The Omicron crisis is less intense than feared – but non-Covid care is now the bigger threat

Editorial: England is now a place where people in cardiac arrest are advised to book an Uber, rather than dial 999

(Dave Brown)

Just because an inveterate gambler wins a bet, does that make his behaviour acceptable? Not, it must be said, when the risks were being taken with other people’s lives, and the gambler in question is HM government, charged with protecting the public health of the country – or at least England.

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland a more cautious approach has been applied, easing the burden of dealing with the backlog of non-Covid cases. In England, there are too many hospitals declaring “critical incidents”, a euphemism for collapse.

England is now a place where people in cardiac arrest are advised to book an Uber, rather than dial 999. Apparently the best that Boris Johnson can offer the country is that it will “ride out” the Omicron outbreak, even though hospitals will be – his words – “temporarily overwhelmed”.