UncleEbenezer wrote:One to look out for is the receding promise. The "week after next" timescale that just slides while the cancer spread. In the absence of NHS promises, we could have gone private or abroad four months earlier, and my relative might be alive and well today.
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Sorry to hear about your relative.
The “receding promise” is something that concerns me too and it’s something that makes me somewhat annoyed whenever I hear the reasonably widespread narrative re COVID-19 that now only hospitalisations and deaths matter and that, in the absence of those, case numbers are not an issue.
I have a condition, luckily not life-threatening but potentially life-altering, that arose in the last 5 months. I was referred very promptly by my GP, my referral was triaged by the hospital, and I was given an appointment with a consultant about 10 weeks after referral. 2 days before my appointment I was called to say that my consultant had been told to self-isolate, that they had no idea when he would be back, and that they would contact me in due course to reschedule the appointment. I have now had that appointment 4.5 months after diagnosis and after the cancellation I did book a private appointment but not everyone can afford to do that. The random disappearance of consultants for weeks at a time due to contact tracing really worries me if case numbers rise even if most are asymptomatic. Unfortunately right now one needs no clinical trials to determine the efficacy of any of the vaccines against contact tracers, the efficacy (to 5 decimal places0 is 0.00000%. ‘You’ve been in contact with an infected person, please self isolate for 10 days after contact”. “you’re fully vaccinated? Don’t care. The rules are the same. Self isolate and cancel your appointment list for the duration, maybe longer if you test positive on an ongoing basis”.
Is the above a polemic against contact tracing? If we are at the stage when most infections are benign then I”m honest;y not sure, and I speak as someone who over the lockdowns raged against the failure to build a decent test, trace and isolate system (my view test excellent, trace not too bad, isolate poor). I’m genuinely confused and conflicted about all of this.
- Julian