Scores of MPs and former ministers have urged the prime minister to tackle a backlog in NHS cancer care that threatens to lead to thousands of early deaths over the next decade.
One senior oncologist has claimed that in a worst-case scenario the effects of the pandemic could result in 30,000 excess cancer deaths over the next decade.
Cancer
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- 16,000 people died because they didn’t get healthcare from March 23 to May 1
- At the same time, 25,000 Britons died of coronavirus at the pandemic’s height
- Of the 16,000, 6,000 were unwell people who were too scared to go to A&E
- It is feared that 81,500 people could die over next 50 years because of lockdown
- In the next five years, 1,400 could die as they were diagnosed with cancer late
- The new figures were presented to the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) in the middle of July.
- They were calculated by the Department of Health, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the Government Actuary’s Department and the Home Office.
- The 16,000 people who died included 6,000 who didn’t go to A&E during lockdown because they feared catching the virus.
- Another 10,000 people are thought to have died in care homes after early discharge from hospital and a lack of access to care.
- A further 26,000 people could die by next month because of the restrictions, while in total 81,500 people could lose their lives in the next 50 years because of the virus.
- In more bad news, the next five years could see 1,400 people die because they were diagnosed with cancer too late.
- An earlier report by the same team suggested deaths caused by delayed care amid the virus they could be as high as 185,000.
- Professor Neil Mortensen, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, warned that the health service ‘must never again be a coronavirus-only service’.
- Professor Karol Sikora says that COVID-19 behaves like pandemics in the past.
- Society is scarred all over the world.
- The virus will go but the fear will do the damage.
Note: YouTube has taken down the video. Please go directly to UnHerd’s site:
https://unherd.com/thepost/professor-karol-sikora-fear-is-more-dangerous-than-the-virus/
Professor Karol Sikora has become something of a celebrity in the UK over the past months for his expert commentary on the pandemic, and his unusual tendency for optimism rather than pessimism.
Virus ‘getting tired’
– In the past two weeks, the virus is showing signs of petering out
– It’s as though the virus is ‘getting tired’, almost ‘getting bored’
– It’s happening across the world at the same time
Existing herd immunity
– The serology results around the world (and forthcoming in Britain) don’t necessarily reveal the percentage of people who have had the disease
– He estimates 25-30% of the UK population has had Covid-19, and higher in the group that is most susceptible
– Pockets of herd immunity help *already* explain the downturn
– Sweden’s end result will not be different to ours – lockdown versus no lockdown
Fear more deadly than the virus
– When the history books are written, the fear will have killed many more people than the virus, including large numbers of cancer and cardiological patients not being treated
– We should have got the machinery of the NHS for non-corona patients back open earlier
Masks and schools
– Evidence on masks is just not there either way so it should be an ‘individual decision’
– We should move to 1m social distancing which means restaurants and bars could reopen
– More schools should reopen in June as ‘children are not the transmitters of this virus’
– We should be getting back to the ‘old normal’ not a ‘new normal’