News OnTheWight always welcomes a Letter to the Editor to share with our readers – unsurprisingly they don’t always reflect the views of this publication. If you have something you’d like to share, get in touch and of course, your considered comments are welcome below.
This from a reader known to News OnTheWight who wishes to remain anonymous. Ed
To: Darren Cattell, Chief Executive Isle of Wight NHS Trust
Please immediately bring back mandatory face masks, and make the hospital safe again for the immunosuppressed and the very many people who are Clinically Extremely Vulnerable, but by now whose third or fourth jabs are waning.
How will you feel when you realise that your immunosuppressed patients – who for the last two and a half years have lived under house arrest and only ever venture out to go to their important hospital appointments for treatments and testing – have contracted Covid-19 at the hospital, and became life-altering permanently worse in their existing disease or died, as a direct result of your hospital policy that no longer requires masks to be worn by everyone in the hospital?
Mutual responsibility to keeping people safe
This is not an issue of ‘personal choice’ but of mutual responsibility to keeping people safe who cannot help themselves.
We need everyone to protect each other, but most of all, protect those who cannot protect themselves at all.
Many of us have little or no protection
Many of us have little or no protection simply because the multiple jabs did not work – cancer patients of all ages on chemo or radiation, people who received organ transplants even years ago on their anti-rejection medication, people with autoimmune diseases on steroids and other drugs who have had to dampen their immune system to protect their bodies from attacking itself, but have no protection against Covid.
No, we are not the people who were ‘going to die anyway’ of the flu. We aren’t all people who ‘had to shield during flu season.’ Many of us are young and relatively healthy, and the hugely milder flu was not a big threat.
Covid-19 is still killing people
Covid-19 is still much, much deadlier than the flu. 50,000 people have died from Covid since so-called ‘Freedom Day’, and yet they are never mentioned in the press anymore.
People of all ages with early stage cancer who were supposed to live, but died months after a Covid infection, not even included as dying due to Covid in the Covid ‘within 28 days’ stats. Young people with blood cancer. Middle-aged people with lung diseases who otherwise were supposed to live out their golden years.
You’ve made our safe haven a high risk
Now you’ve taken away the one place we could have, and absolutely must go, the one once-relatively-safe haven for us, St Mary’s Hospital, and made it a high risk to the many of the people who need it most.
Aren’t you also worried about the many Clinically Extremely Vunerable who aren’t on immunosuppressive medications but who, if infected with Covid, are at risk of death or their diseases and conditions worsening permanently, as their vaccines wear off?
Why are you acting like it is?
Aren’t you at least worried about the long-term financial impacts of ‘no more masks’ costing more in worse pre-existing conditions and Long Covid cases? It’s not a mild flu or cold yet. Why are you acting like it is?
How are you going to stop a maskless person from sneezing or coughing on us? How are you going to guarantee that the air is completely free of Covid?
One errant cough from a maskless person, and we can die, or live a much worse life in more pain, chronic fatigue, and other life-changing problems.
Force to choose
After two and a half years truly stuck at home, now the choice is between risking your life going to the hospital or stopping potentially life-saving treatment and tests.
I thought St Mary’s was supposed to provide a safe environment.
It’s a matter of life or death for many of us
We’re tired of being treated like we ‘choose’ to wear masks or ‘choose’ to shield, when it’s a matter of life or death for many of us.
We all need people to wear masks at the hospital and surgeries and public transport to protect those needing hospital care, who can’t protect themselves.
27 friends and family of friends died of Covid
You know well that even if we wear pricey FFP3 masks that one can be infected still through eyes and faulty masks etc. There was a reason medical staff wore full ‘space suit’ PPE to attempt to avoid Covid.
I’ve had 27 friends and family of friends die of Covid, many of whom were younger, and a little less than half had no known pre-existing conditions.
Five of them died in the last year since no-more-masks “Freedom Day”.
Suggesting we’re paranoid or anxious is insulting
This is very real for us. We aren’t paranoid or anxious, and we often resent the implication that we are with language used by government and sometimes the NHS about us ‘feeling’ unsafe or if we ‘choose’ to wear a mask.
It’s still high risk for us. As medical professionals, how would you feel walking around in potentially a sea of Covid-filled air, around people who aren’t even attempting to cover their mouths?
What actions will you take?
If you continue to not require masks as you have announced:
- Will you be providing free FFP3 masks for anyone who asks for one?
- How are you going to prevent a maskless person’s sneeze or cough from entering the eyes or through the mask of an immunosuppressed person?
- Will you provide regular Covid antibody tests to those who ask for it, so they know if they have any Covid antibodies?
- Also what are the total number of people who are patients on the Isle of Wight whose pre-existing conditions have worsened as a result of Long Covid? Deaths and Long Covid have been measured, but what about people whose diseases and conditioned have deteriorated as a result of having had to fight the virus, and are living more difficult lives now as a result? Have you considered the long-term implications on the Trust/CCG of worsening health conditions on top of the pressures of Long Covid?
I look forward to your rapid response and actions.
Thank you and all of the staff for all of your incredible service during the pandemic.
Isle of Wight NHS Trust Comms tell News OnTheWight they will follow this up and that in the meantime:
To protect those who are most vulnerable and at high risk, we ask that face masks continue to be worn in the following situations:
- Visitors who are presenting with respiratory / COVID symptoms, are on a respiratory pathway, or immunocompromised, if this can be tolerated and deemed safe for the patient
- Visitors may be asked to wear a facemask in our ‘higher risk’ clinical areas, such as the respiratory department and intensive care unit.
Image: thenationalguard under CC BY 2.0
