The Invisible Shield

Last week, the government announced that it was adding 1.7 million to the list of people it was recommending should shield from COVID19.  But, that takes the total number it says should be shielding only to 4 million.  That is completely pointless.  It is essentially an invisible shield, unable to achieve anything useful.  We have known from the start that about 20% of the population are at serious risk from COVID19, so any effective shielding policy should have started from that basis.  Had the government done that it could have saved tens of thousands of lives.

The 20% of the population actually at serious risk of COVID amounts to around 13 million people, as against the 4 million that the government is only now suggesting should be shielding.  A large proportion of that 13 million people are elderly people many of whom are in care homes, in hospitals, or else who receive care in their own homes from health and social care workers.  Of course, these are precisely the people who needed shielding most, and for whom such shielding should have been most easy to achieve by a welfare state and NHS focussing on that requirement.  Yet, the opposite has been the case.

Rather than shielding all of these people, it has been precisely in NHS hospitals, and care homes that the large majority of COVID deaths have occurred.  One of the reasons this necessary shielding did not occur, is that instead of providing such focussed protection, the government implemented its blanket lock down strategy, putting huge amounts of effort into enforcing it, along with all of the resources that went into the totally useless, but vastly expensive test and trace programme.  If a fraction of that effort and resources, let alone just an application of simple common sense had been used to shield the elderly and vulnerable in NHS hospitals and acre homes, and receiving care in their homes, then tens of thousands of lives would have been saved, and the number of seriously ill people in hospitals would have been reduced to a fraction of what it has been.

The basis of who should be in the government's shielding category was unclear.  I was never told I was in it, despite being over 65, and being a lifelong asthmatic who has had pneumonia twice.  If that didn't qualify what did?  My decision to self-isolate/shield from last March was taken out of my own application of common sense, rather than any reliance on the government or its scientific advisors.  In fact, from the scientific advice I have seen offered over the last year, and on the basis of the idiotic positions that the government has adopted on the basis of it, I would say that anyone ha been better off relying on their own common sense, rather than listening to the government.

We know that more than 90% of those that have died or been seriously ill from COVID are people over 60.  If we add in others who are otherwise vulnerable that comes to around 95% of all deaths and serious illness.  So, if the government from the start had told all these people to shield then its clear that tens of thousands of lives would have been saved.  At least it would had the government itself put the resources into ensuring such shielding in its hospitals, and in care homes etc., which of course, it has singularly failed to do as instead it put all of its emphasis into a pointless and counter-productive lock down of the rest of society, where very few deaths and serious illness has occurred.

According to the government data around 120,000 people have died with COVID.  If we take that at face value, then had the government told the 20% of the population, actually at risk to shield, then we would expect that the 90% plus of people who have died, that came into that category, could have been saved.  That means that 108,000 people, aged over 60 would not have lost their lives.  Put another way, only 12,000 would have died.

But, of course, we know that the 120,000 deaths figure is totally bogus, because this is the number who have died with Covid, rather than from Covid.  A large proportion of those dying were not just over 60, but over 80!  The average age of these deaths is 82, older than the average life expectancy.  Many of the people that have died are people who have died from other illnesses, but who also at some point contracted COVID, many of them after they had gone into hospital.  If we say conservatively that only half those dying did so from COVID rather than with COVID, then the number of COVID deaths comes down to 60,000.  But, again, had the government introduced effective shielding of the 20% from the start, then, again, 90% of those deaths would have been avoided.  That would mean that total COVID deaths would have been reduced to just 6,000.

A death toll of just 6,000 is less than the average 8,000 deaths that happen each year in Britain from flu, and far less than the 20,000 that frequently occur in bad flue years.  The policy of lockdown was idiotic and counter-productive.  The real story of COVID has been the failure of the government to effectively shield the 20% of the population actually at serious risk from the virus, and its continuing to do so.