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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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As all you ex-fatties know, the world is currently being swept by a cascade of new and effective dieting drugs. Hence the age old internet cycle is in full swing. I'll give the usual ten-point heads-up:
1. Big Pharma company comes up with a superdrug
2. Superdrug is tested, approved and is dished out by doctors
3. Drug is wildly expensive, Big Pharma company makes big money
4. Other Big Pharma companies come up with lookalike drugs
5. Indian and Chinese companies start producing cheap grey market knock-offs
6. Consumers start buying these products over the internet
7. Big Pharma, Big Medecine and Big Government are furious
8. MSM starts running scare stories about dangers of unlicensed drugs etc
9. Consumers stop ordering knock-offs
10 After the hysteria dies down consumers start ordering knock-offs again.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Big piece yesterday on waiting times for emergency ambulances. It's scandalous etc etc. Now, to a layman, this looks to be one of the easier aspects of health care to get right. Ambulances and their crews are surely both (a) readily available and (b) not a major line item in the overall health spend.
But, it seems, a lot of the horror show arises because ambulances can't offload their patients to hospitals and hence have to hang around, essentially doing nothing, for hours at a time waiting for them to be admitted. And hospital places (a) are not readily available and (b) are a major line item in the overall health spend.
However, speaking as an ex-NHS ancillary myself, I can offer this advice to ambulance crews: bung the patient in an annexe next to Casualty and return to base.
However, as as an ex- etc etc, I can also say why this obvious solution has not been adopted. It suits Casualty staff to have their workload backed up outside hospital (either in ambulances or waiting for ambulances), rather than backed up inside (where they are their responsibility).
And because hospital casualty staff are higher on the NHS totem pole than ambulance crews that's the way it will stay. (N.B. patients are not on the NHS totem pole.)
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | But, it seems, a lot of the horror show arises because ambulances can't offload their patients to hospitals and hence have to hang around, essentially doing nothing, for hours at a time waiting for them to be admitted. And hospital places (a) are not readily available and (b) are a major line item in the overall health spend. |
One potential solution I have seen floated by medical acquaintances is to get the Covid19 marquees* out of storage and erect them next to the hospitals. Call them the Triage Tents. Or a new National Triage Services (NTS). Run by private companies of course.
Ambulances at one end, triage and waiting rooms in the middle, actual cases that the hospital can actually deal with going out the other end. Maybe even with conveyor belts, the kind seen at airports to move luggage, but adapted for faster shunting of stretchers into hospital operating rooms.
The hospitals themselves are freed of the clutter, of the excess population lying and dying on stretchers in corridors etc. The "in-hospital" waiting time is magically much reduced. The "in-hospital" fatalities also decrease. Triage troubles cease to be an "in-hospital" problem.
* Covid19 marquees were the paid-for-at-enormous-cost-but-never-used part of the UK response to the Covid19 "crisis". Which, despite the hysterical fear-porn theoretical predictions, turned out to be not much worse than the previous big flu outbreaks. Ignoring the downstream impact of people expelled from hospitals, extended waiting lists and vaccine side effects. The cure was worse than the disease.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Borry wrote: | | One potential solution I have seen floated by medical acquaintances is to get the Covid19 marquees* out of storage and erect them next to the hospitals. Call them the Triage Tents. Or a new National Triage Services (NTS). |
One thing hospitals I ever worked at/visited/been hospitalised in is empty rooms that nobody seems to know the purpose of. A classic reason, of course, why they can't be used for anything else.
I remember one I worked at had been designated an overflow emergency facility in case, say, a jumbo jet tried to land on the Westway. We had to be double and triple-manned to be on the safe side. Local public transport would be at a standstill so we had to be on site.
| Run by private companies of course. |
Careful. One battle at a time.
| Ambulances at one end, triage and waiting rooms in the middle, actual cases that the hospital can actually deal with going out the other end. Maybe even with conveyor belts, the kind seen at airports to move luggage, but adapted for faster shunting of stretchers into hospital operating rooms. |
It doesn't have to be very efficient to be better than triage by queuing ambulances.
| The hospitals themselves are freed of the clutter, of the excess population lying and dying on stretchers in corridors etc. The "in-hospital" waiting time is magically much reduced. The "in-hospital" fatalities also decrease. Triage troubles cease to be an "in-hospital" problem. |
One unintended consequence might be that knowing you'll spend a few hours inside with someone saying at intervals, "Are you all right, pet? Won't be long now. Can I get you a nice cup of tea?" rather than "Ay-up, we're edging closer. Do you need another blanket?" will increase demand disastrously. After all, wasn't the Casualty Crisis originally caused by GP surgeries insisting on us making an appointment rather than just going along when we felt a bit under the weather?
| Covid19 marquees were the paid-for-at-enormous-cost-but-never-used part of the UK response to the Covid19 "crisis". Which, despite the hysterical fear-porn theoretical predictions, turned out to be not much worse than the previous big flu outbreaks. Ignoring the downstream impact of people expelled from hospitals, extended waiting lists and vaccine side effects. The cure was worse than the disease. |
I think you missed Covid on the AEL. You may have had long Covid at the time. Great days. Finest hour. We'll never see their like. The Swedish model, that's what I remember best.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Ever since Mad Cow disease, and endless "Healthy Living" advice, we all know for sure that eating red meat is bad for us.
Right?
| Researchers in Sweden followed 2000 people for 15 years, and expected to find that the people with the high risk ApoE4 gene, ate more red meat they would suffer from an increase in dementia. |
I hope this isn't going to be a another dementia-doom story?
| Instead the study showed the opposite. |
Oh, no, not another "assumed science is rubbish" story?
| People with the ApoE4 gene who had lower intakes of red meat, had “more than twice” the risk of Alzheimers. But the ApoE4 people with the highest consumption of meat had the same risk as people without the risky gene. |
To be clear, eating more meat didn’t change the risks of people with the ApoE3 or E2 variants. And processed meat didn’t help anyone. This study suggests that people with the ApoE4 gene need more meat than others. It may be just that red meat is higher in B12, zinc, iron, B6, creatine, carnitine, choline, and taurine and it solves a nutrient deficiency?
Blimey! What next? Will they tell us it's safe to drink alcohol?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Borry wrote: | | I hope this isn't going to be another dementia-doom story |
One of the great puzzles of modern medicine is the lack of effort--or as may be, lack of success--in combating dementia. They know it's those little white dubries in the brain, you would think by now they'd have come up with an agent of dispersal. Even if they don't know how they get there in the first place.
The usual reason for Big Pharma inattention--there's no money in it--scarcely applies since all western health sectors are being beggared by having to look after the victims one way or another. And surely every head of every health research outfit worries, "It'll be my turn soon, best get our sleeves rolled up."
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