Coming up for air – but who will arise?

SOON we shall be coming out of lockdown. Not completely, not quickly and certainly not yet. But soon.

It is now 40 days since we entered this state on March 23. It was two weeks too late by most reckoning and this may have caused an extra 6-7,000 deaths. But who knows and can we ever know? Testing, tracing - all have been too chaotic to help.

Six weeks is the length of the school summer holidays and never seemed long enough when I was at school. Then I had children and it seemed way too long. Then they grew up and it seemed way too short. Then I retired and I could not care less.

Today six weeks feels like an eternity. No social contact. No meeting the kids. No coffee shops. No lazy lunches. No slow pints in a pub. Not even, for me, any shopping since I am being 'shielded'. I yearn...

TODAY we broke ranks. We drove to an old favourite cafe in a barn now operating as the village supermarket. My friend Lynn, who runs my wife's favourite top shop, is a resourceful lady. The village post office always stocked bits and bobs; the cafe is a fine haunt for great espresso, cakes and lunches. But under her care it is all now a super market, delivering to the door too.

Then we pootled on to Brooks nature reserve and enjoyed birdsong and woodland. Then home having broken the rules driving further than we walked!

Oh bliss it would be to have trundled into a restaurant and settled down to a lunch.

But soon ,we are told things, will begin to start again. But will they? Really?

HOW will it go then? First tentative step is the return of manufacturing where it is possible. Then the opening of some shops where social distancing can be managed. So queues full of holes and aisles empty of shoppers.

Streets full of people wide apart or wearing face masks or both. They will still be 'chouting' as we call it now – having a chat by shouting across the gap.

But streets full too of many gaps where businesses have gone bust. And where pubs and cafes are still locked down, too cosy and chatty for safety in the age of coronavirus. Will they survive? Who really knows. I personally expect 50% never to be seen again until replaced late this decade.

Deliveries will continue to prosper. There will be so little fun in shopping this new way that most will surely choose to continue with the on line shop, however annoying the NA gaps and substitutes will prove to be.

School will start too, but how do we protect the staff from all those little bundles of coronavirus that exhibit no symptoms. No warning signs? How beyond finding a sudden cache of PPE to protect the teachers and assistants.

AND I want to travel again. But will that be possible? Will we risk allowing trains and planes and ferries to run again? Will anyone want us over there? And what will it all cost? With insurance likely to soar, ticket prices ramped to cover social distancing rules and accommodation needing a surcharge for the deep cleaning.

BUT when will we be allowed anyway? By we I mean we of the ancient and furry brigade. Many also chronically afflicted in so many ways. For me it may not come in my breathing time. 76, recovered cancer but still a severe COPD patient. And my carer goes down the same road. Poor thing.

When will we get to see the green hills of the Dordogne again, or the white lime of Provence or the parched hills of Andalucia again? Ever?

Bringing the guilty to book has to happen NOW...

THE debate over where people are doing their dying from covid-19 (coronavirus infection) is fascinating since it exposes a reality that is not all that it seems.

It is entirely reasonable that, since the sickly elderly move from their own home to a care home, they should die there. When from natural causes that is proper. With their family, their friends and in a familiar environment.

Annually in the UK several hundred thousands of people die in their own home, in care homes and in hospices. And their end of life care is either in their own family's hands or in professionally qualified hands. So well and good.

But coronavirus is not a natural death by any means. Indeed it is, from all reports, far worse than even double pneumonia. The patient is either gasping desperately for breath and in severe pain or is, mercifully, sedated to oblivion.

However there is a but to all this. The purpose of living is NOT dying and thus we expect our elderly to be given their best shot at surviving whatever comes to ail them. When the point naturally arrives that this is no longer possible then where they are when they die may not matter a huge amount to the nation.

But if they have been suddenly struck down in the midst of life with a disease that is highly contagious and spread widely in the community it most certainly does.

If a single patient were to be suddenly struck down by a dread disease that was life threatening would they not be expecting, and their loved ones expecting, that the 999 call would be answered? The paramedics would arrive and the effort to save them would begin. To hospital and assessment, to ITU (ICU or HDU – you choose). Into a ventilator or into surgery. Out for more intensive care. And thus to live or die by the hands of the medics who serve them.

But today it seems that will not be the case. As many as 10,000 people, all old, all unwell and many in close attention care, have been struck down in this way and they have died where they lay. With whatever medication was available or possible but without mechanical intervention or possibly even additional oxygen. Is this how it should be? Or was meant to be?

The NHS has shown that it had only been provisioned to escalate resources to be able to deal with as many as 15,000 ventilated cases at a time, with more in ITU. But it had not been provisioned (as BBC Panorama showed only too well on Tuesday) to go on doing this for days on end.

Their PPE, meant to protect them from infection AND to protect our front line was utterly inadequate. And had been poorly managed by people and by resource supply. Infection began to decimate the front line, some even died. More than 100 it would seem so far.

These are terrible prices for our nation to pay for the open global travel that we so enjoy. They are a terrible price for the bereaved, cut off from the final farewell, to have to bear.

This is a national disgrace that we cannot allow to slip away like Grenfell or Hillsborough.

Too often we fail to act quickly enough to bring those responsible to book and thus to inform those who follow them that we will not tolerate such failures.

We too often sweep the mess under the Kingdom carpet, saying in pious arrogance: “Now is not the time for the blame game”.

But if not now, when? Not never surely.

Across the continent a bridge fell down in Genoa. Before the dust had fully settled those responsible had been charged and bailed. What price Grenfell? What price covid-19?

This time, maybe this time, things will be different. Maybe.

(BBC Panorama 'Has the Government failed the NHS?' is available on iplayer until 2021)