One of the main government mouthpieces, Sky News, which was formerly a well respected news broadcaster, has been pushing the story of how some London hospitals are under stress because of Covid. Sky claim that the information that they have is from a leaked internal NHS email stating that ICU’s at several hospitals are ‘full’.

This is what Sky said:

Intensive care units in three London hospitals were “full” on New Year’s Eve, leaving patients waiting to be transferred to other hospitals for critical care, according to a leaked NHS email obtained by Sky News.

The email, which was sent on Thursday afternoon to staff at University College London Hospital, recorded the status of intensive care units (ICUs) in the northwest and central areas of London, which have been hit hard by the steep rise in coronavirus infections.

ICUs at three hospitals were “full”, the email said. North Middlesex University Hospital, Barnet Hospital and Whittington Hospital had no more room for seriously ill patients and had patients waiting for “a transfer” to another ICU.

If you quickly speed read the Sky article you would get the impression that the entirety of the take up of ICU beds was down to covid. Whilst some ICU beds are without a doubt occupied by covid patients, the article makes no mention of any other patient cohort data such as age, co-morbidities etc nor any mention of whether the covid infections are community or hospital acquired. I’ve seen figures that show that probable hospital acquired covid makes up between 17% and 24% of covid infections depending on the geographical area. It is quite possible that an at present unknown, but possibly high, proportion of those currently in ICU’s in London may have acquired their covid infection whilst hospitalised for other matters.

Also missing from the article is any acknowledgement that winter crisis is a permanent state for the NHS mostly due to bad management. Sky News has failed to temper the tone of their article by telling their readers that the NHS has a winter crisis almost every damned year and to have stress put on ICU’s and to have a rise in the number of people hospitalised for respiratory conditions is par for the course.

Just because the geographical area that the hospitals cover has people testing positive for covid does not automatically therefore mean that all or most of the patients in ICU are there for covid. Some will be of course but I doubt very much that it is all. The more cynical side of myself wonders whether the leaked email was in fact really leaked at all by someone concerned about the situation or whether it could have been deliberately leaked by the NHS in order to make themselves look like they are good and hard working and maybe even to scaremonger the public some more? We get the same BS from the NHS every year just before and during winter periods when the NHS management and NHS interest groups whine loudly about how much stress they will be under and how poorly resourced they are.

Just look at these two screenshots from the past to see how a winter crisis is not at all an unusual thing for the NHS.

You would have to have the memory of a goldfish to not recall that the NHS makes a winter complaint almost ever year.

Whilst I have little doubt that the NHS is currently suffering a staffing problem, this is a problem that is most likely entirely of the NHS’s own making. Firstly the NHS insists on self isolation for staff who have come into contact with covid, test positive or even have a mild case of the sniffles. This means that staff who would be fit for work are being kept home and unable to work.

It has also been shown that retired medics cannot re enter the medical profession on a temporary basis due to the extreme bureaucracy of the NHS. In one reported case, which knowing how crap the NHS truly is may therefore probably be representative of the situation as a whole, a retired medic applying to rejoin the NHS and help with vaccinations was turned down due to a lack of a certificate showing that they’d been on a diversity course. What with the excessive period NHS staff have to stay off work after allegedly coming into contact with covid and the sclerotic box ticking nonsense that characterises the NHS, I believe that I can truly say that much of the NHS’s current problems are less to do with covid and much more to do with bad management.

A different perspective on the situation the hospitals was provided by a nurse who was spoken to by a correspondent and the correspondent themselves over at Lockdown Sceptics. The correspondent said that they visited London on New Years Eve and found the central area deserted apart from a few hardy souls and lots of aggressive plod. On their way down to the Embankment area they passed by the Royal London Hospital. She said that the hospital looked remarkably unbusy for a New Years Eve. She said:

I could not resist a little drive round the block to go past the ambulance and A&E entrance of the hospital. Only one ambulance to be seen and no people. Pretty bloody unusual for 10pm on New Year’s Eve…

I know that area relatively well and with the pubs shut public alcohol related violence would be down but this in my experience doesn’t stop some Londoners from stabbing each other on a regular basis along with the usual aftermaths of domestics and regular illness. I’d have expected to see the Royal London, a shithole that my family unfortunately have experience of*, much busier than that.

In central London the correspondent ran into a person out observing this very unusual New Years Eve. It turned out that the person that the correspondent was talking to was a nurse of ten years standing from one of the London hospitals. Her comments on the situation are quite enlightening. According to the Lockdown Sceptics article the nurse said that bad management in the NHS was part of the service’s current problems and that her experience was that the situation in her hospital was no worse than usual.

As we left I found myself beside a young woman with a scooter. Turns out she was a nurse of 10 years experience at one on the large London hospitals. She said it was busy and hard work, everyone was doing 12 hour shifts, but no worse than usual for the time of year. She said she had decided to come (unmasked) because she had been working so hard she was treating herself to a night out because it was a historic night and you would never see London like this again on New year’s Eve.

She said people’s good will kept them all going at her hospital, but many of her colleagues felt as she did, that the measures were out of proportion to the risk and the NHS has been badly managed in preparation for this crisis. She said the staff shortages were being created by constant testing so many staff perfectly fit for work were sitting at home.

The phrase ‘no worse than usual’ caught my eye about this section of the Lockdown Sceptics article. Anybody who takes any interest in how the NHS runs and is not just one of the morons who mindlessly comply with NHS worship and do the ‘Stalin Clap’, understand that winter is ALWAYS a bad time for the NHS. You would think wouldn’t you that if the current situation was similar to say Hong Kong flu or 1918 then the situation in the hospital would be far worse,not the same as other regular years? I’m not at all surprised to hear from this nurse that the NHS is badly managed. Of course it is badly managed, it’s a nationalised industry where bad management and prioritising the staff/management over the interests of the customers is an inherent feature of nationalised industries. It also appears to be the case that because of an over the top reaction to covid by the NHS, staff who could be working are being kept off even though they are fit for work. If there is a crisis in London’s hospitals then it is in large part created by bad management and possibly not covid.

Sky News failed to inform its readers in the above-linked article about the NHS long and ignominious history of bad management and poor Winter preparation. Maybe this was an oversight on their part, or maybe it was deliberate as to point out to its readers that the NHS has a winter crisis almost ever damned year, would undermine the scaremongering tone of the article?

* When a relative was unfortunate enough to need treatment at the Royal London a few years back the other relative who was their carer was so worried that the person being treated would be treated like dirt by the staff and not cared for properly that she felt that she had to stay most of the night at the hospital just to ensure that their relative was treated properly.  Like so many NHS hospitals the Royal London is a craphole where you can’t completely trust the staff to do their damned jobs properly or even equitably.