Coronavirus Updates

[Innula Zenovka]

It might be his rhetorical style or some other misunderstanding on my part, but my suspicion was based on what he said.

In particular, he thanks "two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way ... who for every second of the night, they were watching." He thanks many other people as well and goes on to say that on the basis of his experience, the experience of a Prime Ministerl, "that is how I also know that across this country, 24 hours a day, for every second of every hour, there are hundreds of thousands of NHS staff acting with the same care, and thought, and precision as Jenny and Luis."

I doubt that they were watching literally every second of the night or even if they were that that somehow guarantees the same occurs every where else in the NHS especially considering the status he has as prime minister as compared to less privileged patients. I suppose that could be a rhetorical device or the NHS may indeed be functioning that well.

I do confess that the whole business grieves me. For some reason I have been thinking recently of something my mother said, late in life, about the boys in her chemistry class during World War II. That she remembered their names and how they went to war and never came back. I am grieving. My niece who works in a large hospital here says that nurses at that hospital are able to check on patients once every four hours. She works there. I don't know why she would lie about it. There is a shortage of PPE and the states are bidding against each other for it. Then sometimes the federal government seizes PPE after states receive it.

From watching John Campbell I understand that Johnson lost time in enacting social distancing and talked about herd immunity as a solution where people would die in the process of attaining that. I blame people like Boris Johnson who have minimized the severity of the problem and acted later than they should. The sight of him unctiously praising the NHS--and I'll grant that they deserve praise--while at the same time he almost sent the UK down a path where even the NHS would be overwhelmed is painful to watch.

I think you may not be giving sufficient consideration to the fact that Johnson was treated in an intensive care unit.

He will have been heavily sedated, while the team tried to keep him alive and prevent his vital organs from failing as his body's immune system went into overdrive trying to remove the virus.

Intensive care

Find out about intensive care units (ICUs), specialist hospital wards for people who are seriously ill.

www.nhs.uk

Intensive care units: 'The point is to keep people alive'

Doctors on coronavirus frontline say admission to ICU is about giving patients chance to recover

www.theguardian.com

From what you say, I think your sister must work on a more general ward, since I cannot believe that patients in US Intensive Care Units are only looked on by their nurses once very 4 hours.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

I think you may not be giving sufficient consideration to the fact that Johnson was treated in an intensive care unit.

He will have been heavily sedated, while the team tried to keep him alive and prevent his vital organs from failing as his body's immune system went into overdrive trying to remove the virus.

Intensive care

Find out about intensive care units (ICUs), specialist hospital wards for people who are seriously ill.

www.nhs.uk

Intensive care units: 'The point is to keep people alive'

Doctors on coronavirus frontline say admission to ICU is about giving patients chance to recover

www.theguardian.com

From what you say, I think your sister must work on a more general ward, since I cannot believe that patients in US Intensive Care Units are only looked on by their nurses once very 4 hours.

Yup, in an ICU, nurses -are- standing by - if British ones are anything like US ones, the ratio between nurse and patients is a pretty narrow one, at least normally.

Also, while BoJo has done stupid, it seems like he's gone more the Cuomo route than the Twitler route; grown up.

 

[Sovereignty]

I think you may not be giving sufficient consideration to the fact that Johnson was treated in an intensive care unit.

He will have been heavily sedated, while the team tried to keep him alive and prevent his vital organs from failing as his body's immune system went into overdrive trying to remove the virus.

Intensive care

Find out about intensive care units (ICUs), specialist hospital wards for people who are seriously ill.

www.nhs.uk

Intensive care units: 'The point is to keep people alive'

Doctors on coronavirus frontline say admission to ICU is about giving patients chance to recover

www.theguardian.com

From what you say, I think your sister must work on a more general ward, since I cannot believe that patients in US Intensive Care Units are only looked on by their nurses once very 4 hours.

They would sedate him if he was on a ventilator. It was my clear understanding he was not on a ventilator. Just being in ICU does not mean you are sedated. How else would he so confidently assure everyone that he was watched every second of the night, etc.? He is amazingly unctious to my ears, like some fundamentalist preacher.

She is my niece. Maybe you hurried through that. You'll have to take that up with her. Note that the hospital is not operating in a normal way. Sort of like being in a jury box and not allowed to question the witnesses.

ETA: You could also say my niece's report is hearsay. I give it probity regardless.

 

[Sovereignty]

Yup, in an ICU, nurses -are- standing by - if British ones are anything like US ones, the ratio between nurse and patients is a pretty narrow one, at least normally.

Also, while BoJo has done stupid, it seems like he's gone more the Cuomo route than the Twitler route; grown up.

The hospital is not operating in a normal way. Otherwise, I would certainly agree with you on that.

A leopard does not change its spots. ETA: Let's see what happens next before heaping praise on Boris Johnson.

ETA2: So far no one has questioned the horrible lie part. I would not put it in Johnson's literal words which are obviously not literally true ("every second of the night"). He apparently had callous disregard for how his plans would have affected the very people he is praising. In that respect, his praise seems false and a horrible lie.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

They would sedate him if he was on a ventilator. It was my clear understanding he was not on a ventilator. Just being in ICU does not mean you are sedated. How else would he so confidently assure everyone that he was watched every second of the night, etc.? He is amazingly unctious to my ears, like some fundamentalist preacher.

She is my niece. Maybe you hurried through that. You'll have to take that up with her. Note that the hospital is not operating in a normal way. Sort of like being in a jury box and not allowed to question the witnesses.

ETA: You could also say my niece's report is hearsay. I give it probity regardless.

I'm sorry, I clearly missed the exact family relationship.

Perhaps you could resolve the matter by asking your niece whether she works on in an intensive care unit, or another type of ward in the hospital and, if she doesn't work in one, if she can tell you something about the staffing levels and type of care patients receive in one.

You will have seen -- or perhaps you, too, skim sometimes -- that according to the NHS info page to which I linked, in English ICUs, "There will normally be 1 nurse for every 1 or 2 patients," so it doesn't seem to me particularly surprising that, every time Johnson woke up, he found either Jenny from New Zealand or Luis from Portugal by his bedside.

The Guardian article and the Telegraph video also seem to show very busy places. As The Guardian says,

ICU staff are not just specially trained doctors and nurses; they also include pharmacists, physiotherapsists and advanced critial care practitioners. “It’s very labour-intensive,” adds [Dr Daniele] Bryden, an ICU consultant in Sheffield [and vice-dean of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine,]

Another ICU specialist adds: “ICUs are generally very busy, very intense, 24-hour spaces, with lots of noise from alarms, monitors and staff. Emergencies may happen frequently, but can often be anticipated, and there are always experienced doctors and nurses in close proximity to deal with them.”

 

[Beebo Brink]

Perhaps you could resolve the matter by asking your niece whether she works on in an intensive care unit, or another type of ward in the hospital and, if she doesn't work in one, if she can tell you something about the staffing levels and type of care patients receive in one.

You will have seen -- or perhaps you, too, skim sometimes -- that according to the NHS info page to which I linked, in English ICUs, "There will normally be 1 nurse for every 1 or 2 patients," so it doesn't seem to me particularly surprising that, every time Johnson woke up, he found either Jenny from New Zealand or Luis from Portugal by his bedside.

Based on my stay in the ICU in a hospital in western Virginia, a 1-nurse-to-2 patient ratio sounds about right. The nurses weren't literally standing by my bedside 24/7 but they were within 10 to 15 feet of my room at all times. The step-down unit was probably 1 nurse to 3-4 patients, and then general ward was... quite drastically different.

Leaving ICU was quite a shock. It was crowded, noisy, and the nurses were overworked; if I couldn't do something myself, I usually had to wait for 20-30mins to get help if I called, and no one was paying attention to whether or not I was walking around as much as I should or paying attention to what I ate (which mattered, because my swallow reflex was still quite weak).

So yes, ICU is its own world compared to the rest of the hospital. And it's not VIP treatment, it's just the standard level of care for that level of being broken.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Free]

Since our defenses are down these days, it might help to note this is a parody.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Since our defenses are down these days, it might help to note this is a parody.

 

[Free]

Yeah see, like that one!

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Yeah see, like that one!

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Me when I post parody and it starts a shitstorm:

 

[Free]

A shitstorm? Canadians...

 

[Sid]

I have no clue who Megan Amram is.
How am I to know whether she is one of those stupid anti vaxxers or a smart person capable to write comedy/parody?

 

[Free]

I have no clue who Megan Amram is.
How am I to know whether she is one of those stupid anti vaxxers or a smart person capable to write comedy/parody?

Well, since the first tweet from her that Kamilah posted is a description of vaccines...

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Sid]

Twitter is the official announcement channel of presidential politics from the USA.
So parody is not the first thought that comes to my mind.
Now if it had been an item of a comedy show .......

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Stimulus checks might be delayed since Trump ordered the US treasury to print his signature on them:

Stimulus Checks May Be Delayed Because Trump Wants His Name Printed On Them

The unprecedented decision will mark the first time in history that a president's name has ever appeared on an IRS disbursement.

www.newsweek.com

 

[Sid]

Now that is parody right?

 

[Stora]

I have the unfortunate situation were one of my family members can spend time in a ICU a couple of times a year and at times when it was called for they had a nurse sat in the same room 24/7.