Hate to break it to you but there's no such thing as Labour. UK has been a one-party system since Tory f'kin Blair
Bigotry is abound, apprently, within these boards. There is a level of supposed tolerance I will have no part of. Obviously, it seems to be well-embraced here. I have finally found something more fucked up than what I'm used to. Congrats. - Ruby
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Show posts MenuQuote from: Cain on March 04, 2020, 12:02:21 PM
A good thing we didn't think the NHS needed more funding or anything
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/03/icu-doctor-nhs-coronavirus-pandemic-hospitalsQuoteICU treats patients whose lives are at risk or whose organs have failed. Severe Covid-19 leads mostly to lung failure but also causes kidney and cardiovascular (heart and blood vessel) failure. All these are rapidly fatal without intense and prompt treatments only available in ICU. In simple terms, treatments include a ventilator taking over the patient's breathing while the patient is anaesthetised (placed in an induced coma), a dialysis machine cleaning the blood and drugs or machines supporting the heart and blood pressure. The reality of care is, of course, considerably more complex and highly intensive.
So let's look at some statistics: it is likely that more than 30% of the whole UK population will get Covid-19 – it may be as high as 60% in some estimates. Most will have no or mild illness but maybe one in seven will need hospital admission. Of patients in hospital up to one in five may need ICU care – that would be an unprecedented number of people admitted to ICU. As many as one in 50 of patients known to have Covid-19 may die from it.
ICU is a precious and scarce resource in terms of beds, staff and equipment. This is especially so in the UK. In 2012 the UK had about 4,100 critical care beds including ICU beds and "high dependency" beds which are a step down from full ICU care. Compared with other European countries the UK ranked 23rd of 31 in terms of ICU beds per head of population and 29th of 31 for all hospital beds. Germany has approximately four times as many ICU beds per capita as the UK and the USA perhaps 10-fold as many. Data from 2017 suggest little change. Most UK ICUs therefore run at or above 90% occupancy and often can only admit new patients only by discharging others – even when workload is normal. Covid-19 will increase pressures not only because of weight of numbers but because intermediate treatments for pneumonia and lung failure are "aerosol-generating" (ie they risk spreading the disease) so cannot be used and early recourse to ICU is required.
Increased ICU demands equate to each ICU bed being needed for approximately 100 more patients than on average in the epidemic period – at least 10 times the normal throughput and equivalent to needing at least another 10 ICUs in the hospital during the epidemic. Of course, this demand will be in addition to, rather than instead of, normal workload as the illnesses that usually require ICU admission will not go away during the epidemic. In Wuhan, ICU capacity was increased by over 1,000 beds in two weeks by building a new hospital, but this is not possible in the UK.
And on and on and on.
If only we'd had some kind of party, running on a platform of reversing the disastrous NHS cuts of the past decade...
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 13, 2020, 03:56:58 PM
If the human race was a horse, it would have to be shot.
Quote from: Cain on January 14, 2020, 03:08:52 PMQuote from: Doktor Howl on January 14, 2020, 02:52:56 PMQuote from: Cain on January 14, 2020, 02:39:29 PM
Why would you aim at 2004, of all the years?
2004 was fucking terrible.
Well, yes. To warn you about 2005.
Did I miss anything interesting from 2006 to now?
Nothing major, but, uh, if you could spike Donald Trump's cocaine, that'd be great.