Christmas fears and a new approach

Janet Street-Porter said planning the D Day landings would be simpler than ploughing through the draconian regulations in place to stem the spread of Covid.

“A couple of days ago, I applauded Victoria Derbyshire’s sensible declaration that their household would be ignoring the ‘rule of six’ on Christmas day because there are seven in their family,” she said. “The mother-of-two told Radio Times they planned to invite her elderly mother plus partner as well as her father-in-law over to celebrate, admitting, ‘it feels almost irresponsible, but I don’t think we’re alone in feeling that way. We’ll do it knowing what the risks are.’”

She applauded the tv presenter as a lone voice of reason and queried why she had issued a ‘grovelling’ apology the next day.

“I don’t know what pressure from her bosses at the BBC (or in Downing Street) forced this award-winning journalist into claiming her remarks were based on a ‘hypothetical situation’, but it smelt fishy,” she added. “In modern Britain it seems we must all fall into step, accept the government’s dictats, or face huge fines.”

She asked whether police vans would be patrolling streets on Christmas Day and counting the number of people having dinner.

“The moral of the Derbyshire debacle is - if you have plans for Christmas, don’t tell anyone,” she said. “At the current rate, the clowns running our Covid strategy will have banned Christmas pudding in the next couple of weeks on the grounds it’s a non-essential food.”

The Guardian

Channel 4 editor Dorothy Byrne said she feared being given Covid treatment at the ripe old age of 68 and had planned to lie and says she was 55, if she had to.

“I suspect that I’m not the only older person who has feared being denied life-saving treatment for coronavirus,” she said. “During the beginning of the pandemic we were often told that the priority was protecting elderly people from infection.

“Yet a different story seemed to be unfolding in the health service. As the pandemic wore on, people spoke of elderly Covid patients who were sent home to die as there was “no clinical benefit” to treating them in hospital.”

She said, at the height of the pandemic, the percentage of older people over 60 receiving intensive care plunged by half.

She said one of her friends, a consultant at a major London hospital, told her that some people in their mid- to late 60s who had other medical conditions were “de-prioritised” for intensive care in her hospital.

“There’s nothing new about this picture,” she added. “In recent years, reports have exposed the raw deal that older patients receive in our health service. It’s been older people too who have been most affected by the decision to postpone non-urgent operations.”

She said so little was known about coronavirus during the first wave it was easy to understand why the health service was faced with difficult decisions about whose care to prioritise.

“We old folk noted Donald Trump’s recovery. Aged 74, clinically obese, allegedly demented: what treatment could he have expected from the NHS?”

The Daily Express

Sir Bernard Ingham proposed a new approach from December 1 and penned a speech for Boris Johnson.

He said we can never wholly eliminate the risk of contracting Covid, even when there is a vaccine.

““We cannot ignore the consequences for health of the harsh economic winter in prospect,” his ‘speech’ for the Prime Minister said.

““It is now clear that the second wave is less dangerous at least to younger. fitter generations. We must release their energies in the interests of all in a drive to rebuild the economy whose health is vital to all of us.

“So, let us start December with a responsible return to work, office, leisure and pleasure, minimising the risk with masks, social distancing and a much improved test and tracing system.”

His speech urged people to work together to rebuild the economy.

“For myself, I would only add that death and taxes may be inevitable, but our decline is most certainly not if we put our backs into ending it.”