in fairness to Josh, he got his info from the Herald-Sun so a man of his intelligence would expect it to be right.
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IMPORTANT // Please look after your loved ones, yourself and be kind to others. If you are feeling that the world is too hard to handle there is always help - I implore you not to hesitate in contacting one of these wonderful organisations Lifeline and Beyond Blue ... and I'm sure reaching out to our PRE community we will find a way to help. T.
Coronavirus
- Thread starter Tigers of Old
- Start date
No - there’s just over 8k in hospital, in total.
You are both technically right. There are about 8k total in hospital, but there were also 6,730 admitted to hospital within the last week.
The key is the charts though. Since the UK opened up, there was an initial jump in hospitalisations (as expected), but that has remained relatively flat lined since then, ie. new patients go into hospital, as others leave. This works for the UK as they have enough beds to cope, and this is the sort of data we need to be assessing in Australia to ensure that our hospital network is resourced at similar proportional levels.
Whats good to see, is that whilst cases can jump around (and they have), between 20k / day upto 60k / day, the total number in hospital (required beds) barely varies, its hovered between 7,000 and 8,000 for the last 4 months since the UK re-opened. If the system is built for that, then Redford is wrong in that the system cannot cope, clearly it can. The number of mechanical ventilation beds in use also follows the similar trend to hospitalisations, relatively flatlined.
The key for the UK (and the whole Northern hemisphere) will now be if they can get enough vaccination boosters into arms before Winter.
We also still have all the Nightingale hospitals dotted around the country that were set up last year and were barely needed then. Granted, staffing becomes an issue, but the beds (including IC beds) are there.
I’m due to have my third jab soon but debating whether it’s even worth it, having had COVID not so long ago.
Also due to have the seasonal flu jab, which might be more important.
I’m due to have my third jab soon but debating whether it’s even worth it, having had COVID not so long ago.
Also due to have the seasonal flu jab, which might be more important.
Read your own link Midsy. At the top, it highlights a previous day’s patient admission number of over 1000. That’s the appx. daily admission number. The 8,000 is a continuous care number.
When you have 7,000 admissions every week, it decimates the healthcare system’s capabilities and why senior health officials - especially emergency care, gynaecology services leaders etc are all highlighting their distress. Nurses and services are deployed to these voluminous admissions at the expense of other important health needs.
How does it decimate it, if you have 7,000 entering hospital and 7,000 leaving hospital in the same week?
It’s not about the Covid capability Posh. It’s about the the total healthcare capability. This is what Sintiger often refers to.
You can have plenty of Covid health capability, but you crush the overall capability to meet the plethora of healthcare needs that exist if you start using that Covid capability to any great degree.
And if I’m “wrong” about that, then so too is just about every government around the world, senior healthcare officials etc.
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Because you’ve gotta use people, resources etc to handle that ! You have to re direct people and resources from other areas of healthcare to deal with it. No healthcare system has infinite resources to deal with EVERYTHING.
And if that wasn’t the case, then you wouldn’t have people in the system - not me…in the actual system - telling you their difficulties.
UK only started rolling out Booster shots at the end of September so will take some time to get coverage.
Golden opportunity for Australia to get ahead of the curb this time if we act promptly and fortunate that we have 6 months to get maximum coverage before the depths of winter.
Winter is certainly a potential issue, but hospitalisations aren't out of control, they are replacement.
The key around "covid" beds versus other beds are going to come down to reality. The UK vaccination has not changed in a month, they have pretty much hit their high point for covid vaccinations, so they aren't going to be able to protect more as they would have received their vaccine by now if they were going to take it, so this is the reality of living with covid. The number of beds they need to assign for covid patients are there in black and white, and the UK must ensure that they resource up in order to support the remaining surgeries etc that also need to be carried out by the NHS.
Personally the NHS is a massive beast that wastes a heap of resources. They are run by bureaucrats rather than nurses and thats the issue. By streamlining operations they could create nurse and doctor capacity but it all seems like its too big to attack.
That’s right about the “reality”. And that’s the full circle isn’t it ? ie when you have this many daily hospitalisations, be it via unvaccinated people or whatever, the reality is that whilst you might have capability to deal with it, it comes at the expense of a host of other healthcare needs. Don’t think anyone is gonna accept not having adequate emergency services as being the new norm are they ? Of course not.
And THAT’S what senior health people in the UK are distressed about and why they’re hammering the government to make changes to the other protection elements - beyond first stage vaccines - until longer term stability can be achieved. Otherwise, the OVERALL system goes into chaos. That’s why they’re pleading for Javid and Johnson to get boosters going, re introduce certain mask laws etc etc.
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Agree on boosters and Johnson has been slow on the uptake of pushing boosters (though its going on, my dad is getting his this week for example).
I don't agree on mask laws. This is the new normal and there will be fluctuations throughout the year, but this is the best the UK will get unless they can organise the remaining 20% that are unvaccinated to take the vaccine. Therefore, they need to resource up, now they've known about this for at least 6 months, so if they haven't looked at nurse and doctor capacity yet then they are incompetent.
Mask wearing / checking in using apps etc cannot be part of our "life living with covid".
No doubt Scomo will take the lead here and get it done so he'll be able to claim heading into an election, the initial non race was all part of the grand plan.....
I've seriously lost the little faith I ever had in politicians of all persuasions!
(Btw, one look at the soon to again be acting PM lastnight had me thinking he'd got in early for the PRE London shindig, skipped the caviar and went hard for the cognac!)
I tend to agree with most of that where masks etc are concerned. Healthcare resourcing… well that’s a challenge for every country and not so easy to achieve. Again, ask Sin about that.
I think what it highlights - and this was my point all along and what we agree upon - is that for as long as you even have 80% of the 12+ population vaccinated, that the remaining 20% (and/or people not getting boosters) is going to cause immense problems until at least a herd type of outcome is achieved in years to come. (If herd status ever is actually achieved.)
Agree with all of that except this last bit. We need administrators ("bureaucrats" if you want to use the term) to administer things. Nurses and doctors don't want to be administrators and managers, at least not all the time. They want to work as doctors or nurses. Like any profession, some want to go the management track and that's fine. And administrators and managers can be d1cks, sure, they need to get the right advice from the medical specialists. Waste is an issue but you don't solve it by taking doctors and nurses off the front line and making them managers.
I work with software devs and they are the same - I've come in to replace team leaders who are also senior devs and their attitude is "thank god I don't need to do all that management bullsh1t any more".
Won't be long before % double-vaxxed becomes obsolete and is replaced by % vaxxed last 5-6 months. Pfizer and co. have us on the hook for now.
Agree with some of what you say. Good administrators are worth their weight, not only do they do their jobs well (freeing the nurses / doctors up to do their thing) but they also look for process improvement. Bad administrators do nothing of the latter. The NHS seems to have a lot of the latter. When I was in the UK, nurses that I knew, would reminisce about the old days of the ward sister and how much better wards were run.
I'm also going through some hand therapy at the moment. My doctor is scottish and we were talking about the UK vs Australian system, and he mentioned that he loves the Aussie system, he could directly refer me to a hand therapist, whereas in the UK they would have to refer you to a hand surgeon (even when they don't believe surgery is necessary), who would then refer you to a hand therapist (a waste of the surgeons time). Once you factor this through for many different referrals there would be a heap of time wasted within the entire NHS system.
The NHS system is good, but I much prefer the Aussie model. It seems to have got the balance between public and private servicing and how they setup process flowthrough of the system seems to be far better than the almost pure public system in the UK (I know they have private but its only used by the rich).
