Is it the virus itself, with its slim chance to doing us any real harm?
The social isolation?
The renewed sense of purpose and mission?
The impact on our elderly relatives? On the economy?
No. It isn’t is it?
The reason the people of Britain are in ‘hair on fire’ mode is because we are all terrified of falling into the tender embrace of the NHS, with its callous bureaucracy, its ‘make do and mend’ ethos, and its exhausted, under-supported and under-supplied clinicians.
You may recall that I had a very extensive (and not a little terrifying) encounter with the NHS last year.
Literally every NHS worker I encountered, from cleaners to consultants, was amazing. Hard working and dedicated to a man, woman and tranny. For the fact that I’m here today, I’m deeply grateful to every one of them. To the extent that they succeed, though, it is abundantly clear when seen from the coalface that they do so in-spite of the system in which they work, not because of it.
The reason I’m so keen on embracing the whole self-isolation thing – apart from the 8 months of practice I had at it last year, meaning it’s very easy, almost second nature to me now – is that with a little bit of mild chronic asthma, if I get COVID there’s a non-trivial chance that I could need medication and possibly even a nebuliser or ventilator. And I live on the outskirts of London.
I’m probably not old enough that they’d decide I should be ‘de-prioritsed’ in the queue for critical treatment, but if this becomes a regular event, it’s not going to be many years, before I do fall into that category.
So, with all due respect to the amazing people who work in the NHS, the system itself must for all our sakes be killed with fire and replaced. We can learn lessons from almost every other European country and need never even look at the US system except as a cautionary tale.
This is something that needs urgent focus the minute we are able to get back to any sort of normality.
AJ
Al Jahom's Final Word 
Very good point.
It’s just about the worst way to run healthcare that’s known, every country from Norway to NewZealand achieves better results per unit spent.
I keep asking the following and still await an answer:
As the NHS is the wonder of the world how many USA charidee appeals have there been in the last decade for some child to come to the UK for ground breaking treatment.
(The NHS certainly has previous of arranging the arrest of parents who try to keep their children alive)
There have been enough of the converse and we keep hearing that the American system is crap with 100’s of thousands dying in the streets
Front-line NHS staff are mostly wonderful, but how can we persuade the pointless multiple levels of pen-pushers that they’re not needed? Turkeys vs Xmas I fear.
It’s almost impossible to reform bloated bureaucracies – they’ll never willingly give up any aspect of their control – so tearing them down and starting again is going to be necessary.
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