Quote:
Originally Posted by Damien
One thing they have to address is the capacity of the NHS. I understand a pandemic is a rare event in modern times and a lot of nations struggled with this but the NHS feels the strain when a bad flu reason happens. The Government is also paying a price for not dealing with that early, they've left no capacity at all.
We need to at least be a bit better at dealing with increased demand whilst maintaining a regular service for routine medical care.
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This is true. And whilst I would expect that a fair amount of recharging of staff batteries happened, whilst Alpha cases and admissions had been brought under control by lockdown and vaccines, which at least reduced pressure on the hospitals with Delta, the NHS still has a fair amount of the "other" illnesses and issues to deal with, which were necessarily slowed down or put totally on hold in the worst times of the pandemic.
As you say the Covid pressures on the NHS just happen most years and if it's not covid happen with things like flu, norovirus, etc etc.
The argument that the NHS can't cope is dependent on two things; an increase in patients needing care (due to them having the virus itself, or having care needs which were delayed due to the virus affecting capacity), and the capacity in the NHS itself. Lockdown only really helps with the number of people having the virus and only ever slows it down anyway. If the NHS needs funding to increase capacity then this should ultimately be something the government should be focusing its energy on. Not restricting a population, who in the main are unlikely to need critical care due to this virus, and who are in the main trying to do the right thing with complying with never-changing restrictions and getting themselves vaccinated.