For many decades I have
been an avid reader of Private Eye and right now it is doing a far
better job of holding Government to account than either the
mainstream, the digital or the social media.
Their medical
writer(s?) under the pseudonym MD have (has?) this edition done the
best job yet of examining the actions - and too many failures - of
our national policy. And given I am no expert I am pleased to find
that as I have said, following the science does not describe it at
all.
From the moment this
pandemic reached Britain (whenever that actually was!) errors of policy
have followed. For a start of course the emergency supplies of PPE
and the 'reserved spare' emergency capacity in the health service had
been allowed to wither during ten years of Tory inspired austerity.
On that basis the
knee-jerk herd immunity was a disaster. Then came the PPE problem and
a devious downgrading of coronavirus to allow lesser protection to, apparently, be allowable.
Then there was the
message to care homes – "you have nothing to worry about". In terms
of Government intervention they were right. In terms of Covid-19
infection they were woefully wrong.
(MD does not say it
but I believe it. That this decision was a cold-blooded means of
protecting the weakened and ailing NHS to cope with what was coming.
And it now appears to have continued with infected and allegedly
recovering care home patients being sent from hospital to care home
without testing or tested with a 30% fallible test.)
Testing started. Then
stopped. Track and trace started. Then stopped. Yet we all know, from
South Korea and others, that this was an essential step in
protecting the NHS and saving lives.
Then 'stay home' came
two weeks too late and after huge public gatherings. And was not rammed home hard enough to begin.
Now we come to loosen
the lockdown. Am I confident we shall get that right? Don't even ask.
But they cannot let the likes of me loose yet: too old, too
complicated, too vulnerable, too much part of the 0.5%....
AND finally I'd like
to share the Eye's leading article this edition. And this I shall
quote at length:
LOSE-LOSE
SCENARIO
PANDEMIC planning is
the ultimate lose-lose scenario. The lives and livelihoods lost from
the virus have to be balanced against the lives and livelihoods lost
from the "treatment".
This virus is causing a
surge of deaths particularly in the sick and elderly, whereas
lockdown is causing a smaller surge in non-Covid deaths and a steady,
sustained increase in harm to those who have their whole lives ahead
of them.
Brutally put, 100
percent of us are making sacrifices to save 0.5 percent of us (or
less).
Children are being
harmed to save adults; the poor are being harmed more than the rich;
and some people have become so conditioned to "stay at home"
that not even a medical
emergency will tempt
them to seek help.
Given such staggering
complexity, the best one can hope for is an overall "harm minimisation"
strategy. To get there, experts from all disciplines need to subject
their models and data on the benefits and harms of any strategy to
full public scrutiny. And politicians need to admit their errors in
real time.
It has taken us more
than three months to move from Patient Zero to mass testing and tracing. It would be
churlish not to welcome Matt Hancock's 100,000 tests a day (even
though they included
requests and promptly fell again), but thousands more lives might
have been saved by earlier action. It is time for an apology.
Meanwhile, after the
mothballing of the little-used Nightingale hospital in London, questions will be asked
about the money and precious resources spent on the hospital — but
it's worth noting that the NHS needs extra capacity in case it gets a
second spike in infection.
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/current-issue
Or order your copy now...
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