Peter wrote:
Cumbria is big but…Do you think this coronavirus thing is a government plot and, if so, what for?
I can see my house on there :)
No I don’t think it’s a big government plot, but I do suspect there is sensationalism in the reporting which may not be giving an accurate picture of what is really going on. Cumbria is pretty rural, although Tyne and Wear also covers newcastle and surrounding areas which are a bit more populated. Perhaps things are being talked up or down to try to get the response from the public they want, masks, food availability. I’d just like to see reliable data that makes reasonable people make informed decisions.
The lakes and north cumbria have been coloured in on the england charts with high case rates for a while now which I would have expected to lead to increases in the hospitals, unless this new variant is more infectious but less dangerous perhaps.
Do I think governments don’t let a good crisis go to waste when it comes to control. Yes, it seems to be the case.
kwlf wrote:
You’d think so but the capacity in 2019 will be very different from those this year. We have a lot of physical bed spaces where we cannot put patients because they would be physically too close together. There are extra potential ICU spaces in theatres (whether they can be staffed is another matter). Then there are corridors.
Thanks for pointing out about that trust. I thought that was the local trust. The North Cumbria one lists 112 in hospital and 13 on ventilation which again doesn’t seem staggering, but again I dont know what the capacity is.
If we have to reduce bed capacity because of of the physical distance requirements does that reduces overall staffing requirements? the spare individuals could be utilised at a nightingale hospital.
Of course there will be sensationalism. We have an all-day BBC news channel. Each day the real news is worth maybe 10 mins. The rest is jingles and junk. Re-used footage, days old.
The rural areas (like where we live) have generally done well, and makes one think that lockdowns should always be regional. But that doesn’t work as a population policy, because the nearby town just drives to the country pub(s) (we live across the road from one such) and crowds them out. Same with pre-announcing lockdowns; people just go totally crazy in the days before. The new variant just spreads like crazy.
Not sure CV19 is useful right now, politically. The B-word is happening anyway. CV19 has been a hassle if anything because – since health is devolved – it enabled generally irrelevant and previously hardly heard of local politicians to come into prominence and it’s always been easy for them to look good, since they are not responsible for the funding of restrictions and the required business support, which comes from central taxpayer funds.
If we have to reduce bed capacity because of of the physical distance requirements does that reduces overall staffing requirements? the spare individuals could be utilised at a nightingale hospital.
They could be, but many are either isolating or sick or contacts of those who are sick, so it doesn’t feel as if we have extra staff available despite the generally reduced bed numbers. I agree 112 does not sound an earth shattering number, but the Cumbrian hospitals are smallish and assuming they are run like the rest of the NHS they will be sized with a view to running at 110% capacity at this time of year with all elective surgery cancelled, so even that number of cases will be putting a lot of strain on the system.
I have felt that a trend in the UK (the UK at any rate) is to devolve many key and erstwhile central governments functions. We devolve the railways, and we devolve the NHS for example if this is the correct terminolgy. Cynically it seems a very good mechanism to leave politicians theoretically in charge, but blameless when things go wrong, because they then blame the devolved governance, sack them and appoint another. In the present crisis they are conflicted. They know there are many things for which the public will see them totally responsible, but it is far better politics to fall back on old ways and make it someone elses problem. Perhaps too cynical?
Yes I think there is that tendency. Same with govt spending; contract out a lot of stuff to keep it off the public balance sheets (while overpaying the various outfits who queue up for the contracts). However, big business does the same: contract out purchasing to agencies which pretend to deliver value while making it hard for smaller suppliers.
In the news just now: 30k in CV19 ICU in the UK, average age 60 (sixty), and lots of younger people too. A part of that lower average might be due to the upper age range not being put into ICU as much.
So the position of “all those in ICU would have died anyway pretty soon” is not valid now (and never was since life expectancy at say 82 is 2-3 years).
The most serious news: Netflix has increased its pricing!
Closer to ten, actually
Peter wrote:
In the news just now: 30k in CV19 ICU in the UK, average age 60 (sixty), and lots of younger people too. A part of that lower average might be due to the upper age range not being put into ICU as much.
So the position of “all those in ICU would have died anyway pretty soon” is not valid now (and never was since life expectancy at say 82 is 2-3 years).
Is this really true? 30k ICU patients with Covid-19 in the UK? I thought the UK did not have nearly as much ICU capacity in total (perhaps I got confused with the number of ventilators?).
If so, that would be extremely worrying. Germany, which on paper had a lot more ICU beds/capita than the UK before the pandemic, has a total of roughly 20k ICU beds in use currently, about 6k of which are occupied by Covid-19 patients.
Peter wrote:
From here life expectancy is 7.3 years and 8.5 years (male/female) at 82, so I got that wrong too; need to search my previous posts more diligently
Those are the figures used (by someone, I don’t know who but it’s a US site) to calculate annuities. They will always have very high numbers, because the point of their ‘calculation’ is to determine that you might live for some unfeasibly long length of time and hence give you a very low annual payment (because you’ll go on for ever, right?) in return for your capital. For instance, they suggest that someone aged 100 can expect over two more years!
In any case, any life expectancy figure is generally a population average. Those in hospital with Covid-19 are not the population average, they’re generally a subset in poorer overall health than the average.
Where I feel we don’t have enough information to analyse the hospitalisation and death figures is lack of a definition of ‘pre-existing conditions’. If they are including everyone with slightly high blood pressure then that is one thing, but it’s very different if taken to mean people with serious life-threatening conditions. Do @MedEwok or @kwlf have any contextual insight as to what the term is generally taken to mean?
The UK figures are here.
30,000 is the total in hospital, not in ICU. They don’t seem to publish an ICU figure, but they do give a figure of 2,645 presently on ventilation.
