A couple of years ago, long before anyone heard of Covid, I was sitting at home one dark evening when the doorbell rang.

When I answered it, a man in running gear asked if he could use our phone to call an ambulance for a colleague who had tripped on a kerb and broken his leg badly.

We went down to the road and covered the unfortunate runner with blankets and hot water bottles as he lay in some pain and distress. Several phone calls later and after he lay for over two hours on a wet and cold footpath, there was still no ambulance; and we were now so concerned about him that a few of us lifted him very carefully into the back of a transit van and brought him to A and E.

When I related that anecdote to others, many people had their own story of the difficulties they’d had with the health service, whether waiting in pain for years to have a hip replacement, anxiously worrying about getting cancer treatment after a diagnosis, failing to get a care package or losing a loved one because there was no help for their mental health issue.

Many others told me about the very positive experiences they’ve had, and I was able to match those with a glowing account of my own treatment earlier this year with a successful procedure at the Royal in Belfast.

Whatever their experience everyone, though, was on the same page when they spoke about their admiration for the caring dedication and professionalism of front line staff; it’s clearly not at their door if there’s anything wrong with our health service – and there is clearly plenty.

According to John Compton, a former chief executive of the Health and Social Care Board, the health service is “in deep trouble".

It must be said, the crisis in our NHS long predates Covid.

In fact, if our health service was a person it would be someone with longstanding underlying chronic problems and Covid has resulted in it becoming critical.

There was a discussion on Radio Ulster on Sunday Sequence, which involved Mr. Compton, Christine Collins, a former Human Rights Commissioner and Professor Raphael Bengoa, who prepared a report for the Northern Ireland Executive five years ago with an imaginative plan to transform the health service here.

It was a reasoned discussion by three experts not given to exaggerated rhetoric. But even they didn’t underplay our problems. Ms. Collins said people have been suffering for a very long time and the health service had been allowed to get into a very bad state.

Professor Bengoa said our health system was designed for the last century and the needs today were very different for the Northern Ireland population, one third of whom had one chronic disease and some with more than one.

Mr.Compton pointed out that the NHS here gets half of the Northern Ireland block grant, an incredible £6 billion for a population of 1.8 million, yet people in pain were being forced to go private to get treatment…..if they could afford it.

Interestingly, Mr. Compton said “This is a moment for real leadership and clarity about accountability.”

None of us would underestimate the depth of difficulty of the Covid crisis, but it has highlighted many political leadership issues and those who run the Department of Health have a lot of questions to answer.

Whatever happened to government “of the people, for the people and by the people”? Accountability, openness and transparency are fine aims, but the perception is of a Department which is oblivious to the concerns and feelings of the public it is supposed to serve.

Not to be distracted from the big picture by Covid, but there’s a lesson from the way the vaccination programme has been dealt with, mixed messaging from the politicians who never fail to take an opportunity to score political points and follow their own ideological agendas.

And a lack of openness from unelected officialdom whose attitude seems to smack of “trust us, we know best, just do as we say".

Somewhere in the middle, a genuine debate about the vaccine has been lost.

It has opened the door to the craziest anti-vax and indeed anti-mask hysteria. One tweet suggested this week: “All churches have been infiltrated. Any person who covers their face in the house of the Lord has accepted the mark of the beast.”

There’s simply no answer to that; or to the anti-vaxxers who suggest all sorts of mad conspiracy theories about microchips, or Nazi comparisons, or the lurid tales of possible effects of vaccines.

Cards on the table.

I’m fully vaccinated now; I got the booster last week and all my family are at least double vaxxed and will be triple vaxxed shortly. I wear a mask when appropriate, though still forget occasionally, and try to be as careful around people as possible, although I also forget sometimes.

I don’t have as much social contact, but do keep in touch with friends and go out occasionally. It’s no big hardship to miss out on holidays, but a few times we’ve gone to Dublin for a couple of nights and again tried to be careful in restaurants etc.

I don’t think it’s the end of civilisation as we know it if I’m asked to produce evidence that I’ve been vaccinated.

I think we should all get the jab and be careful in this way. Not everybody is convinced; and I think those with serious and genuine reservations deserve answers. But they’re lumped in with the bonkers brigade. And, I suppose, many of those people will never be convinced.

But the debate has turned toxic and many with real concerns or even some simply not bothering to get vaccinated are digging their heels in.

For the first time in a while, I briefly tuned in to Nolan earlier this week when one caller admitted he was unvaccinated, and the presenter jumped in straightaway with “Are you an anti-vaxxer?”

Then we get Sir Michael McBride posing for a video showing him getting vaccinated, with one journalist describing it as “leading by example".

Well, no, leading by example would be sitting in a corner of A and E in a chair for 30 hours, or showing empathy to nursing staff and doctors on the point of exhaustion. I doubt if his publicity stunt would convince one person to get the jab.

Do you have confidence in the way our health service is being run?

The Department of Health is poorly led, in my opinion, and instead of the decision makers and the public working together in a bond of trust, we’re getting a confused picture about who is making decisions about restrictions and people are unclear about the scientific basis on which those decisions are imposed. Two years on and the fear factor is still here.

And when I hear of all the dire warnings from certain figures, I sometimes think: “You’re right, but where have you been for the last ten years when you should have been shouting just as loudly about all the shortcomings in many aspects of the way the health service is run.”

Covid is here to stay; we need to be protected and learn to live with it. It needs to be managed far better by the authorities. The blaming and bullying of people is not the way to do it.

But Covid didn’t create the problems which the health service has faced for years, it just tipped it over the dangerous edge to the point where it is struggling and the frontline staff deserve our support in taking personal responsibility to stay safe, get the vaccine, wear a mask and so on.

But the unaccountable nature of the way this is being handled is somehow symptomatic of how our health service is managed, and has been for some time.

It’s our health service, and we don’t want the drift that’s already happening to a two-tier health service where those who can afford it go private and those who can’t wait in pain, or worse. People’s voices should be heard and the media has a responsibility to widen the debate; and there are ways such as the Patient and Client Council that people can have an input.

Politicians and the Department of Health head honchos need to show the will to reform our health service. They’ve already agreed that the 2016 Bengoa report is the way to go. So let’s go.