TOM FARDON GRANT MCINTYRE THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

ROZ FOYER

Grant, at 48, was the youngest patient in an eight-bed Covid unit filled with men in their 70s and 80s.

We had not seen someone so otherwise healthy become so unwell in those early days of the pandemic. I knew Grant and was worried about how quickly he was deteriorating. We were dealing with a virus we had never seen before and there were no references for treatment.

Tests showed that he had severe Covid illness, and as he declined we upped his oxygen again and again.

A few weeks before I became ill, dental colleagues and I had been planning our response to the virus unfolding in China.

We thought we needed to stop all aerosol-generating procedures, but those at the top told us to carry on as normal when all the information coming to us suggested a halt.

By mid-march I noticed colleagues with symptoms which we would normally brush off as seasonal flu. A day or so later I lost my sense of smell and taste and felt exhausted. I called in sick for the first time in 27 years.

I thought I was having a serious attack of childhood asthma and my family called for an ambulance. I was taken to hospital, discharged, readmitted two days later but recovered and released. But I deteriorated, and was admitted again.

I remember a bizarre out-of-body experience of floating above the bed looking at a lifeless body below and when I realised it was me, I fought it. I focused on every breath because my life depended on it.

I remember the consultant in respiratory medicine waiting in the middle of the night as I was having a chest X-ray. Results are usually sent the following day, so this could only be bad news.

I was very aware that I was dying and asked the consultant if continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) breathing would help.

Within minutes I was transferred to ICU. There, two consultants approached in full PPE and said: “Right, are we ready to go?” I was then anaesthetised and that was the last thing I remember until waking up in Ninewells weeks later.

It feels strange to have been unconscious for 50 days. I’m told I managed to lift my fingers and speak briefly to my son on his 21st birthday, but have no memory of this. I didn’t know where I was, who I was, or any of the people around me.

I began to have some strange, unhealthy thoughts. The walls and ceiling moved in and out, animals appeared above me, visions of a python trying to wrap itself around my chest and suffocate me.

I confused the team trying to save me

– the intubation tube – as someone trying to kill me and everyone did their best to comfort and reassure.

My mental health was not as it should be after Covid, and sessions with a clinical psychologist were hugely helpful.

Eventually I was wheeled out of the ward to see my wife, Amanda. I will never forget that moment, or all the NHS professionals who made it possible.

A year ago, we had just returned from holiday in Thailand where temperature screening in public places and wearing masks were the order of the day, without any sense of abnormality or panic.

Today, Thailand has had fewer than 100 deaths from Covid

19 in a population of 70 million. As with so much else, it is inescapable to wonder why it took so long to learn from what was already developing around the world.

When I say “we”, it doesn’t really matter if it is Scotland or the UK as a whole, for the outcomes are similar. With more than 9,000 deaths, an economy in paralysis and an unquantifiable toll of damage to education and mental health, it has been a litany of gloom. As always, the poor suffered most.

One error everyone should avoid is wisdom after the event – if you didn’t say it then, don’t say it now. On that basis, I can point to my view from the outset that this was an opportunity for Scotland to use our devolved powers in a distinctive way.

Long before the Scottish Parliament existed – since 1948 in fact – the NHS in Scotland has been devolved, with the right to do things differently. Not in competition with the rest of the UK, but in recognition of our own distinct geography and demography.

With a small population, we should have used these powers to stick with the World Health Organisation mantra of test, test, test. There were experts in the early days pleading for that approach and I don’t know why they were sidelined.

By early March, it was scarcely news that care homes were vulnerable. Shocking images from Madrid and Milan were there for all to see. It remains incomprehensible that patients here continued to be discharged from hospitals untested – or even when positive – into care homes. Time must not diminish the need for all that to be answered for.

The same goes for the Nike conference outbreak in Edinburgh which only became public knowledge months later. At that point, the Scottish Government should have put their hands up and admitted it was a huge mistake not to reveal the outbreak at the time, in which case there would undoubtedly have been an earlier lockdown throughout the UK, with many lives saved.

My take on that is that two weeks after the outbreak just along the road, I was in an Edinburgh pub with French rugby supporters. That should not have been possible and would not have happened if the significance of the outbreak had been made public.

No one should be interested in blamefixing but we are entitled to expect accountability and, above all, lessons learned. That is the least we owe to the NHS and all who have been in the front line to protect us.

Bad work kills. There are sectors where people are in precarious work with zero-hours contracts. They haven’t been able to self-isolate when they have shown symptoms of the virus.

They have had a terrible choice to make between putting food on the table or following government guidelines. We have no doubt this has helped spread the virus.

The pandemic has really shone a light on the problems in our labour market and magnified them. Our essential key workers – the majority of whom are women – have put themselves and their families at risk but are on poverty pay and their work has been undervalued. We need to make sure that those workers who carry out essential work are paid appropriately.

Another issue is statutory sick pay of less than £100 a week, one of the worst levels in the western world. People just cannot live on that so we are asking for it to be raised to £300 a week for those who don’t have a gold-plated employment contract.

We can’t ask people to comply with public safety measures if there is nothing to rely on for financial support.