Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[beefybake]

55 minutes ago, Suspect Device said:

OK, no. Accepting that old people in care homes die, yes. They died before covid and they will die of other things. Not sure why you would take this to court. 

And it's not a big bad Westminster thing. All governments did the same when they thought they'd need the hospital beds. 

It was understandable when they didn't know how the pandemic was going to pan out.

Your general attitude looks like ....  Yeah, bung em in a care home, and after that, who gives a sh*t..?.."

 

[Michael W]

15 minutes ago, Left Back said:

Conveniently neither are now in post so we all know what's going to happen.

Cummings and Hancock  with their public spat have already laid the groundwork to get the rest of the UK government off the hook.

A wise decision from Freeman, who took the perfect opportunity to stand down. 

The gormless Hancock would've still been standing there oblivious to the oncoming bus were he not caught breaking his own rules. 

"The previous person did it, lessons have been learned" - the perfect excuse to sweep it away. 

11 minutes ago, 101 said:

They have already been found to have acted unlawfully in the handling of Covid contracts. Absolutely no one is going to be facing and kind of punishment for their actions.

Hancock is out the way, so of course it'll be pinned on him to the relief of everyone else. 

The other people I was referring to are the likes of SAGE and the SG's medical advisors. I refuse to believe that 4 Health Secretarys/Ministers independently arrived at the same policy decision without strong guidance leading them to it. That none of them seem to have questioned it is alarming. 

Edited April 27, 2022 by Michael W

[Suspect Device]

13 minutes ago, beefybake said:

Your general attitude looks like ....  Yeah, bung em in a care home, and after that, who gives a sh*t..?.."

 

No. I would prefer to not even have the care home. I hope to f**k I die before I have to endure the shit my Gran and my wife's Dad had. Waste away as any semblance of dignity is stripped from you.

I was glad my parents died before it came to care home time.

[vikingTON]

13 minutes ago, beefybake said:

Your general attitude looks like ....  Yeah, bung em in a care home, and after that, who gives a sh*t..?.."

 

What was the reasonable alternative? A hospital is not equipped with spare capacity to be an indefinite holding pen for people who *aren't ill* and the reason why their destination was a care home was that they were incapable of living independently in the community. 

This is what happens when a litigious claim focuses on the harms that did happen, without seriously reflecting on what the reasonable alternative would have been. There wasn't one. 

[beefybake]

17 minutes ago, virginton said:

What was the reasonable alternative? A hospital is not equipped with spare capacity to be an indefinite holding pen for people who *aren't ill* and the reason why their destination was a care home was that they were incapable of living independently in the community. 

This is what happens when a litigious claim focuses on the harms that did happen, without seriously reflecting on what the reasonable alternative would have been. There wasn't one. 

If you'd bother reading the original link, you'd see that the case was about the willy nilly exiting of people to care homes, whether they were or were not

carriers of Covid, into environments not set up for protection against it.

Sorry..., more whataboutery, and diversion from you by the looks of it. 

[craigkillie]

He's correct though. This is ambulance chasing stuff. The governments all had a tough choice to make, and whatever they did would likely have led to deaths somewhere. If they hadn't made this decision no doubt someone would have taken action about the deaths caused by a lack of available hospital beds.

[Albus Bulbasaur]

Can anyone remember what the state of PPE was like at this time? I know it wasn't available in care homes, was it the same in hospitals? 

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, Michael W said:

Chucking oldies into care homes full of people that are either incapable or are too unwell to look after themselves without bothering to check if they had covid was a predicable disaster. The virus could well have ended up in care homes anyway, but it's a reasonable conclusion that the policy resulted in more people dying at the time. It's astonishing it was allowed to happen when people had no such vulnerabilities were very quickly locked down and allowed out their house once a day to go for a walk. 

They weren't oldies being grabbed off the streets and chucked into a random care home though. They were old people who were *already in hospital*, had no medical reason to remain there and had to go somewhere else where regular care of their needs was required. 

The court verdict seems to think that there was some fucking magical new care setting that could have sprung up from the ground to deal with this insoluble problem. It's not grounded in reality. 

[Albus Bulbasaur]

15 minutes ago, virginton said:

They weren't oldies being grabbed off the streets and chucked into a random care home though. They were old people who were *already in hospital*, had no medical reason to remain there and had to go somewhere else where regular care of their needs was required. 

The court verdict seems to think that there was some fucking magical new care setting that could have sprung up from the ground to deal with this insoluble problem. It's not grounded in reality. 

Does this include the ones that actually had covid?

I know for a fact people were discharged into care homes that were covid positive that then subsequently spread it to people in the homes without covid which resulted in them both dying. 

Edited April 27, 2022 by Albus Bulbasaur

[Captain Saintsible]

4 hours ago, virginton said:

What was the reasonable alternative? A hospital is not equipped with spare capacity to be an indefinite holding pen for people who *aren't ill* and the reason why their destination was a care home was that they were incapable of living independently in the community. 

This is what happens when a litigious claim focuses on the harms that did happen, without seriously reflecting on what the reasonable alternative would have been. There wasn't one. 

They could have just left them in hospital.

The hospitals were a third empty during the first wave. The projected numbers that were modelled never arrived and it was obvious at the time that they never would.

However, it wouldn’t have made any difference though. Those that were vulnerable would have caught it wherever they were.

The real crime is not shunting old folk out of hospital into care homes. The real crime was effectively shutting down the NHS to non covid issues. It’s caused thousands of collateral deaths.

Lockdowns were a means for the middle class left to protect themselves at the expense of the vulnerable and the working class. A means that was doomed to failure anyway. 

[Captain Saintsible]

1 hour ago, oaksoft said:

What you've described is the consequence of decades of running the NHS into the ground.

If you want to talk about "reality", there it is right there.

It certainly shouldn't be used as justification for their actions.

 

The NHS has been “run into the ground” by management and bureaucracy, not lack of funding. 

[DeeTillEhDeh]

What was the reasonable alternative? A hospital is not equipped with spare capacity to be an indefinite holding pen for people who *aren't ill* and the reason why their destination was a care home was that they were incapable of living independently in the community. 
This is what happens when a litigious claim focuses on the harms that did happen, without seriously reflecting on what the reasonable alternative would have been. There wasn't one. 

Not to mention the hindsight rewriting of history by some.

[Captain Saintsible]

2 hours ago, Albus Bulbasaur said:

Does this include the ones that actually had covid?

I know for a fact people were discharged into care homes that were covid positive that then subsequently spread it to people in the homes without covid which resulted in them both dying. 

They might have caught it from staff or recent visitors. There is no way of knowing.

Folk in care homes have a very limited life span. Locking them away and denying them visitors for the past 2 years was completely pointless. Who wants to live their last few months like that? 

[DeeTillEhDeh]

They weren't oldies being grabbed off the streets and chucked into a random care home though. They were old people who were *already in hospital*, had no medical reason to remain there and had to go somewhere else where regular care of their needs was required. 
The court verdict seems to think that there was some fucking magical new care setting that could have sprung up from the ground to deal with this insoluble problem. It's not grounded in reality. 

There's also the assumption that there was an effective test for Covid at that point.

There wasn't - there were a variety of tests but it wasn't until the end of May 2020 that studies showed there were only 4 relatively reliable tests.

This looks like a classic damned if they did and damned if they didn't.

If they hadn't emptied hospitals I think the same people complaining now would be complaining why their relatives had been kept in hospital.

It was never a black and white decision but a decision between people dying in care homes and people dying in hospitals.

[Left Back]

Never expected to see a mass of opinion defending actions by UK gov.

[Albus Bulbasaur]

35 minutes ago, Captain Saintsible said:

They might have caught it from staff or recent visitors. There is no way of knowing.

Folk in care homes have a very limited life span. Locking them away and denying them visitors for the past 2 years was completely pointless. Who wants to live their last few months like that? 

You're right I couldn't be 100% certain. It's well within the scope of being the likely answer. People with covid symptoms that hadn't been tested were placed into care homes though which is pretty dodgy by any standards. 

As you said in a different post the lack of other treatments being denied was crazy. The care home I'm referencing pretty much had a lot of preventable deaths occur. It was extremely hard to get doctors out to visit patients due to whatever risk standards they had in place.  There were people that should have been in hospital that were left to be given health care and end of life treatment by care workers not people medically trained. That's callous by anyone's standards imo. Not pointing the blame at any particular politican and decisions were off course very difficult but it's hard not to reflect on some of the shambolic decisions made at the time. 

[Left Back]

2 minutes ago, Albus Bulbasaur said:

You're right I couldn't be 100% certain. It's well within the scope of being the likely answer. People with covid symptoms that hadn't been tested were placed into care homes though which is pretty dodgy by any standards. 

As you said in a different post the lack of other treatments being denied was crazy. The care home I'm referencing pretty much had a lot of preventable deaths occur. It was extremely hard to get doctors out to visit patients due to whatever risk standards they had in place.  There were people that should have been in hospital that were left to be given health care and end of life treatment by care workers not people medically trained. That's callous by anyone's standards imo. Not pointing the blame at any particular politican and decisions were off course very difficult but it's hard not to reflect on some of the shambolic decisions made at the time. 

I’m not saying this isn’t true.  It may well be but isn’t part of this discussion the lack of acknowledgement of asymptomatic  transmission?  Governments seemed to be in denial about this.

[Elixir]

Btw, I'm genuinely surprised at just how quickly mask compliance has melted away. Was expecting a reasonable number of hingers on for several weeks yet but it's genuinely about 10-20% at best. Even plenty of auld biddies have had enough. Very pleasing.

[gmca]

1 hour ago, Left Back said:

I’m not saying this isn’t true.  It may well be but isn’t part of this discussion the lack of acknowledgement of asymptomatic  transmission?  Governments seemed to be in denial about this.

Boris said in parliament today the scientists weren't aware at the time that asymptomatic transmission was a thing. No doubt that will be looked at in any inquiry (he says in a rare moment of optimism).

Got a text today advising the Highest Risk list will be ended on 31st May because vaccines and treatments mean those most vulnerable are only as likely to fall seriously ill as the rest of the public.

[Left Back]

2 minutes ago, gmca said:

Boris said in parliament today the scientists weren't aware at the time that asymptomatic transmission was a thing. No doubt that will be looked at in any inquiry (he says in a rare moment of optimism).

Got a text today advising the Highest Risk list will be ended on 31st May because vaccines and treatments mean those most vulnerable are only as likely to fall seriously ill as the rest of the public.

If he told me water was wet I wouldn’t believe the c**t.

I can’t be arsed to dig out the details just now but I’m pretty sure asymptomatic transmission was being talked about by Whitty or Vallance before the care homes were emptied.  This all came out during the committees where Cummings and Hancock were going at it.

Cummings claimed Hancock said people would be tested before being discharged to care homes.  Hancock said something like tested when capacity was available.  Certainly neither of them denied testing should have been done or that tests at that time weren’t accurate.

The obvious question then would be if asymptomatic transmission wasn’t possible why would you need to test people?  One position contradicts the other.