"CALLING US HEROES MEANS THEY'RE PROUD OF US WHEN WE DIE..."
HEROES FOR MORE THAN ONE DAY
A lot of people are already suffering from Covid-19 fatigue, particularly on Social Media.
Slagging off the government doesn’t help many, and most of these won’t read the journals (why would you, unless you’re a geek?), the now anti-government right wing press (The Mail and The Telegraph have shocked me in their anti-Tory stance on the front pages in recent weeks), and the TV Reports (from Channel 4 and both BBC News and Sky to give them credit) where the true facts of how the UK has responded to the virus have been detailed with more and more alarm and frenzy.
The latest shocking revelations come from the BBC Panorama programmer from the 27th April 2020
Alarmingly, in this broadcast, NHS staff reveal that:
The Government SIX WEEKS AGO downgraded the nature of the disease so that legally they needed to supply a much lower requirement of PPE (safety protection equipment) to frontline workers.
Millions and millions of items have to be stockpiled before a pandemic as 100s of thousands of PPE equipment are required each DAY. As of this morning, a minimum of 116 NHS staff are dead due to absence of the appropriate equipment.
Much of the PPE being used was revealed to have several stickers covering up the Use By dates, replaced by later dates.
The sight of NHS staff using home-made equipment, donated building site masks, kitchen aprons and plastic school experiment goggles truly sickened this viewer.
The government response to up to 300 companies all of whom want to supply them with PPE but who have heard NOTHING back from them since January confirms the utter desperate nature of criminal management of our response to this virus. One company was in fact shown making high quality gowns, 90% of which are being sold to the US. Other companies continue to supply high end surgical masks to Germany, Italy and Spain.
None of the above is “Keyboard Warrior” stuff. I endeavour in this blog to supply references and the best possible opinions (it seems to me) as supplied by a variety of “experts” (some of whom, as I’ve quoted, disagree with each other), or give online Video references, where you, dear reader, may make up your own mind.
So there. Everyone handling the UK response must be given the chance to express their position, and if represented, state their case. So let that happen.
This is the slowly revealed state of how ill-equipped our beloved “Heroes” have been, down to a series of tragic decisions, largely down to incompetence and government underfunding. All the details contained in the Panorama piece are extremely worrying as we’re only just approaching (or just past possibly) the Phase One Peak of the effects of the virus.
This is ignoring the complete inadequacy of the Testing Programme (still no Antibody tests in the UK, and ramping up of Virus tests will miss the government’s stated aim by some way by the end of this week). There’s an INCREDIBLY DAMNING article in today’s Daily Mail saying that we may indeed be being ridiculous INCOMPETENT at even settling on an ANTIBODY test in Britain while the rest of the World has moved WAY ahead in using a variety of tests which are between 80% and 100% accurate enough for general assessment of the population (That’s a Chris Whitty quote, our chief Scientific advisor). So WHERE THE HECK ARE THEY??????
This is ignoring the totally disgraceful Care Home/Hospice death totals, which are currently adding 40% to the hospital figures announced daily. This may well prove to be a scandal that will shake up Health Care in the UK forever.
HEROES, VILLAINS and VICTIMS
Who’s responsible for the PPE situation? Why did the government find it necessary to downgrade their legal requirements for it?
Is it government scientific advisers who have been unclear and misleading regarding the UK’s strategy from the very start, one day “Herd Initiative”, next day Lockdown and Social Distancing?
The UK probably has including Care Home deaths about 40,000 victims, more than double what the chief adviser said might be a Best Case Scenario. So that’s passed. We have to rely on our experts and leaders to make the right call.
When this starts to get back to what will surely be a New Normal, we’ll all see whether that call was the best we could have done. Hindsight may well be extremely damning.
