Putting air quotes around staying sane rather cheapens the whole concept of mental health. Various mental health conditions debilitate tens of thousands of people a year, and ultimately lead to hundreds of suicides. We can't just start putting that back in air quotes because the media has something more exciting to talk about this month.
I suspect people who think that's going to happen should be preparing themselves for extremely wide-scale and utterly casual breaches of the law and regulations. People aren't built for this, and it really doesn't help when medical type go about making airy statements about how we've got to "get used" to a deeply unpleasant level of state intrusion into all our lives because it's "doctors orders".
Exactly. This is not a pure medical issue, it is an economic one; the two are intertwined.
Absolutely. It's incumbent on Chris Whitty as CMO to advise on the basic medical aspects of this, just as it's incumbent on the government to take expert advice on the psychological, economic and ethical aspects of it from other people. Whenever the government says they are "listening to the science", it's a daily reminder that they are only doing half their job, and in the process are fitting the scientists up for all of the blame when we look back at this. Chris Whitty is a good man, and we aren't doing right by him making him stand at a podium every day answering questions that are beyond his pay grade.
There are already people unable to get treatment for non-Covid illnesses because of the change of emphasis. There are various reports and figures bandied about and you can pick any one you want. But there is no doubt that treatment for some serious illnesses is being curtailed. Each year more than 160k people die from cancer and around 180k from heart and respiratory disease - getting on for half of all deaths. Most of these are among the elderly (just as most of the Covid deaths are). There will come a point when the NHS or the government will have to decide when this emphasis will cease and that Covid will become one of the multitude of other conditions that need to be treated. They can't save everybody from a painful or uncomfortable death from cancer and they will not be able to save everybody from a painful or uncomfortable death from Covid. Once that is accepted it will have to move on to the situation pre-Covid where, although people were dying from cancer, non-essential but extremely desirable treatments such as knee and hip replacements will have to resume. I haven't even touched on the long term psychological problems which people - young and old - will endure.
Not quite. We were told that a "reasonable excuse" to go out (and since the amendment to the regulations, to remain out) was to
That may be true, but in practice no "difficult decisions" have been made. A few arbitrary declarations and a hasty law was knocked together which could be reasonably expected to last month while the difficult decisions were made. Instead of using that time wisely there appears to have been no thought or action at all. The arbitrary declarations are still being expected to hold out, while the government sits on its hands and expects us to fawn over picture's of the PM's latest offspring.
If the policy is to prevent infection getting into care homes rather than try to isolate some residents within them, then all patients proposed for discharge to a care home need to be tested and kept in hospital if positive. Which comes back to my previous point of increasing pressure on the NHS, though not by as much as if an infected person is discharged and infects many others. Unless of course care home residents are effectively abandoned to their fate, which I don't believe is morally acceptable.
Is this from deep inside knowledge or are you assuming that all planning would be made public?
This is less about planning than about the decisions that the planning would enforce. There isn't a shortage of people figuring out clever but extreme measures to solve the immediate problem, but there are no public signs that people are weighing up the costs of those actions and directing them in a strategic and ethical way. Right now it feels like we've discovered a wasps nest in the basement, and somebody has suggested burning the house down. I mean it's great we have plans in place to fetch petrol, and I'm greatly reassured that Boris has a six point plan for remembering where he left the matches. II would genuinely like some evidence though that somebody has had a damn good think about whether burning the house down is, on balance, the optimal solution to the wasps nest problem.
I think there probably are fairly active plans in place to lighten up. I'm just getting frustrated because we are starting to lag behind the rest of Europe in making plans for this, and there seems to be an assumption that you can't be honest with people or they'll immediately head outside and start holding hands with strangers or something. Mind you, living in Scotland seems to be slightly worse in that respect - the Scottish government response is possibly even more contemptuous and doom-laden, but is constantly couched in false claims to be treating us like adults.
