reohn2 wrote: ↑18 Aug 2022, 8:16am
al_yrpal wrote: ↑17 Aug 2022, 7:14pm
Told you, "living in hope". One thing, new Moderna vaccine for us oldsters. Bringing those temporary Nightingale hospitals back into use to help tackle the NHS backlog.
Al
Whilst I agree with you about vaccines,those nightingale hospitals are useless,as they were duringnthe first wave of Covid,without doctors,nurses and auxiliary staff,a shortage due to poor pay and conditions.
I don't think people are aware of just how bad the situation is in the NHS,it's hanging on with it's finger nails with burned out staff due to over work due to short staffing,people are leaving in their droves
This is so true, the general public do not realise quite how bad a state our healthcare is in. From personal observations and chatting with nurses and paramedics, plus one or two doctors, things are really bad. Too much poor management, too few people on the shop floor and relations between the two sound to be less than good. The lowish pay is clearly a factor, hugely so where housing is excessively expensive, but for many I suspect the poor working conditions are at least as much of the problem.
Recent Secretaries of State have proved poor also, threatening to sack tens of thousands over compliance then rowing back on this at the last minute for some but not others. Wasn't Javid a City banker? Germany has almost four times as many beds as we do, it costs around one third more. I do wonder if the NHS isn't like a supertanker which has lost its rudder, no matter how many tugs are connected up, its course can barely be changed without another huge vessel pulling it around.
Regaring the pop-up hospitals, the data from the Diamond Princess cruise ship (March 2020, suggesting the case mortality risk of the original Wuhan strain to be just under 2% in its generally older/elderly First World passengers) gave an insight into what could be expected as the disease spread around the country. So that even with only limited isolation (the Diamond Princess had air recirculating between cabins, staff continued to come into contact with passengers even after people were isolated to their cabins) I'd be surprised if the Government was being advised there was much of a chance they'd be needed for dying patients spilling over from existing hospitals, to be tended by emergency (vets, military) nursing.
Given this and the lack of trained staff, why build them at all? Firstly it was likely to be judged good for public morale and Government popularity, secondly a useful exercise to see how quickly and effectively such things could be built. After all, we're being warned there's another pandemic on its way.