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News Worldwide impact of the novel coronavirus (covid-19)

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@Chris-duck - righteo. In that case, it's going to be a call for the paramedics and police on scene. They have training to make that call - does this person need police transport, or do they need medical transport.

Most mental health transports here where I live are done by paramedics, because mental illness isn't something that should generally be managed by police. On some occasions you'll have police and paramedics attend an emergency, but if it's a health issue, paramedics are best trained to handle that situation and transport that person.

I can't really comment on whys and wherefores in places where mental illness has been managed by police in the past. That doesn't make sense to me. But it seems to me that the rules necessarily change in a pandemic situation. It seems incredibly unlikely to me that decisions like who will transport which patients during a pandemic is something that paramedics and police haven't got some kind of plan for. This situation hasn't happened for about 100 years, but that doesn't mean our frontline services have no plans in place for it. Most of them do, and most of them are simply enacting, and following those plans, based on the advice they're receiving from chief medical officers.

I doubt very much that this is a spontaneous decision by police, or that it has been taken without consultation with the appropriate stakeholders, including paramedics. That's one of the benefits of having a first world medical system.

Second-guessing and criticising frontline services right now is really counterproductive.
 
@Chris-duck - yeah, I'm not envious of paramedics right now. Hopefully they'll be receiving extra support, because aside from being frontline in a pandemic situation (as though their job isn't stressful enough!), they also have all this additional panic to deal with. That's really putting people on edge, and many people get violent when they panic. Makes sense that paramedics would rightly have concerns about that.

But I definitely think that if some police have changed their protocol, that's not a decision that has been made lightly, against medical advice, or without proper consultation.

There isn't fantastic flow of information about why decisions that are being made are necessary. I think better sharing of that information, by the people making those decisions, would help ease anxiety for a lot of people (including paramedics).

You know frontline people, though, yeah? It's not like the police won't attend a scene where paramedics require backup. Police and firies are there in a heartbeat if they're told that paramedics require backup.

ETA the police are in a similarly tough spot. When people start panicking, we need our cops to be available to deal with. That's not an enviable position to be in either. Cops don't exactly want to be patrolling the toilet paper aisle when there's more than enough work for them to squeeze into their shift already!
 
@Sideways that makes sense, yeah. But in reality, in the UK at least, paramedics and in hospital staff don't get extra help. Here it really has been a bunch of other emergency services refusing to attend and paramedics getting overloaded leading to hospitals being overloaded leading to wards having patients sitting in corridors on 10l of oxygen.

Theory and practice is very different. Whatever reasons people in offices have, it's impacting people (and patients) on the floor way more than anyone is acknowledging. And it'd be less necessary if there wasn't so many people refusing to do their normal job (police, GPs etc)
 
Just chiming in for a small sec- I’ve been transported to the ER by police and frankly I don’t think paramedics would have been sure to do that. My vitals were good, I was up and talking, but police have training for when a person is lying out their ass and they were able to see right through me.

As far as police being limited in their duties- I don’t get it. Police are generally a population in mostly great health and this virus barely affects that sector. Can they transmit to more vulnerable people? Absolutely but so can literally everyone. I kinda get the cancellations of events, I don’t understand school closures because it hardly affects kids at all (other than their ability to spread to others- so do a deep clean during spring break and keep on top of it. . . ).

I truly don’t understand this panic and really don’t understand limiting any kind of emergency/health/whatever other necessary staff unless you’re going to do it for all of them. I really don’t get the argument of well nurses have dealt with pandemics before so we aren’t worried about them- that made zero sense and if anything your nurses are the ones who should get to stay home and away from so much exposure. But they can’t, because we need them, just as much as police.
 
@LuckiLee I’m in the Detroit area as well and I can’t seem to find where police roles are changing at all. Could you point me to where you found that? For all that I don’t understand about this, I do want to stay informed.
 
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