The Editors of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and the Health Service Journal (HSJ) have told the Government that the “pandemic is far from over” and that an immediate return to restrictions including gathering limits, work from home, masks on public transport and free testing is needed to save the “dying” NHS. MailOnline has more.
Economically-crippling Covid restrictions need to be brought back immediately to save the “dying” NHS, ministers have been told.
No. 10 has batted away calls to bring back pandemic-era curbs in response to soaring infections, with up to one in 20 people now infected.
But in a scathing editorial demanding action today, the editors of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and the Health Service Journal (HSJ) – two of the country’s leading health publications – accused Boris Johnson’s Government of “gaslighting the public” about Covid’s threat.
Dr. Kamran Abbasi (BMJ) and Alastair McLellan (HSJ) said: “Now is the time to face the fact that the nation’s attempt to ‘live with Covid’ is the straw that is breaking the NHS’s back. The heart of the problem is the failure to recognise that the pandemic is far from over and that a return to some of the measures taken in the past two years is needed.”
Examples of curbs needed included a return to wearing masks in healthcare settings and on public transport, the reintroduction of the £2 billion-a-month free testing scheme, [work from home] where possible and “restrictions on some types and sizes of gathering”.
They didn’t set out what gatherings should be curbed. But previous limits enforced in England saw just six people allowed to meet indoors, weddings limited to a handful of guests and festivals cancelled.
Despite alarm bells being raised about the current situation, other leading experts have insisted Downing Street’s decision to axe all of the final restrictions in April was correct. Virus-tracking surveillance data has even shown the latest resurgence has peaked, with pressure on NHS facilities also set to ease in the coming days.
Daily Covid hospital admissions have risen to a near 18-month high, with around 2,000 people currently being hospitalised every day. Yet only a third of “patients” needing care [are] primarily ill with the virus itself. The rest have incidentally tested positive, NHS figures show.
Deaths and ICU rates have remained flat despite the uptick in cases, with fatalities sitting at roughly 30 a day.
Top scientists say this is because the variants behind the current wave – BA.4 and BA.5 – are mild, and that sky-high immunity rates from vaccines and previous waves have blunted the virus’s threat.
One Government adviser, who didn’t want to be named, insisted there is “no need for Government measures” anymore.
They argued draconian restrictions only worked when the public was scared by the disease itself, and now society isn’t so “worried about catching what’s essentially a cross between a cold and flu”.
“The time of mandates and restrictions is finished and won’t help,” the top scientist said. “The last two waves went down without either.”
They won’t let it drop will they? It’s true that the NHS, including ambulance services and hospitals, is under pressure at the moment, but as the Daily Sceptic has been reporting for weeks, that has nothing to do with Covid. In fact, the journal editors tacitly acknowledge this when they call Covid the “straw that is breaking the camel’s back”, rightly implying Covid is like a straw compared with the other pressures on the health service. The underlying source of those pressures is not entirely clear (NHS backlogs from the lockdowns and vaccines with high rates of serious injury cannot be helping), but whatever it is, clearly nothing will be gained by re-imposing costly, ineffective and harmful restrictions, which has the added drawback of further normalising such illiberal measures.
Bizarrely, the HSJ‘s Alastair McLellan tweeted this afternoon that the latest wave is already falling: “Looks like Omicron wave No. 3 has peaked. Weekly hospital admissions down 3%.” So what is he doing calling for an urgent return to measures that have not been in force since last July?
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
I struggle to think of anything that might save the ‘dying NHS’. It’s done for. Don’t know what comes next, but the current model is done for. Anyone can see that.
I say I don’t know what comes next, but one obvious step is to rid the healthcare system of the sort of bureaucrats who wrote and support these editorials.
What comes next? Remove the State’s incontestable monopoly on payment for and provision of medical care in order to allow a competitive free market in insurance and providers to develop.
Do this by allowing taxpayers to opt-out of paying NIC (as was done for SERPS) and their money paid into a private insurance scheme of their choice.
The NHS can still continue, funded and used by those who don’t opt out, and those who do opt out can still use it paid for by their insurer.
It’s not difficult. Already a small private market exists to form the basis for an expanded private market.
Those who says nobody will be able to afford the premiums should ask themselves how they know that since they don’t know how much they actually pay for the NHS. Those who say ‘the poor’ won’t be able to get treatment, or certain treatments won’t be available in a private market, should ask the 6 million, ‘poor’ and not-poor not getting any treatment now.
And getting all staff to work full time might help too
Would these be the same journals which are owned by pharma companies who benefit from pushing more of their products when the population is sicker??
BINGO
The pharma companies not only own the journals but the people who edit and publish in them. That is to sayette entire medical profession aka the Medical Pharmaceutical Complex.
I know…
I have lost faith in so much of the medical community.
There still are a few good, honest ones out there.
Do these people not see the irony of what they are saying? People should sacrifice their happiness and health to preserve some ailing, bloated, public behemoth that is supposed to be looking after the people who fund it? How can they be overwhelmed when most of the time they are not treating anyone? Like many people, I’ve had to pay for private medical care because the NHS was “overwhelmed” (disorganised). It would be more appropriate to bill them for their non-service than make further sacrifices for them.
Indeed, the NHS exists to serve the people, not the other way around. The swollen egos of the people who run it notwithstanding.
TTFO. Have they lost the plot?
You can say that again! They lost the plot from the get-go, it seems.
No – they are on track following the plan.
If only.
The NHS exists for the purpose of saving people and not the other way round. Further, after two years of happy corona day everyday, we all know which way the rabbits is running (German idiom, wir wissen, wie der Hase läuft — from experience, we know how this will really work out). It started with masks on public transport last time. Should they be reintroduced, these people will immediatley level-up their demands for yet more obnoxious restrictions.
No the NHS exists to meet political aims and to serve the interests of those who work in it.
It was barely able to cope before coronavirus. They created a situation whereby there’s more demand now than ever before and less capacity to deal with it.
Now they’ve made the NHS even less capable of dealing with surges they’re asking for more of the same things that created the problem in the first place.
Genius.
That cartoon is very apt. I feel like we’re actually living in The Far Side. “Thank goodness I’m unvaccinated. It could have been so much worse.”
From March 2020 it was obvious that once you accepted that covid was an emergency requiring unprecendented measures, there would never be an exit from it – it would become a perpetual emergency. The many of us here that voiced this view were dismissed in the mainstream and by ex-friends, colleagues and family members as nutjob conspiracy theorists. More than two years later with everyone who wants to be “vaccinated” up to the eyeballs, here we have “experts” telling us we need more of the same.
Can anyone confirm/demy that they are still testing and positive tests require no work until negative?
Sure, there has been a peak of COVID cases recently (in the vaccinated) with ~10 friends “testing positive”. However, only one was mildly ill. My friend tested himself after another friend he’d spent time with over the weekend tested positive. He wasn’t ill. He can’t quite say why he did it as he’s a self-appointed anarchist. But he tested positive and decided to isolate until he tested negative (six days). He had zero symptoms and carried on running.
If that mentality is pervading in the NHS, then I’m not surprised they’re struggling.
It’s Valhalla for the work-shy – test ‘positive’, have a couple of days or even weeks extra holiday and be lauded for it at the same time. What’s not to like?
In NL the rule is 10 days isolation max. if you have symptoms, or 5 days after symptoms started and you’ve been symptom-free for 24 hours. Test positive without symptoms, it’s 5 days. Except for health care workers, there is no recommendation to test negative first. Rochelle Walensky, the bimbo that’s the head of the CDC in the States publicly stated a few months ago there was no point in waiting to test negative, as “people can walk around with fragments of the virus for up to 3 months”. Which in a sane world would have been the end of ‘testing positive without symptoms’ as proof of having the lurgy and should have called the entire testing regime for people without any symptoms into question.
Some anarchist, your friend :-). A friend was over last weekend to go the North Sea Jazz Festival, for which we had tickets from 2020. It was packed, of course, as was the public transport to get there. He let me know on Saturday he tested positive for the dreaded coronavirus, which he thinks he picked up on the plane home. Possible, but could just as easily have been at the NSJF. I have no symptoms and feel perfectly fine, why would I test? I must confess, even if I did have symptoms it’s highly unlikely I would test because what difference would it make other than wasting a few euros on a test kit.
>I have no symptoms and feel perfectly fine, why would I test? I must confess, even if I did have symptoms it’s highly unlikely I would test because what difference would it make other than wasting a few euros on a test kit.
Same here. Don’t actually have any tests – only ever had a free box once. Friends and neighbours have them stockpiled though.
Why do they still test? All I can come up with is brainwashing.
I was phoned by my garage today. By way of explanation that the number came up as “no caller id” he mentioned he was working from home. I assumed it was the heat (it’s a big dealership not a one man band so maybe they can afford it) but no, it’s covid. He sounded right as rain and was working away. Millions of morons staying at home because they test themselves when before they’d be living their lives.
It’s all over the place. Friends isolated for 28 days (!) before they went to Canada for a twice-cancelled big trip. That seemed a bit excessive… now on return one has tested positive, feeling bit rough but has decided to isolate again and miss an important event this weekend. “Must have caught it on the plane” they say inferring it was because no masks. Weird, as I thought the incubation period was quite a few days.
No testing, no masks, no lockdowns and definitely no Covid death shots. For most though, it is already too late. All they have left is spiralling health decline and an early appointment with the undertaker.
There is something about the human condition that makes many people test compulsively.
I haven’t figured out quote what it is yet. It’s unpredictable. I’m finding that people who are fed up of covid, unjabbed, highly sceptical and independent are occasionally getting tests.
It’s very confusing. I don’t know what to make of it.
Advertising works.
Propaganda works better still
er…I’m one of them. I had a cold the other week and tested. It wasn’t the Rona.
Why? Dunno really. Partly to see if the unvaxxed like me can get omicron more than once (I haven’t seen much commentary on this). Partly because I’m curious and I have a bunch of tests hanging around still. Partly because I was due to travel and am still wary of being surprise tested by foreign border controls and turned back, what with me being a dirty unvaxxed.
The tests are not fit for purpose, either. All part of the scam.
Surprise tested? Which countries do that?
Stop suck pay – that will stop testing to support self-isolation to allow paid time off.
Fire anyone who gets CoVid more than once, they are obviously sicky people and a bad employment risk.
The only question I have is who is pulling their strings – the CCP or the pharma companies? There is definitely an ulterior motive, and saving either lives or the NHS ain’t it. If they truly cared about the NHS, they’d suggest spending 2 billion a month on training up nurses, doctors and ambulance drivers/paramedics, instead of spending it on pointless plastic tests and masks that will probably do more damage to the world than any fossil fuel.
The good thing is, they are jumping the shark, even some of the more devoted covid zealots are starting to see this is all a bit OTT. All sound and fury, signifying nothing. But tedious, so so tedious.
At the core, this is the fault of the government. They should categorically state that they will not reintroduce Corona restrictions no matter what. But the actual position of the government is more something like We really don’t want to do this and really don’t think it’s necessary at the moment, BUT should … happen, we might need to do it again. As COVID was nothing but a highly damaging, global PR campaign from the start, this is an invitation to people who want Corona restrictions no matter what to keep trying and try harder.
Some minor government moron goes on record stating that restrictions might again be needed to protect the NHS. The next day, the NHS is in an unprecedented crisis and one week later, it’s literally dying. I’m waiting for someone calling for a return of Corona restrictions to avoid additional strain on an NHS already ovetaxed to the breaking point by deadly heatwaves caused by climate change.
Decades of austerity and mismanagement would do that. But hey, I’m just the 800-lb gorilla in the room.
The public sector has failed to grasp the concept of marginal costs, quite probably deliberately, particularly within both the health and education systems.
Any attempt top down to match numbers of beds or school places to the numbers requiring them is batty.
The marginal cost of extra places in schools or hospitals is tiny. Consequently massive spare capacity should be built in.
But no one in the public sector wants to do that because then the good schools and hospitals will be full and the useless ones empty.
Less government, a smaller public sector: Kemi Badenoch
Didn’t exactly work last time, did it?
Medical science wise, these people really can’t be taken serious anymore.
Reg. the BMJ: what’s Peter Doshi’s take on this/where is he?
Will they take personal responsibility for what they are asking? Will they resign and forego their pensions if they are wrong?
I’m curious as owner of a small company that will die in a day if restrictions return. I will lose the value of my business, which is also my pension, and my staff will lose their jobs. I don’t get a choice if masks return. I’ve put in 15 years of work and tens of thousands of investment. Sadly that’s what will happen. We’ve only just avoided it twice in the last two years. We wont avoid it this time.
What are they putting on the line that might help me to think that they are doing this with a clear head, and goodness in their hearts, after analysing all the possibilities honestly and critically, rather that using it as a convenient way of covering for their lamentable ineptitude and sloth and wastefulness..?
And for that matter, what mandate do they have to decide this for us? Why should their voice (“owned by pharma companies”) have any more influence than that of, say, Toby Young? And will our politicians tell us plain that they’re more likely to listen to these “pharma owned” journals than Toby Young because of the pharma industry’s financial links to politics, that it isn’t really and never was truly “one person, one vote”, and that if someone stands for election who threatens to rock the boat that they won’t hesitate to bend or even brake the rules to stop him? Or will they effectively (continue to) lie? I do not use the word lightly, but it seems to be a good fit for the past two years (and more), does it not?
It’s too hot to write much more but as far as I’m concerned they can FRO and take their tainted, ‘treasured’, abysmal co-conspirators NHS with them!
Yes and beautiful weather. Joy.
Are they subsidised or gifted by Bill and co yet? certainly, if not now, they are putting in their bill to him, with their published global obedience and loyalty.
We will not forget who they are for future peaceful legal due process to hold them to account.
I
I’m not complaining about the weather. My expectation is that as it is Summer, it should be like this but we are often disappointed. I agree, it is beautiful weather. It will soon be over, sadly and then back to the dismal weather.
Agreed . Let’s make the most I was around in the proper heat wave ha ha in the seventies. Have wished for one ever since .
I will not be complying with any more unscientific useless damaging restrictions.
Is this a photo fit of a controlling health bureaucrat suffering from protective narcissism?
Any other business, that has billions ploughed into it every year, and run as badly as this one, would have been shut down long ago. Yet all they do is employ more administration. Cold, Heat, Virus’, diseases, ill people, its all too much for them
When will the medical establishment understand that the NHS is there to serve the public and not the on8ther way round. They just don’t get it.
Do they have any idea of where the money to fund the NHS comes from. Clearly not.
I can genuinely imagine that their ideal world would be one in which the health service would be the sole employer and the sole purpose of everyone’s reason for being.
The NHS is in effect a religion or perhaps a better description would be a religious cult.
It would be funny if it was not so serious.
I don’t think they want the NHS to be a sole employer; far from it. One of the oddities in that system is that it is permissible for certain senior staff to have two jobs in tandem – one for them, and one for the private sector (e.g. Bupa, and others). Quite often, the private ones are literally just round the corner, or 10 minutes drive away.
Under the current system, you could be on a waiting list for Mr xyz through the NHS, but if you shell out at another place, you could see him almost straight away. Been there, done it, some years ago, when the firm I worked for had a benefit system that involved paying subs to Bupa.
Its not only the NHS that need to realise they serve the people, our government does as well! It seems to me the public sector has forgotten its role and they need to be reminded of it, often!
Will people really comply again now the genie is out of the bottle? Why use restrictions that have no use whatsoever.
How many people see this now?
I think many people have now realised they’ve been conned but there are people who continue to wear masks even in summer!
80% vaccinated and still the cases are as high as pre vaccination. The vaccinated seem far more prone to serious infection than the unvaccinated. Yet I know triple vaccinated who still think that the vaccine saved them from imminent demise! I’m 69 and unvaxxed, I had it at the same time as 2 of my neighbours, both triple jabbed. They took to their beds, yes, I felt rough for a week but with 3 horses and other animals to look after on my own, I still carried on as usual. I truly believe that the vaccines are causing the infections, which is part of their sinister intent, the rest of which we have yet to witness.
Without a doubt the quackines are causing sickness. We are in our 70s, unvaxxed and haven’t had this ‘covid’ that everyone has been obsessing about. I had a mild case of what I would call flu and took to my bed for a day and a half but soon bounced back, yet the people I know who have been vaxxed are repeatedly ill. I’ve spent a lot of time on the internet researching the plandemic and am convinced this jab harms peoples immune systems. I read the other day that in Australia babies are being born without any immune system. I have also read that the NHS is expecting this winter to be particularly busy and hospitals have been told to empty the beds in September. If people thought this was ending any time soon I fear they’re in for a big disappointment. Obviously the special military operation in Ukraine provides an excellent distraction!
If the NHS is dying, after 2 years of Civil Rights destroying measures to “save it” and almost 40% of Government spending going to keep it alive, then it doesn’t deserve to survive.
The demand that the economy be closed down again to “save the NHS” from frail/sick people with a bad cold is the best reason for fundamental reform of our healthcare system I’ve ever seen.
Dr. Kamran Abbasi (BMJ) and Alastair McLellan (HSJ) need jail time.
I have put their names in my notes under the folder headed “Disregard/Ignore” it is quite a long list.
I am hoping that one day some at least will be held responsible.
The plot line of that dreadful TV show Dallas springs to mind: kill Bobby off, watch ratings plummet, bring Bobby back and tell everyone an entire series was a dream. These lunatics imagine that we’ll have forgotten the cost, in every sense of the word, of the last lockdowns and the restrictions. I can imagine that Abbasi and McLellan have been receiving orders from Gates et al. If people are infected – or whatever they are – then they can stay at home. The rest of us want to live our lives and will. I am not going to abide by any restrictions nor be browbeaten into some form of guilt. I’ve had it up to here (indicates space above head) with their nonsense. I am a sovereign human being and will exercise my god-given rights to freedom.
The NHS is dying, its a zombie institution and I say let it die! It served its purpose once upon a time which was about saving lives now its role as far as I can see is to provide a peaceful death for those it considers past their usefulness.
Who will rid us of these meddlesome high priests?
“The only conclusion I can draw from the chart above is that not only is the vaccine not working, it is making things substantially worse. If the vaccine was just saline solution this is not the kind of chart we’d expect to see at this stage of the ‘pandemic’.”
https://metatron.substack.com/p/covid-pressure-on-the-national-health?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web
https://rudolphrigger.substack.com/p/sanity-checking
Darn it, we should’ve reintroduced those NPI”s earlier so that we could say that they worked. Just like lockdowns 1, 2 & 3