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UK alert level reduced [split topic]

Started by olliebean, June 19, 2020, 11:39:19 AM

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Sheffield Wednesday

I think the most important significant detail there is that the first wave has not ended. Lifting restrictions only means that there is ICU capacity and significant economic pressure. Or rather, simply that there is significant economic pressure.

Remember when we were discussing which ICU figures they would be using to decide when to lift restrictions? How quaint that seems now!

Zetetic

True enough, about the ongoing first wave. We've reached the point now where worries about everything else - like the backlog of worsening cancers - are taking precedent again.

QuoteRemember when we were discussing which ICU figures they would be using to decide when to lift restrictions? How quaint that seems now!

It seems less quaint here, in a devolved nation, where we have kept restrictions in place in response to local conditions.

The failure to get a grip on the impact on social care is ongoing, however, and part of the reason why I've found the last few weeks a lot harder emotionally. Parts of the health service have been so pleased about how much we know about mostly-fine healthcare capacity that very few people want to think about how little legible information we have on what we sent back into care homes over the last three months and exactly what the effect of that sort thing has been.

I wish I'd been more on top of this earlier, but I'm not sure it would have made any difference given how hard it's been to get "maybe we, as the national health service, should know how many people we've discharged to which care homes" taken seriously.

QuoteOr rather, simply that there is significant economic pressure.
But, yes, this is ultimately the killer for all of us unless a devolved government is prepared to risk an intervention.

Dex Sawash


Which countries have been near or over max ventilator capacity? I've not heard much about this after the early warnings that it was inevitable.

Zetetic

Part of the point is that "ventilator capacity" isn't a thing that exists at the country level, unless you're talking about Andorra or Lichtenstein. It's not easy to move someone who needs critical care from city to city.

My country went well over baseline critical capacity nationally, but it came close to tripling capacity (including by taking over a lot of other healthcare capacity, like operating theatres) and drastically reduced non-COVID-19 demand. The second of those is already close to back to normal, and the first is being rapidly rolled back. Regionally things were not ... very fun, in some places near the start.

A few English hospitals shut their Emergency Departments (Watford, Weston-super-Mare?) because of capacity issues.