A few short months ago, people all across the UK were coerced by peer pressure to stand outside their homes one evening a week and give a round of applause “for the NHS”.
For those of you unfamiliar with those three letters in that order; National Health Service, the UK’s biggest employer, the state run, centralised health service.
Everyone from the Prime Minister to babes in arms were out there every Thursday doing impressions of performing circus seals to celebrate a massive bureaucracy overseeing a clinical negligence bill that is increasing at a worrying rate (doubling over the previous four years).
And then there’s this:
What’s the likely consequence of that, do we think?
Bill’s Opinion
The Cancer Research charity estimates 350,000 urgent cancer appointments were missed or delayed. They speculate this might translate to 35,000 additional deaths.
That speculation is obviously as scientific and as credible as the original Imperial College model that got everyone into this mess, of course; can a subsequent cancer death really be proven to have been avoidable or was it just earlier than might have been reasonably predicted?
But nonetheless, the absolute number of increased deaths from cancer isn’t zero.
Repeat that for all manner of treatable diseases and conditions.
Then close your eyes and repeat the mantra, “we cannot make trade offs, one life lost to covid is one too many” until you forget all the inconvenient evidence to the contrary.
I loved Tim’s comment, that if the NHS muddled through at 10% capacity, perhaps that’s all it needs and it has ten times the necessary capacity, or ten times the costs anyway.
The deaths relating to negligent care have plummeted during Covid. It’s been very beneficial.