SoapMactavish

I think as the risk of folk dying comes down then the proportion of people dying while positive for covid will come down. I haven’t seen much in the way of positive asymptomstic cases in Hospitals, most folk are symptomatic or are asymptomatic at the time of testing and then develop symptoms. Thankfully as a result of treatment we are better at stopping punters getting sicker and also the ones coming in are generally not as sick. Some folk, similar to the previous waves are coming in too sick and at that point its anyones guess. All that being said, and believe me after 18 months of watching folk suffocate to death I want things back to how they used to be, if every hospital is having to have 1 or 2 wards set aside for Covid as well as a number of ITU beds then things will never be back to the way they were before. Another couple of misconceptions are: - Its just the like flu; it isn’t its considerably more dangerous, more infectious and with a much more complex pattern of complications - its just “fatties” or folk with a multitude of underlying conditions that get real sick with it. It isn’t. Sure these folk will get ill but the overwhelming majority of people I’ve seen in ITU have had very mild things like well controlled diabetes or mild asthma.

Just a point of order here, the whole ‘are they in hospital with Covid or just an incidental finding’ patter is doing my nut in. Similar to the whole ‘did they die with Covid or of Covid’ argument, which is also a load of shite. See also ‘bUt tHeY gOt HiT bY a CaR’ type things. Similar to the following point, People testing positive from Covid who go on to die are amost certainly dead directly as a result of it, or it is a significant contributing factor in their death. i.e. someone who has Covid dies of Bacteria Pneumonia, which they got as a result of ventilation required to support their breathing will still technically be classed as a Covid death due to Covid being a significant factor. The Virus itself isn’t what actually kills people most of the time, its the ARDS, the blood clots on the lungs, ruptured lungs etc that do them in. the vast majority of people in hospital (>95%) who have a positive PCR test are symptomatic to some degree with Covid, be that mildly sick or on things like breathing support. /medicine

That is fucking wild patter. Even if most people are significantly less likely to get ill with it, if you let everyone bloody get it you’ll still have a lot of pressure on the NHS. I don’t know why people don’t understand this. I’ve just seen a guy in his mid 40’s get intubated, no underlying conditions at all.

Yeah of course but there is a lag at weekends for whatever reason. The net number each day across the country is between 60 and 100 admissions.

Admissions aren’t falling though, they are pretty much continuing unabated so far. We’ve had 3 covid admissions in the last hour alone. Admissions aren’t going to peak until the end of the month. The scot.gov figures from today say there is only 3 admissions across the country which is utter nonsense, I have no idea where that comes from. edited to add a side note that we are getting significantly more younger people admitted. Not kids but 30-50 year olds. Of all our ITU patients currently, something like 2/3rds of them are under 60. Very few people at the age of 80 or so are fit for ITU.

Rates might have flattened for now, but number of hospital admissions isn’t going well. Else we wouldn’t be clearing 8 extra wards and preparing our 2 surge ICU’s. People need to remember that the average time from infection to symptoms is 7 days, then the average time to be ill enough to require hospital admission seems to be 10-12 days. A lot of people don’t realise how sick they are with this until they are really, really sick. Infections going down does not immediately impact on hospital admissions. Very concerned that the next few weeks are looking like we will see massive numbers of admissions. Scot.gov figures aren’t 100% up to date with numbers in hospital either. Squeaky bum time.

Its hard to say in all fairness as it isn’t something I’ve noticed before with other conditions. Perhaps its similar but its likely the sheer number of infections that are causing the amount of people I am seeing with more chronic symptoms. 2018-2019 was a bad flu year numbers wise but there was not a notable amount of people coming in months later. Could just be observer bias that I didn’t notice it before, but its signifcant if you see 30 patients referred for chest imaging and around half of them have previous covid infection and ongoing symptoms. Lung function tests and imaging mainly for physical symptoms. A significant amount of folk have lasting damage visible on chest x-rays months and months after which isn’t the case with the majority of respiratory infections. Its a strange old disease, some people were presenting (and still are) with fairly mild symptoms but a horrendous looking chest (insert kenneth williams image here) and silent hypoxia. If it wasn’t so much of a pain in the arse it would be really interesting to study.

Just to address the whole” lOnG cOvId iS a HoAx” on here. There is categorically a post-covid syndrome of some sort, particularly in regard to people still having chest issues like breathlessness, chest pain etc a long way down the line from the actual acute infection. I am seeing on a daily basis significant numbers of patients attending with these symptoms 8,9 or even 10 months after getting infected intially. Some are bad enough to need admitted through ED. Call it long covid or whatever you want but it does exist and is not the same as post viral fatigue.

Hairmyres going the same way. Talk of 700 patients by February across the 3 sites.

It was true until 4pm today when we were all told that today was the last elective list we’d be doing for a while. Not good. This was in Lanarkshire though. I fear the days ahead are going to be grim.

I think the modelling I’ve seen was estimating between 2900 and 8300 (worst case scenario) people in hospital by 1/2/2021. As it stands we are slightly more biased to the worst case scenario but not by much which is good. But even 3000 odd in hospital is 25% of all beds which is not good. That being said the NHS is currently continuing with all elective work so thats good. Plan I believe is to carry on with that until it reaches a point that its not feasible or safe. tl:dr NHS Scotland ^^^

They can be staffed. However that requires the cancelling of all but emergency care. Cancelling breast screening programs to provide Radiographers for example. We had staff volunteered and ready to go during the first wave. Its supposed to be on a week standby to receive covid patients so if that point comes (which I hope it doesn’t) then we’ll find out about it I’m sure. We seem to be grimly continuing with frivoulous scheduled care until the bitter end, so thats a laugh.

Looks like its fucked again boys, batten down the hatches. edit to add, its concerning that a lot of the fash elements of twitter are increasingly jumping on the anti-vax bandwagon.

Booked in for my first dose of the vaccine on Wednesday

Absolutely scunnered that “some of you may die, but that’s a price we’re willing to pay for Christmas” seems to be the latest fuckhanded government response. The last 9 months have been the most horrendous of my career, mentally and physically I am almost spent. I don’t know how many more times I can look people in the eye and tell then they’ll be okay and we’ll look after them when I know having seen their Chest x-ray that its all bullshit. Still, at least we got an applause for a few weeks.

I think if there’s ever a competition for “Most fiting metaphor to describe government incompetence” then Boris Johnson getting Covid-19 twice has got to be up there. Mop-haired fud.

The issue is people admitted to critical care with covid, particularly those ventilated ones, can be there for months. People seldom are in ITU for that length of time with many other conditions. I know we were taking on ITU patients from Monklands and Wishaw. Hairmyres just went with the pre-emptive burn the infected approach. edit to add, I start a new job in NHS Lanarkshire soon, pray for me P&B

Got to love the Right Hon. Mrs Bunfield for Antrim declaring (in a few more steps) “No Surrender to the Covid-19”

It’s regular bed capacity (don’t know whether that includes ITU). Where I work ITU capacity is apparently 14 beds and we currently have 13 full. Exciting times ahead

We have a total capacity of 18 normally (ITU 1 & 2 with 9 beds each). We reopened the third ITU (also 9 beds), which was closed, purely for covid which is currently full. To answer your question we are busier than normal with ITU 2&3 now “red zones”. The concern is if we continue to be getting 1/2 admissions a day.

For all these “tEh SeCoNd wAvE iZ fAkE” posters. We currently have more than 10 patients in our ITU with Covid. Including someone younger than me (I’m 30). We do not ever have more than maybe 2/3 patients in ITU with the flu over the course of a typical winter. Stop being c***s.

I’d love to bring you into our Covid ICU and just let you have a good old breath or two of the air. Without a mask of course. Surely nothing to worry about.