It should be the other way round. We should be protecting them not them protecting us. ‘If you have a cough or temperature stay home’: These are non-specific symptoms. They do not belong solely to the virus. A heart attack, a chest infection and many other common conditions can present with those symptoms. Breathlessness, a headache, a sore leg can be presentations of serious but time-critically treatable conditions that have been under-appreciated in the context.
Emphasizing the ’don’t’ in ‘don’t go to the hospital’ has created the impression that hospitals are these ‘virus infested’ places where doom is certain if you enter. Or that hospitals are those ‘sacred’ places that need to be kept clean from the ‘unclean’ that walk out there. What a misconception, what a mess. How many have stayed home whilst suffering a myocardial infarction or a pneumonia? How many succumbed to conditions that could and should have been treated at the hospital? All in the name of a political slogan...‘protect the NHS’ indeed.
We are the protectors, we don’t need saving we need to fulfill our role now more than ever. The hospital is not a church.
Comparison with how some other nations rose to the occasion is overwhelming. How this crisis was handled by officials who have been proclaiming their superiority and vision in this nation’s future is eye-watering. The condescending tone and boastful uttering of ‘success’ in describing the outcome of the designed strategy will be ultimately judged by generations to come; informed by a ‘number of lives lost’ that is yet to be concluded.
People should get the (national health) Service they are paying for. We should provide the (national health) Service we are paid (by the people) to provide. But, for now, let’s just watch (and survive) the consequences of health science yielding to political myopic speculation driven by sensationalism.
Of course.’Protect the NHS’. No matter what.