On another forum there was a discussion about long term resources needed for the NHS. Long term as in a 30 year view.Woodchopper wrote: ↑Thu Jul 15, 2021 8:17 pmYou know that, I know that and the writer of the tweet knows that.lpm wrote: ↑Thu Jul 15, 2021 12:43 pmI find threads like that baffling.
Of course we can't stop transmission. Of course Covid is now endemic. Of course cases will come along every day for the rest of our lives. Of course cases will routinely build into waves. Of course there will be a permanent level of hospital beds needed for Covid patients and we need to devote more of our resources on health. Of course there will be thousands or tens of thousands of UK deaths a year on average. And - the big one - of course Covid is now a likely cause of our own deaths when we're very elderly assuming we dodge cancer etc.
It's like people still haven't realised global pandemics are really bad.
However very large numbers of people still seem to assume that:
Vaccination + infection -> herd immunity -> everything goes back to how it was in 2019.
There’s been very little talk of what long term Covid will be like.
I argued, very persuasively and with great charm, that GDP growth was nowhere near enough. The combination of (1) ageing population and (2) cost of more sophisticated successful treatments means we have to divert resources from other things we enjoy into healthcare. We're simply not as rich as we think we are - we over spend on consumer items and experiences.
We've now got (3) endemic Covid. It's accelerated the healthcare crunch into immediate failure. The NHS has insufficient beds and staff to meet the new level of requirement and the current backlog of non-Covid healthcare cannot be cleared.
The brutal truth is the world in general and UK in particular needs to accept inadequate healthcare, probably for a decade or two until health resources can be built up. People will die earlier. People will be ill more. Health inequalities will rise.
The 2020 fights for lockdowns appears to me to have taken many people too far the other way. As a society we urgently need to start producing stuff again. Resources are created by human labour, and it's resources we need.
The long term Covid world is ultimately about getting society more accustomed to sickness and death, accepting Covid as a routine killer. We can't hide much longer. The sooner we begin increasing healthcare capacity the better.