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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

#351

Post by physicsguy »

neilwilson wrote: post #173
rleigh wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's not what anyone wants The NHS has been turned into what is effectively a state religion in some quarters. It's untouchable. It can't be criticised. It's immune to meaningful improvement and reform at this point. Yet everyone I know who works for the NHS has a litany of stories about the inefficiency and waste. And it consumes an increasing proportion of the GDP. Eventually, something will have to give. Its b…

"I pay privately through my employer's plan, and then again for the NHS." And yet it is the private system in the UK that is taking away scarce supply from the NHS making it more vulnerable. There is a supply side limit on doctors and nurses, which means private healthcare works like the Fast Track queue at Alton Towers. All it does is allow people with money to jump the queue at the expense of everybody else. And re…

The supply side limit is purely because the government chooses not to train sufficient staff. We have a government imposed cap to train 7500 doctors per year at University. Then when they finish, they do two years at FY1 and FY2 level, but there are not then sufficient places for all doctors to go onto a training programme. A friend of mine is applying for the January intake of anaesthetics this year for e.g. and there are something like 25 places in the entirety of the UK for that specialty. So people end up working as locums, working to fill gaps in rotas, which has a high hourly rate. Then, when they do finally manage to get a training place, they take a big pay cut and work more hours. That’s if we’re lucky - because plenty of them just go to Australia where the standard working week for a Dr is 40 hours, and many of them don’t bother coming back. But this is a problem created entirely by the government’s choices.

We also have a hugely archaic system in the Royal Colleges. In no other profession do we expect people to sit regularly very expensive professional exams, and expect the staff to fund them out of their own salary rather than them being funded by their employer. £600 a go is not unheard of.

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

#352

Post by tokinonagare »

throwaway499195 wrote: post #88
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.

Here's my thoughts as someone who's trying to get a paper published that shows that _potentially_ the vaccine is implicated in injuries and we'd like to do more research. We can't say that! It's getting thrown back at us. We're not saying that it's causal, we're not even trying to propose mechanisms. All we're saying is that using government reported data, we see a signal that suggests that certain adverse events are…

Thanks for trying to do good science. It's a shame that asking questions (the basis of our job) has become forbidden on some topics.

> So my guess with this paper is that they have data, they've thought of the vaccine as an issue. But they have to go with a more politically correct reason to get the data out in the open and then they can follow up later once their data is in the literature. > [article] So what is going on? Experts believe decisions taken by the Government in the earliest stages of the pandemic may now be coming back to bite.

If one reads between the lines, what is the largest "decision taken by the government" that could impact directly health? Vaccines. Of course, since media, big corporations and governments have close ties the truth will take time to get out, if it ever do.

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

#353

Post by physicsguy »

XorNot wrote: post #200
rleigh wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’ve also misrepresented the nature of private healthcare in the UK I mentioned that we don't have the right to opt out of paying for the NHS. It's not possible go entirely private. If you could opt out, you could pay that money to a private provider instead and entirely forego the use of the NHS. That isn't an option today. But it should be.

"opt out" is how conservative parties kill public healthcare systems. Because the public healthcare system winds up subsidizing the private one: private insurers dump bad risks onto it when they get too expensive too insure, after years or collecting the payments that don't go to the public system. It's the definition of privatizing profits and socializing risk. You want to opt out? You get to opt all the way out . Y…

I’m Germany, that’s the way it works, once you choose to go private you cannot opt back into the public system. People sometimes do it if they don’t plan to stay in Germany though, usually if they are immigrants.

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

#354

Post by physicsguy »

nly wrote: post #318
ricardobayes wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't know why that is, every piece of that puzzle I have met, was really efficient and generally doing a good job. Spain is now trying to fix this and pensions by doubling self-employed tax. UK should probably follow suit, UK self-employed tax is ridiculously low. 20% on profits until 50k pounds won't cover a functioning healthcare system (or pensions for that matter).

Total tax on someone in the UK earning the median full-tike salary of ~£32K is actually only ~15%

… no it isn’t?

Someone with the default tax code would take home £ 25,539.52 which means they pay 20.2% in tax. It’s quite low by many countries standards but certainly not 15%.

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

#355

Post by detaro »

physicsguy wrote: post #353
XorNot wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"opt out" is how conservative parties kill public healthcare systems. Because the public healthcare system winds up subsidizing the private one: private insurers dump bad risks onto it when they get too expensive too insure, after years or collecting the payments that don't go to the public system. It's the definition of privatizing profits and socializing risk. You want to opt out? You get to opt all the way out . Y…

I’m Germany, that’s the way it works, once you choose to go private you cannot opt back into the public system. People sometimes do it if they don’t plan to stay in Germany though, usually if they are immigrants.

Depends on the age. Above 55 it's indeed quite difficult, under that you can switch back if you fall back into the required status (i.e. take a job with a salary under the limit)

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

#356

Post by midasuni »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #127
scrlk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are never going to get a serious debate around reforming the NHS until people move on from only comparing the UK to the US. There are many other systems that work - people only need to look across to Europe.

In fact, I would argue that for all its possible faults (which all systems have) the fundamental problem with the NHS is not in how it is structured or in its processes. Rather, it boils down to funding. Nothing else. Just that. The one feature that the NHS has proven time and time again is that it is one of the most cost-efficient healthcare systems in the World, and given that it is working suboptimally that is a c…

Look at g7 health funding by gdp for the last 40 years. The U.K. has been 10% lower than the rest (and about 1/3 - 1/2 of the US) for 40 years, Tory, labour, coalition, doesn’t matter.

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

#357

Post by mandmandam »

missedthecue wrote: post #299
kranke155 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

BBC? The Guardian? The Independent? I think you're picking and choosing narratives here, not accurately representing reality.

No, he's right. And it has been this way for a long time. The way Corbyn and Assaange were demonized and smeared ought to have made it obvious - but that's the thing about controlling the entire media landscape. Even if it ought to be obvious, there are people telling you to ignore the truth tellers, and you've nowhere to read their exposes except social media, where in fact they are likely shunted down the algorithm.

There are always people running in online to say that since "both sides" detest the BBC they must be doing something right, but that's ignorance at best, if not plain disingenuous. The BBC have an insanely pro corporate pro war stance, and have wielded it in elections with craft and force. Same w the others.

It's not just me saying all this either. Many have noticed. Many decry the loss of a balanced media landscape. But you won't hear about it on corporate news, or the Beeb or the Grauniad either.

https://pressgazette.co.uk/john-pilger-says-guardian-column-...

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

#358

Post by _benedict »

binbinbinbin wrote: post #323
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.

>that's not what anyone wants. People want the NHS to work, to be funded and managed appropriately. No, they want cost-effective healthcare. Almost everywhere else in the world uses a mixed public-private model for healthcare, which IMHO keeps a lid on the excesses of government spending into the money pit of fully-public healthcare.

The UK spends less per capita (PPP) than most other equivalent country's health system [1,2]? I never quite understand the "cost effective" arguments against the NHS. These costs include all of our private health care expenditure, which are surprisingly significant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

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

#359

Post by jacquesm »

daenz wrote: post #305
jacquesm wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think they haven't considered the possibility?

Because if the possibility turned out to be true, it would be extremely damaging at a social and political level. Not just on institutions, but on the psyche of people in general. I think everyone understands this at least on a subconscious level. There must not be any truth to it, because if there was, it would do too much damage. So why would I want people to discuss something that could potentially have that kind…

That's circular reasoning at best and conspiracy thinking at worst.

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

#360

Post by daenz »

jacquesm wrote: post #359
daenz wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if the possibility turned out to be true, it would be extremely damaging at a social and political level. Not just on institutions, but on the psyche of people in general. I think everyone understands this at least on a subconscious level. There must not be any truth to it, because if there was, it would do too much damage. So why would I want people to discuss something that could potentially have that kind…

That's circular reasoning at best and conspiracy thinking at worst.

They don't want to consider the possibility of X -> if they're wrong about X it would be harmful.

Where's the cycle?

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