1/This account was created in the summer purely to celebrate good news stories and positive feedback about our unit. We were proud of our team and how they had responded to unprecedented challenges in the first wave of COVID. Criticism should not be anonymous and is not our role.

2/Sadly we find ourselves doing COVID again and in the centre of national discussions.
•The current situation on ICU is not normal.
•Our standard capacity for ventilated patients is full, we are coping by expanding again to other areas and using non critical care staff

3/•It is not caused by other respiratory viruses. Flu is not the cause of the current situation.
•What happens out in the city or country is decided by politicians and how we all choose to behave.
•In hospital we deal with the consequences of those actions without judgement.

4/•Our patients are not people expected to die soon. The average age of ICU admissions with COVID in the UK is 59 and most are well beforehand.
•All of our patients caught coronavirus out of hospital.
•Treatments and care have improved.

5/•Sadly people are dying and will die of COVID.
•Those deaths may be you, or if you are young, your relative.
•You cannot simplistically choose between COVID and non COVID care.

6/•Ignoring COVID does not mean other work can just happen. We must try and do both. At some point this will not be possible.
•Nightingale hospitals may be helpful but are not the solution to all the problems.
•We are likely to run out of staff before we run out of equipment.