End the phoney lockdown or people like me will die - GP Taylor

According to Gov.com, my heart condition that has seen me hospitalised many times does not make me a vulnerable person and yet I read in the news that males over 60 with underlying heart conditions are very likely to die if they catch Covid-19.

In fact, you are more likely to die from C-19 if you have heart disease than if you have had cancer, but the Government will not recognise this.

As dying isn’t in my life plan at the moment, I have stayed in for 99 per cent of the time and exercise in the garden. I have been forced to go for food once a week and the prospect scares the life out of me.

Despite what the Government are telling us, the so-called lockdown is a joke. I would say they would be lucky if 40 per cent of the population are sticking to it. The street outside my house is still busy. Yesterday over 90 people walked past in the space of an hour. Tourists and day trippers are still coming to Whitby and Sandsend beach is filled with dog walkers.

Worryingly, the medical advisors to the Government seem to be obsessed with herd immunity. That to the 7.5 million people in this country with a heart condition could mean possible death.

Professor Graham Medley, the Government’s chief pandemic modeller, said the only viable path through the health emergency would be to let people become infected so they are no longer vulnerable. That’s great if you are fit and healthy and only get a mild infection but for many it would be fatal.

All herd immunity will do for the country is to see over 80 per cent of the population infected and a death toll reaching nearly 500,000. The 4,500 ICU beds we have now would be overwhelmed with at least 200,000 beds needed to cope with the spread of the disease.

What is the thinking of Number 10? Has some accountant worked out that it would be cost effective to allow as many pensioners as possible to snuff it so they will save on NHS costs and pensions? I sincerely hope not, but when doctors start asking older people to sign ‘not for resuscitation’ forms, I begin to worry.

Human life cannot be traded off to satisfy the needs of the economy.

Older people cannot be sacrificed on the altar of trade and employment. It is as crude as that – money for lives lost.

There is now a creeping obsession coming from some that the economy has to be kick started and the lockdown ended. Even academics are suggesting that C-19 isn’t as bad as the plague or the Spanish Flu and people didn’t isolate then… What planet do these people live on?

Whatever sugar coated language they try to put it in, the bottom line is – let people work even though some will die. Nurses, doctors, bus drivers and many others on the front line will be put in mortal danger through the greed of others.

Now is not the time to slacken off the isolation. Now is the time to increase it. Parks, beaches and swathes of the countryside should have been closed weeks ago. Outdoor exercise should have been limited to 1,000 metres from our homes long before now. Food shops that stock essentials should be the only places allowed to open. Garden centres, bedding shops and DIY stores are not selling essentials.

If the majority of people had taken lockdown seriously, then we would not be seeing the deaths we have. The so-called Dunkirk Spirit died years ago and clapping on a Thursday night cannot replace it. A deep selfishness has crept into our society with people sticking two fingers to the government and doing what they want.

Time has come to put an end to the phoney lockdown. People are dying needlessly. They are being killed by selfish people who want to go about their lives as normal. The number of tourists coming to Whitby and the coast on sunny days and those people who stripped supermarket shelves proves just that.

The Government has to get tougher. We are fighting war against an unseen killer that causes people of all ages to die an agonising death gasping for air as they drown in their own bodily fluid. Each death is a tragic loss that leaves behind anger, sadness and heartache.

We will only beat this disease when each one of us realises, as the Queen said, we have a part to play in fighting it. Yes, it will mean sacrifices but doing without a trip to the park or beach and only shopping for what we need is worth it.

People are sacrificing themselves on the front line in the NHS and emergency services. We all owe it to them to take this crisis seriously. Keep calm – stay inside.

GP Taylor is an author and broadcaster. He lives in Whitby.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing [email protected]. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor