In my part of the world, they are already getting frail and vulnerable people to sign DNR forms which ensure they do not see the working end of a ventilator They have gone round the care homes and the special schools, and also those in receipt of Adult Services care packages at home. The GP's are next to be visited.
The excuse is that ventilators are brutal pieces of equipment that cause more damage than cure. They will, however, use oxygen and CPAP equipment but that does not need intensive care admission and is done in a normal ward.
I was given this treatment last year where they took a nebulizer and connected it to the O2 supply and it worked for me. From what I understand, using a ventilator requires a coma to be chemically induced and this also carries great risk.
My own experience of DNAR forms is as follows.
My Aunt aged 94 had mild dementia and in September 2019 she had a dementia check and was said to be capable of making her own decisions and I was to allow her to do that, even if I thought the decisions were the wrong ones. Even though I held a Health and Welfare Power of Attorney I could not enforce my wishes onto her until she was adjudged to be incapable of making her own decisions. I asked the dementia nurse if I could, for instance, order Meals on Wheels for her and the answer was no, not if she doesn't want therm. To which my Aunt said 'I don't' lol
In November 2019 nothing had changed with her mental health but she had a minor fall at home and was taken to hospital. When she was discharged there was a DNAR form with her discharge notes. It had been completed by a hospital doctor who had ticked the boxes to say that my aunt had dementia and was incapable of signing her own form, that there was no Power of Attorney and no next of kin. To say I was shocked is an understatement. I had had many calls from the hospital about her care, each one saying that she had said I was her next of kin. She had provided them with my name and phone number herself. I asked her about the form and she said she had told them she didn't want to bother with that because the Power of Attorney (that she had signed 9 years previously) stated that I was to make any of these decisions on her behalf.
My aunt suffered another fall a month later. When she was discharged there was another DNAR form signed by a different doctor. I telephoned her own GP and arranged to complete a new one with him. She fully understood what she was doing and was quite capable of making that decision. The 3 of us thought the time was right to do it.
Why did I bother getting a new one signed? Because wherever possible this has to be the patients own choice. I could foresee a situation where this might happen to a different old lady who changed her mind and later wanted to cancel the DNAR, maybe she would want to live long enough to see her relatives one last time etc. By writing that the elderly have dementia and can't make their own decisions ( and therefore can't overturn the DNAR) when this is patently not true is to my mind a criminal act. How can it be right that I was a legal attorney and couldn't force my will onto her yet a doctor could falsify forms and overturn her wishes at the drop of a hat?
So from the hospital doctors' point of view my aunt had no hope of coming through a reasonably bad illness yet....
I put my aunt's details into the risk calculator from this thread.
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/diabetes-specific-risk-calculator.177539/
According to that she had a 1 in 13 chance of dying of Covid and a 1 in 19 chance of needing a hospital admission.
Well she only survived with Covid for 5 days and at the onset I would have put her risk of dying of it at something like 19 out of 20.
So I don't believe the Q risk score is accurate, it plays down the real risks. Surely being 94 in itself is a higher than 1 in 13 chance of dying of Covid? Then add the heart failure and other conditions...who are 'they' kidding? Too much reliance on algorithms and not enough common sense? Or lulling us into a false sense of security?