TO risk one’s life to save another is something most of us have contemplated, I imagine.
To save the life of someone we know and hold dear, especially our children or our children’s children.
THANKS to YOU, our generous readers, The Sun’s Who Cares Wins Appeal for NHS staff is well on the way to its ambitious £1million target.
This morning, the total raised to help exhausted health workers will top £200,000 TWO DAYS in.
Here, Virgin Radio DJ Chris Evans becomes the latest star to back our campaign, which will benefit NHS Charities Together.
That is the body providing funds for hospital charities so they can help workers fighting Covid-19.
Every penny you donate counts – so please dig deep for our NHS heroes.
To donate to our appeal please click here
To risk one’s life for a stranger, however?
I wonder how many of us could even come close to putting our hand up for that.
This is precisely what military personnel sign up for, of course.
It is the driving force behind everything they stand for — as it is for the members of the fire service, the lifeboat service and the police force, not to mention our dedicated coastal and inland search and rescue units.
But it’s really not what the hundreds of thousands of frontline NHS workers signed up for.
To save lives, comfort and care for the sick and dying, yes.
But at the risk of losing their own?
No. That was never part of the deal.
Yet look at how selflessly and unconsciously these criminally underpaid, under-appreciated, overworked, everyday heroes have cast aside concerns for their own mortality to face whatever new terrors the coronavirus spits at them — minute by minute, shift after shift, day after day, night after night, 24/7.
What these amazing human beings are doing is beyond incredible.
BRITAIN’s four million NHS staff are on the frontline in the battle against coronavirus.
But while they are helping save lives, who is there to help them?
The Sun has launched an appeal to raise £1MILLION for NHS workers.
The Who Cares Wins Appeal aims to get vital support to staff in their hour of need.
We have teamed up with NHS Charities Together in their urgent Covid-19 Appeal to ensure the money gets to exactly who needs it.
The Sun is donating £50,000 and we would like YOU to help us raise a million pounds, to help THEM.
No matter how little you can spare, please donate today here
Not to mention the thousands of former healthcare specialists and operatives who have volunteered to return to the fold for the greater good, offering to do whatever they can, wherever an extra pair of hands might make a difference.
What is really happening is far darker than that, of course.
A lot of our frontline NHS miracle workers are risking their personal well-being less to save lives but simply to operate ventilators and put in IV drips for patients who are almost certainly not going to make it.
One chilling estimate forecasts that as many as 80 per cent of Covid-19 patients admitted to the new 4,000-bed NHS Nightingale hospital in London’s Excel Centre — itself a modern-day miracle — will tragically perish.
Unthinkable only a few weeks ago, such events, here and around the world, are fast becoming a stark daily reality.
How precisely the virus came about, how much effect the worldwide lockdown is having and how this pandemic will finally play out is anyone’s guess.
No one knows anything for certain about the virus itself.
If they did, surely they would be screaming it from the highest rooftops.
EVERY penny you donate to our Who Cares Wins Appeal will go to the NHS Charities Together Covid-19 fund to help with vital aid.
This will provide the following:
To donate to our appeal please click here
The world is — literally — holding its breath, waiting to see what happens.
Here is what we do know.
We know simple actions at the base level of prevention give us the best chance of buying as much time as possible to help those on the frontline help us.
It is not rocket science . . . but it IS science.
For now, the best we can do is wash our hands, stay home and keep our distance from each other if we must venture out.
I don’t know about you but it seems — ironically — the more physical space we give ourselves, the closer we are becoming both emotionally and spiritually.
Most of us can’t comprehend the mindset, the sense of purpose, it takes for our army of NHS brothers and sisters simply to “keep showing up”.
To keep contending with the horror of interminable disease and despair, often unable to do more than briefly postpone the merciless inevitable.
It is therefore our unequivocal, unanimous and united duty to let each and every one of our priceless doctors, nurses, carers and consultants — plus all their support staff, services and volunteers — know we will be forever in their debt and that we love them.
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That’s right. We must show them we LOVE them.
However you see fit — a handmade poster in your front window, a flag flying from the roof of your van, a salute when an ambulance or paramedic passes you in the street.
It is everyone’s duty to LOVE THE NHS.
