Clapping for the NHS?

The government seems to be expecting frontline NHS personnel to sacrifice themselves — and is creating a moral obligation that they can’t refuse.

Last week the government and others asked the population to open their doors and windows and applaud to show their appreciation for the NHS. The Prime Minister and Chancellor stood outside No 10 and joined in, and there were numerous videos of the event that were both heart-warming and eerie. Many NHS workers went online afterwards to say how much they appreciated this gesture.

However, there were some doctors and nurses who said thanks, but… where the but pointed out that for the past several years whilst the Tories have been in power, the NHS has been catastrophically under-funded and under-resourced, with the business model and ongoing privatisation directly downgrading the health service’s capability to deal with a regular winter flu outbreak, let alone a global pandemic.

These people were vilified online for being ungrateful, even being accused of working against the combined effort to fight the disease.

There is another such case of a nurse with longstanding medical conditions and a young family who refused to treat Covid-19 patients without proper personal protection equipment (PPE). She has received unbelievable levels of hate — for simply asking for the absolute minimum to…