COVID and its consequences on disabled/sick people's care

Presumably the people taken away to be "isolated" will be isolated around health care workers many of whom have died according to the reports we are being given. So exactly how low risk is such a situation.

Presumably health care workers take public transport and go to shops etc and are just as much or even more risk than a family isolating in their own house. If one person in a family gets infected the whole family can decide not to go out unlike a key worker health care worker in an isolation unit. Just what is the point of placing more burden on the health care system for an "infected" person until/unless that person actually needs medical care. Infected doesn't even necessarily mean particularly ill in the vast majority of cases. To date there are 148,000 confirmed cases and 20,319 deaths.

That would mean some 100,000 potentially being isolated and serviced at any given time outside of their own homes.

Exactly how much harder is it for a person to be isolated in a room in a family house away from other family members than in a state isolation unit when they already an isolation unit at home called a bedroom.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/society...-how-are-shielders-managing-lockdown-covid-19

 

Thanks to lockdown and complicated circumstances, I've been left without any one to shower me and haven't had a proper shower since March.

 

Very small fry in the scheme of things but it makes a big difference to me.

My GP surgery have changed the way they do things. No problem with getting a phone appointment, it's just you have to phone up at 8am as they are restricting appointments that can be booked ahead.

So.you have to be awake and capable of communicating. Then you might get an appointment or you might have to do it all again the following day.

So I got an appointment for the same morning but they can't give you a time. Having been conscious since 7.30 (needed a cuppa before the call) the morning is a long time to remain in a fit state to have a GP appointment. Especially as I slept very badly knowing I had to be awake and ready to make the call.

So, when the receptionist gave me the option of a call the following afternoon I took that instead, without really thinking it through.

Awake in the morning, I didn't dare do much in case I was wiped out for the afternoon. Once again they couldn't give a time for the call. As the afternoon wore on I was knackered. I lay down but didn't dare nap as it takes me so long to come round.

When J did speak to the GP she was helpful, she could have insisted I come in for a blood pressure check before reissuing some meds but all my pressure tests have been stable so she said we could let it go this time.

I am knackered though. Just trying to be in a state of readiness for the phone conversation, even with clear notes, was knackering. I think it took more out of me than dragging my carcass down there for a set appointment would have.

 

I find waiting for a telephone call absolutely dreadful, because you have to remain 'on' for, in my case, 8hrs. Loads worse than being driven down there. You try to tell the receptionist you cant do this effectively, but they simply do not understand that it's basically impossible.

 

Especially given how trivial it is to run a queue system that alerts about wait times, say by SMS or email. It's a simple failure of will to remain stuck in technical limitations that don't exist anymore.

Hell, most of medicine should be asynchronous by now, having to interact with people for trivial things is entirely unnecessary. It would even be cheaper since physicians' time is basically the one thing that can't be significantly increased no matter the technology available (well, with the eventual exception of medical AI, obviously).

 

Thread:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1289055607765393408