Thread by @BillHanage

A few thoughts on the pandemic and 'protecting healthcare', prompted by this heartfelt and urgent article about what it is like to actually work in healthcare during a pandemic
theguardian.com/commentisfree/… 1/n

firstly we should note that healthcare is either stretched or close to it in many places at the moment, and we have yet to see the effects of the Christmas holiday or (in most places) any impact of more transmissible variants 2/n

When we talk about ‘protecting healthcare’ what does that mean? Does it mean preserving ICU beds? If so how many ICU beds are enough to handle the regular requirements of the non-pandemic part of healthcare? 3/n

Or do we protect healthcare by not allowing community transmission to rise such a level that other parts of healthcare suffer either because of a lack of resources, or a lack of staff 4/n

If drafting in staff from elsewhere in the system to care for pandemic patients, what happens to those parts of healthcare? Does it mean not having to cancel elective procedures? Or not having to postpone potentially lifesaving surgery because you can’t rely on a bed 5/n

Not everybody gets to know what is actually going on inside hospitals. And in some places Drs and nurses are heavily discouraged from talking to the media, which allows disgraceful misinformation about what is really happening to take hold. Remember the early days in Wuhan? 6/n

This puts more barriers between those of us who spend their days and nights thinking about and working to help stop the worst of the pandemic, and those who are being asked to upend their lives without really being told why 7/n

Finally ‘protecting healthcare’ was the language of flattening the curve, to avert catastrophic damage from an unmitigated out-of-control epidemic. That was then. After that we were supposed to not go back there. It is horrifying so many places have 8/end