Sluffy wrote: T.R.O.Y. wrote:Sluffy - I've re read your post a few times this morning. Still no idea what you're getting at. My original point around the NHS was that additional deaths cannot be the only metric determining whether the health service was as prepared as it could or should have been.
Not getting dragged into your other point, I'm well aware you were talking about hospital deaths. My point was I thought you were suggesting those metrics were only for NHS workers - hence I clarified with 'country as a whole' - maybe i should have also included 'hospital deaths for the country as a whole' but didn't realise we'd got to that level of pedantry.
T.R.O.Y. wrote:Wait, think I've cracked it.
I haven't said anywhere lack of PPE has caused excess deaths in the NHS - not possible for me to know that (or you).
But a lack of PPE is more likely to lead to a healthcare worker being infected, meaning they can't come to work for at least 2 weeks - putting extra strain on the service and negatively impacting their response.
How can you possibly be arguing against that? And why do you think you know better than the experts on this?
I've read your posts as saying
extra deaths have been caused by the government because they underfunded the NHS and did not have sufficient stocks of PPE in the years leading up to the outbreak of Coronavirus. You've been consistent on that point for many weeks now.
T.R.O.Y. wrote:The NHS has stood up well - the government and NHS deserve massive credit for increasing capacity so quickly. Does it need to get to additional deaths to prove that the NHS wasn't as prepared as it should/could have been with proper funding? Don't think so personally, but it's more hypothetical at that point and will need a proper investigation.
I do think cuts to social care and PPE stockpiling have had a demonstrable effect though, as has the governments failure to resolve the PPE shortages. This is a clear failing.
Are we in agreement about that?
If so how and where have these extra deaths manifested themselves from if the government had sufficiently funded the NHS and had sufficient PPE for everyone? Can this question can even be quantified?
Well I believe it can.
The reason why I believe it can is because there is no known cure for Covid-19 and that gives you a constant - not a variable - in order to work to.
Therefore we can examine the effect of this decade of underfunding and insufficient PPE's you state have caused the extra deaths to those who have died.
First we look at what extra funding would have resulted in to the NHS and apply them to how they would have saved more lives than if they had not as is the present case.
Funding would have allowed more recruitment of doctors and nurses - but as there is no known cure for Covid-19, a million more doctors and nurses would not have been able to save even a single life than what has occurred because the virus is killing irrespective of the care (the best care in the world even) that they can give them. All any doctor or nurse can do is to be with them when they unfortunately die sadly.
So that wouldn't have helped the situation even if the government hadn't had cut a single penny from NHS budgets over the proceeding ten years.
Similarly no amount of beds, equipment or drugs being purchased for the NHS would have helped either because existing beds and equipment have not been swamped by need (although it was thought it might - hence the Nightingale Hospitals that have not been used) and that being there is no existing cure for Covid-19 then no amount of extra drug procurement would have saved a single extra life from it than what has occurred either.
The last element of PPE is a little less black and white on this issue but an answer can be found in the hospital stats and the fact the virus clearly targets those who are aged 60 and over (in fact I've read other stats where there is even a finer margin than that which shows the acceleration point of the virus to be from 64 and over age group - but let us leave it with our own published NHS stats to work to, to make everything consistent throughout).
Not only does the virus disproportionally kill more in the age group 60 and over (92% of all hospital deaths) but if you dig down further into the stats it shows that nearly all who have died have underlying conditions (for instance for the age groups 59 and under (8% of all hospital deaths, just 1 in 8 DIDN'T have any underlying conditions and in rough figures accounted for just 250 deaths recorded.
So back to the question of NHS PPE inadequacy and did it lead to extra deaths?
As it would be clearly a requirement of the NHS's legal responsibility as an employer to protect its vulnerable employees, then it would be highly unlikely (though not impossible) to believe that only employees with no underlying health conditions would be on the front line fighting the virus, thus the ones requiring PPE would be in the category of being 59 year old or less with no underlying age condition.
As we have seen there have only been 250 deaths in this category in the whole country - and so it is safe to assume that not all of these would be the doctors and nurses fighting Covid-19 in less than adequate PPE protection.
So yes it is possible that some extra deaths may have occurred due to insufficient PPE kit at the onset of the virus and procurement thereafter - being 250 maximum but much less than that in reality.
So to return to your original premise 'extra deaths have been caused by the government because they underfunded the NHS and did not have sufficient stocks of PPE in the years leading up to the outbreak of Coronavirus', I believe that to be a false assertion/assumption from you and proved it so, with the proviso that sadly a handful of deaths may have resulted from inadequate PPE provision.
As for your additional point "a lack of PPE is more likely to lead to a healthcare worker being infected, meaning they can't come to work for at least 2 weeks - putting extra strain on the service and negatively impacting their response", then yes that is obviously fair comment but as we have seen above with doctors and nurses, they could not have any influence on the death rate as there is no known cure for Covid-19.
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