Off Topic SARS-CoV-2 Covid-19

The PPE under supply situation is endemic to almost all nations. Hence it's unavailablity. That's not what I was referring to.
Your third point was not a direct consequence of government/policy directives. It was stupidity by both organizers of the events and those who attended - assuming the seriousness of the issue was known to everyone.
What is naive by the way, and binary for that matter. Maybe I could clarify ?

 

Almost certainly. They would be picked by the media strategy team hours before hand. You can often see the person doing the interview looking at their paper as they speak, as they read their notes.

 

Isnt this always the case ?
Look at PMQs.
All the questions are vetted with pre arranged replies.

 

The government needs to radically rethink these daily briefings. They’ve painted themselves into a corner by always having a cabinet member do it and having to think up things to say each day. It’s like Groundhog Day each day, fobbing off the same questions. When really, all it needs is a brief daily update of facts from someone credible, and a weekly update of strategy.

fair play to the idea of being transparent and accessible, but when they set themselves arbitrary targets, fail them and then make stupid excuses, all they are doing is eroding credibility. The point was made in tonight’s Question Time that the government need the public’s trust to make any strategies work, and in my opinion they are ****ing that up now. The goodwill they had after Rishi Sunak’s big plan to roll out financial support is starting to leak away.

We had a pandemic playbook ready to crack open and go, i understand it was so well regarded in emergency planning circles that other nations such as Singapore used it as the basis of their response. Why the hell it wasn’t opened and started in January as soon is something I’d like to know very much.

 

I don't think the fact the NHS has done so well in that respect ( enough ventilators, enough intensive care beds, nobody struggling for treatment etc ) is covered enough in the media, just imagine how much of a story they would make it if it was the other way round. Ive been involved in all the nightingale hospitals so far and Visted 3. Even during the construction of them with no patients etc, they where chilling places and I for one am extremely happy and grateful that they haven't been used anywhere near the capacity that they could have been!

 

I'd say that represents a party political bias and should have you banned. It won't happen of course.

 

Just so Elon’s satellites know where you are...

 

PPE isn’t an issue in countries that make PPE. What could have been done in 2016 to resolve the known PPE problem? They could have ensured that PPE is made in the UK, which is what I presume they’ll now do. Should blame be put on the party in charge during that time?
As for Cheltenham etc, what you have said is pretty much exactly what I said. Having said that I had a drink and in hindsight I was overly generous to the Govt. The organisers and attendees were stupid, I agree, but the Govt had all the information to make the decision to put restrictions in place so they were also responsible for them going ahead due to inaction.
I was referring to being naive, and binary, because you were saying that now isn’t the time to attribute blame for anything.
My point was that I think that isn’t right. I do think there is point in blaming people for some things now, because some things we know who was at fault, and where it’s the Govt then holding them to account makes it less likely they’ll ignore the problem or make the same mistakes again during the crisis.

 

the problem with stockpiling vast amounts of PPE is that is runs out of date and cant be used - 200 million pieces were out of date when it was needed recently - I know people like someone to blame but should we just keep ordering more and more and just keep dumping millions of items - I'm sure someone would have a pop at NHS waste at that as well

 

I thought, because there are now dozens of health trusts buying PPE from whoever is the cheapest, rather than in the old days when central government ran the whole of the NHS, Then they could stockpile vast quantities of PPE, supply the NHS, buy more as needed, privatisation on the NHS has shown up its weaknesses when money is the God.

 

PPE is bought centrally now - before it had everyone competing with each other which is why it was brought together because it was inefficient - you can't blame the government for not buying enough PPE one minute then suggest it's dozens of health trusts the next

 

https://fullfact.org/health/covid-deaths/

 

More dangers of Covid-19 have been coming to light. Some might think that talking through their arses was a bigger risk - shows how much they know.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2...alised-gardening-injury-tears-buttock-muscles

 

After such an unfortunate accident I just hope he doesn't become the butt of lots of inappropriate jokes!

 

It really is a question of balancing the risk of mass infection against the financial costs of maintaining reserves. It might be argued that the government made a serious miscalculation following the 2016 review (as I do believe) but that really depends upon your point of view. Another approach might be to consider that early and decisive intervention when threatened by a pandemic would reduce the number of cases and thus reduce the need to maintain stock piles of "vast amounts" of PPE.
Early planning and appropriate preventative action in 2009 had a fair bit to do with the U.K. avoiding a significant outbreak of SARS - unfortunately the same can't be said for Covid-19.

 

PPE is used all the time so with a bit of stock rotation not as much would be wasted, or is that too simple? I don’t know.

 

Just seen a graph comparing a few countries excess deaths so far to covid reported deaths. Interesting to note most countries have a good 20-30% disparity between deaths above average and covid deaths.

 

Yes the 2009 government decided in 2009 that gowns amongst other things were not deemed vital

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...anning-stockpile-as-covid-19-struck-bbc-finds

 

Couple of points. Wearing PPE that is a couple of weeks out of date is better than no PPE at all. Surely it is better than dumping it. I can’t believe it deteriorates to the point of being useless. It’s more likely to be someone worried about getting sued. Secondly one of the major mistakes we had here was not preventing travel to and from this country. We may make this mistake again when allowing travel to our tourist destinations if the lockdown is lifted. I would prefer a limit on the mileage you can travel which would stop some of the daft journeys we have seen to Cornwall in recent days.