No. 193 - Too Little, Too Late. Boris Gets it Wrong Again. The NHS is on its Knees.

Dear James,

It was hard to believe. Yesterday, at a new Mass Vaccination Centre in Bristol, Boris stood there, jacketless, his tie tucked into his shirt front and his sleeves rolled up as if preparing for some prankish game of arm wrestling, He was watching a nurse administering the saviour vaccine to a young lady. Perhaps he wanted to remind everyone that it was he who had ordered the vaccine and that there is now light at the end of this endless tunnel? Whatever it was, the expression on his face gave it all away. It was empty of substance with his trade-mark impish grin glancing off-camera as if to say to his minders?, “Is this what you want?’ He reminded me of some slightly dotty, temporarily spruced up, down and out, standing on the kerb next to the Coronavirus Highway attempting, but failing, to make sense of the continuous parade of hearses going by. ‘Focus on the vaccine’, his minders are telling him. 'Ignore the bad news'. But inserted in this man’s mind is a damp proof course that separates his own internal reality from the external reality of the rest of the world. Boris cannot escape that wonderfully comfortable place of hermetically sealed, self-esteem with its associated rictus grin of the spoiled brat. Real world reality is terra incognita to this man. 

Since his last great U-Turn on January 5th when he went in a single day from sitting on the fence between the economy and health, to declaring Lockdown 3, Boris has been out of sight, rummaging in the locker room of his mind for the key to that greater grip. How he would love to spend time reflecting on his glorious triumph of his election victory a year ago and the 80 seat majority he now has. But he cannot. If only there were no such thing as Coronavirus! 

Yesterday my daughter, who is in lockdown in the Midlands, rang. She is certain that Lockdown 3 is not lockdown 1. The day before, she had had a visit from a meter reader who goes from door to door, family to family as is usual of his essential job. Later the same day her builder arrived to quote for some more jobs in the house. He had been to two other customers that same morning and would be going onto two more that afternoon. The local primary is 30% full of the kids of essential workers but has only 70% of its teachers. Traffic is only marginally down. No wonder the virus is spreading so rapidly. No wonder the NHS is about to collapse under the weight! And yet all Boris can do is to say. ‘We’re keeping things under review’! 

Where is the Command and Control Centre that such a pandemic demanded from day one? There is no control. There is little command. With 81,431 total deaths yesterday and excess deaths of more than 90,000, the UK now has  more new Covid-19 cases per 100K than any other major country in the world. Our capital city is in danger of being overwhelmed within two weeks.

In his quest to balance the economy and health, Boris continues to prevaricate.  He seems not to realize that there is a numerical constant between those two contradictory targets. If you fail to lock down fully as in Lockdown 1, you may reduce the cost to the economy, but at the same time you increase the number of deaths. One day someone will calculate the exact ratio. It will show that Boris’s government with its history of ‘too little, too late’ has been responsible for so many thousands of excess deaths. That will be some legacy for Boris and your government!

James, the NHS is on its knees. The country is waiting for the next Boris U-Turn, an enforceable order for everyone, except for genuinely essential workers, to stay at home. Boris knows that no one trusts him or this government any more. Last Sunday Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer, went solo before the cameras hoping that he has more credibility amongst the public to say that the NHS was drowning.  At the risk of repeating myself, it was, as usual,'too little late, too late'.  

Everyone is tired James, but it is the doctors, nurses and medics of the NHS who are the tiredest of all. As Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden, a senior ICU registrar at the Royal London Hospital, tweeted at the weekend: "We tried. We really tried. NHS staff pleaded with people that Christmas is not worth it. Now one in 30 people in London have Covid and ICUs are overwhelmed. My heart is broken."

 Kind regards,

 BH – Your Concerned Constituent