SALLUST
The tireless hacks at the BBC have emerged from their bunkers once again to terrorise the public by bravely touring the hospitals and whipping up hysteria about the latest outbreak of flu. It seems “literally hundreds” of patients have been bombarding A&E departments, according to Health Editor Hugh Pym and Chloe Hayward who have been courageously touring the front line:
As one patient leaves his room at Leicester Royal Infirmary’s acute unit, cleaning staff are waiting outside.
He is barely out of the room before the bed is stripped and bleach is sprayed. The next patient is already waiting to come in.
Over two days the BBC was given access to the hospital to witness first-hand how it is coping with an early surge of winter bug cases.
Flu season has hit a month earlier than normal this year, with experts warning there appears to be a more severe strain of the virus – mutated H3N2 – circulating.
Hospitals around the country, like this one in Leicester, are doing all they can to avoid becoming completely overwhelmed.
“Completely overwhelmed.” Sounds familiar?
They’re at the Royal Infirmary in Leicester, and after citing some choice case studies, miss no opportunity to make it sound like the end of the world is imminent:
“There are patients in every cubicle,” Consultant Saad Jawaid says, as Paige is wheeled in. “Another ambulance has just rocked up.”
We watch as he works with colleagues in the resus unit to find desperately needed bed spaces.
“When beds are full we have to move people – sometimes that means those who can sit are moved out of beds and into chairs,” he says.
Regardless of the situation in the hospital and the range of conditions people are turning up with, on closer examination it things aren’t quite as bad as the story’s florid copy suggests:
Richard Mitchell has been the Chief Executive of University Hospitals Leicester NHS Trust since 2021 – and has witnessed first-hand how it gets harder to cope with each winter that passes.
”We are already seeing very high levels of flu,” he tells us. He expects numbers to climb into January. “That is one of the many things I am concerned about at the moment.
“At this point I feel we are working at the limits of our ability.”
What exactly was he expecting? An idle coast through to April before going on a well-unearned summer break? It raises the interesting question of what people who work for the NHS think they are likely to be confronted with in 21st century Britain.
The story ends up with the predictable exhortation to get a flu vaccine. The other day the Telegraph reported that the currently available jab is a “poor match” for the strain that’s doing the rounds anyway.
Enough said. But if you’re feeling nostalgic and suffering from Covid-era withdrawal symptoms, the BBC’s story will take you back to the good old days. The only thing missing is some reckless modelling.
Worth reading in full – unless you’re of a nervous disposition.
Stop Press: The BBC’s Nick Triggle (often a voice of relative sanity in the Covid years) has questioned how unprecedented this year’s flu wave really is, pointing out that the NHS’s data only go back to 2021!
NHS England says the number of patients with flu in hospital is the worst on record for this time of year, describing it as an unprecedented situation.
It is, but that’s because the data only goes back to 2021-22. In doing so, it misses several really difficult flu seasons during the 2010s.
The 2014-15 and 2017-18 winters were particularly bad – more than 20,000 deaths from flu were recorded.
Both were far worse than what we have seen over the past four years.
So when the NHS talks about being in an unprecedented situation it is not taking into account what happened just a decade ago.
Could this flu season match those? It is quite possible. The strain that is dominant this year – H3N2 – was the one behind the 2014-15 and 2017-18 spikes.
But it is worth remembering what is being seen now is not something that has never happened before.
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School flu lockdowns show Covid-era fear still rules
DAVID PATON
The news that UK schools are choosing to shut down in the light of the latest flu outbreak is leading to a depressing sense of déjà vu. That’s not only among parents suddenly faced with the prospect of finding childcare for perfectly healthy children, but also among those of us who hoped that society might have learned at least some lessons from the disastrous policies of the Covid era.
Winter viruses are nothing new. It is perfectly reasonable for teachers or pupils with flu symptoms to stay at home, and schools should cope with these absences as best they can. There may be situations where a particular school has little choice but to shut down, such as if an unsustainable number of teachers are off sick and it proves impossible to arrange suitable cover. But this should be a last-ditch move when there really is no alternative.
That is very different, however, from whole-school closures being used as a public health policy aimed at preventing the spread of infection. At a minimum, before even considering such an approach, we need solid evidence both that there are significant benefits and that they outweigh the likely costs, not least from thousands of healthy pupils having their education interrupted.
The argument sometimes goes that school closures are necessary as part of the precautionary principle. But this gets things the wrong way round: we know for certain the high costs of closures in terms of education loss, while the benefits from infection control are uncertain at best. For example, a number of studies have found that school closures had little if any impact on infections or mortality. The precautionary principle would suggest that school closures should be seen as an extreme measure, only to be used in truly exceptional and unavoidable circumstances.
Even worse, it’s not just closures. There are reports that some schools are introducing random policies such as cancelling singing in assemblies despite a lack of evidence that such measures will have any significant impact on spreading infection. And — surprise, surprise — the UK Health Security Agency is encouraging people to wear masks in public again, even though the gold-standard academic research shows little evidence of their effectiveness in preventing the spread of respiratory infections.
How have we ended up in a situation where school closures, lockdowns and masks are increasingly seen as a normal response to seasonal infection? The language being used is revealing. There is talk of school “lockdowns” and “firebreaks” — terms which directly mimic Covid policy. At least part of the blame should be laid at the door of politicians, scientists and the public-health establishment, all of whom still refuse to take responsibility for their failures during Covid. Nowhere is this more obvious than with the UK Covid Inquiry, which refused even to question the effectiveness of extreme infection responses such as school closures.
Until we take seriously the need to learn lessons from Covid-era policy failures, it seems that we are doomed to repeat them.
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This article (School flu lockdowns show Covid-era fear still rules) was created and published by UnHerd and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author David Paton
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