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Coronavirus - how is it/has it affected you?

road2ruin said:
But we’ve been told that it’s our duty to test regularly, that we should test before going out socially to protect people, to take daily tests if one of your household tests positively. All of this at the time of year when so many people are mixing so are likely to test a little more. Anecdotally I know numerous people who’ve not tested themselves once during this entire period who have now started as they are conscious of Christmas etc. It seems, to me, it was announced without any thought toward the practical implications.
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Or maybe people are being selfish and just going around hoovering up as many tests as they can get thinking as long as they are OK and can enjoy themselves then sod everyone else. People are not suddenly showing a civic consience, people are selfishly doing what they can to ensure that they are fine over the Xmas period, same with toilet rolls, same with petrol. Seems that there was no problem until people were faced with restrictions on freedoms. As the petrol situation showed, you can have all the supply you need but it all goes wrong when people selfishly want to take as much as they can for themselves and all do it at once. Hard to prove either way and probably a mix of both.
 
GB72 said:
Looks like we do not have a total monopoly on stupidity. Bloke in New Zealand got 10 covid jabs in a day. Was being paid by anti vaxxers to get the jabs in their names so as they could get covid passports.
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Entrepreneurial ingenuity is universal!
Not the smartest implementation of a quite reasonable policy (no vax evidence; no job!).
 
Sounds like PCR test capacity issues are local and temporary…as would be expected given the immediacy of the omicron virus risk.

LFT supply may be a ‘panic buy’ issue…we noted that pharmacy local to MiLs has notice on its door saying that they did not have any LFT kits. Hopefully that you have to get a code through the app or website will mean that one individual can’t get many test kits at once or in a short period. Don’t know if any such check is made when getting a code.
 
Foxholer said:
Isn't that 'old news' though.
From memory, Omicron was always described as being less virulent than previous strains. Though (on the negative side) it also seems to spread faster than other strains - thus the call for booster that give significant protection.
The strategy seems to have changed somewhat from general protection to protecting those in most danger of serious issues - those in care homes etc (who, imo, were treated very badly in earlier phases of the pandemic), who would also increase the strain on the NHS.
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Yes you're right re old news. IIRC, this was earlier on the forum somewhere, this Dr was in fact castigating UK and others Euro counties for the red listing of S.A. These attributes she made re this virus were part of it.
Ethan gave a reply about it, and her part in the report. He said her observations were premature etc.
Ref your strategy comment? As I see it the main strategy is a drive for "booster for all over 18 by end of month?"
Haven't seen any emphasis on particular groups.
 
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Swinglowandslow said:
Yes you're right re old news. IIRC, this was earlier on the forum somewhere, this Dr was in fact castigating UK and others Euro counties for the red listing of S.A. These lbs she made re this virus were part of it.
Ethan gave a reply about it, and her part in the report. He said her observations were premature etc.
Ref your strategy comment? As I see it the main strategy is a drive for "booster for all over 18 by end of month?"
Haven't seen any emphasis on particular groups.
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The same doctor has written an article for the Mail (yes, I know ?) today, and now she has seen how things have developed in South Africa she is even more scathing of Europe and, specifically, the U.K.

Interesting reading.
 
Billysboots said:
The same doctor has written an article for the Mail (yes, I know ?) today, and now she has seen how things have developed in South Africa she is even more scathing of Europe and, specifically, the U.K.

Interesting reading.
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Not sure why we are so much on the receiving end of this as it appears pretty much global that there are restrictions on entry from SA and now restrictions on entries from other countries with Omicron, including the UK
 
Ethan said:
Can you explain what you mean exactly? Medics have adapted massively, and without their often unpaid and invariably unappreciated adaptation, the NHS would have gone tits up long ago.

Consider also the possibility that some of the proposed change was serving a purpose which was not that which it appeared to be.

The amount of time and money wasted by changes in the NHS over the past 20-odd years massively outweighs any wastage from any or all professional groups.
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Explanations would require some specifics which you would then cite as not relevant because I cannot go into the context.

Thus I don't propose to get into an argument to no purpose about the NHS 'business processes' and their implementation. I am not rubbishing staff who are working hard to stand still because of poor processes/controls.

I'm just saying the NHS issues/backlog are not just money unusual COVID demand
 
Mrs SILH is thinking of pulling out of meeting up in London for dinner with four other couples, very bestest of friends of ours, this weekend. With MiL and BiL both vulnerable she feels we can’t risk the train to Waterloo and underground or taxi to restaurant. Then meeting up with our friends in a busy restaurant. Yes of course if we went up we could do a LFT before going to MiLs next week and if we tested positive we wouldn’t go up for Christmas…but that would not be good given we didn’t go up to hers last Christmas and MiL and BiL are not coping with things that well at the moment.
 
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SwingsitlikeHogan said:
Mrs SILH is thinking of pulling out of meeting up with four other couples, very bestest of friends of ours, this weekend. With MiL and BiL both vulnerable she feels we can’t risk the train to Waterloo and underground or taxi to restaurant. Then meeting up with our friends in a busy restaurant. Yes of course if we went up we could do a LFT before going to MiLs next week and if we tested positive we wouldn’t go up for Christmas…but that would not be good given we didn’t go up to hers last Christmas and MiL and BiL are not coping with things that well at the moment.
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Think that is a sensible course of action and if your wife doesn't feel comfortable then she should do what she thinks is right. We are having a bit of a similar dilemma about how much we go out between now and Christmas when we want to go and see MiL who is on her own but could be classed as vulnerable.
 
Good to see over 24 million booster jabs in arms as of today, 42% of the population over 12. Now going at a rate of 500,000 a day so in a few weeks, I think, we will be, as a nation, as freshly fully vacced as possible.
If things don’t go better, i.e.less hospitalisations and NHS pressure, then I don’t know what more can be done to live with this thing, especially if it is basically just the vaccine hesitant which are causing any lingering problems.
 
SwingsitlikeHogan said:
Mrs SILH is thinking of pulling out of meeting up in London for dinner with four other couples, very bestest of friends of ours, this weekend. With MiL and BiL both vulnerable she feels we can’t risk the train to Waterloo and underground or taxi to restaurant. Then meeting up with our friends in a busy restaurant. Yes of course if we went up we could do a LFT before going to MiLs next week and if we tested positive we wouldn’t go up for Christmas…but that would not be good given we didn’t go up to hers last Christmas and MiL and BiL are not coping with things that well at the moment.
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I am pretty much going into social isolation from now on. Anything picked up from tomorrow onwards means Xmas day self isolating and I would rather avoid that if possible. Think that spending 10 days pretty much not going anywhere is worth it.
 
As Christmas is for many a non religious celebration/holiday, it could be celebrated at any time. Why cant people put it for a few months and have Christmas in say March instead when the picture will be more clear and the weather warmer.
I would prefer August myself. BBQ Turkey :)(y)
 
drdel said:
Explanations would require some specifics which you would then cite as not relevant because I cannot go into the context.

Thus I don't propose to get into an argument to no purpose about the NHS 'business processes' and their implementation. I am not rubbishing staff who are working hard to stand still because of poor processes/controls.

I'm just saying the NHS issues/backlog are not just money unusual COVID demand
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Well, that is rather uninformative, then. I don't know the medics (a vague term, at best) with whom you allege difficulties. It is possible they have a different perspective on the matter.

But I do know that many doctors in the NHS and GP-land are totally pissed off working their arses off, invariably beyond their hours, getting no support from their employers who keep coming up with stupid initiatives designed to look good, but which waste valuable time and resources. In addition, the doctors' pensions are being sneakily limited. Pension is salary postponed, so added to the lack of any meaningful salary increase recently, they are getting shafted. And the employers ra happy to throw them under a bus at a moment's notice, and often do.

I know a fair sample of doctors, mostly in mid-late career but spread across a range of specialties between hospital and GP and I don't think any of them would hesitate before dropping it tomorrow if a better alternative was available, including my OH.

As an example how f-d up the system is, when I was a real doctor, if I was doing a clinic, say a diabetic clinic and a punter told me about a neurology symptom, if I thought it needed seen, I could literally walk the punter round to the neuro clinic round the corner of the OPD, or ask the desk to put them on tomorrows clinic list. Nowadays, if the same situation happens, the clinic doctor has to write to the GP, and ask the GP to write to the neurology clinic and get an appointment. That letter to the GP gets dictated, written by an overseas dictation service, emailed back, reviewed and corrected, the letter goes to the GP, is sorted by reception and put on the GPs large list of correspondence. When they get to it, they need to generate a new letter, possibly fill in a form which if not filled in 100% correctly and fully, will be rejected by an adminidroid and sent back, and then the successful letter is reviewed by a multi-disciplinary team who determine if it will be seen, and if so, when, then a letter is sent to the patient and GP. This means it could be months before the punter is seen and hours of time have been wasted processing the referral. The patient's issue is prolonged, possibly gets much worse and much time and money is wasted.

My OH met a friend, a local GP recently, and the GP mentioned he was disappointed that she couldn't see a certain patient he referred to her. She said she didn't remember the case but would look into it. She discovered that a letter had been sent, addressed to her personally, but was processed by the team and rejected, without anyone telling her, a letter was sent out in her name rejecting it, with a scratchy signature that would be presumed to be hers. She blew a gasket and told her team that if anyone ever sent a letter out in her name again without her explicit agreement, she would report it to the police as fraud and pretending to be a registered medical practitioner. If that person had come to a sticky end and a coroner's case or criminal prosecution had followed, she would have been standing in court defending something she had not done but had no proof of and couldn't remember.
 
Ethan said:
As an example how f-d up the system is, when I was a real doctor, if I was doing a clinic, say a diabetic clinic and a punter told me about a neurology symptom, if I thought it needed seen, I could literally walk the punter round to the neuro clinic round the corner of the OPD, or ask the desk to put them on tomorrows clinic list. Nowadays, if the same situation happens, the clinic doctor has to write to the GP, and ask the GP to write to the neurology clinic and get an appointment. That letter to the GP gets dictated, written by an overseas dictation service, emailed back, reviewed and corrected, the letter goes to the GP, is sorted by reception and put on the GPs large list of correspondence. When they get to it, they need to generate a new letter, possibly fill in a form which if not filled in 100% correctly and fully, will be rejected by an adminidroid and sent back, and then the successful letter is reviewed by a multi-disciplinary team who determine if it will be seen, and if so, when, then a letter is sent to the patient and GP. This means it could be months before the punter is seen and hours of time have been wasted processing the referral. The patient's issue is prolonged, possibly gets much worse and much time and money is wasted.
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I think you have pretty much proved the point being suggested with this example, unless I lost the point in translation. This is an appalling waste of time and money, adding unnecessary delays and layers of beauracracy into the system. Why does this continue when it is so obviously flawed?
 
Lord Tyrion said:
I think you have pretty much proved the point being suggested with this example. This is an appalling waste of time and money, adding unnecessary delays and layers of beauracracy into the system. Why does this continue when it is so obviously flawed?
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My guess would be these “efficiencies” are forced upon Doctors/Nurses etc in the name of saving money whilst failing to listen to or take their worries in to consideration.

It was well reported how low moral was in the NHS prior to the pandemic, god knows what it must be like now.
 
Lord Tyrion said:
I think you have pretty much proved the point being suggested with this example. This is an appalling waste of time and money, adding unnecessary delays and layers of beauracracy into the system. Why does this continue when it is so obviously flawed?
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Oh, that is only one tiny everyday example. There are loads more, and lots of unnecessary fragmentation and processes in place. Many of the processes seem to be there to gather activity data which is useful in pricing clinical activity.

I preferred to the old top down command and control system in the NHS, now dismissed by many fans of the Austrian school of economics (Hayek, with a bit of Ayn Rand) as rather Soviet.
 
pauldj42 said:
My guess would be these “efficiencies” are forced upon Doctors/Nurses etc in the name of saving money whilst failing to listen to or take their worries in to consideration.
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I've no doubt. I'm quite sure it drives people nuts. Surely though, there has to be a way for staff to report back to management and for the system to be made better. It is what drives patients crackers when they go into wards. They see things like this and wonder how can it happen. It is so obviously bad, wasteful and time delaying.
 
pauldj42 said:
My guess would be these “efficiencies” are forced upon Doctors/Nurses etc in the name of saving money whilst failing to listen to or take their worries in to consideration.

It was well reported how low moral was in the NHS prior to the pandemic, god knows what it must be like now.
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Turns out that many efficiencies are rather inefficient.
 
Lord Tyrion said:
I've no doubt. I'm quite sure it drives people nuts. Surely though, there has to be a way for staff to report back to management and for the system to be made better. It is what drives patients crackers when they go into wards. They see things like this and wonder how can it happen. It is so obviously bad, wasteful and time delaying.
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Hence my initial point this morning about the NHS being severely under pressure for many a year.
The Staff at all levels have been taken for granted.
 
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