Kelly’s Eye

THOUGH it received relatively little attention, there was a recent story that might have given pause even to those who continue to treat a disease that is fatal for less than one per cent of the population as if it is bubonic plague.

A parliamentary report called Catch Up With Cancer – The Way Forward showed 350,000 fewer urgent cancer referrals in 2020, and 40,000 fewer cancer diagnoses.

And while handing out medals to the NHS might be an easy cost-free gesture, it’s worth pointing out, as leading cancer surgeon Professor Gordon Wishart does, that this “will lead to worse cancer survival rates, which were already mediocre compared to many Western countries.”

The professor’s most stark illustration of this folly is that while in Sweden, where lockdown measures were less strict, the numbers of patients undergoing prostatectomies for prostate cancer fell by only three per cent, in the UK over the same period they plunged by 43 per cent.Already exhibiting a commendably wider perspective than his absurd predecessor, Health Secretary Sajid Javid now warns of a backlog of patients with all ailments that could reach 13 million in coming months. Prof Wishart points out: “Cancer continues to kill around 166,000 people annually in ‘normal’ years – one shudders at the thought of the preventable deaths that will have been caused by lockdowns.

“Policymakers may like to tell the nation and themselves that there was no alternative, but there was. Cancer healthcare should never have been stopped.”

It was stopped for the same reason that, according to the latest profoundly depressing survey, a fifth – 20 per cent! – of the British would like a 10pm curfew to become a permanent feature of our lives, and why there are people who, if they were told to, would wear masks in bed – even if they sleep alone.The grave consequences of successfully terrorising the public to fixate on Covid are starting to be felt.