Come on now, that's sales and purchasing 101. Anybody with anything to sell will be trying to contact them. That doesn't mean that 99% of it won't be junk and not fit for purpose. Buying for an organisation as big as the NHS is a complex business, they can't be dealing with local businesses supplying bits and pieces that all need to checked over and sent where it's needed. If they can find it in bulk then that's obviously the way to go and what they have done.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Ok but let’s say your source is China. The world and his dog will be fighting over stock. What’s plan B?
That is grim, really sorry to hear about your pal.
Awful. I’m sure there will be countless knock on effects for people ill with other things.
sorry to hear about your friend
Just lack of weekend reporting? Look at the daily deaths graph here.What happened with deaths in Sweden today? Yesterday was 40, today is 185, and more people in the ICU than yesterday as well.
EDIT: Looking at their data over time it could be a case of the way they're reporting their data.
When there is 900 deaths a day (not counting the extra possible 50% from care homes), I question everything.
I'm not calling into question the success of the Nightingale. I'm calling into question why it is there and it is not being used. Did we build it for the fun of it?
I also don't get why we are waiting to 'reopen' the hospital for normal admissions when we could use the Nightingale for COVID-19 patients and let the hospitals resume their normal operating policy now. Why delay treatment for cancer/transplant patients and such when there is clearly capacity to take the COVID-19 patients elsewhere?
I’m very confused about this Nightingale confusion. It’s not an actual new hospital, it’s a building that has been repurposed. It doesn’t have anywhere near the resources as a proper hospital, it was there for exceptional circumstances.
Your raw material will still probably come from the same place, regardless who makes it.
But these are already exceptional circumstances no? I mean, how much more exceptional does it need to get before it is used?
That is what I don't get.
Yeah that's the graph that lead me to think it's a reporting thing. Today isn't on the graph yet and will be higher that everything they've seen before.
That was my understanding yeah.
Well, from my P.O.V, considering some experts were stating that we'd have 200,000 deaths from covid19, the government obviously planned for a worst case scenario and also I think they've been surprised by how well-behaved most of society has been with this lockdown. They probably thought that by now, we'd be notching up 2,000 deaths a day (don't forget, another expert felt that by 17/04, the UK would notch 2,492 deaths or even 3,492, I can't remember the exact number. Either way, it was more than 2 (sorry, mistake/typo) x more than what we actually did hit.
You were insinuating that the rate of death it's down to poor healthcare from the NHS and that by filling the capacity of the field hospitals will somehow reduce this rate of death.
It's an exhibition centre, not a hospital. The expertise and the equipment are at the hospital, the priority to put all patients should be there. Field hospitals are going to be for patients that are through the worst of the virus. The delays are pretty much down to moving all available staff, not capacity, onto dealing with the virus, my other half included. Used to be working in the community and called back immediately to be on the frontline. However your comment in bold kinda summises it fully enough for me.
Plan B is make sure you have a backup supply chain in your home country that can meet surge requirements. Nobody did that though, not just the UK.
The world and his dog is fighting over stock from China and the media is taking great pleasure in printing it on every spare column inch. So far i haven't seen much to suggest they've been unable to match demand, most of the world has been turning to them when their own supply chains have let them down. They definitely bailed Italy and Spain out in the early days.
Whatever happens it's clear that, for example, we couldn't have 50 different labs all over the country administering tests, or 100 different factories manufacturing ventilator valves. The quality control would be impossible and it's not something we can afford to make mistakes on.
They're exhibition centres, just big pieces of space. I had a stand booking at the ExCel on the weekend they decided to purpose it into a field hospital.
So what you're telling me is that Nightingale is not fit for purpose and it is rather more like an aftercare centre? What is your message here?
Edit: And even if it is just an aftercare centre (which I can accept), why is it empty? Are there not a lot of patients who are recovering? Are patients getting sent home straight from hospital when they get better instead? Things just do not make sense about the purpose of the Nightingale.
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It's not even for ICU patients is it?
Italian PM has just announced distancing and masks will be compulsory until a vaccine or a treatment is found. I hope he has a plan for where all these masks will come from. 
You can't read. They're all exhibition centres, and Nightingale is a field hospital. It's designed as a way to deal with the overflow, if you have a capacity at a hospital with expertise and equipment then why would you go to a field hospital? Do we have to go down the route of explaining what a field hospital is for you?
Nope, a field hospital is not an intensive care unit.
I just got information from my bro in law that it looks like it's getting better. He said down 40% in his hospital. He thinks the virus is changing too. Maybe not so deadly as before.
That latter sentence would be massive news if it pans out.
According to the nurse in this video the patients arrive straight from intensive care, are intubated and their job is to bring them on from that point to get them breathing on their own.
I'm guessing their job is to relieve pressure on intensive care after the patient starts to recover a bit?
Early in the crisis a work colleague was infected and within two days was in hospital having an operation on his throat to help his breathing. I do not think a Nightingale hospital is going to help cases like that.
I suspect the hospitals get the patients to a certain level of health before they get sent to the Nightingale. They probably also allow a certain amount of flexibility in future planning. If the proverbial really did hit the fan and the hospitals really didn't have any capacity, at least they would have somewhere for the ambulances to drop off.
Did he mention how it's changing?
That's the lockdown doing it's thing, certainly taken the load off the NHS which was the plan. It's about managing these numbers now once we open the country up again.
Cheers, makes sense.
I can read but you're not explaining it very well. If you didn't mention that you had an other half who worked in the NHS and that I think you might have some inside info, I wouldn't give you the time of day.
I get that you're telling me there is capacity in the hospitals and there is no need to use the Nightingale as it is only a field hospital with no expertise and equipment. I GET THAT.
My question is, if there is excess capacity and our health system isn't being overwhelmed, why are there 900+ people a day still dying? The main reason for a high death count in other countries is due to the health system being overwhelmed so ours must be a different reason.
I'm a doctor (but not the medical kind unfortunately) so please do not speak to me like I am stupid.
Cant win government under prepare and people moan, government over prepare and people moan aswell.
The nightingale clinical admission, certainly the London one, is to receive lower risk Covid patients. It would suggest it would be those stronger patients, or those exiting the worst part of the virus on the lungs. The HSJ has some good articles which covers this and gives insight into how the London hospitals are improving capacity, certainly in ICU.
The time to death definitely slows down over time, that's happened everywhere. Whether it's the virus getting weaker or just the weaker people are picked off early i don't know.
A friend of mine in the UK said they see that people have about 3 days to show signs of improvement after hospital admission to have a good prognosis.
People are dieing because this is a dangerous virus and lots of people are getting it. It is not as a result of a lack of hospital capacity. Could be a mixture of population density, levels of pollution and general lack of health in the UK population. I dread to think what the number of deaths might have been had we not implemented the lockdown which would have most likely overwhelmed the NHS completely.
feck, that close up of Laura K was terrifying.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the health of people in the UK is pretty shocking as is our obesity rates. That has a massive contribution. Others have said alot of other countries are worse than us in the regard so I could be wrong.
Also, don't think we beat Italy with our old age, but we do have a hell of a lot of old people. Not sure how we compare to other countries in that respect though.
You're still going to get death's with this disease, no matter what. There is no vaccine for it, so you're left at the strength of the patient and to have no previous or existing health issues to make a recovery from it. That's not to say everyone that gets it, and has health issues, doesn't recover. It's well known that the older demographic have weaker immune systems and are more susceptible for it. Literally the only thing the healthcare system can manage is patients oxygen levels, and using appropriate ventilation techniques (using a variety of machines) to give patients enough oxygen in their lungs to assist their recovery.
The other element is that we're still getting deaths from 3-4 weeks ago of people who may have not followed guidance on social distancing. We're seeing now, tragically, of healthcare professionals on the frontline dying as they become exposed to it (I'll save the governments shocking response on PPE for another day). So in short, we'll still see deaths. From getting the virus, to death can take as much as 3-4 weeks. So we're still going to see some deaths for more weeks, and certainly in the future as the government wants to open up the country. Obvious social distancing will be the major mitigation to manage the peaks until a virus is found.
I treat everyone equal and only based on their output, can't say fairer than that.
Probably due to there being no known cure for covid-19.
The ventilators don't cure patients, they just keep them going to buy time in the hope the patients body can fight off the disease.
I didn't want to say it, but there is visual correlation of obesity and deaths from this virus. My own personal belief is that it has a huge contribution, but hopefully scientists will explore that angle further in the coming months.
I believe it maybe social distancing, we are learning how to manage acute care, virulence of virus changing its characteristics maybe, weather- as higher temperatures outside maybe increasing cross ventilation....multifactorial... we will know when we analyse our studies...
Interesting, keep us posted on his updates.
But you would have other weaker people coming in for them?
Worrying thing is most of us who are at home now are probably living a less healthy life style now.