Apologies, in fairness I would be better off not even defining a gender (although that quickly becomes a whole other topic) as I don't really tend to view a poster in any particular way. Much like age, it's easy to misconstrue with out a face. Hopefully my point though is fair regarding the overwhelming of the nhs. I've seen your posts as being incredibly insightful and sometimes they seem to be glazed over. It's almost like people avoid responding when you have pointed out that they are incorrect as it doesn't fit their point.
May i ask what your thoughts are on the potential for a short delay on removing all restrictions?
That's okay, it's just something I was surprised about on DS as I automatically think that my name alone reveals my gender, let alone my job (most nurses are female, even in ICU). I'm beginning to think I must post in a masculine style.
I don't have a personal opinion on the removal of all restrictions, except that I trust the government's medical and scientific advisers to make that call. If they believe and advise that we need a delay, from the data coming through, then we need a delay.
It won't particularly affect the way we currently work in the NHS, one way or the other, we will still need the various admission pathways (green, amber, red) because we are still regularly admitting covid patients, we still need to abide by all the strict infection control precautions which make us less efficient.
I don't feel like I'm in lockdown at the moment, I have a lot of personal freedom. I have no desire for a foreign holiday. I would like to get to Ireland to see my folks without the need for an expensive and uncomfortable PCR test but I can book a flight there at the moment if I chose to. The problem is that Ireland's restrictions are only being very gradually lifted and they currently have less freedom than we do (but things are slowly opening up there now too, it seems). There is no urgency since my folks are fine - my 87 year old dad has been on his tractor mowing meadows (he's a farmer with two farms to manage), he seems to have more energy than I do.
We certainly don't want to get into a third surge. We are at a manageable workload at the moment but we wouldn't cope well with a return to the way we work when numbers surge. Enhanced PPE was bad enough in winter but it's almost unbearable to wear in summer (very few wards have air conditioning, the new ICU that we opened last year hasn't closed - the old one is now closed - but not all the bays in the newer unit have air con).
Hopefully, the government will abide by what the expert advisers say.