Of Nightingales & Rainbows

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So we're bouncing back down the yellow brick road again. Today's FT front page carries a piece on the return of the Nightingale hospitals - Rainbows in Wales, although the article only talks of England - to somehow avoid the need for further restrictions and alleviate the impact on trade by providing putatively needed extra acute medical cover for Omicron. Two things: the scientific data at present has it that, although this variant is more infectious, it has a much lower impact on the infected, particularly  on the triple-jabbed: secondly, the fact is that the problem will not be the lack of hospital beds - as evidenced by the unused Nightingale/Rainbow facilities during the worst of the first, unvaccinated wave of the disease.

Anyone au fait with the data has long recognised that the problems that Covid will cause now we're approaching the medium to long term phase of the disease, is not Covid itself, but the diversionary impact it has on the health service, viz: early stage cancer and cardiac referrals and treatment not being carried out, to name but two areas. This has a knock-on effect as those patients not treated when their disease was manageable then go on to present with more serious stages of disease, requiring more treatment, end-of-life pathways etc., stretching already stretched resources ever thinner.

As before, it's BBG - Boris' Big Gestures - he so likes to build big showy things to let his serfs know that he's 'doing' something 'important', despite all the empirical evidence to the contrary. You might have thought that twenty-two months of pandemic would have resulted in some strategic clarity of thought, but no: same old, same old reactive bollocks. It's just that this time the serfs are all going to hell in an economic death-spiralling handcart as Doris will do anything not to upset corporate capitalism this time around. Blwyddyn Newydd Dda i chi gyd, maybe we'll all wake up in Kansas, somewhere over the bloody rainbow...

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