I’ve just had a tally up. I have written 206 eLetters this year.
Yes, I know… they are mixed bag of accuracy and grammar! Certainly my spelling hasn’t improved…
… but it’s been a blast, poking a stick through the bars, finding backs that needed patting and a few backsides I thought needed kicking.
I looked back through the archive and see, this time last year, I was reminding you;
‘Don’t forget to leave some hand-sanitiser out for Santa.’
If it ever was amusing, it’s certainly not funny second-time around.
Looking back, every step, at every stage, we’ve been on the back-foot… and yes, I said that, last year, too.
There’ve been difficult decisions to make. Balancing the needs of the NHS and care with the needs of the economy and businesses. That’s the job of political leadership.
Familiar? Yes, I wrote it last year.
Real leaders know, there is no middle path, no pleasing everyone. Tuff-love is what you needed, not the love of looking tough, in a hard-hat, on a building site.
Apparently it ‘informed’ the Cabinet’s decision to sit-on-its-hands.
The journalist didn’t understand why modelling didn’t include no/low-risk… err, because if there was no risk there would be no need for a decision.
Modelling is a simplification of reality… and may not reflect reality. No model is ‘right’. Hence, variables.
Some variables can’t have specific values. Instead they have probability distributions… some of the variables have a random probability.
Analysis is certainly not meant to arrive with precise predictions.
Probability is calculated by dividing the number of events by the number of possible outcomes.
‘Possible outcomes’ are very variable and scenarios are built from the inference of the information and it's on that basis, someone has to make a decision.
Got that? The only place models are perfect is in a fashion magazine. They never will be on a spreadsheet.
Apart from Mystic Meg, that’s about all we have to go on. They’re an educated guess.
By the time data is for-certain, it’s history and too late to inform decisions we should have made three weeks ago.
On the other hand… there’s common-sense. If a load of people get sick, some will get very sick.
Hosptials are 93% full. Some beds will be maternity, others will be female surgical beds where you can’t put a male medical patient, etc., etc. In other words 93% means 100%.
So, when Dad falls off the ladder, putting the star on top of the Xmas tree, and breaks his leg… he’ll wait 6 hrs for an ambulance, goodness knows how long in A&E and for an operation to screw it all back together.
By the way, staff Omicron-sickness absences are through the roof.
Dad won’t be playing golf for a while.
The big message for this year…
If the Cabinet were a flat-pack from Ikea, there would be a couple of screws missing.
What to do?
‘Political distancing’. Distance ourselves from the politics, the dithering and the rules that come, too late.
You decide what’s best for you and yours.
There are laws for everything; murder, embezzlement and parking on the zig-zags near a pedestrian crossing. Most of us will never fall-foul of them. We don’t need laws to figure out right from wrong.
Over Xmas and the New Year, you know what’s right. You don’t need to wait for BoJo. Take care of what’s most important to you. He certainly will.
Finally, thank you for your company this year and I look forward to sharing some of your in-box next year.
In the meantime, stay optimistic.
Dreams tip-toe into our lives, whilst we are sleeping. Optimism wears heavy boots, ready to march into the reality of next year, wide-awake, with no guarantees.
You may not come to work wearing a stethoscope or a uniform and you may not stand at the bedside but we all know, the NHS can only deliver its fabulous care, as a team. Everyone is important.
Wherever you are in that team, thank you.
Have the best time you can, stay safe... you're precious.
>> I'm hearing - A second monoclonal antibody treatment has been approved in the UK for preventing hospitalisation in high-risk patients and is being made available immediately.
>> I'm hearing - The BMA are saying staff shortages in general practice, caused by rampant COVID-19 infections, could derail the booster campaign and are a 'canary in the mine' that shows urgent measures are needed to slow the pandemic.
>> I'm hearing - HMG has refused to clarify the position of NHS Resolution chair Martin Thomas – who stepped down from his role as head of the Charity Commission last week after allegations of ‘inappropriate behaviour’.
>> I'm hearing - health bosses in London are predicting their systems will be overwhelmed by early January.
