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

Not in the US. It’s mainly thought of as an “old English” word. It hardly ever appears so you usually learn the length some time in school and then subsequently forget it.

>There was a good piece in the private eye a few years ago listing headlines saying the NHS is doomed tomorrow going back to before Blair.

https://twitter.com/KulganofCrydee/status/833654730849136641

>Just to flesh this out, the NHS could use more money, but it's worth saying that it's the only European healthcare system I'm aware of so fragile.

You've fallen for the very "NHS is more fragile than systems in other countries" mantra that the Private Eye piece mocks. COVID19 has overwhelmed the French, Belgian, and Italian systems too.

>If you ask a lot of British people they seem to think that the only alternative is the wild west found in the US, rather than the other healthcare systems in Europe.

The NHS is unique in being so unified. I'm not sure there's another European country in which one government entity runs insurance, billing, and delivery. Because the UK is the foreign country Americans are most exposed to (Canada doesn't count), this results in both Americans and Britons thinking that all healthcare plans outside the US are like the NHS, when actually the norm is something closer to that of France, Germany, or the Netherlands.

Government running every aspect of healthcare means that every aspect of healthcare is a political issue. The consequent level of weaponization of the NHS in British political rhetoric is flabbergasting. It's said that Social Security (the US version of UK National Insurance) is the "third rail" of American politics—any politician that touches it gets electrocuted—but there is no comparison. I, for one, have no desire whatsoever to ever experience the US equivalent of how in the UK the NHS is always, Always, ALWAYS the #1 or #2 topic of every single election, with every candidate competing to outdo the others in promising that the NHS will "always be free" and that he is the only candidate who can make sure that the local GP's surgery hours will widen and that the A&E will no longer be "the worst in England" or "the second-worst in Yorkshire". The Private Eye piece is the result of the above.

(Canada, also with a single-payer system, sensibly divorces billing from providers. As in the US private entities deliver most healthcare, and in both countries if one's doctor has inconvenient hours or if the local hospital has substandard care, one simply goes to another as opposed to having this being something politicians are expected to fix.)

>In general hospitals will experience capacity pressures at lower overall occupancy rates than would previously have been the case.

Why?

Congratulations on totally missing the point.

[ EDIT: the number I originally used for "requiring hospitalization" were way off. I've edited to reflect data from September provided by the CDC. The 20% -> ICU figure comes from the NYC experience in May, but seems roughly correct from other global hotspots ]

Roughly 0.4% of those who catch COVID19 will require hospitalization. Of those, 20% will require ICU treatment.

In the end, the entire human race will be exposed to SARS-COV-2. If that happens all on the same day, or week, or month or probably even year, no health care system in the world can possibly deal with the case load.

Some of those who might have survived COVID19 with hospital care will die.

But (and this is the important part) those with other medical conditions that timely and effective health care could have treated will also die. Trauma (e.g. car or tool accidents). Infectious disease. Cancer. Chronic health conditions.

And in killing all these people, you've made nothing better for those who survive, because if you think the economy has gone to hell under current attempts to deal with it, you clearly cannot imagine it as the entire health care system melts down.

COVID19 is not a personal health crisis. Most people will not die of it (even though hundreds of thousands will, which is not going to be much comfort to their families, friends, colleagues and neighbors. It is a public health crisis that threatens to overwhelm our health care systems and thus have far worse effects than just the disease itself.

On principle you're right - and hopefully you, and others who share your line of thought, will continue to fight for this after this period is over so that we can focus on spending money to alleviate problems affecting those in relative-poverty that we - as a society - have happily ignored thus far