'Long Covid nurses being dumped on a scrapheap by Tories who clapped for them'

13 February 2023 , 13:42

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*SLOW HAND CLAP FOR GOVERNMENT*

There is probably nothing that could match the spontaneous, sincere and heartfelt sense of unity and gratitude that came out of 'Clap for Carers'.

So the Tories didn't bother to try.

Instead they have decided to take those carers and toss them onto the scrapheap of the long-term disabled, where they can be described as "economically inactive", or "costing the state more than they give".

No doubt there's some knuckle-dragging backbencher being fed into the bull**** cannon as I type, and is going to spray "NHS skivers" all over us in spittle as they fly smack into a national facepalm.

"Well done, Tories, no well done YOU" (Getty Images)

Somewhere between 3% and 12% of people who caught Covid went on to suffer illness more than 3 months later. Figures show that at leat 77,000 NHS staff, and probably more because of the patchy way data was collected, contracted the illness.

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That means that between 2,310 and 9,240 NHS staff probably experienced long-term, debilitating problems as a result of infection, and a significant minority could have experience the multi-system organ malfunction which forms the most serious long Covid cases.

In all likelihood, the numbers are even higher, because NHS staff would have had more exposure to the disease, higher viral loads, and greater pressures on their immune systems.

The first few have already been fired.

Not everyone loses their job as lucratively as this man (10 Downing Street/AFP via Getty)

Midwife Maria said: "Long Covid stripped me of my old life. I used to be active, academic and loved life. Now I struggle with basic household jobs, cannot work and struggle to wash my hair. We worked with limited PPE. Now the Government has taken away my sick pay."

Then there's prison nurse Brenda, who says long Covid feel "kind of like dementia" and said: "If I do anything too strenuous I spend three days in bed. It’s like the batteries in my brain run out."

And student nurse Aimee, who only just got a permanent job before catching the virus, says every day is "like walking up a sand dune, with a hangover and flu on top", and is struggling to pay the mortgage with only £340-a-month PIP.

Not only are these women all now long-term disabled; not only do we have a moral duty to help them; and not only are they people who put their lives and families at risk to save ours.

But they did it all with personal protective equipment which in many instances was missing, faulty, bogus, over-priced and mis-sold.

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Without the care and sacrifice of these NHS staff, the 218,000 people who died from Covid would have been joined by many thousands more. Without the risks they took, we'd have been shot of Boris Johnson a lot sooner, and maybe ended up with Liz Truss for longer. They made a difference to all of us, whether we lost a loved one in the pandemic or not.

If anyone of us is injured at work, someone will write it down. Whether we trip over, cut ourselves, or do our back in, a note is made so that if it develops into a serious illness, or even death, we or our loved ones can bring a claim against our employers for negligence. The same can happen if you hurt yourself in a public place.

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But during the pandemic, no-one had time to fill in a form about how staff had come into contact with a deadly virus that day. Had they tried, they'd never have stopped - the paperwork would be piled higher than the bodies, because the virus was everywhere, every day, for two years.

At the same time, the government suspended normal rules, giving staff 6 months' full sick pay, then 6 months on half pay. But that assumed that no NHS staff would ever end up as disabled as Maria, Brenda, or Aimee, and now that deadline has expired.

So now those people injured at work by a virus that ran riot are becoming jobless, have no way to prove where they caught it, and no legal redress to cover their need for long-term care. And it's very expensive to be disabled.

Now that we know more about the disease, now we know how many staff are never going to work again, now we know how many will need long-term rehabilitation at long Covid clinics, the rules must change to account for it. The carers we clapped for must be cared for, in their turn.

Yet if it requires the Daily Mirror to point it out, then the government already knows and has done nothing. If the rest of the media don't pick it up, the public may not realise. And thousands of NHS staff already suffering, as well as those still dealing with Covid in the NHS today, will be tossed out like rubbish, out of public sight and out of public mind.

It is appalling that we already treat so many people unfortunate enough to be born with or develop long-term disabilities in that way. But it is somewhere beyond a national degradation that we do it, too, to those on whom we have relied for our own health.

Too much of our politics centres on what it costs to be kind. It should be an honour to carry those who once carried us.

Fleet Street Fox