NHS nightmare
The Tories’ mismanagement of the pandemic was obvious for everyone to see.
I qualified as a doctor just before the initial lockdown. On my first job, I saw that our PPE had expired years beforehand, but a sticker hid the expiry date on the boxes. I watched in horror as COVID swept through whole bays of patients.
I remember shaking in a full hazmat suit while confirming a patient’s death for the first time. There was no time for a decompress afterwards – the nurses were too busy and exhausted.
My patients suffered terribly from loneliness, missing their loved ones who were not allowed to visit, while the Tories were dancing at Downing Street.
We still haven’t seen pay restoration for us so-called essential workers. Yet millions were spaffed by up the wall by the government on the outsourced ‘track-and-trace’ system.
Healthcare workers bravely risked their lives to fight this pandemic, donning bin bags as PPE and isolating themselves from their families.
Boris Johnson got a private hospital bed. If I wasn’t already a sworn enemy of capitalism by 2020, the pandemic would have convinced me.
RM, NHS Doctor
Blame the capitalists
When the pandemic hit, I went back to work in a nursing home. I worked 12-hour days for £6.45 an hour.
I spent my days caring for terrified residents, explaining why I was wearing PPE, why families couldn’t visit, and why they couldn’t eat in the dining room. Hospitals started refusing to test the unwell and sending them back to us.
We wore bin bags when short on PPE. My colleagues and I found many dead. We spoke with people whose families could not visit, who were scared, confused, alone.
We were surrounded by the smell of death, shit, and bleach – a smell I still hallucinate.
I experience guilt that I lived; that I could have spread this virus; that I couldn’t fully provide people with the comfort and dignity they deserved.
I took on the blame for these deaths. Meanwhile, those truly responsible partied, had affairs, refused to act, completed backroom deals, and profited from the deaths of thousands.
The inquiry’s initial report is unsurprising. Capitalism continues to contribute to needless suffering. We deserve better.
Klaudia, Manchester
Communities over capitalism
When we first went into lockdown, I put out a post on social media offering to help anyone who needed shopping or medicine collected. What I didn’t expect was to become responsible for a team of 100 volunteers, delivering food and supplies to 500 households.
It became my full-time job. Every day was spent on the phone speaking with the elderly and vulnerable. Many of them had no support network, had no clue as to what was going on, and were understandably terrified.
It was common to have someone in tears on the phone, unable to see their family and completely alone. Government schemes were failing; food and medicine wasn’t arriving; and charities were struggling to reach people.
It took two months to pass on all of the households to a charity or government scheme. I honestly think, if it wasn’t for the thousands of community groups like ours, hundreds of thousands more would’ve died.
The fact that the government was completely unprepared, with no plan or infrastructure in place for such a catastrophe, is nothing short of criminal. Only the self-organisation of millions prevented the situation being even worse.
It highlights an abundantly clear fact: a planned economy isn’t just something nice – it’s absolutely necessary.
Alex Falconer, Cardiff
No trust in the system
I was working in a care home when COVID-19 first hit. And the callous disregard that I saw for the lives of the elderly is what made me a communist.
At the beginning of the pandemic, then health secretary Matt Hancock made the decision to send older hospital patients into homes to free up bed space.
Half of the residents at my workplace died in the first wave, all within the space of a few weeks. This boiled a rage in me like I had never known before, and it led me to question why the NHS had no beds.
The later flouting of lockdown rules by MPs and government advisors destroyed what little faith I had left in the system.
It was clear to me that this whole rotten system needed to go. Soon after, I joined the RCP to help put an end to the rule of these serpent-tongued servants of the ruling class once and for all.
Sam Lovesey, Northamptonshire
All in it together?
During the pandemic, my grandmother was hospitalised and later transferred to a care home. I was unable to visit for months afterwards due to restrictions.
Sadly, her health deteriorated and I never had the chance to see her again. Millions had similar experiences.
‘Everybody’ had to stick together through the crisis, we were told.
But some of ‘us’ – ‘our’ elected representatives in Westminster – treated themselves to booze and takeaways at illegal gatherings, shamelessly scrambling to destroy evidence and pull the wool over our eyes afterwards.
The findings of the recent inquiry, which revealed that the entire healthcare system was horribly underprepared for a pandemic, add further insult to injury
Austerity, privatisation, and mismanagement gutted our health service for decades. Whilst billions were spent on wars, the NHS crumbled, and the health of the population deteriorated, putting society at much greater risk.
The pandemic could have been better dealt with if the needs and safety of the many had been prioritised over the profits of the few.
Rather than allow this sick system to drive us off a cliff’s edge – from healthcare to the environment to housing – we need to put an end to the rule of self-serving politicians, big businesses, and bureaucrats, who place themselves at the top of the pile at the expense of everyone else.
Only a socialist future, with workers truly in control, can ensure this.
Callum Parkinson, Preston
