UKH

Is anyone else here remotely concerned that the NHS hospital data is being widely misrepresented by the Tories to justify their lockdown which may or may not save some lives but regardless has huge consequences for jobs, business and the very poorest in society? 

We were in favour of another lockdown but a friend who'd lost their job recently pointed out that we are saying this from a position of being quite comfortably off, in secure jobs, in an industry not really affected too much by Covid measures.  We are not struggling to pay the mortgage or put food on the table and we will still get paid in full at the end of the month regardless of what happens.  I must admit he has a point, hence asking the question posed below in the Telegraph:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/03/hospital-intensive-care-no-busi...

The crux of the article says:

"An update from the NHS Secondary Uses Services (SUS) seen by the Telegraph shows that capacity is tracking as normal in October with the usual numbers of beds available that would be expected at this time of year - even without extra surge capacity. 

An NHS source said: “As you can see, our current position in October is exactly where we have been over the last five years.”

The new data shows that even in the peak in April, critical care beds were never more than 80 per cent full. 

Projected hospital Covid-19 capacity by regions in England:

Although there has been a reduction in surge capacity since the first wave, with the closure of the emergency Nightingale Hospitals, there is still 15 per cent spare capacity across the country - which is fairly normal for this time of year.

The documents show there were 9,138 patients in hospital in England as of 8am on November 2, although had since fallen to 9,077. 

It means Covid-19 patients are accounting for around 10 per cent of general and acute beds in hospitals. But there are still more than 13,000 beds available.

In critical care, around 18 per cent of beds are still unoccupied, although it varies between regions. 

But even in the worst affected areas such as North West, only 92.9 per cent of critical care beds are currently occupied. 

Professor Carl Heneghan: 'Everything is looking at normal levels, and free bed capacity is still significant, even in high dependency units and intensive care'

Commenting on the new data, Professor Carl Heneghan, Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said: “This is completely in line with what is normally available at this time of year".

I have never trusted the Tories but are Boris and his chums trying to deliberately mislead us here, being that their whole argument for lockdown seems based around the NHS being overwhelmed?  Yet the hospital occupancy appears now to be falling, even if just slightly?  Taking this into account, are we really is such a dire crisis as made out?  Please give me some hope.

Out of interest, where are you based?

Chorlton

Hi Julia, so a very brief post on crags and then a very long post on covid, all as a brand shiny new user. 

This is a new situation on here entirely and I am sure no one will doubt your motives at all...

Happy Wednesday!

Hospitalisations are now 10377 not 9077....doubling time is around 15 days.

Do you mean  the lockdown that more Tory MPs are going to vote against than Labour MPs?

Your immediate politicalisation of the issue does nothing to validate the rest of your article 

That's the point isn't it, trolling OP or otherwise. It's not the numbers now, it's what they'll be in two weeks if we don't change something. 

But the point in the article is that capacity always becomes stretched in the Autumn as seasonal respiratory conditions manifest.  This is a normal scenario and to be expected apparently.  Happens every year in the Autumn and Winter except we don't tend to hear about it apart from the usual capacity grumbles. 

Surely in another 15 days we won't be at 20,688, particularly now that the R number is already very low and falling in most areas as I also read this morning?

I can't see why Johnson or the Tories would deliberately lock down the country when there was no need. The need for the lockdown is an admission, dragged from him through gritted teeth, that his efforts have failed - too little, too late and a dysfunctional track and trace system. There are those on the Tory right, who have the ear of the Telegraph, who want to take the 'Trump' route of letting things run free to save the economy. Without entering into the whys and wherefores of the need for the lockdown, the fact that Johnson is doing it means it must be serious. This is a man who still says everything's going to be lovely with Brexit!

Exactly, but people like the OP latch onto the 'hospitals are not full' line and think everything will be ok....

It's frustrating when the likes of The Telegraph pump out this sort of disengenuous argument then then gets spread on forums like this and social media,...

The Telegraph is increasingly full of tosh. I use my eyes and ears to see how bad it is. Most Manchester hospitals are struggling, if not full, Merseyside similar.  A dog walking friend told me his cancer treatment is now on hold (Wigan), where we had 100 covid hospital deaths during October. Given about a three week lag between infection and death, I guesstimate about 150 deaths in my local Hospital for November. The tail off will be much slower than spring. So I am confident (sadly) most parts of NW England will experience more hospital deaths then in spring. 
But most of the press, and our government, increasingly seem to be not bothered about the likes of Wigan. 
Anyway, they need to lockdown in anticipation because if they didn’t they would, eventually, be rammed. 

To prove your interest in climbing please complete the following:

TPS is:

1. HVS

2. E1

3. Other (please state suggested grade)

So in a normal November we have 10k+ patients in with COVID-19?

Of course the NHS gets stretched even without COVID-19 but now we have to deal with all the normal stuff and COVID-19! Hospitals in the worst effected areas are already cancelling non-urgent surgery to free up space....

The doubling time is slowing down very slowly, throughout Oct it was around 13 days....I predict we will hit 20k+ by the 21th Nov though.

Go and check your local hospitals.  I have. Really bad.  Thought you’d have known this. 

Has there ever been a cost benefit analysis done for lockdowns?  i.e. lives saved v's lives cost, factoring all the associated job losses, business failures, national debt etc? 

I am assuming that lives saved will mostly be people in their 80's (or later stages of life), whereas lives cost will include much younger people (cancer screenings missed, suicide, etc).  Therefore should we be measuring things in 'Quality Life Years Saved' rather than actual number of lives?  The suicide stats right now are shocking:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/paramedic-callouts-suicides-attempte...

Exponential growth.  

I'd be interested  to know where you read that; latest figure I can find still give it as over 1  don't  think that qualifies as very low.

Exactly and this is something the anti-lockdown people can never answer beyond the scientists are wrong line....and then they trot out the likes of Gupta or Heneghan to justify this.

Well as an over 60 person, still working and climbing I am in a high risk group.  But hey your quality of life is more important than my life eh?

F***k you!

It's not about saving old peoples lives, it about stopping the NHS being overwhelmed and people who need urgent treatment being turned away from hospitals...the domino effect of this on the economy and society would be huge.

How do you imagine cancers treatments to be helped if the NHS is having to deal with more and more COVID-19 patients? 

I doubt anyone has thought of doing one. 

The real problem here is the dishonesty of Heneghan et al. You can't blame the Telegraph for jumping on this with glee given their position on lockdown, nor a UKC user posting a big news headline (the anti-lockdown trolls here state bogus 'facts' not ask questions).

Wintetree and others have explained and illustrated the mainstream science and data many times that show Heneghan and Gupta are obviously wrong but there is a lot of dirty politics attached to this too:

https://bylinetimes.com/2020/09/23/scamademics-right-wing-lobbying-groups-r...

A typical UKC thread showing why Heneghan is wrong.

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/the_biggest_class_action_lawsui...

There's another sude to the suicide stats. If we let COVID rip through the population there'd be a mental health impact amongst medical staff and families from seeing patients/loved ones choking to death on their own body fluids.

But growth is not exponential:

youtube.com/watch?v=atbnvog1yuI&

If you're right and she's only pretending to be interested in climbing, she's pretending to be a newbie which neatly evades the trap you've set there.  Incredible as it may seem almost everybody is oblivious to the greatest climbing controversy of the last few decades.

I have to say though, it does seem highly suspicious that she initially said "Peaks" and so graciously retracted and went with "Peak" instead after the inevitable.

If the R number gets above one you have exponential growth and that needs stopping. If other measures don't work a lockdown of some sort is the only choice or the NHS will be overwhelmed (as it is close to being in Liverpool and looks worrying across various cities in the north, according to the trusts that run the hospitals). Delaying lockdown will get the virus back under control slower and hence increase the time and required harshness of the lockdown and so will cost the economy more. All talk of a trade off between saving lives versus the protecting economy is plain bullshit.

That's interesting.  Why then were hospitals running at much reduced capacity over the summer?  I know this as a doctor friend told me.  A deliberate decision made to prioritise Covid apparently.  Should we not have been treating those cancer patients during the quieter summer instead?  What gives priority to preventing Covid deaths over all other forms of death?  Surely treating a young mum from curable cancer should take priority over extending the life of someone in their 80's by another couple of years at most?

I would argue that both are intrinsically linked.  That is why rich countries have good healthcare outcomes, long life expectancy and a modern healthcare system.  Poor countries generally tend to have exactly the opposite.

You are arguing very vociferously against lock down based on one article. Why are you choosing to go with this article rather than SAGE, alternative SAGE, the (anti-lockdown inclined) cabinet etc.? You say that the missed treatments for other illnesses are the result of lock down whereas they are the result of not locking down. Do you think the clinicians and manager responsible for cancer treatment are just going to roll over and cancel all elective surgery just knowing they have ample capacity not to? Do you not see that someone undergoing treatment for cancer is more at risk from covid?

Can't be arsed to engage with you on the statistics, plenty of others will do that.  But that's the thing about exponential growth though isn't it - it can take lots of "doubling times" to get to 50% capacity and then just one more and boom!

Also, I have a couple of good friends working at the 'coal face' of the NHS (and if you'll stick around you'll see that a few more post first hand accounts of things on here).  "Overwhelmed" isn't just a numbers thing, everybody is absolutely knackered. 

Nobody can keep working this hard forever, they were already desperately papering over the cracks, now they're covering a lot of Covid related sick leave as well and in case you haven't noticed we just recently decided it seemed like a good idea to get down to some serious hounding EU nationals out of the country, which accounts for a lot of NHS doctors, nurses and others.

I think the opperative word is "not yet." Although Liverpool are already struggling and not doing surgery due to lack of intensive care beds

Have a look at the latest data and see for yourself what you think the outlook is for hospital occupancy:

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/death_scenarios_could_be_four_t...

The question you should be asking is: is the data I am looking at likely to give an accurate picture, or is the Telegraph?

Taking your post at face value, rather than assuming you're deliberately spreading misinformation for money, I'll give you a clue: it isn't the Telegraph. The Telegraph does not attempt to give you accurate information about what is happening in the world. That is not its purpose. Its purpose is to persuade you of a fairly extreme political position which if implemented in policy would rip our society apart, but benefit a small number of disgusting people. That's what the the Telegraph is for. Everyone involved in the Telegraph should be executed.

The NHS switched lot capacity to COVID in March/April in preparation for a surge of people that needed treatment, we didn't know how large the surge would be and the scenes in Italy quite rightly frightened us..

Over the summer this was gradually switched back and the NHS is now trying to run as many normal services as possible and deal with COVID-19.

So I ask you again how will a massive increase in COVID-19 patients help when trying to run normal services or are you suggesting that old people who need urgent care are left to die at home?

You are doing what a lot of people do in focusing on the bad sides of a lockdown....but failing to look at the counterfactual position of what might happen if we don't lock down and the bad sides to that.....if the NHS becomes overwhelmed it will be far more that a lot of old people dying, trust me

You’re a bot. 

Yes they are intrinsically linked in the covid case: they correlate. The idea that a country with a health system in complete chaos will have a more successful economy is just ridiculous. Its not about covid deaths so much, more about a state having no ability of hospitals to function properly. The only exception would be if we just refused to admit covid patients... good luck with that in a democracy when most people who would normally live will die in their hundreds of thousands (even then this would produce a big economic hit).

My life is too short to spend 17 minutes watching a journalist on a YouTube video.  

Unless you can find proper mathematical evidence I am going to go with the mathematicians and the graphs.  

Covid will spread exponentially if left unchecked.  It’s the very basic example of exponential growth.  

If as I suspect you are a journalist yourself and not just a spreader of nonsense then you’d do well to look at Wintertrees graphs.  

If you are just here to spread nonsense then do crack on, enjoy, but don’t underestimate your audience.  This is not Facebook.  

Question for you: if during the April peak only 80% critical care beds full, what’s your view as to what would have happened without the lockdown?

To be fair, exponential may not always be a very useful word in this context.  It simply means that the rate of increase is itself increasing.  Anything for which a doubling time can be calculated is technically exponential, even if that doubling time is quite long*.

So, exponential doesn't necessarily mean explosive, catastrophic, or even very fast.  Of course if the doubling time is, say, about two weeks, in the context of ICU admissions it does mean this sooner rather than later.   

*I'm no mathematician but my source is unimpeachable - Tim Harford.

Interesting, which hospital does your "doctor friend" work at? I live in Chorlton and am married to a doctor. Once you marry a doctor, you get to know a LOT of doctors. None of what them have said anything like your statement.

It's probably worth mentioning that the Nightingale in Manchester IS open at the moment.

On your cancer care vs covid point, most hospitals returned to near normal cancer support levels over the summer (only 'near' as some had to deal with backlogs). It only completely stopped, in the peak, in some places where covid nearly overwhelmed hospitals.

You can't change hospital organisation in short time scales: they have to plan for what's likely to be coming so non essential operations will be forced to close when covid numbers increase fast. Also when staff start going off sick in large numbers with covid or forced to isolate due to possible exposure to covid, all hospital services suffer. 

Normal covid mortality is now probably below 0.5% of those infected in the UK in functioning hospitals. If the hospitals get overwhelmed covid death rates increase to a few percent, plus lots of other people will die from a failure to be able to properly deal with other life threatening situations.

Propaganda really should be going in premium posts.

Kudos for the new emollient style, it'd get traction if your colleagues hadn't been here before you all guns blazing with the same dangerous nonsense.

jk

Even that idea doesn't work. You've got breathing difficulties, you call 999. Do they say "not until you've been tested, love". Do they come out, test you, then leave you on the doorstep? Even that way, you might save hospital beds but you're still all out of ambulances. Or maybe employ people to go out in pre-ambulances with just a testing kit...

The practicalities of the totally inhumane policies that Telegraph likes the sound of are impossible. Once you've set up universal healthcare, you're committed, like it or not. Personally, if we do have to choose between those who get treatment and those who don't, I think their contributions to social media over the pandemic should be assessed.

I still think Peaks is perfectly OK usage as the tribe the area was supposedly named after were themselves named after an area with peaks. Such arguments distract from real controversy, like is 3PS E0?

What I was speculating is, when hospitals are beyond capacity, ambulances are told to no longer respond to anyone with breathing difficulties. In practice some of that probably happened due to overwhelmed logistics in Lombardy first time.

Yes, very plausible.

But the 'R' Rate is going down and has been now for around 3 weeks.  In some parts of the country it is below 1.  It even show's the progression of this on Professor Whitty's own slide, and the Zoe App data confirms the same:

https://images.ctfassets.net/pjshm78m9jt4/4EKdVUlj0VjlWOcjEHFx38/083a6c46b1...

This is not exponential growth and nothing like it?  So why would the NHS be overwhelmed and why the need for a damaging lockdown?  Was it the now much debunked 4,000 deaths a day scenario as presented by professors doom and gloom?

I see some people seem to be taking this rather lightly, but I bet that no one on here promoting lockdown so vigorously has personally lost their job or seen their business fold?  No skin in the game!

Oh do F off dear.  

It’s not the lockdown we aren’t taking seriously, it’s you.  

If you think the change in R is what to look at for exponential you need to do a basic stats course.  

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk

So don't bloody argue with me then!

Hm..  I feel I've been suckered into wasting my time writing an earnest reply in the other thread now.  Still, I guess a regular "which crag for a newbie" thread is always likely to be useful for a genuine newbie who might be lurking and a little too shy to post.

Or maybe those people work for a company that was what is marginal at the best and is a zombie company and its about time they folded.These zombie companys  pay badly and are unproductive. Then it might force people to retrain and get better jobs.

Another way of thinking about it,

No one is taking this lightly, do you think anyone enjoys a lockdown?

You however seem to be taking the risk of the NHS being overwhelmed very lightly based on an article in The Telegraph and the views of one 'fringe view' scientist.

Against this you have the overwhelming weight of scientific/medical opinion that says we need to lockdown to protect our ability to provide basic health care to the nation....

As a new user is that how it is on here?  The bullies shout down anyone who disagrees with them?  Reminds me of Nazi Germany where alternative views are strictly 'VERBOTEN'!

No it's based on the facts on the ground from the NHS/ONS that show hospitals are mostly at normal or low capacity for this time of year.  Oh and that the R has been dropping significantly in the last few weeks as Prof Whitty's own slide in my post above clearly shows.

Do you have some alternative data the NHS/ONS are not aware of?

Bing bing, we have Godwin.

I appreciate that you probably know precisely why your arguments are nonsense but you have to present them anyway to get paid, but:

If R is greater than 1 then, by definition, there is exponential growth.

If mitigating factors are put in place, such as mask-wearing, gathering restrictions or lockdown for instance, that act to slow the rate of change of the R rate, then the resulting graph may appear not to show a typically exponential growth curve.

Somehow though, I suspect you're not keen on recognising that the only reason the curve currently may not resemble an unconstrained, exponential explosion of cases is due to the restrictive measures already put into place.

Why do you think R is dropping?  

Hi "Julia".

Am I right in thinking you're being paid by the same people that are funding Nigel Farage?

I doubt you'll answer that and I'm almost completely certain you won't answer my next question. Instead of indulging in the normal bot tactic of sowing seeds of doubt and confusion why not be honest for a moment and tell us all what you think England should be doing.

Go on, prove to me you're not one of the alt right's friendly helpers.

Your own graph posted there shows that the 'R' number is down to 1.1-1.3.  This has consistently dropped from around 1.3-1.6 around 5 weeks ago.  So according to you the 'R' number is going up is it?  Your own link disproves this.  Thank you.

See Prof Whitty's own graph:

https://images.ctfassets.net/pjshm78m9jt4/4EKdVUlj0VjlWOcjEHFx38/083a6c46b1...

It's good that R is going down, but when R is above is above one, the epidemic is still growing, not shrinking. As time goes on, the large growth in infections gradually moves up the age range, so there are more hospital admissions per 1000 infections.

There is a delay between infections and hospital admissions. This is why the situation is not looking good and a change of policy was needed.

It's exponential when R is constant above 1, so a gradually decreasing R still above 1 is still quite a lot like exponential growth, but it isn't exponential. But that's not relevant - we need R below 1, or at exactly 1 with a caseload we can cope with.

Explained above. If you get your head around it, you'll see why 

No. The narrative you are promoting is false. Policy was not decided on the 4,000 deaths scenario. It's not relevant. The facts about NHS capacity and what is almost certain to happen without better control of the virus forms the rationale for the policy. The 4,000 deaths is now just being used as part of the lie "the policy was decided because of the overestimated death rate". That's a lie. That was not the rationale for the policy.

Your understanding is very very poor, if you are being genuine, which is highly suspect. Without better control of the virus, more people will lose their jobs, more businesses will fail, because a functioning economy is dependent upon a functioning healthcare system and a healthy population whose kids are at school and who are not occupied caring for dying loved ones. No one has presented a credible alternative strategy that can lessen the economic and social impact of covid.

All of this stuff is completely obvious, and it has felt like a total waste of my time explaining it to you. 

Would it be fair to say that you have not considered the data I reposted from Wintertree, and that you have absolutely no interest in understanding the situation correctly?

Get a grip on reality!

youtube.com/watch?v=3F0sNzhCt8Y&

Who writes your cue cards?

That's proof enough for me.

So you think the NHS are very worried for no reason at all?

You don't understand the basics behind the R rate, until you do it would be very hard to have a proper discussion with you...

Julia, anymore info on the hospital you mentioned? I know of one hospital in GM that ran out of ICU beds at the weekend. I know of another that 50% of in patients have been admitted due to Covid. All hospitals have a higher rate of staff illness as Covid is a lot more prevalent than it was during the previous lockdown so cases are up and staff numbers down.

I can see the stress in my wife's face when she wakes up in the morning and before she goes to sleep at night. I've seen the mental toll on friends working on the "front line" of covid care and the effects of seeing such horrible deaths so regularly has had on someone.

My job is fine, my wife's job is obviously safe, but that doesn't mean I'm not sympathetic to the people losing jobs or seeing their businesses fold. I know people in those situations but that economic hardship hasn't made them blind to current health crisis in the our area.

Oh come on guys, there have been many threads lately about fraud attempts and you then humour the highly suspicious OP with a response.....?

Come on mods you must do better with these dodgy new accounts. 

Moves up the age range?  You sound as clueless as this guy to be honest:

youtube.com/watch?v=H1voGaXVgB4&

Again numbers in hospitals are completely normal for the time of year, we are not in danger of being overwhelmed right now so why not wait and see what happens if the 'R' is consistently decreasing?  No need to panic yet.

If I was being cynical I'd say that the government saw the 'R' decreasing and thought 'oh crap, we better rush through a lockdown now so it looks like it was our decisive lockdown that caused the 'R' to go down.  Boris saves Xmas!  It's a bit like King Canute turning up at the beach just after high tide.

It is relevant surely if that's what the Prime Minister chooses to quote to justify a lockdown?

Sweden?  How many Covid deaths in Sweden right now?

With due respect I have seen some of Wintertree's posts over on another thread and he comes across as narrow minded, a little bit hysterical and obsessive, with a rather strange way of picking selective facts, which he then distorts to fit his own narrative, whilst at the same time failing to see the bigger picture.  If you think he's right then I'm afraid you've probably fallen for the Tory propaganda too.

At no point did I say r was rising.  

What I said was that the rate of change of r isn’t exponential and wouldn’t be expected to be.

You have no idea what you are talking about.  If you read the information I linked you might understand what r actually means.  You clearly don’t.  

With such basic misunderstandings your opinions on lockdown are beyond meaningless.  

Do you have a GCSE in maths?  

Wintertree has more intelligence in one of his fingernails than you.  

You don’t have even the most basic grasp of what any of the data means and your attempts to say that r isn’t exponential would be hilarious if the topic wasn’t so serious.  

You can’t bluff on here.  Go find some stupid people to annoy.  

Good of you to bring up Sweden......70% of their population is now under further new restrictions to halt to epidemic there and they have not ruled out going harder.