David Craig, on November 21st, 2020(weekend blog)
I obviously haven’t a clue about what is really happening in the NHS. Though I have ghost-written and published one book about the NHS – WHO CARES? by Amanda Steane and I was married to a (female) cancer surgeon for over 20 years. But I have a nagging suspicion that in many A&E departments staff are sitting around much of the day with little to do and that many hospital wards are almost empty as they wait for the great supposed tsunami of Chinese plague victims predicted by ‘experts’ like Imperial College’s Professor Penis and the Government’s Dr Gloom and Professor Doom:
It was, of course, Gloom and Doom who produced their ludicrously exaggerated (and quickly debunked) ‘scenario’ with 4,000 Xi Pingpong plague deaths a day in the UK even though this is about four times the Covid-19 death rate of a country like India which has about twenty times the population of the UK and probably 80% of the population without any proper medical care.
For me, the 4,000 deaths a day scenario was Doom and Gloom’s ‘Colin Powell moment’:
the moment they lost all credibility.
Moreover, I get the impression that it would be easier to break into Fort Knox than it would be to get into many GP surgeries.
My own limited personal experience is that it is close to impossible to see my GP, in spite of the massive taxes I pay to support our ‘wonderful’ NHS that is ‘the envy of the world’. Though I am allowed to send messages through a complicated on-line consulting system and get brief rather dismissive emailed replies from my GP.
When I did have to go to the surgery to have my blood pressure measured, I found that I couldn’t go to my usual surgery as the machine there was broken, no medical staff would be available to take my blood pressure and nobody had any idea when the machine would be repaired. However, I was told to make an appointment to use the machine at the practice’s other surgery a few miles away. When making an appointment to use the machine that did still work, without actually being allowed to come into contact with any medical personnel, I found I could go at any time on any day as no other patient would be using it. And while at the surgery measuring my own blood pressure, I didn’t see any sign of any doctors or any other patients in what used to be a very busy practice.
As for the normally busy receptionist, she apparently had so little to do that I had to wait almost 10 minutes ringing the surgery bell every few minutes just to get into the locked surgery as the receptionist was away from her desk chatting with some of her chums possibly because there was no need for her to stay at her desk as she had little to nothing to do.
I wonder where all the patients have gone? And I wonder what our doctors do all day?
I’m sure there are a few hospitals up north full of whining Scousers and moaning Mancunians who did catch the virus as they chose to get pissed in large groups rather than maintaining the social distancing that most of the rest of us reluctantly adopted. But are most of our ‘wonderful’ hospitals run by our ‘wonderful’ NHS really full to bursting point?
Instead of me writing a blog this weekend, I’d like to refer you to this Daily Mail article written by journalist Ross Clark (click on link below)
Throughout the Chinese plague (media-induced?) panic, most mainstream media supposed journalists have desperately tried to outdo each other in writing/fabricating the worst ‘shock/horror’ headlines they could possibly think of. Ross Clark has been one of the few admirable exceptions. Instead of flatulently hyperventilating about the supposed catastrophic disaster that so many other journalists have irresponsibly and self-servingly hyped up in order to further their own lousy careers, Ross Clark has forensically analysed, and often dismantled, the Government’s hyperbolic figures and predictions as our rulers tried to bludgeon us into terrified submission.
I really am beginning to wonder whether our ‘wonderful’ NHS is actually doing any work at all.
Category: 
We can all be forgiven for suspecting that Doom & Gloom and Professor P are relishing the sense of power that they currently have over us ignorant, unscientific plebs. After all, what do we know? Collectively, very little, as evidenced by the wide variability in observable conduct in the population, which varies from obsessional self-protective measures in terms of, literally, sluicing down every item of shopping as it arrives in the house and being struck by terror at the thought of walking down the street, to participating in enormous house-parties seemingly specifically intended to disseminate the plague as widely as possible. Neither extremes of conduct are, in my opinion, either sane or justified. But that’s just my personal view. I don’t want the plague, so am tending to keep away from strangers, but on the other hand I would like the freedom to decide for myself whether I want to isolate myself from my children and grandchildren. I rather think, having lived through WW2 and worked to earned my living all my life as well as successfully raising a wonderful family, I am old enough and sensible enough to assess risk for myself. I resent the paternalistic, dictatorial stance of Gloom & Doom and Boris Johnson and I resent even more the prospect of a fine should I be found contravening their instructions. As regards the NHS, I know from family members working at the sharp end that there is wide regional variability. It rather seems that London is over the worst and has seen relatively little increase during this “2nd wave”. The Reaper did his damnedest first time around, gathering in thousands of those with comorbidities whom he’d been rather overlooking. This time it is the turn of other regions, where I am reliably informed that some hospitals are crammed to overflowing and nurses and doctors are being worked to mental, emotional and physical exhaustion. Almost certainly it is, as always, a case of too many Chiefs, comfortably isolated from the action and failing to get a grip administratively, failing to fund adequate staffing levels whilst issuing instructions to and determining unachievable “targets” for too few Indians. My own GP surgery is, incidentally, effectively uncontactable for many, given that the phone “queue” is interminable – all at the caller’s expense! – so that the caller eventually gives up. The door is locked and remains unanswered other than by prior arrangement. Which it is impossible to make because there is no phone response! the only means of contact is through the appalling website to which you refer. This is to my mind inexcusable in an area where the majority of the population is well over retirement age and many have no concept of how to go “on line”. A friend on the other hand, who lives less than 10 miles away, has found her Practice easily accessible by phone. It’s evidently a question of motivation and will on the Partners’ part. Nationally, I suspect that deaths from untreated conditions, including malignancies and heart conditions for which no medical advice has been available, plus naturally occurring deaths accelerated by depression or physical inactivity, will equal or even eventually exceed deaths from covid-19. Not that we shall ever learn the truth of course! Lies, damned lies, and statistics!
Out of curiosity, I’ve just been researching the claimed current state of C-19 infections in the original source of the outbreak, China, via their media outlet ‘China Briefing’. Because the original outbreak that so comprehensively shafted the rest of us has, somehow, fallen off the MSM’s radar lately.
Unlike our own government, in their official figures the Chinese health authorities actually distinguish between the figures for asymptomatic C-19 cases and those for confirmed cases, so would appear to provide a more realistic picture of their current situation than our health authorities do of ours where both are lumped together as ‘cases’.
They appear to be finding between fifteen and forty ‘confirmed’ cases a day, and fewer than twenty ‘asymptomatic’ per day. Around five hundred ‘asymptomatics’ are currently under observation. The vast majority of their infections, they claim, are imported from abroad.
Imported frozen meat, China Briefing claims, is currently a major source of C-19 infections. In that context it might be apposite to point out that Australia, a country currently pushing hard for for an inquiry into China’s initial handling of the Covid-19 outbreak, is a major frozen beef exporter to China; Australian beef imports there having peaked in 2019 after a major epidemic of Swine Flu in China decimated the Chinese pork industry, and caused an acute national shortage of proteins.
Another interesting piece of news from the respected periodical ‘Nature’, on 15th October –
”Chinese vaccine makers have developed four of the roughly dozen leading candidate vaccines that are in the final stages of testing worldwide. No vaccine has yet completed the crucial phase III trials that are needed to firmly establish safety and efficacy. But that hasn’t stopped hundreds of thousands of people in China and abroad being injected with one of the four Chinese vaccine candidates under policies known as emergency-use authorization.”
”Wu Guizhen, the chief biosafety expert at China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing, told Chinese state media last month that….. vaccines are being tested in countries including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Peru and Argentina.”
From CBS News, August 25th – ”Zheng Zhongwei, director of the Development Center for Medical Science and Technology at the National Health Commission, said in an interview with State Broadcaster CCTV Saturday night that the government had authorized the emergency use of vaccines developed by domestic companies on July 22.
Zheng, who also heads China’s coronavirus vaccine development task force, said the emergency use authorization was in line with the Chinese vaccine management law, which allows unapproved vaccine candidates to be used on people who are at high risk of infection for a limited period.”
I’m quite sure that there are people in authority in this country who would be quite prepared, for their own reasons, to see such ’emergency use authorization’ rolled out here. especially in the light of calls from such beacons of democracy as Assistant Commissioner Anil ‘Neil’ Basu for the prosecution of so-called ‘anti-vaxxers’ – ie anyone who dares express the view that vaccines rushed out in a quarter of the time needed for research and safety testing might just possibly not be quite as effective or safe as Big Pharma or Big Government claims.
Meanwhile, my partner, who unlike me still owns a television, tells me that there has recently been a considerable increase in the numbers of so-called ‘celebrity doctors’ in the media, who obviously have plenty of time on their hands in the absence of all those boring sick people whom they used to treat.
I’m fortunate to have reasonably good health but when visiting hospitals I have never seen any of the claimed pressure they supposedly work under. It is concerning that they even claim this. People working under pressure make mistakes and it is their job to manage the work to avoid pressure and mistakes. They don’t do this because the NHS is not serving their patients, it is following instructions from its masters – a socialist government. We will never have a good health service until it is privatised and we have competition in healthcare. The private hospitals are not much better in the UK because the NHS dominates and prevents competition and the private staff are mostly trained in the NHS and have the NHS mentality.
I recently had a flu jab at my surgery. Normally it is like a conga line of the elderly. This year nobody else was there and the vaccination was done outside. I also went for diabetic tests. Only a blood test was done and there is no sign of the foot test being carried out. The waiting room had two other people in it. The nurse was in a state of panic because she was “under pressure to keep the waiting room clear”. I’m six months overdue for an eye scan at the hospital and two cousins in a different part of the country are in the same position. If the NHS was responsible for aircraft maintenance instead of us there wouldn’t be a plane in the sky.