by arsene wengers coat » Sun May 03, 2020 6:37 pm
Farnie has a point about lockdown.
My brother is a surgeon in Glasgow. Forth Valley Royal ICU capacity: 20 normally, expanded to 30 currently. Current ICU patients 7, 5 of them have covid. Current survival rate from intubated patients in Forth Valley 0. Local testing facilities running at less than 25%. Currently ALL surgery for bowel cancer cancelled... 40ish Glasgow patients on hold. Surgeons keen to crack on but can't.
some pretty urgent and life saving surgery has been cancelled to buy ventilators. Ventilators only seem to have less than a 50% chance of working. So they bought lots of ventilators they dont need that dont work anyway. So on that evidence, why, if proven surgical procedures can't go ahead and people with cancer can't have their critical surgery.
Thankfully, due to lockdown the Nhs has more than coped, only 19 beds used at the Nightingale in London. However the standard of care for everyone else is poor and economy about to plunge half the country into poverty and associated premature deaths likely to rise.
Before covid19, the difference between socially deprived areas and affluent in uk had a gap of 9yrs life expectancy. I'll just be interested to see how much covid widens that gap in life expectancy through economic matters, ie increase in violent crime, drug use, mental health, marriage breakdowns etc as a result of employment impacts if the recession is as bad as feared it will be.
For a moment, let's not think on an individual basis, but from a societal basis. If Lockdown causes a huge recession that plunges half of the uk into poverty for 20yrs, how many years of life lost overall? And it'll be the young who suffer most from this recession. Whereas covid tends to get the elderly worse. Its a horrible political conundrum. But i cant get angry with politicians about this. They have to be doing something to protect life now, but at what point does the future of the country take precedence?
Total buggers muddle.
You've got to go there and come back, to know where you've been.