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London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

hsj.co.uk

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Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#171

Post by cptskippy »

ppod wrote: post #77

People who are making claims about hospital capacity should compare them to the same times in previous years. The data is all available online: https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas...

The data you provided isn't easily compared to the data in the article. I did a pivot off the Jan 2019 data and got this...

    LONDON COMMISSIONING REGION
    Adult Critical Care Beds:
        Open:     1033
        Occupied:  882
        --------------
        Total:    1915
According to the Article London has...

    BEST CASE
    Adult Critical Care Beds:
        Unmitigated: 1392
        Mitigated:   1661
So they lost 300-600 beds capacity since 2019?

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#172

Post by lostlogin »

polote wrote: post #151
patrec wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking only for myself, I think your opinion is idiotic based on some simple back of the envelope math I did many months ago (when the UK announced its herd immunity plan), relating to hospital capacity, likely peak case numbers, proportion of cases that would need hospital treatment or die and some simple minded guesses about knock-on effects for the rest of the health system. I have not bothered to redo these cal…

if we let the virus lives its life, maximum 2% of pop will die, 90 more % will live normally and a few percent will have covid related health issues. so we sacrifice a few percent of population for the future of the others

... or you can lock down, eradicate it and go back to normal (except for international travel). It passed that point in many places now unfortunately. I’m in Auckland, NZ and it’s a normal summer. We have also learned that NZs terrible road toll is unrelated to tourists, who we previously blamed.

Have you considered that of 100 friends, family and acquaintances you’d see two die and 10 would have a painful and difficult future?

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#173

Post by GlennS »

polote wrote: post #80
jpxw wrote: post #33

And yet we still have idiots here in the UK saying things ranging from: * coronavirus is invented as a government power grab * the government locking down is a deliberate ploy to kill small businesses * the government should just let this run its course, it’s Just A Flu TM * hospitals are actually empty (the “proof” being people recording empty waiting rooms in outpatient departments on bank holiday weekends) * coron…

> the government should just let this run its course Isn't it just an opinion? I personally think that way. Why wouldn't I be allowed to think that?

I guess it seems like a surprising view to have (to think that the government should let it run its course)?

I mean, the evidence is pretty clear by now isn't it?

Countries that responded to the pandemic with swift strong action, especially restrictions on movement, have had the best outcomes for both health and the economy.

Countries that tried to protect the economy / their nation's finances by enacting watered down measures have fared very much worse.

It's interesting to me how far views in different places have diverged on where the balance point is for this. Australia's recently been having a debate about whether or not 20 cases a day is enough to justify a full lockdown of a city (the NSW premier decided no) and border closures (most states decided yes). Meanwhile, in the UK...

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#174

Post by ac2u »

polote wrote: post #138
jpxw wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re allowed to think it, it’s just patently idiotic. Our hospitals would be overwhelmed, the morality rate would skyrocket amongst COVID and non-COVID patients alike.

So now the number of free icu beds in hospital and number of death are the only kpi we look at to make decisions? It is crazy how people opinion like mine is fully ignored in Europe. today we tolerate flu deaths so that people can live freely, why shouldn't we tolerate covid deaths to live freely?

Because the standard of care that people receive in a regular flu season is with a health service that can say that it gave someone the intensive care they needed, but unfortunately it didn't work out.

With covid left unchecked, the intensive care isn't intensive at all because the health care resources are spread more thinly.

Over a large enough population, this will lead to many more deaths that would not have happened had those people not been in a healthcare system that was overwhelmed.

So as a society we'd be saying that "these people died because our health service was overwhelmed, we knew that this would happen if we didn't lock down, and we chose to not lock down anyway".

>It is crazy how people opinion like mine is fully ignored in Europe.

I don't believe it's crazy that your opinion is ignored. I think it's rational and moral to do the opposite of your opinion.

I just happen to think your opinion is selfish and deliberately and unproductively obtuse.

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#175

Post by selimthegrim »

polote wrote: post #151
patrec wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking only for myself, I think your opinion is idiotic based on some simple back of the envelope math I did many months ago (when the UK announced its herd immunity plan), relating to hospital capacity, likely peak case numbers, proportion of cases that would need hospital treatment or die and some simple minded guesses about knock-on effects for the rest of the health system. I have not bothered to redo these cal…

if we let the virus lives its life, maximum 2% of pop will die, 90 more % will live normally and a few percent will have covid related health issues. so we sacrifice a few percent of population for the future of the others

And what happens when you get more mutant strains that do God knows what. You want to bet it’ll be 2%? What about 1895 and 1918?

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#176

Post by core-questions »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #55
core-questions wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~1700 people per day die of heart disease in America and have done so for decades. I think we should shut down the economy until we can get everyone's heart healthy.

Can't believe after 12 months this argument is still being made. You say shutting down the economy so casually, as if it has no impact on an infectious disease spreading during a pandemic. If there hadn't been any shutdown, it would lead to a tenfold increase in infections and an even higher than tenfold increase in death as hospitals will be completely overwhelmed and unable to provide normal healthcare. But if you…

My point is more like, 10x the number of people could be dying of COVID per day than are dying right now, and I would care about 10x more than I care about all those people who are dying of heart disease, which would still be an indescribably small amount of care, even with the multiplier.

I am not making the argument that it's "just a flu", but I will make the argument that it's "just death". Death is. Only a sheltered person is emotionally distraught because of this; and in turn, only a person who cannot handle this perspective would deem it logical to permanently damage society in order to reduce this number.

I am all for protecting older folks, even at great expense. We should have isolated every old folks' home and done everything possible to keep them COVID-free and well stocked with everything they need. These folks have served their time in society and deserve to be cared for with a higher standard than others. It's highly unfortunate that the exact opposite thing happened; I hope that we learn a lesson from this.

However, when we're talking about the non-elderly, it seems that the vast majority of people who are dying are simply in bad shape / vitamin deficient / etc. Sorry, I don't see any reason I should care about their death any more than I would care about it if they died from heart disease, which is almost certainly going to get most of the people in that demographic eventually anyway, if they don't get hit by a car first. It's sad for their families, and for us it's just a warning to get some sunshine and exercise ever so often, which is literally all it takes to put yourself in the group of people who have a massively high survival rate. In fact, we've all had a whole year with literally nothing else to do for amusement to have gotten in good shape during. At this point, anyone who is still ignoring that has made their choice.

It's about putting things in perspective. 50-100k people die from the flu every year in America for the past decade and nobody cared before and nobody will care about that 10 years from now either unless it's a really slow news day.

> there really is no arguing with you

There's plenty of arguing with me. Convince me why I should care about people who die of one disease when I already didn't care about all the people dying of a different one. That's fundamentally what this comes down to: blowing that level of care out of proportion while denying people the right to make their own decisions about what level of personal risk they are comfortable with.

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#177

Post by simonh »

stupidcar wrote: post #28

This article is confusing. It starts off by saying this is an analysis of "best" and "worst" case scenarios for continued growth in cases, but later it says: > HSJ understands that the briefing was part of an attempt to get senior clinical leaders to focus on what they would have to do, if current growth trends were not surpressed by the tighter lockdown . So, er, what if the growth trends are suppressed by the tight…

I would expect that if growth trends are suppressed by the tighter lockdown, that would be the best case scenario. That’s not the most likely scenario though, and you need to prepare for the worst case scenario. So that’s what clinical leaders need to focus on, right?

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#178

Post by dandellion »

titzer wrote: post #145
dandellion wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you gain by insulting them and calling them idiots? What if it just makes them even worse? Not saying they don't fit the definition... but maybe the reaction doesn't actually help.

In every society since the dawn of man, certain things carried a social cost. In our society, advocating idiotic conspiracies should carry, IMHO, a social cost of feeling embarrassed and stupid. Frankly.

At this point I'm not sure they're capable of feeling embarrassed or stupid. They get all riled up and start acting out, but it doesn't look like insulting and embarrassing them is working...

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#179

Post by design-material »

stogxx wrote: post #52
jpxw wrote: post #33

And yet we still have idiots here in the UK saying things ranging from: * coronavirus is invented as a government power grab * the government locking down is a deliberate ploy to kill small businesses * the government should just let this run its course, it’s Just A Flu TM * hospitals are actually empty (the “proof” being people recording empty waiting rooms in outpatient departments on bank holiday weekends) * coron…

NHS is overwhelmed every winter if the hyperbolic headlines are to be believed

The fact the overworked staff still somehow make it run doesn't mean it isn't and hasn't been overwhelmed for years

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#180

Post by TheRealSteel »

core-questions wrote: post #26
mike00632 wrote: post #13

3478 people died from COVID in the US yesterday. https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-daily-deaths

~1700 people per day die of heart disease in America and have done so for decades. I think we should shut down the economy until we can get everyone's heart healthy.

Wow, do you truly believe heart disease is contagious?
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