There’s no hiding from lockdown damage now
TA raft of dire new data suggesting the cure was worse than the disease is a looming political problem for the PM
‘There are wider issues that are no less detrimental to children than the virus itself’
he painful realisation that the lockdown cure may have been worse than the disease is increasingly undeniable. This week, we learned that only six healthy children died of Covid, against the backdrop of a billion lost school days since the pandemic began.
Of course, it is six children too many – and my heart goes out to their grieving families – but the truth of the matter is that coronavirus itself has almost entirely spared the young. Instead, it is the lockdowns that have wreaked havoc with their psychological and physical health.
As Dr Camilla Kingdon, the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, pointed out yesterday, successive lockdowns and social distancing caused far greater consequences “through lost education, mental health, and other collateral damage”, with much of the impact yet to be seen.
“These are wider issues that are no less detrimental to children and may have a more long-lasting impact, actually, than the virus itself,” she added. Or, as Prof Russell Viner, a professor in adolescent health at University College London and the author of the paper on Covid cases among children, said: “The indirect effects of the pandemic on children are likely to be significantly greater than the direct effects.”
It came as an Oxford University study showed a 17 per cent fall in diagnoses of childhood cancers in the months following the first lockdown. Meanwhile, the latest NHS statistics show that the number of children waiting for treatment for eating disorders has doubled in the past year from 860 to more than 2,000. These are just a few examples of how repeatedly locking down for one vulnerable group – the elderly – has harmed another – the young.
Sadly, the full “non-covid” consequences of the pandemic remain incalculable because the Government and health bosses continue to be fixated with Covid infections, hospitalisations and deaths – rather than all of the other far more important statistics.
On Wednesday, Sajid Javid felt the need to warn officials to be careful when discussing Covid figures, after Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, wrongly claimed that hospitals were now treating more infected patients than a year ago, saying there were “14 times” more coronavirus patients in hospital now compared to “this time last year”. In fact, data from the Government’s dashboard shows there were 800 average daily coronavirus admissions and 7,000 inpatients in England at the end of last week compared to 1,300 and 11,000 respectively in the first week of last November.
Asked whether he should talk to Ms Pritchard about the error and if the NHS should be extra careful with figures, especially when anti-vaxxers leap on data that paint jabs in a bad light, Mr Javid said: “We all need to be cautious about the facts and figures that we use and that includes me.”
Surely of far greater concern than Ms Pritchard’s dashed hopes of appearing as a contestant on Countdown are the figures on at-home deaths, cancer rates, missed diagnoses and the availability of face-to-face GP appointments? These are much more worrying and yet the obsession with Covid continues, with some experts still quite incredibly flirting with the idea of further lockdowns.
This is despite the latest waiting lists showing that by continually locking down to “save the NHS”, we actually made it even more vulnerable. On Thursday, even Prof Tim Spector, who leads the Zoe Covid Study app, admitted that “some of the rules that we had in place ... last year I thought were actually over the top.” Blaming the Government’s “appalling public health messaging”, he warned of the “perilous” state of the country’s health system and called for measures that were neither excessive nor insufficient.
A record 5.6 million people are now waiting for treatment, with just 73.9 per cent of A&E patients being seen within four hours, way below the 95 per cent target. There are 300,566 patients waiting more than a year to start treatment – double that of last year (which was 139,545). October was the busiest month ever in A&E, with 1.4million patients descending on emergency wards while ambulance response times have also shot up.
So, far from being “saved”, the NHS is once again in crisis. And let’s not even get started on the predicted 73,000 strong staff exodus if the health service does end up going ahead with compulsory jabs next spring. (The idiotic decision to bring in the “no jab, no job” policy for carers sixth months before the NHS is going to cause even more bed-blocking, with many homes either forced to close or working at a third less capacity due to staff shortages.)
All of which – combined with an economy that only grew by 1.3 per cent in the summer – puts Boris Johnson in a politically perilous position.
Forget sleaze. When the Prime Minister is really put to the test at the next general election, people aren’t going to be talking about Owen Paterson or Geoffrey Cox but what the hell happened to the £36billion they ploughed into the NHS.
By then, with our fragile economy having to weather a rise in inflation, probable interest rate hikes and yet more stagnant growth thanks to our ongoing supply chain problems, already hard-pressed taxpayers will want to see improvements – and fast.
Yet you can bet your bottom dollar that even after it has been propped up by the costly health and social care levy, taking our tax burden up to its highest level since the Second World War, the NHS will still be “on its knees”, as the King’s Fund think tank put it this week. That is not just because it is a badly managed topdown system incapable of reacting quickly to change but because it continues to be rewarded for failure.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: as the daughter of an NHS doctor who now runs a care home, I have no desire to do down the dedicated doctors and nurses who work tirelessly for the NHS.
But the fact of the matter is that it is woefully in need of reform. Yet instead of demanding that it learns the lessons of Covid, the Government has once again doubled down on the cash bomb, pumping yet more billions in, seemingly without asking for much in return beyond “clearing the backlog”.
As recent days and weeks have demonstrated, the NHS doesn’t appear capable of simultaneously dealing with coronavirus infections and reducing waiting times. Perhaps it is impossible, but I imagine that come 2024, the electorate will be thinking of 36 billion reasons why it shouldn’t be. If Mr Johnson thinks he has had a nightmare week, it is going to be nothing compared to the fallout if NHS productivity doesn’t go up after his characteristically crowd-pleasing cash injection.
And on that note, just how long does the Prime Minister think he can survive on his “war-time leader” bounce?
Yes, people gave him the benefit of the doubt on a crisis he couldn’t control but he cannot hide behind the pandemic, now it is largely over, any more than Gordon Brown could blame all the country’s ills on the “global financial crisis”.
I understand Mr Johnson has spent much of the week walking around Downing Street, tugging at his blond mane and asking: “What should I do?”
It’s high time he came up with the answers himself.