2021 Lockdown – Day 10

Over 1500 people died from Covid-19 in the last 24 hours in the UK. As it happens, 1500 in Roman numerals is MD. In itself this is meaningless. At any point I could have pointed to a figure of 1500 whether it was the first 1500 deaths in the country or an NHS authority. It could have been the first 1500 items of PPE delivered last year. And ‘MD’ simply stands for ‘medical doctor’. 1564 is the actual number and that too would be meaningless except its a record, not that its anything to be proud of.

There is something surreal about that number of people dying in one day. You could get your head around 15 deaths. You could see that many people on a Zoom call. But this is over 100 times that. How does an MD or a nurse get their head around a number like that? We got used to hundreds dying but when it neared 1000 our heads were turned. Now the headline is how much above 1000 is it and have we reached a total of more than 100,000 yet?

Number of death occurrences where Influenza, Pneumonia or COVID-19 were the underlying cause of death, January to August 2020, England and Wales:

Flu: 394
Pneumonia: 13,619
Covid-19: 46,168
Office for National Statistics

There were over 3 times the number of deaths by Covid-19 in that period than influenza and pneumonia combined. There were over 100 times more deaths by Covid-19 than flu. Whatever you might have heard about the survivor rate from the coronavirus you can’t deny that this is extremely serious. How the NHS has coped this far is a miracle. And as marvelous as our NHS staff are, this is not sustainable by any reckoning.

Of the 5 countries with the highest death toll to date, the UK has the highest number of deaths per capita. That’s world beating. We are leading the world in a race everyone would rather lose. We should have resignations coming out of our ears and in more honest times the Prime Minister would be at the head of the queue.

At what point does this become untenable? When a school falls below failing it goes into special measures. Generally the head either takes sick leave or resigns. When a company becomes insolvent it goes into administration. A failing CEO rarely hangs around for the vote of no confidence. Is there a doctor in the house? We have a government fribrillating. It’s bleeding out. There is no pulse.

Calling on the population to be more stringent in keeping to the guidelines is like asking the school kids to teach themselves while the school gets it’s act together. The children are taking care of the parents. Where are social services? This isn’t a crisis, its a disaster. We are in steerage believing there are enough lifeboats. We’ve already hit the iceberg and the lifeboats are full. Parliament might as well be in recess for what use it is. Speaking of Parliament, where is the opposition?

The opposition leader asks why it took so long for the PM to close the schools and the response is that the opposition leader was of the same opinion — and that is no lie. And when the opposition leader condemns the PM over free school meals the PM points out that is was a professional footballer who held the government to account. Where was the leader of the opposition? Where indeed?

Something has to break.

Dear God, something has to break.

SOMETHING HAS TO BREAK.

IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?