The silence on covid/long covid is deafening.

Way_Out_West said:
Or we could just open the windows?
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Or people could drink less!!!
Alcohol harm costs England £27.4 billion a year, new research by the Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS) has found.
Tax revenue from alcohol only raises around £12.5 billion each year, meaning it is dwarfed by the financial cost of harm.

The economic burden on the NHS now stands at £4.9 billion, enough to pay for the salaries of almost half the nurses in England.
  • £4.91 billion cost to the NHS and healthcare in England – such as hospital admissions and ambulance call-outs.
  • £14.58 billion cost to the criminal justice system, police, and wider crime and disorder.
  • £5.06 billion cost to the wider economy due to lost productivity – such as people missing work or being less productive at work.
  • £2.89 billion cost to social services.
TOTAL COST = £27.44bn
 
Uncle_Marbles said:
Or people could drink less!!!
Alcohol harm costs England £27.4 billion a year, new research by the Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS) has found.
Tax revenue from alcohol only raises around £12.5 billion each year, meaning it is dwarfed by the financial cost of harm.

The economic burden on the NHS now stands at £4.9 billion, enough to pay for the salaries of almost half the nurses in England.
  • £4.91 billion cost to the NHS and healthcare in England – such as hospital admissions and ambulance call-outs.
  • £14.58 billion cost to the criminal justice system, police, and wider crime and disorder.
  • £5.06 billion cost to the wider economy due to lost productivity – such as people missing work or being less productive at work.
  • £2.89 billion cost to social services.
TOTAL COST = £27.44bn
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If alcohol was invented now it would never be legalised.
 
sherlock said:
Might do if we chucked Wes Streeting out of it ;)
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Has he been bad?

I've not been following him that closely, but at least they've got the Junior Doctors back on side and the nurses seemingly around half way there. It's not a bad start, for a few months I think.

Lots of un-F***ing for him and Labour to do now though, but I'm sure they will, just like they did last time with Blair and Co. I don't expect anywhere near the results which Labour did last time mind, not in one term anyway, as it's a harder task this time. We don't have growth to bail us out with more budget/ income/ tax etc, and don't have access to the easy importing of nurses etc. Plus the budget is screwed in a million other ways.
 
Andy_W said:
Has he been bad?

I've not been following him that closely, but at least they've got the Junior Doctors back on side and the nurses seemingly around half way there. It's not a bad start, for a few months I think.

Lots of un-F***ing for him and Labour to do now though, but I'm sure they will, just like they did last time with Blair and Co. I don't expect anywhere near the results which Labour did last time mind, not in one term anyway, as it's a harder task this time. We don't have growth to bail us out with more budget/ income/ tax etc, and don't have access to the easy importing of nurses etc. Plus the budget is screwed in a million other ways.
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I was joking really but I really don’t like his fondness for private health care.
 
Way_Out_West said:
Well, it is the 'back to work' mitigation strategy suggested by the OP.
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I'm not the OP though, I probably don't fully agree with him, but I do agree there is a long covid problem, and it will likely get worse.

I think I'm a bit more realistic to what is coming and what can be prevented though, by that I mean I think the damage is done and further damage is coming. There is nothing plausible which can be done to reduce the risk probability, so all we can change is how we deal with those risk outcomes as it will occur.

The people are off sick. We can't expect to get them back to work without being able to treat them, or stop them getting sick in the first place? We can't rewind time, so the latter ship has sailed. The chance to do that was back in 2019-21 or by not letting the Tories in back in 2010, 2015, 2017, 2019 etc. The damage is largely done now, it's basically baked in.

Clean air and ventilation should have been the plan in early 2020 before we even locked down, it was blatantly obvious to any virologist or modeller etc. But the Tories herd immunity plan and ignoring science negated anything we implemented half assed. BJ was the absolute worst person to be in charge during a public health emergency, so the public health is going to pay for that, and then the budget for the public/ economy will pay again and again.

Now all the sane people are vaxxed up we have to basically take that risk on now, as basically the public would not really be up for mitigations anymore, the chance for that has been and went. People won't want their kids in cold classrooms and they won't want to work in cold offices etc.

The benefit of doing that was 100x more in March 20, than it is in Sep 24 etc.

I would eat my hat if a large chunk of the economically inactive aren't those who didn't get the vaccines, so now the taxpayer is paying for their ignorance of science to get treated, and now as they're not working they're not funding the system themselves either.
 
sherlock said:
I was joking really but I really don’t like his fondness for private health care.
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We're going to have to use a lot of it to bridge the gap to get things back on track I think, until the trained workforce can be built back up again, and stopped from leaving when they are trained, but that will take a decade.

I'm not against things being ran privately if they can do it for the same price and with KPI's to meet which the public healthcare would have done, or even better. Payments and profits need to be linked to these KPI's though.

The problem is in order to do that "the client" needs to not be bent, and needs to know what they're doing, but we had neither of those with the Tories. If the client is bad, and has bad intentions then it's never going to work well, it's the same in any sector.
 
Andy_W said:
We're going to have to use a lot of it to bridge the gap to get things back on track I think, until the trained workforce can be built back up again, and stopped from leaving when they are trained, but that will take a decade.

I'm not against things being ran privately if they can do it for the same price and with KPI's to meet which the public healthcare would have done, or even better. Payments and profits need to be linked to these KPI's though.

The problem is in order to do that "the client" needs to not be bent, and needs to know what they're doing, but we had neither of those with the Tories. If the client is bad, and has bad intentions then it's never going to work well, it's the same in any sector.
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If the staff are there in the private sector then there are enough qualified and trained staff. We need to get them to return to the NHS and that takes investment that Labour probably aren’t willing to make. Instead they will likely spend more than that getting the private sector to ‘bridge the gap’.

Allied to the fact that Streeting and Starmer have both taken sizeable donations from private health companies, it’s yet again a bad look.
 
sherlock said:
If the staff are there in the private sector then there are enough qualified and trained staff. We need to get them to return to the NHS and that takes investment that Labour probably aren’t willing to make. Instead they will likely spend more than that getting the private sector to ‘bridge the gap’.

Allied to the fact that Streeting and Starmer have both taken sizeable donations from private health companies, it’s yet again a bad look.
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It's the money though isn't it, I imagine they're paid a lot more private, and fair play to them, they should get more than the standard pay, a lot more.

The thing is there are loads contracting too I think, but contracting is meant to be much better pay as you're at massive risk of not getting any work or hours etc, but we know that's not going to be the case as the work opportunities seem to be endless.

It's like the doctors etc, some of them have been paid 2-5k per shift, that's hard to justify I think, but how do you get these people back when they've had a taste for that?

I know it's not the same but this is sort of what we're fighting now:

I know a load of lads who went abroad contracting for "2-3 years" to Saudi, and that was in 2008, they're still there now. Two of the lads were on 30k back in the UK, they're now both millionaires and could retire now in early 40's if they wanted to. The job they're doing is still basically the same as the one they did in 2008 lol. It was basically the same job I was offered.
There is just no way they will come back to that 30k a year job, or whatever the equivalent would be now (probably 45k). As they say themselves "I won't even get out of bed for a 100k in the uk", and they aint joking.

So, to get back on track we need to be recruiting young nurses and doctors on "normal money" again, and by that I actually mean more in line with what they're were getting in 2010, plus inflations since, probably even more. Those who went contracting have gone, I don't see a way to get them back permanently unless work dries up for all of their options (which includes abroad also).
 
Andy_W said:
We're going to have to use a lot of it to bridge the gap to get things back on track I think, until the trained workforce can be built back up again, and stopped from leaving when they are trained, but that will take a decade.

I'm not against things being ran privately if they can do it for the same price and with KPI's to meet which the public healthcare would have done, or even better. Payments and profits need to be linked to these KPI's though.

The problem is in order to do that "the client" needs to not be bent, and needs to know what they're doing, but we had neither of those with the Tories. If the client is bad, and has bad intentions then it's never going to work well, it's the same in any sector.
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But we have found out that the only way a privatised company makes any money is by lowering standards, wages, conditions, and employment rights.
 
Trug said:
But we have found out that the only way a privatised company makes any money is by lowering standards, wages, conditions, and employment rights.
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That's not true, it depends who is the client, who is the contractor, who is the sub-contractor and what all the contracts, specs and KPI's are. The biggest ways to save/ make money are through efficiency and time.

Running something badly previously isn't an excuse to not do it next time, just get people in who can run it/ do it properly next time, all the way through the chain. i.e. don't have bent people as the client, with their mates as main contractors. A bit like the bent Tories giving their mates non PPE company a multi million pound PPE contract when genuine PPE companies couldn't get a look in. Like don't give a contract which requires loads of ferries, to a company which has never had or operated a ferry etc, like the tories did.

My company regularly makes 20-50% on jobs (and ~30% margin per year) where we've been the cheapest quote, where our competition can't even break even for a year, and they take longer on the jobs, using more people, and people who are paid a lot worse. That's on sites where specs and standards are enforced across the board, like National Grid, Highways and Rail sites etc. All the money/ savings are made in design, planning, time saving and efficiency savings.
 
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