NHS plays fast and loose in the game of risk

QUITE a number of our friends have just opened a letter from their local NHS surgeries instructing them to stay at home for 12 weeks. Eat alone, sleep alone, keep indoors until mid-August. At the end of this draconian missive, is the list of qualifications for receiving this sentence, not a single one of which applies to any of those who got it.

It emerges that this cohort are part of the one million people being added to the list of 1.5 million contacted at the start of all this, who the NHS think need to be shielded, or as you might call it, be shut inside. Unfortunately the broad trawl of the data base has scooped up people involved in minor medical interventions – those prescribed statins, who suffer mild asthma or who have had cancer treatment decades back – and put them in the same category as those currently undergoing chemotherapy or kidney dialysis, or suffering sickle cell disease. In other words, those who are currently and acutely unwell.

The recipients of this unwelcome letter have to decide what level of risk they are prepared to take. Local surgeries telephoned for clarification have simply said to these people that if they didn’t fit the outlined criteria for this shielding they could probably ignore it. The response handed them back the decision about their own health, but psychologically the damage was done.

It’s not helpful to be informed you could be in mortal danger if you go out for a loaf, and the next minute advised to chuck the warning letter in the bin. Not in these times.

In our lives we constantly take risks, such as the proverbial crossing the road. It’s part of existence. But these days the basis on which we calculate risk has changed.

One person’s common sense is another’s recklessness. One person’s go-for-it spirit is regarded by another as selfish and dangerous to others. The definition of reasonable risk, something that previously we took to a large extent for granted, has become far from clear. Yet never before have we had to spend more time trying to work out what a reasonable risk might be.