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I disagree with you, Alastair. I believe @PanData19 is filling in the gaps that governments have failed to fill. I encourage you to have an open mind and listen intently to what we have to say. 1/n


Here’s how @PanData19 is approaching this crisis differently from governments:
We believe that "health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."- @WHO 2/n

To tackle the problem holistically, we have formed a multidisciplinary team made up of immunologist, microbiologist, geneticists, data scientists, physicians, economist, psychologists, educators, public health professionals and business owners. 3/n

We have also backed ourselves with a scientific advisory board made up of prominent experts in their fields.
@MartinKulldorff
@SunetraGupta
@MLevitt_NP2013
@MichaelYeadon3
#JayBhattacharya
#SucharitBhakdi
They are supporting us every step of the way. 4/n

We believe that "the right to health is one of a set of internationally agreed human rights standards, and is inseparable or ‘indivisible’ from these other rights.” @WHO 5/n
I came across this tweet from "Caroline Mansfield" about my local hospital being "empty".

So let's take a look:

First up, some warning signs:
1) A generic username, and another real Twitter account (I've emailed)
2) No registration with GCRN
3) Only recently joined Twitter


On to the Issues.

Issue No. 1: Barnet Hospital isn't actually IN Hertfordshire. It's in Barnet, with an Enfield postcode.

Which is confusing, but wouldn't be counted in Hertfordshire's hospital admission data.


Issue No. 2

Barnet is actually VERY busy with COVID cases, with 22% of our ENTIRE pandemic caseload in the LAST 7 DAYS ALONE

Source:
https://t.co/IECfMo8FAK


Issue No. 3:

Barnet Hospital is seeing incredible pressures, the trust (The Royal Free Trust) has cancelled most non-urgent and routine work,

and as of 23rd Dec had admitted 244 patients with COVID, roughly half the peak of March, and climbing v. fast.


Issue No. 4
Even busier is Intensive Care - the whole trust only has 57 beds (23 - Barnet & 34 at the Royal Free Hospital).

As of 23rd Dec, 40 of them were occupied by COVID patients. That's 70% of the ENTIRE CAPACITY used up by COVID ALONE.

Source: https://t.co/zGmMSuoywN
Seeing a lot of this circulating on the right, so let me explain why folks are worried even though it is not literally true that every ICU bed in the country is occupied at the moment.


#1, the big worry is ICU space, not hospital beds, and as you can see from this very thread, ICU utilization is running well above hospital utilization generally.

#2 The constraint on ICUs isn't beds, it's staff. ICU beds are (relatively) easy to build. They're not much good if the only people you have to staff them are the cafeteria workers.

#3 It's true that ICUs can flex to deal with high utilization. But to do so, they have to:

1) Stretch existing workers to do more (potentially compromising care)
2) Recruit workers from other specialties (potentially compromising care)
2) Hire additional temporary workers

Hiring temps is the best strategy. The problem is, it's a good strategy that's hard to implement when a staggering fraction of the nation's hospitals are all having the same problems, requiring exactly the same skills from the same shrinking pool of workers, at the same time.