The government is refusing to act on Covid. By doing so it is exacerbating a crisis that is increasing rapidly. This tweet from the editor of the Health Services Journal neatly summarises that:
What is not being said enough is what this means for the rest of the NHS.
As we now know the consequence of Covid is that 5 million people are waiting for some form of NHS treatment. Many of them are quite sick, or in pain. The knock-on effect on GPs is staggering. I listened to a broadcast by a Cambridgeshire GP on local radio, I think this week. They noted that because of their practice management software they could log how many patient contacts they had a day. A year ago on a day in early October they had about 450, as I recall. This year on the same equivalent day of the week (days of the week matter in the NHS) they had almost 1,000 more i.e. about 1,450.
The explanation was simple. There were three. The first was that there are more worried people, although many might not have symptoms that really required a GP contact. For these people a pharmacy should be their port of call, which is why the demand for face-to-face appointments is so misplaced.
The second is much more serious. Because people with acute conditions cannot see specialists their conditions are becoming chronic. The treatment of those chronic conditions is now falling on GPs. Many can create co-morbidities as a result. This then escalates the care that they need. Without an end in sight to hospital waiting lists - not least because the government is deliberately letting hospitals fill with Covid patients again - this can only get worse.
Third, GPs are having to see people who should be seen by social care because social care is overwhelmed.
The GP's questions were simple, again as I recall. They were:
- How were they meant to deal with this?
- For how long could they deal with this before people broke?
- Why was the government making issues worse?
- Why were GPs being blamed for something not of their creation?
The simple fact is that 'just in time' medicine has failed in the UK. That's because of Covid of course, but it is now much more to do with the failure of the government response to Covid than anything else. As with Brexit, and as data shows, this is a peculiarly Brit9ish failure only capable of explanation by looking at the British exceptionalism that has created it.
The GP's questions were the right ones to ask. My concern is that this cannot be sustained for long.
What then? How many people must die before things change? And why should they have to do so? The job of government is to protect people from harm, and in the process deliver freedom from fear. This government is creating harm and stoking fear. Why are we tolerating that? For how long will we do so?
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It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the government is creating the conditions for the NHS to fail in a way that justifies radical reform that would not otherwise be acceptable to the public. Possibly privatisation. They won’t call it that though.
Be careful, Mr Murphy. Get to be too much of a problem, and you’ll be Craig Murrayed.
I can live with that risk
I have to
You overestimate your importance, significance or influence!
No I don’t
I just write a blog and do some research
Others can notice if they want
You have
But I didn’t ask you to
I think it’s more likely your blog would be blocked the same way informed Establishment critic Jonathan Cook’s appears to be. I can’t see that without using a VPN now, something not everyone knows how to do. It’s significant as it looks very much like Virgin, my ISP, are taking orders from the govt to silence the govt’s critics. Maybe he annoyed them more than you have 🙂 Quite feasible actually as a lot of your stuff is technical so over the heads of many. Maybe that’s why you’re allowed to continue.
I do not know who he is
I think there are many bigger threats to HMG than me
Please note my comment on today’s blog of yours on the BMA statement. It applies even more strongly here.
Re this and your earlier blog on doctors speaking out, one wonders where Chris Witty and Patrick Vallance are these days, or even what they must be thinking about the current approach of Johnson and co. Particularly given the formers ‘downbeat’ speech to the GP’s conference last week. Then again, you don’t get elevated to the positions they occupy without knowing that the last thing you must do is upset your political paymasters.
Regarding holding our politicians to account for failures of Covid policies I thought this short segment from Chris Hayes’s ‘All In’ current affairs programme on MSNBC in the US worth watching as it’s increasingly arguable that his argument applies not just to Trump and Bolsonaro but increasingly to Johnson too: ‘”Crimes against humanity”: Hayes on holding leaders to account for Covid failure.’ https://www.msnbc.com/all
Very good indeed
Thanks Ivan
Regarding holding politicians to account and on a similar vein, this latest from Robin McAlpine on what looks like the current Scottish Government’s attempts to alter the past, should make people very very nervous.
http://robinmcalpine.org/are-we-in-the-middle-of-a-cover-up/
We tolerate it I think because we’ve got used to it.
Human beings are naturally resilient and adaptive.
This trait does not encourage enquiry and in an age of mass distraction and misinformation, the trait is heightened.
The recent polling data perhaps supplies the answer to your question. Both Remainers and Leavers are locked in a war of emotion. The split in the population suggests a slow, very slow move to Remain.
With the Leave vote dominated by the Tories who are systematically smashing all potential centres of opposition (media, judiciary, NHS, local government) and the political opposition both internally divided and without policy, I cannot see rapid change.
It is interesting that in Hungary the opposition parties are finally combining. It has only taken them 15 years of the Boris role model, Victor Orban.