OV9

duncs500 wrote: Tue Dec 29, 2020 11:35 am You lot must live in some shitty areas, I see nothing but compliance wherever I go from businesses and individuals.

Explosive Newt wrote: Tue Dec 29, 2020 4:50 pm

Broccers wrote: Tue Dec 29, 2020 11:57 am Has anyone looked into effectively killing patients by inducing coma and putting them on a ventilator?

Gosh, there is a lot to unpack here.

Yes, being on a ventilator is terrible for you. All the muscles in your body atrophy from lying in the bed and when you are 'fully' ventilated (i.e. paralysed and the ventilator doing all the breathing for you), then the breathing muscles atrophy too. For a week of being fully ventilated, you are looking at 2 or more to wean you back off the ventilator after the disease has passed, just re-training the muscles. If you are too frail to begin with, that weaning process will simply not be possible. And of course, you are at risk of ventilator acquired pneumonias, DVTs and all the other mischief that goes along with being critically unwell picking you off.

That's why you should only go on a ventilator if you are going to benefit from it - i.e. you are sick enough that you will die without it but not so frail that it will kill you. Working this out is where experience comes in but we have various scoring systems backed up by research that can guide us. Ventilation definitely saves lives, when used on the right person at the right time. I know a lot of people I ventilated in the first wave made it and are alive and kicking today (our unit actually had one of the best survival rates at round about 75% when we checked in November).

Unfortunately, a chunk of my job is telling people that their loved one is not going to benefit from being ventilated and we're not going to do it. Sorry: I know "he's always been a fighter" - but he's 85, obese, he's smoked all his life and he doesn't have the lungs to make it through. It's not willpower, it's not penny-pinching, it's just putting him on the vent will mean he spends 3 days in a coma being ventilated and dying in an uncontrolled fashion rather than dying today with analgesia and surrounded by family.

I would definitely agree that people catch covid in hospitals and it's one reason why why need to be vaccinating hospital staff as soon as we possibly can as in general it's the people looking after you who are picking up the 'rona asymptomatically and passing it on as they move from patient to patient. We're better at isolating patients from each other than we used to be.

Gwaredd wrote: Tue Dec 29, 2020 5:40 pm

duncs500 wrote: Tue Dec 29, 2020 11:35 am You lot must live in some shitty areas, I see nothing but compliance wherever I go from businesses and individuals.

How about all those people being turned away from the Brecon Beacons today. Loads from tier 4 areas. Unbelievable.

duncs500 wrote: Tue Dec 29, 2020 6:32 pm

Gwaredd wrote: Tue Dec 29, 2020 5:40 pm

duncs500 wrote: Tue Dec 29, 2020 11:35 am You lot must live in some shitty areas, I see nothing but compliance wherever I go from businesses and individuals.

How about all those people being turned away from the Brecon Beacons today. Loads from tier 4 areas. Unbelievable.

Well I wasn't there, maybe you were, but (not having a go at you here) if you base your sample of how people are behaving on media reports then you're only going to find that almost everyone everywhere is an idiot. Based on my experience that is not the case at all.

I know I've laboured this point before, but everybody seems to judge the country's actions on media reports of what I believe / hope are a relatively small minority.

Ascender wrote: Thu Dec 31, 2020 12:29 pm Oxford vaccine being approved means reasons to be optimistic right?

Simon wrote: Thu Dec 31, 2020 9:27 am @Explosive Newt do you know if you had the vaccine yet? I see someone on Twitter was unblinded by contacting them for clarification after being offered the Pzifer vaccine.