During the height of the Covid pandemic there were a great number of people who had no choice but to keep on working. For them work from home was not an option at all. The country was kept going by bus drivers, security staff, delivery drivers, supermarket staff and a whole host of other private sector employees. Whilst the teachers, social workers, council staff and NHS management cowered behind their sofas or failed to engage with the public at all on nearly full pay and failed to provide to the public the services that we pay them to provide, the private sector soldiered on.
So which group, public or private, do you think has made up the biggest group who are claiming that they are suffering from long Covid? You would think wouldn’t you that those workers in the private sector who continued to provide services and continued to have extensive contact with the public would be more afflicted by long Covid? Unfortunately that’s not the case according to the blogger Tom Winnifrith.
He is stating that the vast majority of those claiming to be afflicted by long Covid and therefore needing to take extensive time off work are teachers, medical staff and social workers.
Mr Winnifrith said:
You might have thought that it would be those who suffer the highest rates of covid such as bus drivers or security guards. Au contraire. It is some of those suffering far lower than average rates of catching the disease, those working in social services, healthcare and yes, of course, teaching who are massively over-represented among those claiming long covid. Maybe bedwetting, while WFH, causes long covid?
……Folks like teachers and University Lecturers seem to have been more sick pre-covid and now massively more likely to develop long covid after having covid than those in other professions. No doubt it is the complete job security, fat pensions, way above average salaries and those massively long holidays that cause the stress inducing all this illness.
Or maybe they are just greedy and lazy bastards whose workshy antics make them incapable of gaining employment in the productive part of the economy.
I remember saying to a friend during the first lockdown that those who seem to be winning, ie those who are getting paid for doing nothing and failing to provide the services that we are paying for were primarily from the public sector. I remarked back then to my friend that those who worked in the private sector were continuing to work despite the pandemic. It was the social workers, medical management, council waste dump staff and other public sector workers who were failing to do the jobs that they were being handsomely paid to do.
During the lockdowns a lot of people in the public sector really took the piss and failed to turn up for work but continued to get paid for their now non-work status. Now it seems that they are milking the diagnosis of long Covid to take yet more sick paid time off. Is it any wonder that our public sector services are so godawfully bad and inefficient?
Predicted it from day one. All of the public sector desk jockeys, puffed up with their “rights”, on full pay. The worst actually being GPs who while getting paid a substantial amount plus per patient “commissions” for jabs, smoking cessation, diabetes and obesity “diagnoses” mostly decided to “self isolate” and “socially distance” themselves from their patients, the results of which are now coming home to roost, the unnecessary deaths and suffering from cancer, kidney, heart and other ailments, particularly for the expendable, expensive, no longer productive, elderly.
As soon as the “experts” of “The™ SCIENCE” hijacked the agenda, I saw where this was going, our scientifically illiterate politicians, human shields to whatever excesses these often serial failures, such as Neil Cow-Killer Ferguson got up to or spouted.
“Long-Covid” the trendy new name for post viral syndrome, is particularly fashionable with a very large number of those claiming to be suffering, know that they’re on the gravy train, virtually unchallengeable in the public sector.
Funny too, how the surge of “positive” tests dovetailed neatly with an extended Christmas break both at the beginning and afterwards.
As a postscript, the hospitals are still half empty, seeing a flying saucer is easier than seeing a GP and getting any sort of response from your local authority is harder than getting a visitation by the Madonna at Lourdes.
The “new normal” is becoming the “new laziness” paid for out of our bloated taxes for sod all in return.
When I served as a borough councillor from 2006-10 I saw these people in action. The attitude was that the residents were there to service their needs, rather than the other way round. The arrogance of the “directors” was gob-smacking, who with many middle management types would use the ambiguously worded ” councillors code of conduct” to attack, stymie and humiliate elected councillors into submission, on ludicrous grounds such as “not showing sufficient respect”. We had enough of that crap from aggrieved or just plain malicious activists and members of the public who didn’t get their own way. Fortunately before I’d signed it, I’d read the code of conduct and struck out, (under the unfair contract act) all clauses that could be used as a sniper’s charter. The borough solicitor didn’t challenge me, asx I threatened to go to the media and insist that all costs and arguments would be posted on the council website. As a result, out of 63 councillors, much to the irritation of my detractors, I was bomb-proof for 4yrs and I know that there were several attempts to target me. The level of pettiness and malevolence in local authorities is quite appalling. Add in the often dismal calibre of both officers and councillors and it’s a wonder that anything works at all. As a footnote, my asking some very awkward questions about a proposed PFI, saved residents between £120/150 million over a 25yrs period, us at least another £25million in energy costs. Got a fair amount of stick for spoiling a pet project and “legacy”.
See this face…… Am I bovvered.
Must admit the same “hmmm” occurred to me when I read/heard that covid absences peaked over the Christmas period in the NHS.
I’d be more sympathetic (maybe) if I didn’t also suspect that quite a number of the covid cases in hospital are acquired in hospital.
As has been stated elsewhere it is strange how the NHS is at one and the same time “the envy of the world” and yet perpetually at the “point of collapse / “on its knees” etc.
I do see how it could simultaneously be the wonder of the world and at the point of collapse however. I’m sure many people wonder how it turned into such a disaster for … just about everybody.