Probably a more pertinent question is: ‘why is he still in a job?’. It has been claimed—and a claim with which I am happy to concur—that he is hopeless. In fact, he is ******* hopeless. And that was according to his boss the Prime Minister Boris Johnson MP. Quite early in the pandemic our Secretary of State for ‘Health’ and Social Care proved himself to be fairly dim with regard to false positives related to the use of PCR COVID-19 tests. Toby Young described him as being either ‘obstinate or innumerate’. It must have been embarrassing to his cabinet colleagues listening to him stumbling over the issue of false positives and the accuracy of tests on Sky News in October. Even earlier he demonstrated his misunderstanding of false positives on talkRADIO, especially the fact that they were a more serious issue when actual prevalence of COVID-19 was low. This prompted an excellent explanation of the differential effect of false positives depending on actual prevalence by Diana Kimpton in The Conservative Woman. And he is still in the job eight months on.
Only last week it became apparent that we are most probably still suffering from COVID-19 restrictions because he withheld important and positive information about the figures for COVID vaccines and the concomitant infections and deaths related to the Indian variant of the coronavirus. Thanks a bunch Matt! He came under fire from former government adviser Dominic Cummings and, while it is hard to take either side in an argument between two such odious people, he admitted to mistakes but clearly displayed that he was not one to take the blame. It was all the fault of those pesky scientists. Well, if that was the case, why is he and his government continuing to take advice from precisely the same group of scientists? I wonder if he has ever considered the dismal record of SAGE at providing us with any accurate and useful information and that other scientists are available?
Hancock has been at the heart of the confusion generated by the government during the pandemic. We are treated regularly to the ‘on/off’ nature of travel by his cabinet colleague Secretary of State for Transport (provided it is not transporting you on a plane) Grant Schapps MP and blatant lies from the Prime Minister that restrictions would be lifted with no going back on 21 June. To this Hancock, without apology, is capable of first announcing that vaccines will not be compulsory for home care workers and then announcing the opposite. But without a doubt his most sinister utterance, recorded in Hansard, was in response to a question in Parliament by Liam Fox MP who asked:
“Can my right hon. Friend give us a little more information about the rise in hospitalisations that he mentioned? Of those who are being hospitalised, how many are in the younger age group who were not yet eligible for the vaccine, and how many are above that age—in other words, those who were able to get the vaccine but chose not to?”
To which Hancock replied:
“My right hon. Friend makes a really important point. The answer is that the majority are in the younger age group who have not yet had the chance to be vaccinated. Just under one fifth of those going into hospital in the last week have had both jabs, about a fifth have had one jab and the majority have not had any. The majority are under the age of 50 and have not yet had the opportunity to have both jabs. I think there is a material difference when it comes to the state’s responsibility to offer the vaccine to all adults. The duty that we have when somebody has not been offered the vaccine is greater than the duty we have when we have offered a vaccine but somebody has chosen not to take it up. There is a material difference between those two situations that I think my right hon. Friend was getting at.”
This statement clearly indicates that he considers that the NHS has a greater duty of care towards those who have been vaccinated THAN those who have not.’ NHS has a greater duty of care towards those who have been vaccinated and those who have not. This is an astonishing admission and the lack of any subsequent discussion or correction suggests that this may well be government policy. If Hancock is as stupid as he sometimes appears to be, it is hard to believe that he alone dreamed up this fundamental departure from the way our health service operates. Health care is supposed to be given based on need, not conformity. Was he told to say this after considered discussion with colleagues or is he being instructed by unknown advisers? Probably we will never know but with the emphasis during the pandemic on conditions that have been associated with poor outcomes in COVID-19 patients, principally obesity, what is next? With the prospect that the NHS app is likely to contain further health information and possibly criminal records I do not consider it beyond the bounds of possibility that future healthcare will be rationed on the basis of social credit. Prepare yourself for NHS app scanners at the entrances to health facilities. And prepare yourself for ‘computer says no’.
Opinions from the Unity News Network (UNN) editorial team & various contributors. | UNN always clearly distinguishes between news and opinion pieces and as an open minded outlet we publish views from a variety of people and organisation that do not necessarily reflect the views of UNN or its writers. Articles published under UNN Opinions are always opinion pieces and if published on behalf of a contributor will contain that authors name at the start of the piece.
