Millions of pieces of vital protective equipment are being shipped from British warehouses to Germany, Spain and Italy despite severe shortages in this country, The Telegraph can disclose. Lorries are being packed with masks, respirators and other PPE kit before heading back to supply hospitals in the EU, it has emerged. On Monday night, UK firms said they had “no choice” but to keep selling the lifesaving gear abroad because their offers of help had been repeatedly ignored by the Government. Perhaps the government would like to comment? It must be getting bad when the Torygraph shows up the incompetence of this shower.
Well, who would have believed it? A Government department set up 128 fake social media accounts in order to promote the 'herd immunity' policy. https://skwawkbox.org/2020/04/21/bi...s-fake-nhs-accounts-set-up-by-dept-of-health/
On Saturday the government assured the public that a “major consignment” of PPE was on its way from Turkey, and was set to arrive on Sunday after growing criticism of a critical shortage for frontline workers. But Sky News has since reported Turkish sources claiming that Britain only made a formal request to Turkey over a consignment of personal protective equipment on Sunday. Now it seems that there is only a “slim possibility” that an already delayed order of personal protective equipment (PPE) from Turkey will arrive in the UK on Tuesday, reports my colleague Dan Sabbagh. He writes: An RAF A400M Atlas transport plane is on the tarmac at Istanbul, but it is yet to start loading the 400,000 gowns and other vital equipment for the NHS and is not expected to do so until later on Tuesday at the earliest. It was sent out on Monday night by the UK in a desperate attempt to put diplomatic pressure on Ankara, despite the fact that Turkey, which is centrally controlling PPE exports during the coronavirus crisis, had not cleared them for release. Just why does this government keep lying to the public when they must know by now that the truth will come out?
Because they think they’ll get away with it, and if the little media investigation that there is, is not given wide exposure, they do get away with it and then they carry on lying and ‘we’ keep voting them in.
UK ministers took a political decision not to be involved in an EU ventilator scheme, Sir Simon McDonald, the foreign office permanent under-secretary said today, so challenging previous claims that the UK did not take part due to missed emails, writes the Guardian’s diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour. McDonald was asked by a Labour MP Chris Bryant at the foreign affairs select committee whether the ventilator scheme was put to Ministers he said “It was a political decision. The UK mission (UKREP) briefed ministers about what was available, what was on offer and the decision is known” So Gove was lying about missed emails. Quelle surprise ! It really was a case of Brexit before Breathing. An example of a country with a small order to place losing out to a group that can place a large order.
On a perhaps more lighter note we have just come back from a walk and noticed some people weeding the minute quantities of moss between their monobloc driveways. I would call that scraping the barrel for something to do. I had another profound thought while we were out but it has escaped me for the present.
“Dozens of patients with Covid-19 have been turned away from the NHS Nightingale hospital in London because it has too few nurses” My profound thought is that sounds like an aircraft carrier without any planes.
Their idea of being prepared & ready for a sudden increase in the number of coronavirus infections was to be applauded - but perhaps they will now admit that they were wrong to rely upon their strange 'Tory Maths' idea when estimating the number of nursing staff that would be required. The "we're going to employ 50k more nurses" thing which turned out to include 20k already employed...
please log in to view this image Lengthy article in the FT which describes how the government is underestimating the deaths in the daily hospital only count. The FT have not produced these figures before as they needed to check that their model was correct, and needed sufficient data before going to press with it. Having found out that it is an accurate way to gauge the statistics they have now gone public with it.
Shocking... but I am not surprised... The whole behaviour of the government at times reminds me of prep school boys trying to cover up dirty deeds! No offence meant.....
One island, two different governments and two different policies. It is good to compare just what is working best. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/...with-two-very-different-death-rates-1.4234353
Social distancing will likely be needed until a vaccine is available for Covid-19, according to the chief medical officer for England Chris Whitty. He told the daily news briefing he is hopeful for a vaccine within a year but there is a long way to go between having a vaccine and widespread immunity. It would therefore be “wholly unrealistic” to think that restrictions would be relaxed any time soon and some “very socially disruptive” measures would almost certainly have to remain in force for the rest of the year, he said. Whitty added that coronavirus isn’t going to be eradicated, so we must accept we will be working with it globally for the foreseeable future. If this is correct then life is not going to change greatly for the rest of the year.
Diseases can be eradicated completely if they are only found in the human population, whereas those which are not specific only to humans will survive in some form. Nonetheless a virus is a living organism which needs a host (ie. you and me) deprived of that it will die - outside of a host a virus becomes highly vulnerable. The fact that such comments come from so called experts in England doesn't surprise me considering how half hearted the British response has been to this. The British government should be listening less to their own experts and take more time looking at those countries which are now driving down the numbers of active cases. It is perfectly possible to all but eradicate this, ensuring that any future outbreaks are localized ones which are much easier to control. To assume that we must live with this until a vaccine is available to all is like waiting for divine intervention - it might happen, but it cannot be used as an excuse for doing nothing.
