Well Of Course The NHS Doesn’t Have Enough Beds For Coronavirus

A little sly dig here at the fact that the NHS doesn’t have enough beds to deal with the coronavirus:

Patients with ‘mild’ coronavirus told to stay at home as health chief admits NHS has too few beds

Well, yes, obviously the NHS doesn’t have enough beds. The wilder predictions are that perhaps 10% of the population will need to take bed rest. Do we have 6 million beds in the NHS? No, of course we don’t. We’ve not needed to have 6 million beds since the damn thing was set up in 1948. It would have been ruinously expensive if we had had 6 million beds this past 70 years.

Because we don’t want to have to maintain capacity all the time for something that comes along once in a lifetime.

We also don’t have enough gravediggers to bury ’em all (nor priests), crematorium space if we’re not to bury the victims of a pandemic. For the same reason, we don’t maintain double the capacity normally needed.

The NHS won’t have enough beds if this becomes pandemic, yes, true, and gosh, well noticed. And?

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Tim Worstall

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  • Do you mean the corporate PHB managment mantra that was the bane of all coalface staff is wrong ? You cant "manage" for all contingencies. HR will have something to say about that. Am I being bitter again ? sorry

  • why the heck would someone with mild flu of any type need to go to hospital? They don't normally. Hospital beds are for those that need medical care, not a week in bed with chicken soup etc.

  • Why would anyone need to be hospitalised with a Cold or even ‘flu except in severe cases?

    The Coronavirus results by big majority in mild symptom to asymptomatic, with more severe cases like a bad Cold. ‘At risk’ people the same for other respiratory tract infections and most likely already in that NHS bed for something else.

    Either you should keep Coronavirus victims out of hospitals unless their life is threatened, or invite lots of them in to free up bed-space from long term patients. A good ‘flu epidemic is usually welcomed by NHS staff for freeing up beds on geriatric and psychiatric wards. Dead patients are the cheapest for the NHS to treat - budget savers. Dying saves the NHS £millions.

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Tim Worstall

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