Live data from Hacker News

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

uk.news.yahoo.com

271–280 of 429 posts

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

#271
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "underfunded" mean? The UK has a similar system to Canada. Costs are controlled by controlling the funding. You set a cap to what you'll spend and let the system figure out how best to allocate those funds. It's a big reason why the cost per capita for healthcare is quite low - you simply choose not to spend more. The demand for healthcare spending is almost infinite. You can set it up so everyone get an MR…

You can start by paying doctors/nurses a better wage for the shit they have to put up with for the last 2 years Our Ontario government capped nurse pay to 1% per year which is effectively a 8% paycut/year given the current inflation

Unfortunately that's in line with the Bank of Canada's recommendation:

------------------------

"Mr. Macklem: [... T]he high inflation that we have today is not normal. It's not here to stay. We are resolute in our commitment to bring inflation down. We are taking action and we will continue to take action to bring inflation back down. So as a business, don't plan on the current rate of inflation staying. Don't build that into longer term contracts. Don't build that into wage contracts. It is going to take some time, but you can be confident that inflation will come down.

-----------------------

- Tiff Macklem, Governor and CEO of the Bank of Canada in a webinar hosted by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Transcript here: https://20336445.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/203364...

The reason he speaks to that is that he's worried about inflation increase due to a wage-price spiral. Depressing wages is a way to prevent that. And I'll mention now; I have no idea how true this is.

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

#272
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it be an option? Because we live in a free country, and should be free to spend our money as we see fit. Even if others don't agree with it. Why should we all be compelled by the force of law to divert a huge fraction of our income to an organisation which is so ineffective and inaccessible? We are forced to spend a significant fraction of our salaries on the NHS whether or not we want to. If we feel that…

Isn't your argument really an argument against paying taxes in general?

It wasn't intended to be so, but overall I do think that taxes could be reduced significantly. I do think that taxes are used inefficiently and that individuals are better at making decisions in their own and local interests in place of poorly-accountable bureaucracies. But I certainly am not advocating for not paying taxes at all!

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

#273

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…

It looks to me like NHS funding has gone up and up and up over time.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/166A5/production...

At what point does throwing ever more money into an industrial furnace become a bad idea?

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

#274
post #259

Quoted post unavailable.

Of course it's a possibility, and it has received an enormous amount of scrutiny, before and after approval, in many independent countries. The safety of the vaccines is the most obvious thing to be on the lookout for. But just because some people don't like the vaccine doesn't make it more likely to be the cause of excess deaths. Have you considered that fixating on the vaccine could be blinding people to a whole bunch of other potential problems?

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

#275

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…

Price inelastic healthcare is a private equity dream. The project to leave NHS funding unreformed in order to buy acquiescence to its sell off, all the whilst leaving people to rot, is to my eyes scandalous. But somehow unremarked in the twilight zone that the UK has become.

The UK media is an example of an oligarchy successfully controlling the entire information landscape and consistently pushing for manufactured “problems of the week” while ignoring real disturbing trends in home ownership, poverty, health and inequality between London and the abandoned “regions”.

The book “Fake law” was terrifying to me - it talks about a whole number of high profile judicial cases that were pretty much distorted by the Mail/Times/Telegraph into whatever propaganda they wanted to push that week, often directed just in ways that it would benefit the oligarchy. And there are multiple books like that. Fake Law, Flat Earth News, Merchants of Doubt.

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

#276
post #259

Quoted post unavailable.

From the article: '“We are beginning to see the deaths that result from delay and deferment of treatment for other conditions, like cancer and heart disease, and from those associated with poverty and deprivation. '“These come through more slowly – if cancer is not treated promptly, patients don't die immediately but do die in greater numbers more quickly than would otherwise be the case.” 'The Government has admitte…

Yes, the article does a fantastic job of claiming their hypotheses as the only possibilities, while dishonestly ignoring others that would more severely undermine confidence in the state.

I'm honestly surprised they're attributing deaths to lockdowns at all! That's a huge shift in the overton window. If you remember, that was also taboo. But I assume now it's ok to talk about because it can be framed in the louder, "not enough funding for healthcare" context.

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

#277
post #210
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demographics have changed, but they take that into account in terms of how they handle and manage care. There's a lot of thinking and work that goes on to cover working out the changing needs of your population that has to be handled by any well managed healthcare service. In the NHS specifically I am aware that they also have change management procedures that exist to try and understand how to provide continuous…

One common complaint from doctors (at least, in the U.S.) is the need to hover over a laptop all the time that takes time away from talking to the patient. A big problem as I've heard of a number of doctors retiring early because they don't feel as though they are even treating patients anymore, they are slaves to a console. (And these are not old doctors nearing retirement anyway.) Personally, I think we've become a…

Well, doctors are mainly hovering over a laptop to justify their treatment plan to insurance companies anyway. They were not implemented because someone thought they would improve quality of care.

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

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An institution does not become beloved by the public for failing to provide a good standard of care for a long enough time that people become used to it doing so. Here's how you do it: you pump unsustainable amounts of money into the service over time. This allows you to offer a great service until in the future you can't pump enough money into it anymore. But that's a problem for the future generations. Those futu…

What's a better system then? Because it certainly isn't privatization. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming that's what you're arguing for. > you pump unsustainable amounts of money into the service over time. This allows you to offer a great service until in the future you can't pump enough money into it anymore. This is how every growth based juggernaut business works as well. Quality of service always goe…

It's not so much the profit that matters, in principle. But profitability does provide some constraint and guide to resource allocation that a public institution is still grappling with how best to do. Private institutions can go under and be replaced more easily. Again, not perfect, but you never see the same creative destruction in government institutions.

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

#279
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: '“We are beginning to see the deaths that result from delay and deferment of treatment for other conditions, like cancer and heart disease, and from those associated with poverty and deprivation. '“These come through more slowly – if cancer is not treated promptly, patients don't die immediately but do die in greater numbers more quickly than would otherwise be the case.” 'The Government has admitte…

Yes, the article does a fantastic job of claiming their hypotheses as the only possibilities, while dishonestly ignoring others that would more severely undermine confidence in the state. I'm honestly surprised they're attributing deaths to lockdowns at all! That's a huge shift in the overton window. If you remember, that was also taboo. But I assume now it's ok to talk about because it can be framed in the louder, "…

It sounds like you really want it to be vaccines even though not much seems to be pointing towards that conclusion, be careful to avoid a bias. The article mentions cancer and cardiovascular chronic diseases.

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

#280
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's not a simple explanation why did vaccine companies need absolving of any liability by govts? So safe they need to avoid liability? So safe many of the vaccines had complication rates far higher than any flu vaccine in history? Look I'm glad we had the vaccines so quickly. Trump pushing them through regulation was extremely good for man kind and we have all benefited. But stop acting like there is no risk.

> why did vaccine companies need absolving of any liability by govts? We know some people will be harmed by vaccination. Despite that, we need to vaccinate as many people as possible. Because of that, we make it easy for people who've been harmed to claim compensation from a government and industry backed fund, rather than force those harmed people to go through the courts against multi-billion dollar companies with…

Congress actually made it more difficult to receive compensation for a COVID vaccine injury.

Despite thousands of reports of injuries, including death, I don’t think anybody has been compensated.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10584

Post reply on HN