I saw something recently that made my blood boil.
It was an interview with an oncologist who was saying that he’s finally seeing patients referred to him after the lockdown started and that because these people have a six-month delay in diagnosis and treatment for suspected cancers, their outcomes are much, much worse. They are having to perform mastectomies and colostomies that had they started treating these patients months ago, they probably could have avoided. Other patients have metastasized in that time period.
In our rush to fight COVID, our governments condemned countless cancer patients to disfigurement or death.
If there is one good thing to say about a national healthcare system, it’s easier to get real-time data, rather than piecemeal like in the US.
From CTV News:
‘Collateral damage’: Doctors worry patients diagnosed with more advanced cancers because of delays
Back in March, Bill Gardner’s doctor wanted him tested for a sore throat, trouble swallowing and a slightly altered voice, but couldn’t get an appointment because of delays from the coronavirus pandemic.
It wasn’t until Gardner coughed up blood four months later that he got checked out. He had Stage 2 oropharyngeal cancer.
“To some degree, the cancer is bigger than it would have been found earlier and so I’m going to have to have more intensive radiation,” Gardner told CTV News.
“Some people who might have gotten early treatment that could save their lives might not have their lives saved,” Gardner said. “Some metastases from those cancers that might have been prevented by earlier treatment will happen and more demanding — and frankly toxic — treatments will have to be used.”
From the Globe and Mail:
More than 50 per cent of Canadians affected by cancer have had treatments and tests cancelled or delayed as a result of COVID-19 precautions, according to survey from the Canadian Cancer Survivor Network.
The national internet survey of 1,243 Canadians between May 22 and June 10, conducted by Leger for the CCSN, assessed disruptions in cancer care as a result of COVID-19. The survey included 960 Canadians diagnosed with cancer, as well as caregivers and patients in the prediagnosis stage, and found that 54 per cent of respondents had tests and treatments postponed or cancelled, including three-quarters of prediagnosis or recently diagnosed patients.
From Sky News:
The husband of a woman with brain cancer said government has “failed” to look after people with illnesses other than COVID-19.
Emma Jenkinson, 31, had her chemotherapy treatment paused for three months over lockdown.
The heartbroken pair, who are parents to four children aged 11, nine, four and two, have now found out the disease has progressed and is likely resistant to further chemo.
From Health Data Research UK:
The Big C isn’t COVID-19 – it’s cancer
‘Britain’s Cancer Crisis’, which aired on BBC One in early July, followed the stories of several people living with cancer during the pandemic. The show highlights the shocking and horrific reality of how the pandemic is affecting people with cancer across the UK, with delayed diagnoses and cancelled treatment potentially causing anywhere between 7,000 and 18,000 additional deaths from the disease in the most likely scenario over the coming year.
From The Times:
Cancer patients to pay heavy price for checks lost to coronavirus lockdown
Five-year survival rates are expected to fall due to delays in getting urgent referrals or treatment at the height of the pandemic
Thousands of lives may be lost to cancer because 250,000 patients were not referred to hospital for urgent checks, says a report to be published this week.
Family doctors made 339,242 urgent cancer referrals in England between April and June, down from 594,060 in the same period last year — a drop of 43%.
The fall in the number of people seeing their GP with symptoms, and in referrals for scans, is resulting in cancers being spotted too late, according to the research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Carnall Farrar, a healthcare management consultancy.
The result is that Britain could reverse a decade of progress in tackling the disease with survival rates predicted to slump, the study found.
There is no reason to think it was any different in the US.
If anything, our hyperpartisan governments over panicked even more.
Most hospitals in the US were not overrun, far from it, they were so underutilized that they had furloughs and layoffs due to budget failures.
Giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, that might have been one thing during the “15 days to flatten the curve,” but once that was over, hospitals should have started taking in patients again, not continuing their delays for months afterwards.
I think much of this panic was driven by the NYC based media reporting on NYC hospitalization rates and making it seem like the entire country was New York, and politicians reacted accordingly.
Huntsville Hospital shut down for COVID, even though it is a nearly 900-bed hospital that had at its peak 100 COVID patients at any given time.
This is something that hits very close to home for me. My dad died of cancer. I had cancer. When they saw the spot on my x-ray, I was in surgery 48 hours later. If I was forced to wait six months, I’d be dead. Just dead. Flat fucking dead.
I know this because the brother of my mother’s best friend developed the same kind of cancer I did. He wasn’t diagnosed until he became symptomatic and he died six months later.
What the government, bureaucrats, and some media personalities have done to cancer patients because of COIVD is a crime against humanity. They needlessly sacrificed countless cancer patients for an ineffectual response to a virus with a 99.7% survivability.
In a just world, when all this is over, there should be a Numreburg-like trial for these people and they should be made to swing by the neck for the people with cancer they killed while hyping COVID panic porn.
This is absolutely horrible, and there are more victims to add to the list:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8861271/Why-Victorias-lockdown-killed-four-newborn-babies.html
I covered that one last week.
https://gunfreezone.net/the-absolute-cruelty-of-bureaucracy-and-lockdowns/
Bureaucrats decided not to send babies with fatal heart defects to hospital in another Australian state because of the risk of spreading a virus with 99.7% survivability.
Guaranteed death from heart defects vs. 0.3% Virus mortality and they chose to let babies die because of the Virus.
D’oh! That’s where I saw it first, then (I even liked the post).
The Hippocratic Oath starts “First, do no harm.” Yet, Fauci, and many other MD-bearing politicians (NO, they’re not doctors–they’re just politicians with medical degrees), if you mentioned concerns other than WuFlu, went immediately to “you only care about money.” Read Hayek about why we should never rely on “experts to rule us. (TLDR: they look at everything in terms of their narrow specialty, rather than looking at the whole picture.) If you cared, back in March, you could find plenty of research studies about excess deaths due to stress and treatment delays during the virus outbreak in 2009.
It’s not rocket science. I may be the only EE you’ll encounter who was a published author in the medical literature before he entered college–I’ve been reading medical literature since right after my junior year in high school–but the medical literature is accessible to anyone. You might have to look up some of the terms, and you might have to brush up on your sadistics to judge the validity of the “results” section of a paper, but, if you can read, you can figure it out.
And, you’re absolutely right about Nurenburg-style trials. You can start with the a-hole in England who predicted zillions of deaths with his computer model, and run right through almost everyone at the top of the CDC, the WHO, and their equivalents almost everywhere outside of Sweden. Then, you can start on the “experts” quoted in the enemedia worldwide. While they’re awaiting their trials, put them in Africa, where people are starving because of the economic lockdowns.
Yes, you’ve hit a nerve here, if you couldn’t guess….
If “X” is the unknown, and a spurt is a drip of liquid under pressure, we’ve got proof that an “expert” is just an unknown drip under pressure.
YMMV….
Ok. First I live in Canada and the industrial facility I work at has about 50 employees. Three different employees have lost parents or spouses this year to cancer. Every one was because treatment was delayed because of covid.
One employee died of a heart attack, his testing had been pushed off because of covid and so he didn’t get the surgery in time.
Another person lost a grown son to suicide after he became depressed over loosing his job.
Zero people know anyone who died from covid. No one has been hospitalized over it either.
For our small facility the cure has been much worse than the disease.
Exile1981
I hate to say it, but I’ve been beating on this drum almost since day one.
If you don’t measure it, you can’t fix it. J. Kb, as a fellow engineer, you’ve probably heard that in Root Cause Analysis meetings forever.
All we tracked were two things: deaths with Covid and cases. Neither of those numbers are particularly meaningful.
There was no effort to track things like numbers of patients with cancer diagnosis delayed or missed, suicides, drug overdoses, anything. In an instant, you can go to the Johns Hopkins web page and get the numbers of cases and deaths, but nothing else. Since the efforts are so scattered, I can’t know, but I’d bet the number of deaths including those from more serious cancers that will show up over time is in the range of 10x to 100x the number of deaths from Covid.
If you can’t know what the costs and benefits of what you did are, how would you know if you did the right things?
As far as I can tell, this is the first time in history we’ve quarantined the entire population instead of people with the illness. At some point in the future, sane people will look back at this period in horror and wonder, “how could the medical experts have been such utter idiots?”
Was it idiocy or corruption? Both played a role.
Now we’re entering the normal “flu season”, and the media has already coined the term “twindemic” to cover the China Virus and influenza.
Funny thing is, flu deaths are WAY down so far. Something like 5-10% what they usually are (that’s a 90-95% drop-off).
I suspect that someone who dies from a respiratory illness is tested for COVID, but not flu, and if they’re positive for COVID (or COVID antibodies, which only tell if you’ve HAD the virus, not whether you still have it or have recovered), they’re recorded as a COVID death even if they actually died of the flu.
The death certificate only has one space for “cause of death”, and the doctors are still under orders to list COVID if the test is positive.
I predict we’ll have a record low number of flu deaths reported this season. Not because the flu is especially mild, but because the coroners are still following COVID reporting protocols.
To me it was pure manufactured panic because “orange man bad” syndrome. When hospitals started layin off doctors and nurses THAT shoulda been the first clue that maybe it aint as bad ss it seems. I been out in it from day one. I only wear a mask by force to keep my job. Here in areas with lots of liberals you have mask nazis. In “normal” areas its 50/50 or 70/30 no mask/mask. Its getting VERY old. I will not wear a mask when im not working. It will be interesting to see where this goes when Trump wins.
When communicating with my local assembly member, he stated “I do not want to be the fool that ignores the medical experts.”
To which I responded he was a much larger fool because he is not asking questions of the experts, and he is voting to pass resolutions that he knows will ruin tens of thousands of people’s lives (economic, social, and physical/mental health).
If the people passing the declarations of emergency were to ask some simple questions: “What is so terrifying about this disease? How exactly will the healthcare system be overwhelmed? Explain how your model works, and why you think it is an accurate projection?”
Not terribly tough questions, and worst case, you still vote to destroy tens of thousands people’s lives, but you do so knowing why. Instead of just voting because of scary headlines.
When my Lady came down from Canada to be with me, she was terrified of getting sick. Because she didn’t have any access to health care in the US.
The first time she got sick and needed to see the doctor, I took her to the urgent care facilities, and she was seen within 15 minutes. She walked out with antibiotics, a prescription and a bill for less than a $100 which I paid on the way out.
From the time we decided to see the doctor to the time she saw the doctor was about an hour. She was explaining to me that if she had wanted to see a doctor in Candida she would have had to go to the ER and would have spent many many hours with no promise of actually being seen.
Currently we have a family doctor. To see our family doctor over an upper respiratory infection we call at 0800 and we see the doctor by 1200. Cost is around $50.
I have a friend that lives and works in Canada. He got an upper respiratory infection. He just tried to run it out because it was to much work to go to the ER and his family doctor could see him in around 6 weeks. He finally got into see a doctor because another friend of ours called in a favor with his doctor. At which it had been almost two weeks from the time it was obvious that a doctor was needed before my friend was seen.
When you look at the survival rate for the big-C you find that american’s are much more likely to survive. The reason is that we are more likely to be seen and diagnosed by our medical system and then be in to see a oncologist in a short period of time. The waiting times for oncologists in the NHS (UK) and in Canada are much higher. By the time you are seen, your cancer might very well have progressed past the stage(s) where it could have been treated.
Yes, there are no death panels, there are just long waiting lines, and if you happen to die while waiting, that wasn’t the fault of the doctors or health system.
I had a friend pass away because his kidneys shut down. He had a compatable kidney and surgery was scheduled, they shut down the hospitle the next day! So, yes it happened here also!