THE NHS is just a little busier than usual at the moment, in spite of what a handful of idiots are saying on social media.

A few weeks ago, before Omicron, a hospital consultant I spoke to put it like this: “I can’t afford to get Covid because I’m the last one standing in our team of five.”

This doctor’s colleagues were not all sitting at home awaiting PCR tests because they’d been pinged. Their absence was caused mostly by stress and exhaustion, brought on by a relentless workload.

We’re talking about the sort of workload that suffocates people; where exercise has become a rare luxury and precious moments with family are a life raft to cling to; where anxiety interferes with sleep and the Sunday pre-work dread kicks in at Saturday lunchtime. The NHS desperately needed Covid to be over so it could catch up with a snaking backlog of work. Instead, it gets Omicron, which is rampaging through the population like a microscopic Ghenghis Khan.

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Doctors’ leaders and politicians fear that due to Omicron, the NHS this winter will be like an overheating steam engine, pistons flying with a fury and intensity which, if cases continue to rise sharply, will end with the whole thing breaking down.

But that’s not the only problem. When the pandemic began, there was enormous public appreciation for doctors, nurses and other health workers. We leaned out of windows clapping and banging on pan lids. We wanted to do something – anything – to show solidarity with those in the forward trenches.

Now it’s a very different story. In October, the British Medical Association (BMA) surveyed Scottish GP practices. It found that there was widespread abuse by patients of GPs and other practice staff, particularly medical receptionists. Nine out of 10 practices reported that staff had been verbally or physically abused within the last month and nearly 80 per cent said the abuse had worsened since May.

Why is this happening? Partly it’s down to frustration at delays in getting appointments and accessing treatment. With hindsight, perhaps it was not helpful to have designated everyone who draws an NHS salary as a national hero, as if they were a breed apart, because it was inevitably going to rebound on them as public expectations of their capacities rose unrealistically high.

But if medical staff are getting it in the neck, it’s also because the atmosphere has changed. Sensing public weariness, a group of Tory MPs, media commentators and journalists have been feverishly whipping up opposition to measures that could help protect the NHS.

Cynical attempts have been made to sow doubt in people’s minds about the level of pressure the NHS is under. The very real challenges faced by the hospitality sector (which clearly needs financial support) have been shamelessly co-opted to try and give legitimacy to this charter for selfishness. MPs argue we shouldn’t wear masks or work from home but offer no opinion on how the health service is supposed to cope if we all party like it’s 2019 and the predicted “tsunami” of infection engulfs the NHS in January.

They have nothing constructive to offer when warned by epidemiologists that in the worst-case scenario, if nothing is done to check the spread of infections, accessing basic medical help could become impossible. There appears, in other words, to be shrugging indifference to the medical staff they once professed to support so strongly. These MPs are more interested in giving voice to the anger of voters who are fed up of living with the pandemic.

This juvenile, reactive opposition has gained force on the back of misinformation, lies, and self-serving cant.

If you’re looking for some intellectual underpinning for all this, then you’re wasting your time. Arch sceptic Desmond Swayne MP, the member for New Forest West, expanded on his opposition to mask-wearing and home working to MPs by suggesting that we don’t need to worry about Covid nearly so much. Referencing road accident rates, he claimed on Tuesday that they were “almost certainly killing more people than Covid at the moment” and that we live with that risk.

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In fact, as a cursory internet search would have told him, car accidents have caused a small fraction of the number of deaths Covid has caused since the pandemic began. With apologies for stating the bleeding obvious, Covid deaths would have been even higher without lockdowns and other restrictions.

Even worse is the claim to be standing up for civil liberties against the government’s supposed hidden authoritarian agenda.

Hidden agenda? This is the most chaotic, unfocused UK government in living memory. If only it had a hidden agenda. If it ever did, it was lost months ago. Perhaps someone used it to roll a joint at the Downing Street Christmas bash.

Through TV or social media, this unpleasant nonsense cuts across borders but thankfully, the mask sceptics and Covid deniers are a much weaker force politically in Scotland than they are in England, perhaps because Boris Johnson’s Conservatives are not the dominant force here.

The Tory 2019 intake in the Commons came to power on a wave of divisive politics in which Brexit-supporting voters prevailed, getting their way against the better judgment of supposedly elitist experts. Well, here we go again. This is populism writ large. Boris Johnson may be on the other side of it for now, shored up by Labour, but he’s being harried from the backbenches by a beast of his own creation.

And meanwhile the Covid numbers get ever more jaw-dropping. Nearly half of the 6,000 cases recorded in Scotland on Wednesday were the Omicron variant; by the time you read this, Omicron will likely be the dominant strain.

The NHS must stumble on. Hospital staff must do their best, with absences due to stress and exhaustion said to be commonplace, and all against the backdrop of high vacancy rates. These have been a problem for a decade but during the pandemic, just when a full staff complement is most critical, staff numbers have dropped.

The Scottish consultant workforce dropped 16 per cent in 12 months, according to figures released recently, with 193 posts vacant for six months or more. Workload pressures and the impact of the pandemic, as well as changes to pension taxation that are punitive to doctors, have been blamed by the BMA for the rise in vacancies. Doctors’ leaders are incredulous that they are still awaiting a full and clear workforce plan being published by the Scottish Government to address these issues.

Of course the NHS is not the only sector where the workforce is under stress. Who would be a restaurant owner right now? But this is not about trading off the interests of one workforce against another. It’s about protecting the ability of the NHS to function. It needs our support – now more than ever.

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