That advice to seek treatment was drowned out by the "Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives" slogan that was repeated everywhere, along with use of death/infection numbers that were spun out of proportion by the media.

It is no surprise that people decided that the risk of seeking treatment was not worth it.

Routine investigations, operations and treatments for entire categories of disease were entirely cancelled in many hospitals. In the big one near me, most of the big equipment like CAT scanners and such were turned off and mothballed for well over a year, some more than two years. No investigation or treatment for many conditions during this time.

So I really don't buy the "seek treatment when needed" line. The public was both cajoled intensively into not using the NHS, and the NHS itself shut down a lot of its basic services. Not just reduced. Shut down entirely. For over two years.

I'm friends with one of the radiation safety officers who was responsible for overseeing the shutdown and then the restarting and recommissioning of the equipment. The NHS shut down! What we are seeing now is the consequence of that. And we were expected to both pay for it, and applaud this weekly.

I hope that if there is one outcome from this pandemic, it's that we never allow such a situation to cripple the whole economy and the health service in such a way again. The cost of closing it all down will be many times greater than the cost of the pandemic itself. It should never have been done, and we need to look long and hard at the pressures and the decision-making that led to this.

I think the government and the media had a negative feedback loop.

I've noticed the media prefers to saturate news with one topic. For years it was brexit, then that stopped completely and it was Covid, then Ukraine, now energy price rises.

The Conservative government originally were keen on personal responsibility. But once the headlines started of older people in carehomes dying, there was no hope of doing nothing any more.

Lockdowns were the "something that has to be done".