Vocal Voices

Up to now the only question the media seems to have asked of the government in the pandemic imbroglio is "Why didn't you lock down sooner, harder, for longer?"

Now however Allison Pearson in the Daily Telegraph has actually asked some questions that we were asking on here some time since.
Late in the day, Allison has noted that in 1987/88 the NHS had 299,000 beds but as of 2019 only had 141,000. (I first mentioned these figures on here in Dec 2018).

So she is asking WHY must the NHS "be defended"? Is the lack of beds, and in particular the lack of critical care beds, why "our NHS" has to be "defended"?
An organisation which gets £148 billion pounds a year has to be "defended"? Why cant it defend us - which after all is the idea?

If you were to say "the NHS can't do it's job at the moment" you would be shouted down - but isn't this just the truth?
I'm waiting for a hip replacement, eventually. The waiting list was virtually zero at the start of the pandemic, now it is over one year; this situation has to be replicated all over the country.
Are the press mentioning this? Not much. Or the suicides? No. Or the lack of cancer screenings? No. Everything is covid.

Pearson also calls out the NHS stats. The latest gloom mongering was "A Covid patient admitted to hospital every 30 seconds!!!". Which is a flat out lie. In one 24 hour period 1,000 people were admitted to hospital with Covid. In the same 24 hours 2,000 who were already in hospital were also diagnosed with covid - and they were included in the figures!

What wasn't mentioned that during the same 24 hour period 1,789 Covid cases were discharged from hospital! Neither was the fact that the previous week saw circa 2,500 Covid patients per day were discharged from hospital.

So at last some people in the press are beginning to question why, how many this and how many that. I don't suppose they will get very far. Boris will still just repeat the mantra "We must defend the NHS. Stop the spread", and have no other exit strategy but to put people under house arrest.

The NHS seems to exist for the convenience of those at the top, who run it. Dodgy statistics, selective statistics, and outright lies.
And don't get me onto the subject of that fool in Wales, Mark Drakeford, whose excuse for not rolling the vaccine out quicker is "We can't have the vaccinators standing around with nothing to do if we use it all up".
Bad news if you are elderly in Wales!The way of doing things matters more than you do.

I keep seeing or hearing the mantra 'We're not here to help the NHS, it's here to help us', which is fine and true. Unfortunately that then evolves into criticism of NHS staff, from doctors to nurses to HCAs to porters and cleaners, as if they are somehow responsible for the funding and management.

Some people actually blame them for admissions and deaths and with total belief in what they are saying. It is not a case that the NHS cannot do its job at the moment because it has suffered years of underfunding and loss of staff, it's because the present staff are not up to the job. It is frightening the perceptions some people have of certain situations.

I know that WM. As I said on an earlier post, I don't blame the people who are actually doing the front line jobs.

But the way it is funded, organised and led - yes, I would question that. And I would also start any public inquiry 40 years back and work out how we got from there to here.

No, Cromwell, I know that you were not blaming the front line staff.

Unfortunately there are people out there doing just that. And, boy, are they convinced about what they say!

They have no knowledge of the background to the demise of the NHS's capacity so they can only go with what they see today. What they see is a struggling NHS so it must be the fault of the staff. Add in conspiracy theories on social media and you get the perfect storm. It is true that a lot is down to MSM, but there are other powerful players involved.

Workingman wrote:Unfortunately there are people out there doing just that. And, boy, are they convinced about what they say!

So we should not challenge the situation, demand better and require the government to produce a NHS which is fit for purpose and ready to meet the 21st century because:

Some people are stupid, get the wrong idea and cause trouble for innocent people who have nothing to do with the situation?

We can't live like that or the solution we get will be stupid.

Tell the truth, get the situation sorted out and deal with the stupid.

Suff, nobody is suggesting that the NHS should not be criticised so please do not put words in my mouth. I have criticised the NHS myself over poor management, procurement, the duplication of work in neighbouring trusts, and on many other things. I think that you have misread what I am saying

The above are completely different from the rants of people accusing front line and ward staff working in a crisis of slacking, not doing their jobs properly, not following best practice and actually causing Covid deaths through a lack of care. These things are not constructive criticisms, they are just people lashing out at stories without foundation they have heard third or fourth hand down the pub or seen on SM. They are out there.

In my world the first is totally acceptable but the second is not.

The second was dealing with the stupid.