Another Healthcare Worker Dies From COVID-19: Please Stop Dismissing This Disease

03/04/2020

I'm getting incredibly fed up with seeing people sharing lies or misinformation via social media in respect of the coronavirus. Some of these are using data from the World Health Organisation (WHO) in order to boost the credibility of their posts.

These posts appear to be aimed at dismissing the deadlines of the coronavirus. Many of these people appear to pushing the message that everyone is overreacting, and that the common influenza bug is a bigger killer than COVID-19. They allege that the media companies are scaremongering.

The threat of misrepresentation of data is so serious that the WHO have actually launched an information service via the Viber communication platform.  This isn't something they would have done, if they weren't concerned about the risk posed by fake news merchants.

Click the image to visit the WHO site and learn more about the information tool on Viber

In my opinion (that is what my posts are about, after all), those sharing the dismissive messages are in effect saying they don't care about the 684 people who died in the UK yesterday, as a result of contracting COVID-19. Or the 569 that died the day before.

Those deaths include many health workers, who have died as a result of staying in the front line in trying to save the lives of others who are fighting the virus.

Aimee O'Rourke (39) who is one of the health workers that have died as a result of contracting COVID-19

The latest NHS employees who have lost their lives to COVID-19 include:

• Aimee O'Rourke (39), who was treated and died at the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital (QEQM) in Margate, where she had previously been helping patients; and

• Areema Nasreen (36), died shortly after midnight in the intensive care unit at Walsall Manor Hospital in the West Midlands; which had been her place of work for 16 years.

Areema Nasreen (36) died after doctors had initially thought she was making a good recovery

Neither of these mothers are believed to have had previous health issues that might have contributed to their deaths.

I would urge people to stop comparing the death rate from the coronavirus to seasonal flu, or indeed to the number of people who die from all causes. Stop trying to suggest the world is overreacting.

In the UK alone, over 1,800 people have died in the last three days from COVID-19. People that would otherwise, most likely, still be alive. Those who are saying that some of them would have died anyway are missing the point; completely.

We are all going to die. They say the only two certainties in life are death and taxes, but that isn't really true. The only certainty in life is death.

However, these 1,800+ people have died earlier than they otherwise would have. We don't know if that is a few weeks or months sooner, or years or decades sooner.

If, in the last three days we had gun massacres in the UK that took 581 lives one day, 569 the next day and 684 on he third day, these people who are dismissing the coronavirus as less deadly than the flu would (I believe) be expressing horror at how our government had allowed needless murders.

This isn't a game.

We absolutely need to slow the pace of infections, in order to protect the NHS from being overloaded. If we fail, it won't just be the COVID-19 patients who die, it will be others who have other illnesses or accidents and are unable to obtain treatment because of a lack of resources.