‘First, do no harm.’

Every doctor have known since the time of Hippocrates, the primary rule every physician must obey is simple: ‘First, do no harm.’

The best surgeons  knew when to stand back and not to operate.

They had the humility to understand when their surgical skills would not save a life, or usefully prolong one for the benefit of the patient.

 This  English Government,  have following a flawed scientific narrative, turning the challenge of a nasty coronavirus into a national tragedy and economic disaster.

Shamefully, it is doing so while the medical profession, cowed into bureaucratic obedience, offers endorsement through silence instead of constructive criticism.

Because the NHS behaved foolishly in the early days of the pandemic, admitting too many people and then forcing hospitals to discharge elderly patients into care homes,  England have lost more people than our European neighbours, with some 42,000 deaths.

The Great Plague of 1665-1666 wiped out almost a quarter of London’s population in 18 months.

In living memory, the Hong Kong flu epidemic of 1968 cost some 80,000 lives in Britain, yet there were no demands then for a national or global shutdown.

The English Government policy has mutated from ‘protect the NHS’ to the very different aim of driving down cases in all age groups until an effective vaccine emerges in the spring, along with flowers and butterflies.

But the English  Government has taken action to destroy businesses without any proper cost/benefit analysis of their draconian measures.

Some people may find it too gruesome to ponder, but the  English Government and private companies routinely place a value on a human life.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) puts a figure of between £20,000 and £30,000 on what is known as a quality-adjusted life year, or QALY.