As I write this, Baroness Hallett has just started the inquiry into the U.K.’s response to COVID-19. It has already been said that the inquiry will investigate aspects such as the preparedness of the U.K.’s response, the initial response and particularly the impact of lockdowns. But questions remain about whether the inquiry will deal with internal Government communications (or the lack of any record of such communications).
This latter point raises an important question – is there a case to be made for the official suppression of information if the release of this information would undermine the public’s support of authority and increase dissent?
Note that I’m not stating that there has definitely been a suppression of truth and promotion of ‘official misinformation’ to stop the public understanding what is being done to them. I happen to think that this has been occurring, but this isn’t necessary to have the discussion about what should be done if there have been efforts made by officialdom to misrepresent the situation to the public.
There are four aspects of the behaviour of our Government (and governments worldwide) that raise questions that have a significant ethical component:
- The use of lockdowns and whether there were any data at all on whether they would offer any net benefit. It is worth noting that preparatory documents relating to an influenza outbreak suggested that lockdowns wouldn’t offer any significant benefit and would introduce harm, yet we locked down anyway. Also of consideration should be the use of hard-line policing of the lockdowns, rather than their being merely ‘strongly recommended’.
- The use of vaccines with only short term testing for efficacy and safety. Again, what is of concern isn’t simply that the vaccines were authorised for use, but also the role of the Government in strongly recommending their use nearly to the point of mandate (a point passed by other governments). Related to this point is whether there were any conditions connected to the supply of the vaccines (the secret T&Cs) that have forced the Government to suppress anything other than support for the vaccines.
- The suppression of the investigation into generic drugs as prophylactics and treatments. Again, the Government wasn’t simply ambivalent about their use, but appears to have actively suppressed any discussion of their use, other than a few ‘preferred’ solutions.
- And, most importantly of all, the use of advanced psychological techniques by the Government to support its policies, and the rigorous suppression of any discussions that might undermine the Government’s position. These psychological manipulation techniques appear to have been used at all points of the pandemic, from lockdown behaviour to vaccination. Even now, there are ‘nudges’ from the Government’s official communications arm (BBC) questioning the actions of those who declined vaccination and once more pushing the ‘wet market’ theory of the origins of Covid.
Taken at face value, it would seem obvious that the inquiry should look into all these aspects of the Government’s response to Covid – but is there a deeper ethical consideration at stake?
The Suppression of Truth and the Noble Lie
Around 2,500 years ago Plato wrote about a somewhat similar dilemma. The Republic documents a dialogue between Socrates and others about whether there was an ethical case to be made for the promotion of a lie if it would offer social cohesion. The point of the Noble Lie in The Republic was whether a lie that had little in the way of negative aspects and some positive aspects could be considered as ethically correct even though it involves the deception of the public. There’s another ethical dimension to this question, not discussed in The Republic, which is whether it’s ever ethically acceptable to suppress the truth to maintain social cohesion or to avoid the social unrest that would occur if the truth were to be disclosed?
If it was the case that the Government knew that it had made decisions that have resulted in enormous harm across the population then it is very likely that were the truth to be revealed there would be significant public unrest and a real chance that the Government be overthrown and any replacement would find it difficult to regain control. Furthermore, the exposure of any significant use of psychological manipulation techniques would make it difficult for the public to ever believe anything governments and their agencies said in future.
Thus it could be argued that the best thing to do at this point in our Covid story might be to actively suppress any information that undermines the Government’s position – after all, even if it isn’t noble, the lie would help maintain public order and prevent the unrest that could follow if the lie was exposed.
But still my doubts remain – should the public be deceived in such a profound way? I’m going to divide my discussion of this into four areas:
- The consequence of failure – the level of unrest that would follow the lie being exposed.
- The level of ‘bad’ that the lie supports.
- The ongoing difficulty of maintaining the lie.
- The wider consequences of the lie being successful.
The consequence of failure
An important aspect of the ethical suppression of truth are the negative consequences that would occur if the truth were revealed. These range from violent protest through to a general decrease in the level of trust in government. Note that ‘distrust’ can itself have long term damaging consequences, such as might happen if people have distrust in medical authority or in policing.
Of course, it might be that individuals in Government might themselves get harmed should the truth be told, but this is often the case for people in positions of authority and isn’t really an aspect that should be considered in a Noble Lie discussion.
Nevertheless, there comes a point where the amount of harm that comes from the lie being exposed becomes considerable. At this point the ethical case for a suppression of truth becomes apparent. The question then becomes whether the other aspects of the situation might support a suppression of truth.
The level of ‘bad’
In The Republic the Noble Lie made society better (than the neutral state without the lie), but the reality of official lies is that they so often hide an unpleasant truth. There then becomes an ethical concern about the suppression of information about a harm that has occurred (and might be ongoing). Surely, it is important to consider the level of harm that the lie is supporting. Indeed, is there a level of ‘evil’ where there can never be an ethical case for keeping it secret?
To consider an extreme example of a hypothetical officially sanctioned lie (and rapidly fall foul of Godwin’s law), would there have been an ethical case to be made for the Nazi’s to have suppressed the truth of the Holocaust if they’d have won WWII? It is likely that many nations (surely all) would have recoiled in horror at that truth, resulting in an unwillingness to accept Nazi rule. Of course, the ruling Nazis would likely have responded with violent suppression of the population to continue their rule, but this is an ethical consideration – the vast majority of sane individuals would surely consider that there is no ethical case to be made for the suppression of a truth of that magnitude, and that a period of violent unrest would be worthwhile if it had any chance of overcoming an authority that had behaved in such a way.
A large part of the ethical argument for or against the suppression of the truth is whether the impact of the lie has any ongoing effects. Perhaps if the actions supported by the lie are stopped and society allowed to return to normal without the lie being exposed then this would be preferable to the period of unrest that would come with the truth being suddenly revealed. On the other hand, if the suppression of the truth allows ‘bad actions’ to continue when they would have had to stop if the truth were exposed earlier, then the suppression of the truth would have led to additional harm being done. Furthermore, the continued ‘bad actions’ would almost certainly result in an increased and more damaging period of unrest were the truth to become known, resulting in it being ever more important that the increasingly ugly truth not be revealed.
The maintenance of the lie
This then brings us to the difficulty of maintaining the lie. Some lies are easily maintained – if a series of poor economic decisions are made by a government with outcomes that were beneficial for a few insiders but disastrous for the population in general there would be no easy way for the population to tell that this had occurred – after all, there’s no easy comparison that could be made, no readily available way to ‘try out’ an alternative decision and see that things would have been different had the original decision gone the other way. On the other hand, it can be more difficult to maintain lies where the consequences of actions can be tested properly and where large numbers of people are involved in decision making processes.
Often political decisions to suppress the truth for a long period of time work out for authorities. For example, the decades long delays before the inquiries into the Bloody Sunday massacre or the Hillsborough disaster worked, in so far as the Government managed to keep the truth suppressed for long enough that the majority of people had ceased to worry about the problem and evidence of any wrongdoing (including recollections of the time) had dissipated enough for any malfeasance to be unprovable. I believe that this is the general approach taken by governments on occasions when terrible mistakes are made by those in authority that would result in public disorder if the truth came out – and, sadly, it actually works most of the time. Perhaps all we can look forward to is a new inquiry into our country’s response to Covid in the 2040’s?
However, other decisions are less readily maintained. It might be simple to keep a secret where all of the paperwork is locked away in a safe and where there are very few people who know the truth… However, decisions based on a specific interpretation of science are not like this – there is never widespread consensus in science (despite what our authorities and media tell us) and those with alternative theories will always be there to challenge the orthodox view. Any suppression of the truth that relies on claims of ‘follow the science’ is likely to come unstuck should the scientific rationale supporting it be presented as overwhelming but where it is actually based on careful selection of only those aspects of the science that supported the Government’s position.
The wider consequence of success
Many of those who have discussed the problem of the Noble Lie considered that it is always a dangerous concept and should be avoided – a sufficiently noble lie might well offer advantages in keeping society happy, but the problem comes where the authorities see the success of the lie and start to lie in other areas. Human nature being what it is, the likelihood is that those in authority would lie more often, potentially about things that don’t offer any advantage to society and only benefit those in authority. Thus a sufficiently noble lie might well offer a net benefit at one point, but it risks the start of a journey into totalitarianism.
This aspect of the argument over the Noble Lie would maintain that were such a lie to be told, the decision that would be most beneficial for society would be to ‘come clean’ as soon as possible, even if there were short term negative consequences.
Thoughts on the application of the ethics of truth to the Government’s Covid response
I believe that the application of the ethics of the suppression of truth to the Government’s response to Covid is much more simple than is the case for the majority of lies in politics. No matter what decisions were made and when, the science will come out in the end – it doesn’t matter what our authorities do to suppress this, scientists (in general, not the subset of Government-approved career science-politicians) are the type of individuals that will doggedly keep on exploring until they find something to report. At that point the lie would be exposed and the social problems would come anyway. Furthermore, given the pace of science, these truths are likely to come out sooner rather than later. Thus the futility of the attempts to maintain the lie is enough argument in itself to support full disclosure of all information as soon as possible.
The problem then becomes not one of whether the lie should be exposed or not, but one of how to limit the fall-out when it does. I suggest that we’re already in rather deep, but that no-matter how bad the response would be if the truth came out now, it will only get worse if governments continue to suppress the truth anyway. Or, put another way, when you’re in a hole you really have to stop digging.
To help limit societal disruption following the disclosure of the truth, I suggest that there should be a type of Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), offering immunity from prosecution if people come forward and tell the truth. This sits uneasily with me as I don’t like people to ‘get away with it’, but this would be the only way to get the truth out now and avoid much more serious problems in the future. An important aspect of this would be that people would only have protection if they came forward and told the truth – anyone that withheld information at that point would be exposed to the threat of rigorous prosecution in the future (possibly based on what others said to the TRC).
One final point. It isn’t simply about the societal disruption if the truth were to be out – there’s also the impact on the individuals that made the decisions. Even if there was protection from prosecution, any individuals that perpetuated a lie at the expense of the public will surely be vilified – thus it is only natural that all those involved in the decision making around the response to Covid would strongly oppose any disclosure of the lie. This is especially true of politicians, who are trained to never own up to their mistakes and who seldom have anything but the most basic understanding of the nature of science. As a result, the individuals deciding whether to hold a type of TRC, and the members thereof, shouldn’t have had anything to do with the Government’s response to the epidemic (and that includes members of the media that have been complicit in any lying).
Unfortunately, this is surely wishful thinking on my part – I fear those in power would do anything to perpetuate the lie and not face the consequences. I think this would be futile, but is nonetheless likely to happen – perhaps we’ll get a totalitarian state yet.
But ethics isn’t about what I think – what do readers think about this ethical dilemma?
Amanuensis is an ex-academic and senior Government scientist. He blogs at Bartram’s Folly.
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According to migration watch, the UK has added 8 million to the GP list since 2010, and GP’s are still leaving, sort of explains why now, its difficult to get an appointment. The census forms used to do a good job of predicting and planning infrastructure, until they decided to ignore all of that.
While that may be a factor, it doesn’t account for the extreme reluctance to ever see patients, which is what now happens in many GP practices. Nor does it account for the determination to continue with Covid theatre.
Agree about the covid theatre. But no ‘Free’ service, (exceptions are tax payers,) could survive such an onslaught and if GP’s with increased patients can deal with many more via zoom or telephone, why wouldn’t they.
Some things can de done without seeing the patient (e.g. many repeat prescriptions) but other things simply don’t work if done that way – and if they actually cared about providing a decent service they wouldn’t attempt it.
What’s the point of the GP system?
It basically assumes mass health illiteracy.
The question is why do they, and the answer is not immigration. The answer is they can get away with it. They mostly have contempt for patients, and they do as little work as possible for as much money as possible.
You have to be able together through to the surgery in the first place… Very difficult with our practice.
Nor does it account for the determination to continue with Covid theatre.
Absolutely. My GP’s practice is still all plastic screens, masks (“even if fully vaccinated” – hohoho!), signs on every wall, floor and door warning you to keep apart…..they only brought chairs back to the waiting room at the end of 2021, before that you had to stand outside, until you were allowed to stand inside.
Not that I go there much; but I’ve passed the building and looked through the windows.
Same here – I just look as I walk past and it is the same.
You are not even allowed beyond the entry vestibule in my GP surgery and all communication has to be done with hand signals and facial expression – as much as can be achievable when wearing a face mask.
Ludicrous when covid is a total nothing burger
In my practice, the doctors aren’t even in the building… they leave all that kind of thing where they might have to touch someone to nurses, paramedics and HCAs (in no particular order).
That problem is self inflicted by the medical profession, which basically operates as a cartel. The medical industry is pretty much self regulated. They could streamline the training and get more people into the profession, but I don’t think they have any interest in that. Sadly most of the innovation in medicine is done by pharma and tech companies and not so much on the human side
In my recent experience, it seems the GP doctors just do the admin and refer you to someone else who might know, once you’ve run the gauntlet of reception, practice nurse, Minor Injuries and Paramedic…
Since some people here love to talk about immigration: the medical “profession” in Britain prefers to import medics from abroad, some of whom can hardly talk English except if they’re reading from a bullet-pointed card in front of them, let alone actually understand English that’s being spoken to them by a patient, rather than train up British proletarians into being medics, which could be done in a few years for a fraction of the cost of any of the several multi-billion pound “Covid” scams that have been perpetrated since 2020.
Cuba would probably be willing to help.
“… let alone actually understand English that’s being spoken to them by a patient…”
When my wife was training, she was attending a recently arrived doctor of dusky hue when the patient’s mother enquired, in a broad Gloucester accent how the lad’s hearing was… the bemused doctor turned to my wife to ask: “I wasn’t aware that we’d tested his urine?”
The census forms used to do a good job of predicting and planning infrastructure, until they decided to ignore all of that.
This may be a problem globally – or at least in the Anglosphere. I have been fortunate in rarely needing to visit a GP here in Australia, but I’m hearing from those who do that waiting times are now at unprecedented levels.
Apparently, according to an ONS bod, the Government has no accurate figures on the actual population of the UK.
Maybe it’s now more reliable to estimate population by asking all the supermarkets for their regional food sales. Seems a lot cheaper than sending out an increasingly intrusive form, followed by visits by goons if you don’t complete it by the deadline …
Then correct this for a few small factors:
1 sales from small shops, restaurants, cafes, etc
2 production of home-grown fruit and vegs., eggs from free-range chickens, etc.
Result: regional population figures to within a few million.
The most reliable method appears to be to work back from what arrives at the local sewage plant. Not everyone shops at a supermarket, but everyone…
Sorry for the duplicate – I didn’t see your post before clicking send. We’ve obviously both heard the same thing.
lol – sh1t happens… as they say! ;o)
I’ve heard that the quantity of sewage produced in a given area is also a more reliable statistic than the census. (I wish this were a joke, but it’s deadly serious.)
By design. They based immigration numbers on the International Passenger Survey, which was an absolute farce of a system that performed a tiny voluntary dip sample survey on a few incoming travellers on daytime flights at major airports.
Their answers about their intentions were taken at face value, and there was no box for “Planning to overstay my tourist or student visa and vanish into the grey economy”.
Even the ONS eventually had to admit this wasn’t fit for purpose. The obvious solution is just record passports in to passports out, but of course what they’re going with is “statistical modelling”.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/articles/internationalmigrationstatisticaldesignprogressreport/2021-11-26
what was point of census then – the big cumbersome form that if you didn’t complete satisfactorly you faced some kind of prosecution?
was that just a government workfare scheme to keep some people in employment??
They do if it means they can make vaccines appear more effective
Why are they leaving after two years on holiday, because they have too big a pension.
They haven’t accounted for the ‘boomer wave’ that’s about to engulf the NHS, and that’s been apparent for the last sixty years, if they cared to notice…
Can you say some more about this? Where are the bottlenecks? Few pop their clogs on ventilators. And if the median “wait” for treatment for XYZ (if a person gets any treatment at all) increases from say 3 years to 5 years, people are so passive in this country that not very many people will go out on the street and burn tyres.
“The average cost of treating patients aged around 65 in the NHS is 2.5 more than patients aged around 30; for those in the 90+ age bracket, the cost is seven times higher than the 30-year-old age bracket. The aging population is raising the cost of running the NHS, and the NHS, which is already suffering from a lack of sufficient funds and services, will no longer be able to meet public needs.”
From: Refurbishing the NHS: UK Faces Challenges of an Aging Population – thebritishtribune
Pretty much any search of the NHS and an aging population comes to the same conclusion.
The vast majority of those immigrants will be young and healthy, keen to work and therefore pay taxes which are needed to support the health of the rapidly aging population. Many of them will be working in the NHS or care. We would be in an even worse position without them.
Studies in both Norway and The Netherlands a few years ago showed that only migrants from elsewhere in NW Europe were net contributors to the public finances. That’s because the labour of others isn’t worth much, which means they pay little tax, and as soon as they have a child they become a net drain on the system.
The worst performers were Somalis and Afghans.
And however did we manage before limits on immigration were largely scrapped in 97?
I wonder if the health services in the other western European countries that significantly outperform the NHS are as dependent on imported labour?
We are talking about the UK not Norway or the Netherlands. Here different studies draw different conclusions about contributions to public finances. Migration Watch has a nice summary of different bits of research. but the overall conclusion is complicated and uncertain. Anyhow most of this just measures the strict fiscal balance – not the overall contribution to the economy.
I am not sure we did manage in the 1990s. But to the extent that we did, the population was younger then.
Doctors these days are pretty much just reps for the pharma industry. I’m sure they can prescribe medication much more quickly and efficiently via zoom.
Doctors these days are pretty much just reps for the pharma industry.
You know, I used to think GP’s were there for the benefit of the patient – I realise now I was completely wrong – in my mind they are first and foremost a business and are there to earn money for the practice and as much dough as they possibly can – nothing wrong with earning a profit, I understand that – but I actually mean pushing all kinds of uneccesary medications (including covid jabs) in an attempt to get as many people hooked on prescibed drugs for as long as possible knowing full well that most of these people don’t really need them. I know of people who have been repeat presciptions for as long 20-30 years – everything from blood pressure tablets and anti-depressants to Statins and all other kinds of of prescribed medication without once having to see their GP in that time – they just phone up the surgery, speak to the receptionist and the next day the prescription is in the phramacy waiting for them – GP surgeries must be earning an absolute fortune from these prescription junkies.
I have nothing against a medical system that operates for profit. I think free exchange for profit is overwhelmingly a force for good. But it has to be free exchange. Which means that the demand side, the patient, the customer, also needs to be free to chose.
What we seem to have now is a supply side of pharma, tech, doctors incentivised by profit and mandated patients with little or no freedom of choice. Basically, a racket in which billions of tax money is channelled every year towards a profit making medical establishment.
And to add insult to injury we are encouraged to stand on our doorsteps clapping and cheering for it all.
If patients can be seen over the phone or internet … why are we paying the huge cost of British doctors when we can get any qualified doctor from anywhere on the globe to provide the same service?
That is how you do it. A national campaign to give us the right to consult any doctor anywhere. Fear will drive them back to work.
The harsh reality is we are learning the hard way what happens when we allow everything to be paid from general taxation. Even changing to paying an explicitly marked “Medical Tax” on your salary slip focuses attention. It reminds people we pay for all this.
This is Britain. They run it like a colony. People do what they’re bl**dy well told and like it.
I think Amazon will soon be offering the same service as part of Prime membership. No joke.
At least the ‘doctor’ in the pic has bothered to put on his white coat and stethoscope, so we know standards haven’t plummeted too far.
“His”? Are you a biologist?
I’m rather surprised he’s not wearing a mask. How did they miss the opportunity to reinforce or our reprogramming? They’re getting sloppy..
Off topic but on the subject of reinforcement programming.
https://ibb.co/b1wWv6v
It’s impossible here in West Dorset to make an appointment over the phone to see your GP. The receptionist, in her inimitably haughty manner, advises to use the “e consult” online service, which is useless and (if you’re “lucky”) only results in a brief phone contact by an unknown, untrusted doctor.
My reply to the receptionist is along the lines of “what is wrong with Doctor X, is he dead – or playing golf?”. Last time I slammed the phone down, muttering “what a stitch up”.
Do you think GP’s receptionists are chosen because of their snotty attitude? Or do you think they have to go on training courses? They seem to see their entire role as protecting their GPs from the patients.
True. They somehow, with practice, manage to see themselves as well qualified and superior – apparently an attitude they osmotically absorb from the GPs.
Ha yes. Little do they know the doctors probably have even more contempt for them than they do for us!
Gatekeepers:
Surgery: “Please do not enter if you feel unwell”
Everyone I know who has come into contact with a GP’s receptionist is saying the same thing.
To answer your question: I think it comes “naturally” to them, given the British cultural environment that they’re in. In Britain, most who sit behind desks and talk to “members of the public” are conditioned to be full of contempt and hatred, even if they themselves when they’re not at work are sometimes in exactly the same position as the person as front of them.
File under “customer services”.
Crazy but true: customers are often seen as a complete pain in the neck who don’t deserve what they are paying for (or what they’ve already paid for in their taxes) and who are essentially just trying to scrounge off their heroic supplier. They’re seen as basically barbarian filth.
It’s not like that in most other countries.
You know the old joke – “this would be a great place to work if it wasn’t for the customers/patients etc etc”
In my area it isn’t a joke now – it is reality.
Okay, this is going to sound petty and small minded (but I don’t actually care, because I have become petty and small minded)… we have a couple of fire breathing dragons on the plastic and wood screen protected reception desk at our surgery. In the background you can see various members of staff meandering about. The chief receptionist is grossly fat (20 stone I would say), her second in command is just fat. Behind them nearly all the staff, including one man, are either large or very large. It’s a bit like a comedy sketch, with a selection of bad tempered Mr Blobby lookalikes stamping round crossly in their anti-covid compound. I have watched with amusement as I wait for someone (anyone) to acknowledge I am actually standing there. So many NHS employees are fat it’s just amazing. And they dole out health advice? Ha.
The receptionist is just doing their job, the doctor probably isn’t actually in the building anyway. Their attitude, in large part, is generally a result of dealing with the public every day…
how are elderly people – some of whom cannot work that technology supposed to manage to cope with that?
Absolutely. I’m in my 70s. I can work it but I find it intimidating. What’s needed is face to face contact with the GP I’ve learnt to trust.
It’s ok they’re allowed to carry a paper copy of their video consultation.
Our doctors surgery has now stopped taking orders for repeat prescriptions over the phone or in person. You know have to go on the website. This should kill off a few more old people
Mines been using online requests for years. Previously, you could also drop off a paper form in a box in the surgery, and you picked up your repeat prescription from there. It normally took 2 days. .
Not any more! Online only, please allow at least a week for it to be processed, all prescriptions are sent automatically to the pharmacy next door, where the staff are still cowering behind plastic screens – don’t dare come into the GP’s surgery in person, you disease carrying monsters!
Yes – you hit the nail on the head. “Disease carrying monsters” – filth, basically.
Same here.
Best to stock up on whatever medicines you need by buying at least a year’s supply over the internet. Yes it’s expensive, but there you go – that’s reality. Those who have house insurance policies or such cr*p can always get some funds by discontinuing them.
Goodness me, the life of the doctor (and the receptionists) would be so much more pleasant, were it not for the patients.
Still, they are all doing their best to “doctor”, without having any in person contact with the people they are being paid to help.
Plus, the customers are always ill! Ew. So depressing.
Given that more and more people are having to turn up at A&E for things that should be dealt with by GPs but aren’t, if I was the head of a local care trust, I’d be seriously considering setting up a GP-style service within the hospital ‘in competition’ with GPs and getting patients to sign up. Might as well get the ‘patient premium’ if they’re having to do the work.
If you were a pharmacist, would you be thinking of dispensing generic medicines, i.e. exactly the same as those that are “prescribed” but not of the specified brand, and much cheaper? They would drum you out of the “profession” within five minutes’ flat, and turn your name into mud. The pressure would feel as though the roof had fallen in.
GPs are all a bunch of lying crooks, and so are NHS hospital medics almost all of the time.
Nailed it OB!! Genius idea!
We must learn to live without “Doctors: and A & E. The problem is that they will be criminalising the alternatives which actually .keep you healthy.
Let’s face it – they want people to be sick – they are easier to ‘vaccinate’ and control.
Related, a pharmacist friend is now begging the GP practice across the road to stop soapy-shouldering people onto her.
She’s already working unpaid hours to fulfil the unlimited demand for “free” (Scotch) prescriptions, and can’t retain staff once they see what the job really involves: hour after hour of relentless, thankless, grinding repetitive work where one slip-up can kill, and the NHS payment is inadequate to cover paying competitive wages. One of her staff just packed it in to make more money as a veterinary receptionist, to put it in perspective.
And on top of that she’s now being sent a constant stream of desperate people who’ve been told to go to her to be diagnosed, many of whom she has to tell to go straight back again because their symptoms are way beyond her remit. It’s breaking her heart and her spirit.
What is soapy-shouldering??
Passing the buck at the same time as taking the P155?
That isn’t fair. But it follows that patients will be pushed down the food chain and people on the lower rungs will have to take up the slack.
I’ve said it before many times on this forum but I now have an intrinsic and automatic distrust of medical professionals. They showed themselves to be little more than stupid automatons following crazy diktats from above in spite of clear and obvious evidence that they were causing more harm than good. Don’t even get me started on the gene therapy injections. They have brought medicine into disrepute and unless they spoke out and took action, as very few did, they can go to hell, I will never trust them again.
My wife worked in drug addiction for many years and she has always distrusted and disliked doctors who, in the large part, could never understand addiction and wielded their power to prescribe like some kind of power trip, punishing addicts in ways that never helped improve anyone’s lives. Arrogant, ignorant and self-important.
Well said.
They actively encouraged people to take up the clot shots.
And to strong-arm doctors into damaging children with fake ‘vaccines’ the government paid doctors £10-00 to jab them in addition to the £15-00 or so they got from jabbing each adult.
£25-00 per jab for harming kids.
They are as venal as f***, and amoral with it.
They’d do anything if they were paid for it.
Quite agree that there is no way they should be let off the hook.
“I only get paid for it” is an even worse excuse than “I’m only doing what I’m told”.
They are scum.
Funnily enough, “scum” is exactly what they think those who criticise them in a fundamental way are.
Obviously GP services are struggling at the moment but I fear pressure to force GPs into making a face to face appointment when a telephone call would do (I can, for example, see some kind of measurement and cash incentive to make a good political headline). Face to face appointments typically mean travelling to the surgery and waiting in a room full of sick people – sometimes for an hour or more. Recently I have handled several problems with both myself and my mother via our respective GPs over the telephone and it has been much more convenient.
GPs don’t like ill people.
Any specialist medic will be able to confirm.
Why? Because they think they’re entitled to keep as much of the money they can claim for as possible, so any amount they “spend” on a patient is a cost – it’s as if they’re being “robbed”. Yes – they think patients are parasitic on THEM.
Scum of the earth!
Like any other profession, GPs vary. I expect there are some that try to limit their commitments to patients. However, my GP gives me outstanding support. I take a number of drugs and vaccinations that could come off either the GP practice budget or the specialist’s budget. There is never a hint of trying to move it to the specialist. My mother’s GP took the initiative to ring my sister to suggest a treatment he had thought of when he didn’t need to do anything.
If esteem for quacks has gone through the floor, that’s a positive development since the start of the fascist period in March 2020.
The same goes for bankers after 2008. It may seem normal now to say that bankers are w*nkers and “Hey, got your bonus, have you?” but before 2008 hardly anybody dared criticise the stalwarts of the High Street, thieving outfits such as Lloyds, Barclays, Santander, and HSBC. You were generally seen as a headbanging nutter if you did. “Keep away from that guy – he’s going on about bankers.”
Insurance companies are still blue-eyed boys, though. Very few people understand the basic arithmetical fact that the expected payout from any insurance policy is negative. Even Fields Medal winner (and Cummings-chum t*sser) Timothy Gowers only realised it late in life.
Next on the list? Let’s hope it’s schoolteachers and headteachers, before it’s too late.
I’m being overly optimistic, of course. It’s always f***ing too late.
It SHOULD go without saying (but doesn’t) that Google is OBVIOUSLY on the list, as are Faecebook and Sh*tter.
But criticise Google now, and most people think you are insane.
For those who want to study “GP world”, including how GPs think, the magazine Pulse, which is aimed at them, is probably an extremely useful source – not just the articles, but the comments too.
They have little shame when they feel they’re among themselves – they let their hair down.
It’s at pulsetoday.co.uk
Visited. Repulsed. Left sharply.
This was written by a GP in Essex – he put his name to it (says it all really) – I wouldn’t want him to so much as lay a finger on me let alone be my GP if this is what he thinks:
“But if the answer to a, er, health crisis is to decisively impose a system of rationing, aren’t we missing an open goal here? After all, flush-busting oestrogens aren’t the only things in short supply in the NHS, are they? GPs are at a premium, too. And if perimenopausal women can be noble enough to accept restrictions on personal supplies of HRT for the greater good of womankind, then patients should man/woman up for the benefit of the general populace. By which I mean, restrict themselves to seeing the GP only three times a year, tops. This doesn’t just mean less demand. We know that 10% of our list create 90% of our work – if we could spread those consultations around a bit to the less frequent attenders then everyone gets a go, diagnoses aren’t delayed and everyone’s happy.”
UTTERLY LOATHESOME
Yep. That’s what I’m talking about!
Medical schools clearly do such a good job don’t they?
Talk about bedside manner!
I think it’s a spiffing idea. Nobody on the public payroll should have to endure face to face meetings with any of the hideous and ungrateful plebs who pay their wages. How fortunate that lockdowns created the opportunity to have a test run with this idea and prove how wonderful and successful it was.
Next up: the police only to meet the criminal fraternity via the telephone or Zoom. I am sure they can come up with statistics and models to prove that this will reduce crime.
But did the government not put a bill in Queen’s Speech to ban working from home???
Does this not pull rug out from under GPs who won’t see patients in person?
If not, I might lobby my MP to campaign to insert a clause into the Bill which deals specifically with GP access.
9 year old in the family has a racing heart beat and chest pains. Repeatedly. Doctor wanted a monitor fitted to record events over 48hrs. This took two months, not least because the urgent request from a Consultant, was forgotten about. We await result. Meantime, he is regularly picked up from school as they do not want the responsibility when an event occurs (quite rightly).
Ambulances are now refused and he is quickly bounced out of A&E as they can’t do anything. Pretty much, ‘stop coming here’. He was diagnosed with SVT by a Consultant, though none of the ECGs to date had shown it. There was evidence of AV block. A beta blocker was prescribed, which causes chest pains if you have AV block. His chest pains are worse.
Today he had radically different BP readings in each arm. He is in A&E now. When is one of these serious and needs attention? Or do we stop ‘bothering’ the NHS? We await someone coming back to us with a review of the recent recordings and hopefully an actual diagnosis and a plan. 9 year old, with a heart issue. Not that important. (And yes, they did find him to have symptomless Covid, put him on a Covid ward and discharge as caused by Covid, at one point. So fashion has been addressed).
Sounds horrendous and very stressful, both for you and your 9 year old son. Hope you find someone who can help and soon.
The sweet irony is that by enthusiastically jumping on board the remote consultation bandwagon, doctors have hastened the demise of their own profession. They will eventually be replaced by AI consultants and through their own laziness, fear and lack of diligence, have helped the public become accustomed to impersonal screen consultations.
Demand > Supply simple as that.
Just not enough GPS for whatever reason facing an exponential demand
Not going to get better any time soon if at all
xxd09
Attended a blood test ‘review’ yesterday at my local surgery – a chat with, in the past, a doctor, which was held once a year. I wasn’t granted the tremendous privilege of a blood test/review in either 2020 or 2021, so was pleased when things seemed to have gone back to normal this year, when, a couple of weeks ago I had a call – they called me!!! – to arrange one. So they took the blood a week ago and yesterday was review day. I just assumed I’d be talking to a doctor, given that I had technical questions to ask. I was ushered into what was clearly the doctor’s examination room and I asked the nurse which doctor I was seeing. She let me down gently: “No you’re seeing me. Are you not happy with that?”
I asked her two of the questions I had, and when she couldn’t answer them I told her “No I’m not happy with that” and left in, I admit it, high dudgeon. I mean, wtF is the point?
In our practice – in Scotland – you have to phone at 8.30am to try to get an appointment. You are in competition with everyone else doing the same thing. If you’re lucky you get told you’re in the queue. If you’re unlucky you get cut off or told you’re in the queue and then get cut off. It’s a total lottery and then if you get through you get told there are no more appointments for that day and to try again the next day. It’s no surprise that A&E departments are overrun.