Empty hospitals: The cost of lockdown
With social distancing and adherence to lockdown almost entirely out the window, to try and protect our healthcare system through a lockdown is clearly costing more lives than it is saving.
It’s only been a few months since the mantra of ‘Protect the NHS and save lives’ underpinned the government’s lockdown strategy.
There seemed to be justifiable reasons why preventing the overwhelming of our health system seemed most pertinent, but the whole basis for the lockdown being to wait for a vaccine is slipping more and more away from being as practical as is claimed. As others have said, the easing of this crippling lockdown is not lives vs. the economy but lives vs. lives.
No more is this apparent than in the NHS. With social distancing and adherence to lockdown almost entirely out the window, to try and protect our healthcare system through a lockdown is clearly costing more lives than it is saving.
Indeed, it could even be said that the gospel of protecting the NHS has caused those who should have been in a hospital on a ventilator to die at home, not wanting to bother the NHS out of the sacrificial desire to keep it protected like the sacred cow it has become.
In these past weeks, we have seen millions of cancer patients denied treatment by NHS trusts, and other essential operations being cancelled as well. Even private hospitals remain empty as the waiting list for vital surgeries stretches to unimaginable lengths. The blame for the huge loss of life this will cause, a loss which I believe outweighs that of the virus, is the fault of both the government and NHS trusts across the country.
The government have not stepped in to prevent this loss of life, to urge hospitals to function normally once again and the NHS trusts have made the personal decision to deny treatment while falsely claiming that they have been instructed to do so when really it is a choice they made themselves for reasons that are becoming less and less justifiable.
The way in which doctors and nurses across the country have adapted hospitals to use protective equipment, keep wards clean and ensure the safety of their patients is a commendable effort. So why is it so difficult to allow patients who need treatments as a matter of life and death to get that treatment immediately, or at least gradually?
I am wary to say that protecting the NHS and treating the virus has become an excuse for hospitals across the nation, but I struggle to find what other conclusion we can come to when we step back and see this systematic and dangerous problem unfold before us.
This has become an issue that has impacted my own family and their friends. Hospitals give out appointments then cancel them time and time again, citing coronavirus as the reason and claiming that the government are telling them to deny treatment when nothing could be further from the truth. If hospitals cannot replicate Covid-secure wards across all their departments then it is a poor showing on both them and the government.
Things must now return to normal, and even though the public should continue to do their part to prevent a second wave even, things should open back up. There is going to have to be a point where we question whether this suffering has been worth it, or whether the cost of lockdown is becoming too great to burden.
