What does the CMO do, you may ask? It was not easy to find a list of responsibilities; the best we can do so far is this:

So, to sum up, the CMO is the country's number one public health authority. He/she advises the government on public health matters. He/she is a physician. He/she is independent, well, sort of, as his/her career and honours depend on ministers, as events have shown.

His/her advice is sought as and when but is not binding.

He/she may or may not toe the government line.

So, under his advisory stewardship, the following took place before, during and after the Covid pandemic:

• A public health emergency was declared based on unverified data

• Failure to observe what was going on in other countries (“ahead of the curve”)

• Failure to stop or dissociate himself from politicians talking nonsense (“zero Covid” and “flattening the sombrero”)

• Failure to ask questions on the verification of “cases”

• Failure to verify the reliability of testing

• Failure to put in place mechanisms for the separation of possible cases from other hospital admissions

• Failure to tackle the problem of Hospital Acquired Infections

• Mandating the use of 200 different “containment” measures (known as throwing the kitchen sink at a problem you do not understand)

• Failure to study the mode of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in a systematic way

• Failure to study the timings of the epidemic curves in relation to testing times

• Failure to protect the young, the frail and pregnant women - Potentially endangering the said categories by mandating vaccines which had not been tested in these populations

• Failure to communicate commensurate risks of SARs-CoV-2 to his patients (England)

• Endorsing the use of vaccines the properties of which not even regulators understand

• Endorsing the use of face masks in the absence of evidence of effectiveness or knowledge of the mode of transmission of SARS-CoV-2

• Failure to encourage a programme of randomised trials and other studies to fill the evidence gaps, providing modellers and influencers ample room to make “assumptions”

• Aiding and abetting the construction of a fear narrative

• Failure to investigate the causes of “Covid deaths” and excess mortality

• Farcical attribution of excess mortality to statin starvation over 12 months 

• Lack of apology for the social and economic butchery suffered by the people

• Failure to press for the institution of measures to prevent social media, modellers and influencers from dictating government policy

• Failure to institute a national framework for the assessment of short, medium and long-term effects of restrictions

• Failure to denounce the activities of Matt Hancock in suppressing what he considered as “enemies’ views”

• Failure to act post-COVID and investigate the causes of excess deaths, exploding NHS waiting lists and why the mental health of the population massively deteriorated.    

But apart from these minor points, well done, carry on, Sir Chris!

This post was written by two old geezers who understand their responsibilities and under such a weight would have resigned their Orders of the Concrete Boots a long time ago.