WASHED AND READY TO EAT

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at ...

The British government is a great believer in straightforward questions and answers when it comes to swine flu. So here are a few of my own, based on empirical observations in a number of clinical settings. (As well as watching the telly and looking at Twitter.) Q. Is it possible to distinguish between the symptoms of swine flu and any other kind of flu or nasty respiratory virus? A. Not really. They can all give you a high temperature, a cough and some aches and pains. The only way of knowing whether someone's got swine flu is to take a swab and send it to a path lab. Q. Are we therefore swabbing anyone we suspect of having swine flu? A. No. That's too difficult, time-consuming and expensive. And it means that people who may be infected need to come to the surgery. Q. So how do we know if someone has swine flu or not? A. We don't. But if they tell us on the phone that they have a high temperature and a cough, we'll say it's likely they have it. Q. And if it's...