP than comparable European countries, Germany and France. I agree more money doesn't solve the issue, especially as so much money was wasted on Covid testing and private beds that were never used. However in my lifetime the difference in healthcare spending between New Labour and Conservative has been noticeable. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.…

I'm not convinced that the UK has been all that comparable to Germany and France for years. GDP is of course an imperfect measure of the real size and capacity of the economy - Ireland has about twice the GDP per capita of all of those countries, but there's not really any way for their government to capture that economic activity as funding for stuff - and certain other metrics are not so great. For example, the average UK household is apparently £8,800 a year worse off than in Germany or France (median income, adjusted for purchasing power) and that gap's been there since about 2008: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/13/average-uk-...

In some sense, the UK became poorer than the other European countries it'd normally be compared to at the end of the previous New Labour government when the financial crisis hit and just never really recovered from that. It's possible there is no obvious way out anymore - everyone being poorer means less means less money for them to spend on consumer products and services and less tax revenue the government to spend on things like healthcare and infrastructure, and all of that means less businesses interested in setting up in the country (for reasons other than low taxes anyway) and less tax revenue, less well paying jobs... it's a vicious circle to be stuck in.

Even before that happened, the New Labour-era spending was obviously unsustainable at the level of tax they were willing to charge. Despite the economy booming and a bunch of NHS infrastructure spending being moved off government books via expensive PFI programs the national debt went up consistently as a proportion of GDP year after year. Afterwards the Tories made a big fancy show of austerity and cutting back on government spending (and to be fair it did eliminate the deficit like they promised, for a while anyway) but even their big scary austerity program only froze the proportion of GDP spent on healthcare for a while.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#104

Post by starkd »

solar-ice wrote: post #40
jajahusjsna wrote: post #8

Covid is one aspect of this. Another is the massive. underfunding of the NHS over the last decade. This has become much more evident post-covid thanks to the backlogs. - Getting a GP to see you in person is now quite difficult (they want to do everything via phone). - Seeing your GP (depending on your area) can involve a 2-3 week wait and waiting in an hours long phone queue. - When you are referred to hospital for t…

Indeed; the reason people exonerate it is that the Tories have been threatening the population with a dismantling and privatisation of the NHS for over a decade now, and that's not what anyone wants. People want the NHS to work, to be funded and managed appropriately. A primary reason it doesn't is the Tories crippling it.

What makes you so sure government bureaucracy is even capable of doing this? It never had a great track record to begin with.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#105

Post by youngtaff »

julianlam wrote: post #42
sudden_dystopia wrote: post #23

Wouldn’t a reasonable hypothesis try to rule out the vaccine? I’m not anti vaccine, I received the vaccine. But if excess death is creeping and it’s not Covid, would t that be one of the first things to rule out? They don’t even indicate that was ruled out, just completely ignored.

Why jump to it when simpler explanations exist? Delays in diagnosis or no diagnosis at all is likely a more fitting explanation.

Plus the pandemic has probably burnt out healthcare staff

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#106

Post by solar-ice »

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #66
jajahusjsna wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> One can be concerned about both. I didn’t say that you couldn’t. But by voting for the current day Tory’s you are choosing to decimate the health system and waste money on sending Refugees to Rwanda. It’s idiotic to prioritise that over the NHS.

>> decimate the health system and waste money on sending Refugees to Rwanda. It’s idiotic to prioritise that over the NHS. It all depends how you view the world. For many people, preserving the historical character and demographic of their country is an important issue. It might not be to you, you might consider it stupid, but it is a concern many people have. So much so, they would see illegal arrivals of non histor…

Supporting the party which consistently underfunds a British institution, and sells off parts of it to their mates, in order to protect Britishness. Sums up Tory politics nicely, really.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#107

Post by tremon »

alecco wrote: post #89
jajahusjsna wrote: post #8

Covid is one aspect of this. Another is the massive. underfunding of the NHS over the last decade. This has become much more evident post-covid thanks to the backlogs. - Getting a GP to see you in person is now quite difficult (they want to do everything via phone). - Seeing your GP (depending on your area) can involve a 2-3 week wait and waiting in an hours long phone queue. - When you are referred to hospital for t…

An aging obese population is the elephant in the room. This problem is not only happening in UK. About 15 years ago the NHS tried to add easy to read labeling to foods with a semaphore: red, yellow, green. And it was blocked during a Labour government with majority. Giving it more and more funds while not fixing the underlying problems is going to cause a massive budget crisis. We need to fix the causes not the sympt…

We need to fix the causes not the symptoms

We need both. You don't fix a skull fracture by giving the patient a helmet.

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#108

Post by starkd »

thrown_22 wrote: post #46
solar-ice wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed; the reason people exonerate it is that the Tories have been threatening the population with a dismantling and privatisation of the NHS for over a decade now, and that's not what anyone wants. People want the NHS to work, to be funded and managed appropriately. A primary reason it doesn't is the Tories crippling it.

The left has somehow ended up as the party of the political managerial class instead of the working class, this is one of the best explanations why we're in such a weird place where the socialists are all trust fund kids who would rather have the working class arrested than talk to them.

Indeed. A lot seem to have lost the urgency of meaningful reform, because they don't believe it can be. They are out of ideas and unable to build the momentum to get anything passed. But they already have theirs, so ...

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#109

Post by cassepipe »

lettergram wrote: post #45
jajahusjsna wrote: post #8

Covid is one aspect of this. Another is the massive. underfunding of the NHS over the last decade. This has become much more evident post-covid thanks to the backlogs. - Getting a GP to see you in person is now quite difficult (they want to do everything via phone). - Seeing your GP (depending on your area) can involve a 2-3 week wait and waiting in an hours long phone queue. - When you are referred to hospital for t…

> Another is the massive. underfunding of the NHS over the last decade. This has become much more evident post-covid thanks to the backlogs. If this were the true issue, the excess deaths would have been starting at peak Covid hospitalization. In fact the opposite is true… That said, particularly on any bureaucracy- more money doesn’t solve issues. In fact, more money often makes more bureaucracy. Obviously that’s no…

I feel like we always end up having the same debate. On side says "Not enough money" The other side says "But money don't solve problems, there's an effciency problem" Both are true. Maybe we can now admit that yes bureaucracies are generally inefficient (by design. Why would seek efficiency when it can provide safe jobs for a part of your population that you can now get out of your unemployment stats) and yes public healthcare system have been massively underfunded, probably for ideological reasons, in order to open up the market to private healthcare like European Union wants to open anything to market. (Look up what happened when they "opened up" the electricity market in France, what a joke)

Re: Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

#110

Post by thrown_22 »

ben_w wrote: post #94
thrown_22 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The left has somehow ended up as the party of the political managerial class instead of the working class, this is one of the best explanations why we're in such a weird place where the socialists are all trust fund kids who would rather have the working class arrested than talk to them.

If the (UK) left is the party of the political managerial class, what is the (UK) right? When I'm feeling particularly sarcastic I might call them the party of dilettantes, but is that apt?

The right has no identity right now, which is why someone like Trump could take it over.

Depending on what happens in the next few years it could well be that they become the party against power. Which would be a rather interesting inversion from the last 40 years.

Which raises a lot of uncomfortable questions for people whose world was informed by Reagan, Thatcher and Bush.

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