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Scaremongering or Not, Corona Virus = Nae Killie


Andy

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30 minutes ago, Stefanus said:

I’d cancel Trident for starters and divert that money where it’s actually needed . I don’t subscribe to the absurd notion that such a move would leave us “defenceless”. I think we are seeing right now, in the NHS, and in the country, just what  “defenceless” actually means. 

 

Its not about leaving he country defenceless. Its about getting a seat on the UN security council.

You mean finally admit to ourselves we are not a world power anymore and free up billions for investment in infrastructure?

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3 minutes ago, gdevoy said:

Its not about leaving he country defenceless. Its about getting a seat on the UN security council.

You mean finally admit to ourselves we are not a world power anymore and free up billions for investment in infrastructure?

We have a seat, it's a permanent one. Gifted to the victors of ww2

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15 hours ago, CSI Kilmarnock said:

I wonder why the BBC didn’t “go live to Downing Street” for the UK government’s press briefing, until the briefing itself was over and the Q&A had started.  They said repeatedly that they were awaiting the start of the briefing, even though they were reporting the contents of the briefing in their text feed ... I assume it was technical problems, but if so, why not say so...

Nothing to do with the BBC - it was a “pooled” broadcast and a technical fault.

I don't know about the BBC, but Sky News showed the whole thing deferred.

 

Edited by skygod
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11 minutes ago, skygod said:

Nothing to do with the BBC - it was pooled broadcast and a technical fault.

I don't know about the BBC, but Sky News showed the whole thing deferred.

 

You're telling me that the BBC News readers telling us that the press conference hadn't started yet, when it had, is "nothing to do with the BBC".  I'm afraid I don't follow your logic??

Edited by CSI Kilmarnock
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1 hour ago, CSI Kilmarnock said:

You're telling me that the BBC News readers telling us that the press conference hadn't started yet, when it had, is "nothing to do with the BBC".  I'm afraid I don't follow your logic??

Sky News was exactly the same: they went over to it live in the middle of the Q & A without any explanation until it was finished. 

The news anchors were probably relying on getting live pictures and there wasn't any.

I can't see that it's a big deal but maybe you do.

 

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6 hours ago, skygod said:

Sky News was exactly the same: they went over to it live in the middle of the Q & A without any explanation until it was finished. 

The news anchors were probably relying on getting live pictures and there wasn't any.

I can't see that it's a big deal but maybe you do.

 

It’s not a huge deal, but Matt Hancock had said earlier in the day that exercise outside might be “banned”.  There is a member of my household who relies on outdoor exercise to manage a medical condition and so was quite distressed. As a consequence of this, for the first time ever, we tuned in to see what was going to be said and Got nothing, which exacerbated the situation. A simple comment that there were technical issues would have been helpful. 

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COVID. ‘With’ ‘Of’ or ‘Because of’

6th April 2020

Here is a section from the Health Service Journal (HSJ) in the UK, discussing the current fears of NHSE (NHS England). The article is behind a paywall.

NHS England is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care. NHS England oversees the budget, planning, delivery and day-to-day operation of the commissioning side of the NHS in England as set out in the Health and Social Care Act 2012>/p>

Exclusive: NHSE to act over fears covid-19 focus could ‘do more harm than virus’

‘NHS England analysts have been tasked with the challenging task of identifying patients who may not have the virus but may be at risk of significant harm or death because they are missing vital appointments or not attending emergency departments, with both the service and public so focused on covid-19. 

A senior NHS source familiar with the programme told HSJ: “There could be some very serious unintended consequences [to all the resource going into fighting coronavirus]. While there will be a lot of covid-19 fatalities, we could end up losing more ‘years of life’ because of fatalities relating to non-covid-19 health complications.

“What we don’t want to do is take our eye off the ball in terms of all the core business and all the other healthcare issues the NHS normally attends to. 

“People will be developing symptoms of serious but treatable diseases, babies will be born which need immunising, and people will be developing breast lumps and need mammograms.”…

Nuffield Trust deputy director of research Sarah Scobie said it was “a considerable worry that people are keeping away from routine and urgent health services, and also from emergency departments”.

She added: “The PHE (public health England) data suggests there could be significant problems already developing for heart disease related conditions patients, for example. Attendances relating to myocardial infarction at emergency departments have dropped right down, whereas ambulance calls in relation to chest pain have gone right [up].

I suppose my first response would not be one of great surprise. In fact, it confirms what I have been saying for some time. When the great Swine Flu epidemic (that killed hardly anyone) created the last pandemic crisis in the UK, exactly the same thing happened. If, whatever you were suffering from, wasn’t Swine Flu, it didn’t seem to matter.

In my small part of the world a small but significant number of people were diagnosed with Swine Flu. This was done over the phone, by poorly trained operatives. These people were then prescribed the (almost entirely useless Tamiflu), they then died. It turned out that they had other conditions that could, and would, have been properly treated had we not been overcome by a massive over-reaction to Swine Flu. They died because of swine flu.

Last week, in Intermediate Care, we sent two patients into the local hospital who were seriously ill. They were both sent back almost immediately. They both died. Yes, they were ill, and may have died anyway. But I believe they should both have been admitted, and treated, and they could both still be alive. They died because of COVID.

Ambulance crews are under very heavy pressure not to admit anyone unless absolutely necessary. Some of those, not admitted, will die.

These people, all these people, are dying ‘because of’ COVID. Because of the fact that almost the entire focus of the NHS is now on COVID – to the virtual exclusion of anything else.

Our local hospital now has more empty beds than at any time in history. Elective surgery has stopped, to free up resources. There is enormous managerial pressure to clear more and more people out of hospital, out of Intermediate Care beds, back home with little support available. Some of them will die because of this.

My last blog focussed on the economic costs of the reaction to COVID. My argument was that economics, and health, do not exist in isolate bubbles. Harm to the economy will result in harm to health and vice-versa.

Equally, if you spend all your healthcare resources trying to treat one thing, everything else will suffer, because resources are not infinite. At present we have virtually shut down the NHS to deal with COVID.

I saw several patients yesterday while I was working in “out of hours”, who were not critically ill, but they were ill. Two of them, I felt, really needed to be followed up. A girl with weight loss over the last three months, a man with clear signs in his chest that could have been malignant.

They will not be followed up any time soon. If at all.

At present there is a lot of discussion about how we are categorising deaths from COVID. Anyone who dies, having been diagnosed with COVID, is considered to have died of COVID. Even if they died of something else. The died with COVID, not of COVID.

There is, I believe, an even greater immediate problem here. Which is those who are dying because of COVID. This is not just me saying this, this is NHS England:

While there will be a lot of covid-19 fatalities, we could end up losing more ‘years of life’ because of fatalities relating to non-covid-19 health complications.”

For many years, there has been an old medical joke. It will not make you laugh out loud, but it goes like this.

The operation was a success, unfortunately the patient died.’

A very interesting article . 

Edited by Bonbon19
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On ‎4‎/‎5‎/‎2020 at 6:16 PM, gdevoy said:

Its not about leaving he country defenceless. Its about getting a seat on the UN security council.

You mean finally admit to ourselves we are not a world power anymore and free up billions for investment in infrastructure?

We haven't been a real world power since we sold our air bases to the Americans in 1940.

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11 hours ago, Bonbon19 said:

COVID. ‘With’ ‘Of’ or ‘Because of’

6th April 2020

Here is a section from the Health Service Journal (HSJ) in the UK, discussing the current fears of NHSE (NHS England). The article is behind a paywall.

NHS England is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care. NHS England oversees the budget, planning, delivery and day-to-day operation of the commissioning side of the NHS in England as set out in the Health and Social Care Act 2012>/p>

Exclusive: NHSE to act over fears covid-19 focus could ‘do more harm than virus’

‘NHS England analysts have been tasked with the challenging task of identifying patients who may not have the virus but may be at risk of significant harm or death because they are missing vital appointments or not attending emergency departments, with both the service and public so focused on covid-19. 

A senior NHS source familiar with the programme told HSJ: “There could be some very serious unintended consequences [to all the resource going into fighting coronavirus]. While there will be a lot of covid-19 fatalities, we could end up losing more ‘years of life’ because of fatalities relating to non-covid-19 health complications.

“What we don’t want to do is take our eye off the ball in terms of all the core business and all the other healthcare issues the NHS normally attends to. 

“People will be developing symptoms of serious but treatable diseases, babies will be born which need immunising, and people will be developing breast lumps and need mammograms.”…

Nuffield Trust deputy director of research Sarah Scobie said it was “a considerable worry that people are keeping away from routine and urgent health services, and also from emergency departments”.

She added: “The PHE (public health England) data suggests there could be significant problems already developing for heart disease related conditions patients, for example. Attendances relating to myocardial infarction at emergency departments have dropped right down, whereas ambulance calls in relation to chest pain have gone right [up].

I suppose my first response would not be one of great surprise. In fact, it confirms what I have been saying for some time. When the great Swine Flu epidemic (that killed hardly anyone) created the last pandemic crisis in the UK, exactly the same thing happened. If, whatever you were suffering from, wasn’t Swine Flu, it didn’t seem to matter.

In my small part of the world a small but significant number of people were diagnosed with Swine Flu. This was done over the phone, by poorly trained operatives. These people were then prescribed the (almost entirely useless Tamiflu), they then died. It turned out that they had other conditions that could, and would, have been properly treated had we not been overcome by a massive over-reaction to Swine Flu. They died because of swine flu.

Last week, in Intermediate Care, we sent two patients into the local hospital who were seriously ill. They were both sent back almost immediately. They both died. Yes, they were ill, and may have died anyway. But I believe they should both have been admitted, and treated, and they could both still be alive. They died because of COVID.

Ambulance crews are under very heavy pressure not to admit anyone unless absolutely necessary. Some of those, not admitted, will die.

These people, all these people, are dying ‘because of’ COVID. Because of the fact that almost the entire focus of the NHS is now on COVID – to the virtual exclusion of anything else.

Our local hospital now has more empty beds than at any time in history. Elective surgery has stopped, to free up resources. There is enormous managerial pressure to clear more and more people out of hospital, out of Intermediate Care beds, back home with little support available. Some of them will die because of this.

My last blog focussed on the economic costs of the reaction to COVID. My argument was that economics, and health, do not exist in isolate bubbles. Harm to the economy will result in harm to health and vice-versa.

Equally, if you spend all your healthcare resources trying to treat one thing, everything else will suffer, because resources are not infinite. At present we have virtually shut down the NHS to deal with COVID.

I saw several patients yesterday while I was working in “out of hours”, who were not critically ill, but they were ill. Two of them, I felt, really needed to be followed up. A girl with weight loss over the last three months, a man with clear signs in his chest that could have been malignant.

They will not be followed up any time soon. If at all.

At present there is a lot of discussion about how we are categorising deaths from COVID. Anyone who dies, having been diagnosed with COVID, is considered to have died of COVID. Even if they died of something else. The died with COVID, not of COVID.

There is, I believe, an even greater immediate problem here. Which is those who are dying because of COVID. This is not just me saying this, this is NHS England:

While there will be a lot of covid-19 fatalities, we could end up losing more ‘years of life’ because of fatalities relating to non-covid-19 health complications.”

For many years, there has been an old medical joke. It will not make you laugh out loud, but it goes like this.

The operation was a success, unfortunately the patient died.’

A very interesting article . 

And this very subject appears to be another divergence between the UK and Scotland.

The FM announced last week they were changing how the deaths were being calculated, and that anyone whose death certificate contained covid19 as a factor would be counted in the numbers.  Which in theory would  or could artificially inflate the death rates but at the same time it may also allow us to gather a truer impact on the humans in our country from this pandemic.

The UK imp is understating their numbers by ignoring this and only counting those dying OF covid19 and possibly even just those in hospital? (Not sure about that last bit as everything coming from them is as clear as mud, so perhaps therws a correction needed there)

But which approach is right? Neither, Both, UK, Scotland?

Imo I think we need to whole picture and not just the OF picture,  to truly gauge how this has impacted the health of our population, and potentially totally then to be able to have plans in place for the next round or next pandemic to further reduce the impact.  To do otherwise is bonkers.

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7 minutes ago, Beaker71 said:

Imo I think we need to whole picture and not just the OF picture,  to truly gauge how this has impacted the health of our population, and potentially totally then to be able to have plans in place for the next round or next pandemic to further reduce the impact.  To do otherwise is bonkers.

Definitely. The better our information is then the better the authorities should be able to manage things going forward. 

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There is no such thing as an accurate covid 19 “death rate “ . As the blogger stated there are many other factors involved in the death of some patients , covid 19 just being one , for some .  The only true measure would be to perform an autopsy on every patient that was reported to have suffered from it , but that is obviously unpractical at this time . 

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1 hour ago, Bonbon19 said:

There is no such thing as an accurate covid 19 “death rate “ . As the blogger stated there are many other factors involved in the death of some patients , covid 19 just being one , for some .  The only true measure would be to perform an autopsy on every patient that was reported to have suffered from it , but that is obviously unpractical at this time . 

It was stated last week that the Italians reckoned that as low as 12% of the deaths were directly attributed to Covid-19 ... the remaining 88% were due to existing or underlying conditions that may or may not have been influenced by the virus.

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3 hours ago, gdevoy said:

They only test in hospitals. So only hospital deaths can be attributed to covid-19.

Unless as the FM has stated the numbers include those whose death certificate state that it was related to covid-19.  Yes I know as per bonbon post above that without a PM this cannot be confirmed, but imo it's better to over state than underplayed the death toll of this virus.

Better be over prepared than be lost in a sea of holy f**k how do we cope.

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I was working close to the new test centre in one of the car parks at Glasgow Airport yesterday. It was absolutely jumping by mid day. Looked like mainly NHS staff turning in. Was good to see.

Only downside was the vultures from the press pushed up against the fence taking pictures of people being tested. Would have liked to have seen some sort of cover on the fence around the site although I suppose the authorities want people to see hey are testing. 

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3 hours ago, chubbs said:

It was stated last week that the Italians reckoned that as low as 12% of the deaths were directly attributed to Covid-19 ... the remaining 88% were due to existing or underlying conditions that may or may not have been influenced by the virus.

The huge increase in death rate would indicate the virus must have impacted most...

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22 hours ago, chubbs said:

It was stated last week that the Italians reckoned that as low as 12% of the deaths were directly attributed to Covid-19 ... the remaining 88% were due to existing or underlying conditions that may or may not have been influenced by the virus.

Obesity will be a big underlying heath condition, without necessarily being seen as a serious health condition beforehand.  Heard about 2/3 of folk in intensive care are overweight/obese.  Would be interesting to see what % of population  80+ don't already have, 'existing or underlying health issues'?  My guess would be a minority.

Edited by RAG
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45 minutes ago, RAG said:

Obesity will be a big underlying heath condition, without necessarily being seen as a serious health condition beforehand.  Heard about 2/3 of folk in intensive care are overweight/obese.  Would be interesting to see what % of population  80+ don't already have, 'existing or underlying health issues'?  My guess would be a minority.

It is pretty difficult to get to 80 without probably several underlying health conditions. Trust me as somebody with a bus pass who likes to think of himself as moderately active it is hard to find anybody over 50 without some "co-morbidity". Also they usually omit the key word "known". They had no "known" co-mirbudity.

Edited by gdevoy
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I’ve read a report that’s theorising that ventilators are being overused in the treatment of covid-19 , and could in fact be detrimental in the long term . The report in STAT news is saying that CPAC is a better and less invasive treatment option  and patients are being “moved “ onto ventilators too soon . 

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51 minutes ago, Bonbon19 said:

I’ve read a report that’s theorising that ventilators are being overused in the treatment of covid-19 , and could in fact be detrimental in the long term . The report in STAT news is saying that CPAC is a better and less invasive treatment option  and patients are being “moved “ onto ventilators too soon . 

That's interesting Bonbon. I say that as I was given an asthma spray many years ago to open up me passages. It made me loads worse!. As it happened, I didnt have asthma but lung scarring. So, if its a similar kinda (ish), principle with the ventilators I could see the logic in using CPAC as priority

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