Number 10 must say no to ASH and Quit for Covid

Written By Simon Clark

Further to my previous post, and the news that ASH is demanding £350,000 to fund the Quit for Covid campaign, Number 10 might like to consider the following.

Since it was launched on March 17, the Quit for Covid Twitter account has attracted 742 followers, most of them (I would guess) non-smokers or ex-smokers working in public health or tobacco control.

Not counting retweets, Quit for Covid has posted around 550 original tweets. Over 65 days, that's an average of 8.5 per day. A quick scroll reveals that many Quit for Covid tweets attract no comments, no retweets and no 'likes'.

When a tweet does get a 'like', or is retweeted, the organisation or individual responsible is almost always part of the tobacco control or public health industry.

A random check of Quit for Covid tweets posted in April and May found the following organisations retweeting or 'liking' them:

ASH Wales, Breathe2025, Smokefree Hackney, Making Smoking History Greater Manchester, Get Healthy Rotherham, NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire CCG, and the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (NCSCT).

Individuals included Ailsa Rutter, director of Fresh Smoke Free, and Andrew Furber, regional director of public health, North West England.

Other individuals who I won't name included a health psychologist, public health consultant, smoking cessation officer, smoking cessation specialist and a 'smoke free lead'.

Ordinary members of the public, notably smokers who want to quit, are almost completely absent from the conversation.

Aside from a couple of references to direct messages ('Had a very interesting DM conversation yesterday with a worried smoker', 'Just having an interesting private DM chat with someone looking for answers'), the Quit for Covid team appears to have interacted publicly with just TWO smokers in May.

One works for an 'academic health science network' and is very Twitter savvy:

The other (I kid you not) lives in Mexico. On May 7, in conversation with @metomcat, Quit for Covid tweeted:

At the end of the session, relieved perhaps that a smoker had actually engaged with the clinic, Quit for Covid tweeted:

Two days later, with UK-based smokers still reluctant to contact the clinic for quit smoking advice, the campaign reached out to @metomcat in Mexico to ask:

I suspect @metomcat didn't reply because on May 11 the Quit for Covid team was almost imploring her for a response:

Having observed the Quit for Covid tweets for several weeks it seemed to me that, far from being a smoking cessation service, it was more of a platform for public health professionals and tobacco control activists to share their experiences or offer support for one another.

Take, for example, this tweet:

Or this:

On May 14, at the start of the evening Quit Clinic, we were told 'There are quite a few tweets to pick up from today, so I'll get started'.

Interested to see what they were, I waited. Four tweets were retweeted. Not one was from a smoker who wanted to quit.

Instead Quit for Covid retweeted an ASH press release about passive smoking at home during lockdown, a tweet by North East Linconshire Council also warning of second hand smoke, a tweet by a smoking cessation officer, and a plug for the Quit for Covid Quit Clinic by the SGH Paediatric Asthma Team.

Talk about an echo chamber!

The absence of smokers from the Quit for Covid conversation was not the only thing I noticed. On May 18 another Quit for Covid tweet implored GPs to get in touch:

Outcome: one retweet, four 'likes', zero replies.

On May 4, in an attempt perhaps to reboot the ailing campaign, Public Health England tweeted:

The following week, noting that the Quit for Covid Clinic had actually been open for six weeks (PHE take note), the team tweeted:

By now however not even the ever cheerful Quit for Covid Clinic team could disguise the fact that the project was ailing badly.

As it dawned on them that the clinics weren't attracting much interest, they began asking questions.

By Sunday the desperation ('No question is too trivial!) was palpable:

On Monday (May 17), the team revealed its radical new policy – 'open all hours'!

If the new policy has made a difference I haven't noticed it, but watch this space.

And so to yesterday and the report that ASH has applied for £350,000 to fund Quit for Covid from May to October.

Goodness! How are they going to spend all that dosh in six months? My guess is that a lot of it will go on a mass media campaign urging smokers to 'quit for Covid'.

But, hang on, the impact of the coronavirus appears to have peaked. Hospital admissions and the number of deaths per day from Covid-19 is falling. Yesterday it was even reported that 'London recorded zero Covid-19 infections for the first time since the outbreak began.'

If we're over the worst, and numerous studies suggest that a significantly smaller proportion of smokers have ended up in hospital as a result of Covid-19 in relation to non-smokers, why on earth would the Government spend £350k on a public health campaign that is already past its sell-by date?

According to ASH, the Department of Health encouraged them to apply for funding for the Quit for Covid campaign. Echoing Chris Snowdon ('Quit for Covid ... looks like just the kind of ineffective lame duck that the Department of Health would lavish money on.'), I'm sure they did! ASH and the DH have been joined at the hip for years. I'm only surprised they don't share an office.

Yesterday's report implied that the 'delay' in ASH receiving the money is down to Number 10, which in turn referred the Guardian back to the Department of Health.

Reading between the lines, my guess is that officials at the DH want to give ASH the money but Number 10 is quite rightly dragging its heels while it questions the use of public money for a campaign that is unlikely to help many smokers stop smoking and may actually be counter-productive at the present time.

After all, who wants to be nagged about their smoking habit and urged to quit just as they are coming out of lockdown?

This is not the time to launch a quit smoking campaign, and it's certainly not the time to use taxpayers' money that could be better spent elsewhere.

For my final thought on whether Quit for Covid deserves £350,000 of taxpayers' money, I leave you with this rather sweet tweet:

I retweeted it this morning and someone replied (I paraphrase), ‘Be fair, Quit for Covid is only two ladies working alternate weeks', to which my response is: have you seen their agenda?

That's not a stop smoking 'clinic'. That's a full-blooded anti-smoking campaign. ASH has got it all worked out and they want another £350,000 of taxpayers' money to pay for it.

My message to Boris? Just say no.

Simon Clark
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