RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: More than 10,000 people caught coronavirus after being admitted to NHS wards

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Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance has been forced to admit that there’s no evidence locking down pubs and restaurants saved a single life or stopped the spread of Covid.

Vallance, one of the Two Ronnies of Doom, also confessed to MPs that the 10pm curfew was plucked out of thin air. It was a ‘policy decision’ not based on hard facts.

When challenged to justify closing down the hospitality sector, he blustered: ‘It’s not something you can model with any degree of accuracy. 

‘We can’t give specific data on that and neither can anyone else in the world.’

In plain English, he hasn’t got a clue. It’s all guesswork. Right from the start, the so-called ‘experts’ have been making it up as they go along.

All the illiberal, draconian restrictions to which we have been subjected since March were, the Government assured us, introduced to ‘save lives’ and ‘protect the NHS’.

Yet while there’s a marked lack of evidence to support the dubious contention that drinking in pubs or eating in restaurants has contributed significantly to the spread of the virus, a serious source of infection has been swept under the carpet.

It has been revealed that more than 10,000 people caught coronavirus after being admitted to hospital with other illnesses. 

In some health trust districts, as many as four out of every ten people being treated for Covid-19 contracted it in hospital.

Now why doesn’t that surprise me? The NHS has plenty of previous when it comes to infecting patients with everything from sepsis to MRSA.

This isn’t to detract in any way from the tireless, heroic efforts of frontline staff who have battled night and day to save countless lives since the start of the pandemic.

But it does help explain why so many people suffering from other serious medical conditions, including cancer and heart disease, have been reluctant to attend hospitals since March.

Certainly the Two Ronnies — Vallance and his oppo, the cadaverous Chris Whitty — haven’t ever mentioned how many people have either contracted or died from Covid while in the care of the NHS for other conditions.

Their emphasis has been on scaring the rest of us half to death and demanding ever tougher measures, regardless of the effect on the wider economy.

Ministers have behaved like rabbits in the headlights, agreeing to every demand for new lockdowns and restrictions on free trade, assembly and freedom of movement.

It is, indeed, wonderful news that a vaccine is now available and others are about to be approved imminently. 

But that doesn’t let the Government and their advisers off the hook. Not by a long chalk.

Even as the first batch of people is being inoculated, there’s a real threat that London — the V-12, fuel-injected engine of the British economy in normal times — is about to be plunged into Tier 3.

That would sound the death knell for vast swathes of the hospitality industry, already reeling from nine months of lockdown, uncertainty and financial ruin.

Yesterday, the pub trade warned that 290,000 jobs are likely to be lost as a result of the reaction to corona. 

Across the country, only 19,000 out of 47,000 pubs are currently open — and most of them are shackled by assorted rules and regulations. 

By Christmas, four of five pubs may be closed, many of them for good.

And that’s just pubs. Cafes, bars, hotels and restaurants are also staring into the abyss. 

Yet ministers and advisers like the Two Ronnies couldn’t give a stuff. 

They’re only interested in covering their own backsides in advance of the inevitable public inquiry — and to hell with the economic consequences.

Meanwhile, the hi-viz standing army of coppers and Covid marshals are having a field day, using the pandemic as an excuse to throw their weight around and show us who’s boss.

It’s a pity the Old Bill don’t devote more time to doing the primary job they are paid for, rather than harassing those they suspect of breaching Covid rules.Yesterday we discovered that Greater Manchester Plod has failed to record 80,000 crimes, including serious domestic violence. 

That’s 220 offences a day going ignored.

This is, of course, the same force (sorry, ‘service’) which had no trouble sending officers to measure pizza slices to check if they constituted a ‘substantial meal’.

Elsewhere, in Staffordshire, police threatened with a £10,000 fine a man who every year turns his home into a National Lampoon’s Christmas-style House of Lights to raise money for charity. 

They claimed the spectators it attracted were in contravention of social-distancing regs.

Inevitably, council jobsworths are the worst offenders. 

A pub in Burnham Market, Norfolk, which offered a free scotch egg with every pint, was raided not once but twice by ‘aggressive’ hi-viz warriors from the Town Hall.

How many more times? If you give anyone any modicum of authority, especially if it comes with a hi-viz vest, they will always, always . . . well, you know the rest.

The most outrageous abuse of power came in Barnes, South-West London, where a drinker pleaded with a landlord to sell him a pint.

When he was told that he could only be served if he ordered via an app, in line with Government diktat, he said his mobile phone had run out of juice and he was gasping.

Eventually, the landlord took pity and pulled him a pint. The ‘drinker’ then whipped out a badge and revealed himself to be an undercover Covid inspector from Richmond Council.

As a result, the pub was served with an enforcement order and had to close.

This is a scandalous case of entrapment. Both the agent provocateur and whoever ordered this covert operation should be sacked and charged with using deception to solicit a criminal offence. 

There’s bound to be a law against it somewhere.

At the very least they should be dragged on to Barnes Common, put in the stocks alongside the Two Ronnies of Doom and pelted with scotch eggs.

This madness must end.

Given what we know now, if the Government really wanted to stop the spread of Covid they’d be better off letting the pubs open and closing the hospitals.

Knee-jerk reaction 

Thanks for your thousands of letters, emails and online comments supporting my stand on football’s tiresome ‘taking the knee’ nonsense.

Sadly, instead of listening to the paying public, the Premier League and Sky Sports, Black Lives Matter’s self-appointed official broadcast partner, have doubled down.

I’m grateful to Mail reader Colin Anderson for drawing my attention to the fact that, following the summer’s BLM protests in the States, Comcast, Sky’s new Philadelphia-based owner, gave $100 million to an assortment of ‘anti-racist’ charities. 

So to those of you who wonder what’s behind Sky’s slavish, over-the-top promotion of BLM UK, that might explain it.

When Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp owned Sky, the Left were always howling about the iniquity of an American citizen allegedly dictating editorial policy to a British TV network.

But now that another giant U.S. corporation, eager to bolster its woke credentials, is calling the tune, not a peep.

Funny old game, Saint. 

What is Dominic Cummings’ favourite Christmas song? Driving Home For Christmas.

Boom, boom. It’s been voted Britain’s No 1 Christmas cracker joke. I wonder where they got that from. 

Back in October, the punchline to my spoof Covid-secure Christmas concert, featuring Noddy Holder and Band Aid was . . . Special guest Dominic Cummings performing, er, I’m Driving Home For Christmas. 

Apparently, the author of the winning gag gets £1,500 towards a holiday and a box of crackers. 

Nothing’s arrived yet. I assume my prize must have got lost in the Christmas post.

A Government lawyer convicted of ‘upskirting’ has escaped being struck off after blaming Brexit. 

Daren Timson-Hunt was arrested for using his phone to take pictures up a woman’s skirt at Embankment Underground station.

He claimed it was a ‘moment of madness’ brought on by the pressure of putting in 80 hours a week as head of the Department of Trade legal team working on our departure from the EU. 

Not even the architects of Project Fear in their wildest imagination came up with the idea of Brexit driving men to take covert photos of ladies’ underpinnings.

Vote Remain unless you want dirty old men sticking a mobile phone up your frock. 

Timson-Hunt could have been jailed for two years, but was given community service and fined £1,200 instead. 

His law licence was suspended for six months and his future career prospects have gone down the Tube, so to speak. No longer on the Up Escalator, then.

And finally, a very special guest star, direct from Downing Street with his very own version of that Chris Rea seasonal classic, please welcome Dominic Cummings.

I’m driving home for Christmas . . .

(Audience: GET OFF!)