Test and Trace ?

[Observer II]

Put the brakes on = lockdown, cases reduce/take foot off the brakes = increase in cases - simple.  😷   btw Asp - if your not worried about deaths from covid, why worry about deaths from other causes, such as the snowflakes with mental illness. 😷

[asperity]

17 minutes ago, Confused52 said:

The 1.3 million is a bit high.  On 7th March the total General and Acute bed occupancy in NHS England was only 80,000.

So the hospitals are even quieter than normal? That must be an optimistic sign then.

[asperity]

15 minutes ago, Observer II said:

Put the brakes on = lockdown, cases reduce/take foot off the brakes = increase in cases - simple.  😷   btw Asp - if your not worried about deaths from covid, why worry about deaths from other causes, such as the snowflakes with mental illness. 😷

I'm not the one that's putting the deaths with/from Covid above other deaths. We all die from something when our time comes, but we shouldn't all have to put our lives on hold just in case someone, or even me, gets sick and dies.

Nice to see the compassion you have for the mentally ill by the way 🙄.

[Evil Sid]

10 hours ago, asperity said:

So the hospitals are even quieter than normal? That must be an optimistic sign then.

Or it could mean they are saving bed space in case there is a sudden need for extra beds for covid related patients.

I am no expert.......just thought i would get that in to avoid any confusion on anybodies part..🤫

[Bill]

Well, we all have our own take on the covid situation Asp but your comments I think can best be qualified as being quite unique. I respect the rights of everyone to be able to openly express their opinion however far removed from the consensus view.

My take on this is that life is simply the most precious thing that we have and unlike businesses and money, it can’t ever be replaced. I’ve gone through some tough times during my life but nothing has ever destroyed my belief and hope that things can and will always get better.

I could go on with another of my long-winded rambles, but I suspect it would only fall on deaf ears.

 

Bill 😊

[Confused52]

3 hours ago, Evil Sid said:

Or it could mean they are saving bed space in case there is a sudden need for extra beds for covid related patients.

I am no expert.......just thought i would get that in to avoid any confusion on anybodies part..🤫

Sid, I am not taking aim at you - you are right that they could need space for an upturn in patient numbers but there is not really a lot of spare capacity available. None of us are experts but data is available which can tell us what is happening (all except the number of hospital acquired infections which is obscured in the public data - I cannot find other than in occasional SAGE analyses)

Well now, the possibilities for confusion are endless aren't they? I will help! On the 7th March the number of General and Acute beds in England that were occupied was 73999 the total that were staffed to be available was 90465. The figure of 1.3million quoted earlier is clearly a figure not related to the number of beds useable for urgent cases.

On the 4th March the total beds occupied by NHS patients was 112745, that figure includes non G&A beds such as those used in private hospitals which could not be used for covid patients. On the same day the total covid patients was 9092. On the same day the Adult Critical Care beds open was 5,227 of which 3,832 were in use by covid patients. The total long stay patients on that day who had been in for over 21 days was 11,661.

So that will have helped clarify thing for the others won't it?. There is not a great amount of spare capacity in the system they are 82% full across the whole of England.

Using 7th March data the hospitals that were most full were:

98% Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust

97% Croydon Health Services NHS Trust

95% King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

94% Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

93% Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust

93% Whittington Health NHS Trust

92% University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

92% Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust

91% University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust

91% Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

91% Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust

91% The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust

91% Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

91% Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

So suggestions that there are is no problem are way off the mark because the situation is uneven across the country, these numbers are all publicly available every week but still people just interpret headlines and make stuff up. When the government says we are not out of the woods yet they are not telling lies because they want the economy locked down.

The data is currently getting better all the time but with the starting point above it needs to. 

[asperity]

Bill, I'm sure you will agree with me that just because one view can be called "consensual", it doesn't magically make that view correct. I'm also sure that most people hold their own lives to be precious, but that doesn't mean they should risk the lives of others to preserve their own does it?

[asperity]

Confused, what percentage of beds occupied would you like? 10%? 20%? 30%? 40%? 50%? Is there an ideal level of bed occupancy? If there is, and it isn't at the levels you quote, why hasn't the NHS spent the money on making sure there are enough beds and staff instead of employing diversity managers and the like? Or perhaps bed occupancy of 95% has been found to be the most efficient use of resources, I don't know but perhaps a diversity manager could tell us.

[Observer II]

Think if we analyse the last 12 months, from the failure to lock down the UK to foreign entry, to the disaster of transfering bed blocking grumpies into care homes, through the disaster of Cheltenham and the Liverpool v Madrid Match; those in favour of draconian lockdowns and adherance to strict seperation rules; have been proven to have been correct throughout; whilst those calling for relaxations at every turn, have been proven to have been dangerously wrong.  Whilst I have and will criticise the slow and hesitant performance of HMG, I've no doubt no one else could have done any better, either in this Country or Globally.  What does sadden me is, that despite the catalogue of failure to act quickly enough, and to be urged into premature relaxations; we are still having this debate.  😠   😷

[Confused52]

44 minutes ago, asperity said:

Confused, what percentage of beds occupied would you like? 10%? 20%? 30%? 40%? 50%? Is there an ideal level of bed occupancy? If there is, and it isn't at the levels you quote, why hasn't the NHS spent the money on making sure there are enough beds and staff instead of employing diversity managers and the like? Or perhaps bed occupancy of 95% has been found to be the most efficient use of resources, I don't know but perhaps a diversity manager could tell us.

There is not a single ideal level nor could there be. The Wrightington/Wigan case at 98% represented just six spare beds with an average covid only admission rate in the previous week of one per day. It does not take much to overwhelm that apple cart. 

Your point about diversity managers is interesting. If one took the money to be spent on the diversity manager one could not get enough extra nurses to open a single new bed. The diversity manager is only one per region and nurses are needed everywhere. Furthermore diversity managers probably can be found to employ but nurses are in shorter supply and couldn't be found quickly. Therefore short term, for political expediency, employment of a diversity manager is probably a total irrelevance, so not worth making a fuss about.

[asperity]

35 minutes ago, Confused52 said:

There is not a single ideal level nor could there be. The Wrightington/Wigan case at 98% represented just six spare beds with an average covid only admission rate in the previous week of one per day. It does not take much to overwhelm that apple cart. 

Your point about diversity managers is interesting. If one took the money to be spent on the diversity manager one could not get enough extra nurses to open a single new bed. The diversity manager is only one per region and nurses are needed everywhere. Furthermore diversity managers probably can be found to employ but nurses are in shorter supply and couldn't be found quickly. Therefore short term, for political expediency, employment of a diversity manager is probably a total irrelevance, so not worth making a fuss about.

You're treating one hospital as representing the whole of the NHS there. So all the beds are taken? There are other hospitals with spare beds just waiting to be used which is the point I'm trying to make. You could make sure that all hospitals had 100 spare beds waiting to be used at all times, but what would be the point of that? Hospital beds are there to be used for patients, not there to sit empty in case they're needed tomorrow, next week, next year.

Your point about diversity managers seems to be that, because there are diversity managers out there looking for positions, it's up to the NHS to give them employment, and anyway we can't find anyone out there who wants to be a nurse. Madness. The NHS has a limited amount of money allocated to paying staff, so why waste it on people who don't contribute directly to the core purpose of the organisation - healthcare? I only used diversity manager as an example, there are plenty of other areas where staff savings could be made but as usual with overgrown organisations empire building will be endemic and reasons will be found why such positions are "vital to the running of the organisation".

[Davy51]

On Monday evening our grand daughter gave birth to an underweight baby due to pregnancy / health/ early delivery issues. The GD is in Whiston while her son is in Arrow Park neo natal unit as Arrow Park had no bed for her.

[Confused52]

23 hours ago, Davy51 said:

On Monday evening our grand daughter gave birth to an underweight baby due to pregnancy / health/ early delivery issues. The GD is in Whiston while her son is in Arrow Park neo natal unit as Arrow Park had no bed for her.

I hope they have been re-united by now Davy. 

[Davy51]

29 minutes ago, Confused52 said:

I hope they have been re-united by now Davy. 

Thanks Con ,GD is home now but the offspring is only just 30 weeks development so at the moment he is still in Arrow Park. Good news though is that he is off oxygen now & feeding through a tube & apparently has a noisy set of lungs with which to tantrum. Doing well considering that ante natal advice was to abort just a few months ago.