THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR

SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times that has won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything’s going to be all right read Professor Positivity.

A GOOD number of people in this country would have a fair idea about the current rolling average of Covid deaths, hospital activity related to the virus and also what percentage of the population have had their first doses.

But how many would be aware of the frightening number of excess deaths in the home? Every week the ONS release the statistics and every week there are hundreds and hundreds more people than we would usually expect dying in their homes. The vast majority of these sad deaths aren’t related to Covid – so what is going on?

It’s a really sensitive and difficult problem to understand.

Ignored

There has been an effort to allow people to pass away at home which is not a negative thing if the patients are given the support they need. But the sheer number, tens of thousands, suggests that there is a bigger problem.

Yet it is simply ignored by so many and I don’t know why.

Have we become that focused on Covid that we are willing to overlook hundreds and hundreds of people dying in their homes without at least a proper and open discussion as to why?

Pressure can and has changed policy during this pandemic. More attention on this would save lives.

It’s clear that many people are still unwilling or too scared to seek medical help.

If politicians wanted to mitigate suffering from all harms, not just Covid, then tackling that fear should be their number one priority. If it hasn’t happened by now however, I doubt it ever will.