Warry

I want to thank NHS staff up and down the country for how they tirelessly worked on cancer throughout the pandemic.

But sadly we've seen I think around 50,000 fewer people diagnosed with cancer because of the pandemic, and we do need to go a lot further, a lot faster. We need a new national war on cancer.

That's why today on World Cancer Day. I'm launching a new call for evidence that will be part of a new 10-year plan on cancer about how we can do even better at prevention, how we can do much better in early diagnosis, and how we can make the very best use of cutting edge treatment.

So says Sajid Javid in February 2022. Entirely unrelated, of course, to what Dr Karol Sikora said about the lockdown in May 2020,

If this continues for six months, I suspect that in the years to come there will be at least 50,000 excess cancer deaths

"excess cancer deaths" being not the same as "fewer people diagnosed", "because of the lockdown" not the same as "because of the pandemic". These excess deaths being caused exactly by the NHS not tirelessly working on cancer.

A good robust Call For Evidence will certainly undo all this damage though, so no harm done, eh.

However awful the consequences of inept policy, the Establishment will simply shift the Talking Point away from the Actual Point and carry on as if nothing untoward has happened, as will indeed be the case once the new National War gets under way.

In the Soviet Union on Sea, the manifestation of failure is a failure of the policied-on, not of the policy, a transient untidiness in the raw material.