(Addendum below.)
The UK medical system has reached the breaking point where doctors can no longer care for all their patients. I have no insider knowledge, but I suspect “disaster medicine mode” is similar to what happens in war zones and disasters. Doctors will be forced to decide who lives and dies based on a predetermined list of criteria, reserving care for those easiest to save.
Imagine how much worse it would be if the tories had gotten their way and privatized all health services.
London NHS hospital in ‘disaster medicine mode’ and ‘can’t provide high standard care’
Royal London Hospital is in “disaster medicine mode” and unable to provide “high standard critical care” as the number of people suffering from Covid-19 continues to soar.
The news comes just days after it was reported that emergency vehicles had been forced to line up outside the the hospital in Whitechapel on Tuesday.
NHS chiefs at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel have emailed staff admitting they are so overwhelmed with cases “we are no longer providing high standard critical care, because we cannot”.
[. . .]
A tweet shared by Dr Julia Grace Patterson, Founder and Chief Executive of EveryDoctorUK said that the hospital managers had sent an email to staff warning of the “disaster mode” the hospital had entered. She added that the content of this email was “shocking.”
BREAKING: from the Royal London Hospital, this email from management👇
“We are now in disaster medicine mode. We are no longer providing high standard critical care, because we cannot”The content of this email is SHOCKING and I’m passing it to a trusted journalist right now🚨
— Dr Julia Grace Patterson (@JujuliaGrace) December 31, 2020
Hospitals are now so short of staff that they may need volunteers. Or worse, if a state of emergency is declared, people may be conscripted into working at hospitals.
Recruit the military and cops to do it, not civilians. They’re getting paid and allegedly “defend the country”. Don’t force civilians to work under threat of force as slave labour, as was done for the “diamond jubilee” in 2012.
Hospitals make desperate plea for staff as new coronavirus strain spreads ‘like wildfire’
The new coronavirus variant is “spreading like wildfire” in the northwest of England as cases continue to rise across the country, piling further pressure on the struggling NHS.
The more infectious strain was responsible for the dramatic increase in positive cases across the southeast in the weeks before Christmas. Now it has been identified in a spike in Cumbria, according to Public Health England.
[. . .]
This is thought to be behind the surge in infections across the southeast and London which has crippled hospitals and forced the cancellation of thousands of operations.
Nationally, Thursday was another record day for infections with 55,892 cases reported in 24 hours with 964 deaths.
London hospitals are racing to open up more beds with children’s wards, operating theatres and clinic rooms being transformed into bed spaces.
I have several friends in the UK. Thankfully two are in Shrewsbury (a couple who just had their first child), which is one of the least hit areas. But another lives in London; she may be in her twenties, but that doesn’t make her immune. Another is currently hunkered down in Germany (working legally before brexit came into effect), but her family are also from the London area.
A pharmacist in Wisconsin is under arrest for INTENTIONALLY leaving 500 doses of the Moderna vaccine at room temperature and spoiling them. He did it TWICE. That could mean as many as 500 more deaths that were preventable.
A life sentence is barely sufficient for someone like that.
Wisconsin police arrest hospital worker suspected of intentionally spoiling Covid vaccine doses
Police in Wisconsin said on Thursday evening that they had arrested a hospital employee who was fired after being suspected of intentionally spoiling hundreds of doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Law enforcement and federal authorities in the US had already been investigating after a health center in the state said an employee admitted to deliberately spoiling 500 doses of the coronavirus vaccine.
Aurora medical center, in Grafton, first reported that the doses of the Moderna vaccine had been spoiled on Saturday, saying a staff member had accidentally left them out of refrigeration overnight.
On Wednesday, however, it said the doses appeared to have been spoiled deliberately.
Another addendum, from the US:
Covid 19 coronavirus: Los Angeles calls in National Guard to remove bodies of virus victims
America’s coronavirus crisis has reached a new low, with its second-biggest city so overrun with cases that patients are dying in hospital hallways, with morgues now overflowing.
The situation has grown so dire in Los Angeles – a sprawling city with a population of nearly four million – that the National Guard has been called in to move bodies into storage at the LA County Department of the Medical Examiner-Coroner.
According to the LA Times, which has published a detailed investigation into the disaster facing the city’s health system, hospitals are now so overwhelmed medics are being forced to choose which patients will receive vital care, with Los Angeles County reaching 10,000 coronavirus deaths this week and many healthcare workers also contracting the illness.
The LA Public Health agency is so concerned about the worsening disaster it has launched a Twitter campaign warning that “every 10 minutes someone dies of Covid-19 in LA County”, urging people to do their bit to help stop the spread as the city emerges as the new epicentre of the virus in the US.
Where is says 10,000 deaths, I suspect that means in total, not during a seven day period. But given that’s in just one country, it’s appalling.