Do you have the machine that goes “ping”?
Posted on 04/02/2020 12:24:04 AM PDT by Helicondelta
Stable coronavirus patients could be taken off ventilators in favour of those more likely to survive, it emerged on Wednesday, as another sharp rise in deaths left the UK braced for the outbreak to reach up to 1,000 deaths a day by the end of the week.
In a stark new document issued by the British Medical Association, doctors set out guidelines to ration care if the NHS becomes overwhelmed with new cases as the outbreak moves towards its peak.
A rise in the death toll of 563 brought the overall total to 2,352, an increase of 31% on Tuesday’s figure. If the total continues to grow in line with increases over the last week, it is on course to go past 1,000 new deaths recorded each day within three to four days.
Under the proposals, designed to provide doctors with ethical guidance on how to decide who should get life-saving care when resources are overstretched, hospitals would have to impose severe limits on who is put on a ventilator. Large numbers of patients could be denied care, with those facing a poor prognosis losing the potentially life-saving equipment even if their condition is improving.
The BMA suggested that younger, healthier people could be given priority over older people and that those with an underlying illness may not get treatment that could save them, with healthier patients given priority instead.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
I want to model my healthcare system after them!!!
DK
That is - literally - a death panel.
As terrible as a “death panel” is - it will be considered when dealing with this overwhelming global nightmare.
But liberals want to use it as a model for affordable health care policy!
why isn’t the article reporting about why the numbers are soaring?
behind a paywall:
31 Mar: UK Telegraph: Counting coronavirus: How are different countries calculating death tolls, and can you trust them?
Testing capacity, differing public health protocols and political meddling may have distorted coronavirus death counts around the world
by Roland Oliphant
The British government has faced criticism after new figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest the death toll from coronavirus is a quarter higher than previously reported.
But Britain is not alone in struggling to count coronavirus casualties accurately.
A mixture of pressures on testing capacity, differing counting protocols, and political meddling may have distorted death and infection rates around the world...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/31/counting-coronavirus-different-countries-calculating-death-tolls/
31 Mar: BBC: Coronavirus: Why the UK death count is an inexact science
By Michelle Roberts
The Office for National Statistics has released new figures on the number of deaths involving coronavirus.
Unlike the statistics we have heard about before now, these include every community death linked to Covid-19 in England and Wales.
According to the data, there were 210 deaths up to 20 March - the day that pubs and clubs were ordered to shut down to help tackle the outbreak.
That is 40 more than the official figure of 170 released at that time...
Why the increase?
It looks at community deaths - people who died at home or in residential care who doctors recorded on the death certificate as probably having Covid-19...
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52103808
Not defending NHS here in any way, but yeah, the NHS, as with any similar type healthcare system, will have rationing and triage carried to ‘death panel’ type resolutions. That said, the UKs largest problem is that it has approx. 5000 ventilators...definitely not enough for a system being overwhelmed.
I saw that yesterday. 4,000 vents, 5,000 vents. That’s what you get when you give the medical needs of “The Community” just equal footing. When they were starting “Preventive Medicine” courses in Med Schools I couldn’t understand at the time why the “old doctors” were so against Preventive Medicine being part of the profession. Suddenly it all makes sense. Things go to hell fast when your priorities are wrong.
Patients most likely to die have ventilators taken away?
Rather self-fulfilling isn’t it?
Do you have the machine that goes “ping”?
The Guardian is taking speculation and scenarios, printing them as fact and FReepers are lapping it up. It’s hard to decide which is more pathetic.
sorry folks...but if it has to be done, it has to be done.... wouldn’t we’d rather have the father of 3 survive over the demented copd diabetic 85 yro old.....
Stable coronavirus patients could be taken off ventilators in favour of those more likely to survive, it emerged [...]
That doesn't seem to correspond to the headline, which states:
Patients More Likely To Die May Have Ventilators Taken Away
"Stable" does NOT mean "more likely to die."
In other words: The headline says the very opposite of the first line of the article. This is very confusing.
Regards,
And are you #s at the Guardian gonna blame Trump?
GTH, Guardian.
These issues are similar to "lifeboat ethics". A great movie, made in 1957 features a lifeboat crowded with too many people. At least a dozen need to be tossed overboard, where they will die. How to decide who goes? It is not easy. The movie goes by several names: "Seven Days From Now", "Abandon ship", or "Seven Waves Away". It's on Youtube & it's worth a look. There are doubtless newer movies with the same theme; but, this one is the only one I remember & there are parts of it I'll probably never forget.
I would give the hospital care, drugs, medical equipment, etc. to the one who could afford to pay for them.
That precept wouldn't work, e.g., in a Veterans' Administration hospital, I admit, but in private hospitals...
Regards,
A Lancet paper indicates that 92% of patients on ventilators due to covid-19 end up dying. Only 1 out 13 survive. Basically, if you need one, you’d better get the family together - it might be the last time they see you alive.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30110-7/fulltext
That’s another ethical choice! And there are many more.
I don’t know what the ‘right’ answer is — but, ultimately, this is just another (admittedly extreme) example of the ethics involved with rationing health care. These sorts of decisions (or rote rule-following) happen all the time in health care.
In a purely capitalist system (which does not describe the USA) care would be distributed to those who can pay.
In a purely socialist health-care system (which describes about 2/3 of Canada’s system); health care is supposed to be based on ‘need’. It is rationed in many ways. And some people are more equal than others. (In Canada, the general population is actually on the 3rd or 4th tier of a supposedly single-tier health care system.)
Why should the mixed U.S.A. health-care system default to a purely socialist model (complete with death panels) during a crisis? I don’t know the ethical answer; but, it’s an important question.
Oh, and BTW, does anyone actually believe billionaires, senior politicians, and other elites will be denied care?
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