Yea I’ve know quite a few who have had it this fall/ winter. Didn’t know anyone last spring.
But the bigger question is, they had almost a full year to prep for an increase and they don’t have an emergency plan for a rush of hospitalizations?
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valid point, definitely. but there's the problem that medical practitioners get COVID too and are sometimes out for long stretches of time. there's only so many retirees in the medical field, volunteers who have a basic medical knowledge, med students, Red cross workers, army meds etc. that you can substitute those with
while you can always create more space, more beds, buy more medical supplies (which they still might have not done in the right amounts, which is part of your argument I think) you can't create aptly medically trained 'manpower' within 9 to 10 months in large numbers
also, and we have to be honest here, people who work in homes for the elderly only get very basic medical training (at least down here). they are not even officially called nurses but 'caregivers' - so those who own those homes can pay them less. down here it took ages for those caregivers to grasp what COVID was (in general : how viruses can behave), what protection was necessary and especially how NOT to infect patients when doing their rounds. the anecdotes are plenty. caretakers stuffing their one time use only facemasks in their pockets, taking it home, using it again the next day, using the same equipment from patient to patient without disinfecting items. really basic stuff, things everybody on wucorp knows about just because, but they don't because - again, let's be real here - some of them are REALLY on the slow side and took caregiver classes as the highest possible degree for them.
I don't want to sound like a cunt (I do) but I taught caregivers age 16 and onward, trust me, you don't feel safe knowing these are the kind of people that will take care of you in your old age
just one anecdote, there was a volunteer down here with basic medical training who decided to surprise the elderly at the home where his father also resided by turning up in (the local version of) a Santaclaus suit, taking pictures with them, standing right next to them etc. caregivers assisted him without asking any questions. this happened early December. it turns out he was infected with COVID but asymptomatic and had not taken a test before going to the home for the elderly. by now 27 residents have died (tests have shown they carry the same strain as the volunteer) and very large numbers have been infected. he has received death threats and the home for the elderly is being taken to court
anyway, you've got a whole bunch of people that needed urgent medical training first (and they received it on the go during the first wave and afterwards) and those who taught them could not be used elsewhere to train others, or to a lesser extent
what this health crisis shows is that, probably, in some countries more (tax) money should be spent in the medical field BUT MAKE THAT MONEY COUNT don't squander it where it isn't needed
Hal, you knocked it out of the park there.
They’ve spent trillions? This year.
It seems like a hospital has popped up on every corner in the past 20 years around here with the Cleveland Clinic. They occupy blocks upon clocks of a part of the city. I see more medical workers than I can ever remember.
I don’t know. Doesn't seem like it’s money over there.
It just further proof on how incompetant the British government is. Ofcourse the mutation complicated things but they should have been prepared. We came out of lockdown on the 4th of December, in the 2 weeks after London was absolutely packed for example. Roads were closed for cars while full of people. Shopping centres, Oxford street was packed. The Govt encouraged people to shop and spend money. So they did that. The Covid numbers dipped to around 12,000 cases a day, then it just shot up. Before Christmas it was 30k a day, now today it's 60k. 1 in 50 people in England have Covid-19 as of today.
The Vaccine rollout has been slow and they finally admitted it will be mid March until they get all the vulnerable vaccinated. It is what it is but yeah now I'm starting to hear people dying, relatives of friends, neighbours whatever. It's completely out of control at the moment.
England is a war zone right now.
I went camping, come back to civilisation and suddenly it's a $200 fine for not wearing masks in shops which are mandatory now because the china flu is spreading? Fuckin hell, because some cunt ate a bat 18 months ago I couldn't go in the servo to get a coffee because I didn't have a mask.
Off topic, it's pretty awesome to see the rapid decline of the UK and the USA in real time - it's not karma but there's a lot of "what goes around comes around" happening. The American stereotype of being loud and stupid might be true but honestly the English are dumbest cunts of the lot.
in London 1 in 30 people has COVID right now
Yeah it's really fucking bad at the moment. Someone down my street died today from it. Another been in hospital for a few weeks now.
That's whats eventually going to happen as it's spread so fast. The hospitals are 1-2 days away from having no more room though. London right now is the worst any city barring Wuhan has been since the start of this.
London is densely populated, and some people have still had to travel in and out for work, it only takes one or two people not taking precautions and then it snowballs.
It's just about mitigation - shut everything down while they vaccinate. My grandparents got theirs last week.