My brother-in-law is critically ill – Boris Johnson’s selfishness over Covid is a slap in the face

I’m angry that my sister can’t lie next to her husband. I’m angry that my nieces and nephews can’t hold their dad’s hand

There isn’t a solitary respected voice on my Twitter feed championing the removal of restrictions (EPA)

I always describe my brother-in-law as “the best man I know” (along with my husband). He’s just a fundamentally good human. He is a GP, never still, always pottering about doing this job or that, and he becomes unintelligibly Scottish watching or refereeing rugby.

He is kind and wise, rational and constant. He and my sister met at medical school, have been together for nearly 30 years and have five children and three grandchildren. He has displayed inhuman patience with me since I was 12 and I love him dearly.

He is currently critically ill in hospital and his family cannot be with him due to Covid visiting rules.

As I see news alerts announcing the removal of all Covid restrictions flash on my phone, I can’t marry the knowledge that the last time my nephews saw their dad he was in the emergency department, with the fact that people are now spared the “inconvenience” of compulsory isolation. The incongruity of the carelessness of this policy change and the trauma my family is experiencing due to visiting restrictions makes no sense to me.

I’ve worked in and around the NHS for 16 years. I understand the need to uphold infection prevention and control protocols and to maintain Covid-secure pathways in hospitals. I can see a scenario in which if mask wearing, distancing, testing and isolation were maintained (and indeed adhered to), visiting restrictions could be lifted sooner. I’m also aware that at some point we need to accept that the virus is becoming endemic and we need to live with that. I’m aware that for some, isolation is financially or emotionally challenging.

My Twitter account is an echo chamber of NHS workers and health policy wonks. It seems like everyone is battling with logic, reason and endless contradiction. There isn’t a solitary respected voice on my feed championing the removal of restrictions.

Instead “we” are angry.  My God, I’m angry. I’m angry that my sister can’t lie next to her husband. I’m angry that my nieces and nephews can’t hold their dad’s hand. I’m angry for all the families who have lived this trauma already; ashamed that I hadn’t understood the full gut-wrenching horror of it until it happened to us.

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I’m angry about the absence of compassion in our government. I’m angry that we’ve lost sight of the need to do the right thing, or grown too numb to recognise what that even is. In 2020, the government implored the many to do the right thing for the few – to stay home, save lives, protect the NHS. What happened to that sentiment? I feel exploited for the sake of a quick bump in the polls.

I’m angry that I, like everyone else in healthcare, has worked so incredibly hard over the last two years to continue to provide care in the most challenging of circumstances. This feels like a slap in the face. Thanks for your help, now for a national game of health roulette.

The vitriol of my anger is exhausting and I fight the temptation to disengage and to become so disenfranchised and disillusioned that I opt out of the conversation altogether. But to butcher a Steinbeck quote, there’s a responsibility in being a person and a citizen. It’s more than taking up space where air would be. And so I’ll persist. I’ll wear my mask, I’ll test appropriately, I’ll isolate when I should. I will channel my anger into hopeful protest; with two fingers to the confederacy of fools “in charge”.