Human Snails, Vaccine Credit

Okimono of a Snail
unknown artist
Photo Credit: Maidstone Museum & Bentlif Art Gallery [CC BY-NC]

 Smartphone users have become "human snails carrying our homes in our pockets", with a tendency to ignore - and anger - friends and family in favour of their device, according to a landmark study...

The smartphone is perhaps the first object to challenge the house itself (and possibly also the workplace) in terms of the amount of time we dwell in it while awake - coining the term "transportal home" to describe the effect. We are always "at home" in our smartphone. We have become human snails carrying our home in our pockets.

(Alex Hern, The Guardian, 2021)

Vaccine Credit

The vaccine campaign has been claimed as an electoral asset for the Conservative party, and clearly there is a widespread mood of optimism that bolstered their support in the Hartlepool by-election and local polls.

For those of us working at the coalface of the NHS, this is galling. Who decides that they get to take the credit for this, but not the blame for all the unnecessary grief and suffering of the last year?..

At every turn the wrong decisions were taken, if what they wanted to do was save lives and livelihoods. The list of mistakes is long, including the initial "take it on the chin" herd immunity policy, late lockdowns, dodgy deals for even dodgier PPE, the dismally performing privatised test and trace system, and the incomprehensible decision to throw fuel on the Covid fire by opening up at Christmas.

We have had 150,000 excess deaths, more than one in 500 people in this country, not to mention the million still suffering from long Covid, and much of this was avoidable.

One thing the Government did get right... was to order lots of vaccines from anyone who was developing them, taking a punt that at least one of them would come good. For that I am grateful - mostly to the scientists who worked night and day to make and test the vaccines, but also to whoever took that decision.

But I object to giving credit to the Government for the success of the vaccine campaign. Three-quarters of the vaccine doses have been given in primary care. This is GPs, nurses, practice managers and admin staff working evening and weekends on top of a full week to make it happen...

The success of the vaccine programme is largely down to the fact that it has been organised locally, in GP surgeries, mosques and cathedrals. If we are to prevent further waves of infection (for we cannot just keep our fingers crossed and hope that vaccine-resistant variants won't appear) we now need to put the test, trace and isolate system into local hands too.

May I politely request that the Government stops trying to take the credit for other people's work, apologises for its mistakes and concentrates on preventing the next wave?

(Helen Salisbury, GP, The i, 2021)

Will this government acknowledge and apologise  for its mistakes? I think not. Will this government stop trying to take the credit for other people's work? Again, I think not. That is the nature of the beast.