“Zoom Medicine” – the next NHS bauble

What chance do we have of ever getting our lives back when the PM is the main driver of keeping us locked down, for our own good! It’s as if he and ‘Our MSM’ are playing ping-pong (or should that be ‘whiff-whaff’?) by keeping that fear and hysteria going – for our own good, of course. It’s as if they’re all submitting to being ruled by the ‘experts’ governing ‘Our NHS’ whose explanations and proposals must not be questioned. ‘Getting back our sovereignty’ didn’t mean handing it over to unelected NHS ‘experts’!

This morning the main issues driving the ongoing fear & hysteria campaign are that ‘The North’ will go back into more stringent Lockdown, that test-and-trace efforts will be ramped up, even unto local councils doing it with their own schemes (link, paywalled), and that “Zoom-Medicine” will become the ‘new normal’ for patients and GPs.

It’s again all about numbers which must not be questioned, not when ‘Our NHS’ is ‘worried’. The astonishing thing is that the various MSM writers seem unable to interpret the official numbers even when they provide them in their reports. As for the PM – well, he acted ‘decisively’, didn’t he, so don’t blame him for that lockdown in the North – he’s only trying to keep everybody safe!

The ‘case numbers’ provided by ‘Our MSM’ show that the writers must never have heard of the concept of  rounding up or down. Have you ever met a 0.3 person? I haven’t! See for yourselves:

“According to NHS Digital, towns with the most cases were Blackburn with Darwen, with 85.3 cases per 100,000 people, Leicester 57.7, Oldham 53.1, Bradford 44.9, Trafford 39.9, Calderdale 32.4, Rochdale 30.9 and Sandwell 27.5. The national average is 7.2.” (paywalled link)

Astonishingly enough, the authors of that article are actually referring to scientists (unnamed) who beg to differ. This is right at the bottom of their report, where they simply let those remarks dangle:

“However, some leading scientists said talk of a second wave was premature as most new cases were among those who had only mild symptoms but who were being detected through increased testing. They added that hospital admissions were still falling”(paywalled link)

‘Our NHS’ isn’t overwhelmed then? People are apparently not really ill – but must stay at home anyway? Is that why MPs in The North are allegedly ‘puzzled’, asking for more government guidance? Perhaps Andy Burnham, Mayor of Manchester, can help them:

“[he] said that people could still go to pubs with their support bubbles despite not being allowed to meet friends in private gardens.” (link, paywalled)

Funny, isn’t it, how it’s ok to congregate indoors provided you observe all the rulz, the mask-wearing and hand-sanitising and all that faff, but being outside is totally dangerous! It’s as if politicians, ‘Our NHS’ and the writers in ‘Our MSM’ believe that the air we breathe outdoors is simply heaving with CV-19 and it’s safe only indoors.

That’s magical thinking, just as the insistence on testing is. Getting a test doesn’t cure you of CV-19, and that fabulous tracing system also isn’t going to help because, it seems, tracing is running into difficulties. The ‘Head of NHS Test and Trace’, Baroness Harding (blimey, how the ‘heads’ in ‘Our NHS’ are proliferating …!) moaned:

“I urge everybody to get a free test as soon as you experience coronavirus symptoms and to follow the advice you’re given if you are contacted by the service. If we all continue to play our part, then together we can stop the spread of this virus.” (paywalled link)

Don’t ask how and where “we” can get a ‘free test’ when we ‘experience symptoms’ while being told to stay in quarantine for two weeks or ten days or whatever they come up with next. However, it seems that people aren’t happy to be traced, regardless of being told to ‘do their bit’:

“The latest figures from the Department of Health and Social Care, for the week ending July 22, show that 25 per cent of people who came into close contact with someone infected with coronavirus could not be reached by the service and asked to self-isolate. This was up from 10 per cent when the service launched eight weeks ago.” (paywalled link)

I respectfully suggest that people need to work and earn money (hello, Rishi – shouldn’t “we” do our bit to get the economy going again?) and are thus unwilling to be labelled ‘infected’ and lock themselves down. On the other hand, this latest government ‘advice’ looks like a proper hypochondriac’s charter:

“[..]  anyone with a cough, fever or loss of sense of smell or taste will be told to stay at home for 10 days rather than seven. Health officials said those found to be negative will be freed from their confinement unless symptoms continue. Mr Hancock said the changes were a “precautionary approach”.” (paywalled link)

Note the choice expression: ‘freed of their confinement’ – that’s how they regard their ‘test & trace & lockdown’ exercise! It’s about depriving us of the freedom to go unless ‘Teh Test’ allows us to.

They ‘advise’ us to ‘do the right thing’ and stay at home but at the same time they are setting up the conditions for never getting a proper diagnosis because “Zoom Medicine” is definitely going to happen, according to Matt Hancock. It’s, after all, due to ‘lessons being learned’ from the Lockdown:

“In a speech to the Royal College of Physicians yesterday Mr Hancock said the health service must keep some of the operational changes that were introduced to cope with the pandemic. […] Ministers believe that remote consultations will lead to a better service for those who need face-to-face care by freeing up doctors’ time. Mr Hancock said: “The crisis has shown that patients and clinicians alike, and not just the young, want to use technology.” (link, paywalled)

This approach, this speech, is based on interesting numbers (sorry about using that word so many times!):

“In the four weeks up to April 12, 71 per cent of routine GP consultations took place remotely, with just 26 per cent face to face. In the same period in 2019, 71 per cent took place face to face and 25 per cent remotely, Mr Hancock said.” (link, paywalled)

I’ll just point out that, before Lockdown, one had to ‘see the doctor’ for virtually everything because “we” couldn’t be trusted to decide if we were really ill. But now, it’s all change at the surgery and “all consultations should be tele-consultations unless there is a compelling clinical reason not to,”(link, paywalled). First though “we” must use ‘web consultations’. Rest assured, ‘Our NHS’ “will be ready and waiting to see you in person, just as it always has been” (link, paywalled).

Meaning well in a most patronising way, Hancock actually said next that “We can’t patronise older people by saying they don’t do tech.” (link, paywalled). Indeed you can’t, but you’ll do it anyway because it’s easier than to accept that ‘older people’ are probably still keeping their streak of independence and are not keen on giving access to their private data to all and sundry. Note also that suddenly there’s no mention of GDPR, or of patient confidentiality, the reason my surgery gave me as to why they ‘don’t do emails’ – pre-lockdown. 

There are critical voices pointing out that this might exacerbate the ‘health inequalities’ (paywalled link) which are the next item to clobber government with, but no matter: we need “Zoom Medicine”  for the sake of ‘Our NHS’:

“That way care is easier to manage and the NHS can deliver a much better service. “Not only will it make life quicker and easier for patients but free up clinicians to concentrate on what really matters.” (paywalled link)

Yes, it’s for our own good! Email your ailments and use a webcam, to help ‘Our NHS’ and the clinicians to concentrate on what really matters – to them, not to you. This’ll also ‘help to blast off bureaucratic barnacles’ – as if! –  and the few doctors who believe that seeing a patient face-to-face should now accept the brave new NHS world, according to the Times:

“Nobody is proposing that elderly or acutely sick patients be banned from seeing their GP in person, as some fear. While the difficult birth of the government’s tracing app for the coronavirus is a cautionary tale, we know that technology can make remote consultations work.” (link, paywalled)

What clarification – not! Onto the next health battlefield – the question of ‘excess deaths’, of which England had more, according to ONS numbers, than anywhere else in Europe. These are people dying of causes other than CV-19, many of whom died at home. Questions of ‘collateral damage’, perhaps caused by the hospitals and GP surgeries being in Lockdown, aren’t asked.

These deaths must somehow be our own fault, for being ‘in worse health’ than people in other countries, e.g. by being fat. “We” must learn from this, said Hancock, by doing “Zoom Medicine” because that’ll mean less bureaucracy (in yer dreams, Hancock!).

Apparently, ‘health inequalities’ can be dealt with by compelling – gently, mind! -everybody to allow ‘Our NHS’ to trace us, not just test us, for anything we might want medical advice for. Will we all be provided with ‘NHS smartphones’? Will there be a new NHS app, testing and tracing the activity levels and diets of the obese? And all this will be under one roof, the roof of ‘Our Sacred Cow’! Happy days!

You feared getting a socialist government under Labour? No worries – we’re on the way to getting a socialist country under ‘Our NHS’ without elections. Happy us!

KBO!