Is Boris right? - Page 4

Hi Paul,

    the items are probably accurate but many of taken out of context. How many European governments, or indeed any Western governments have avoided criticism for their handling of the pandemic? It is very easy to criticise but not many come up with viable alternatives. Don't you think the message would be more balanced if they mentioned the successes of the past several months, the sourcing of ventilators, the building of additional ICU capacity, the success in never exceeding NHS ICU capacity, the great work done by the armed forces and other successes to balance the negatives highlighted?   

  The government have made mistakes and need to learn from those mistakes, without question. MY question would be,who would have led us better?  

Rgds

Aitch. 

Who would have led us better?

The coalition government that could and should have taken over last year. 

Hi Aitch,

The piece is just a cronology of the governments actions during the early part of the pandemic. What other context would you put them in? I suppose one could argue this was an unprecedented event that they were dealing with, but that doesn't explain the PM repeatedly failing to attend Cobra, or the failure to lockdown when the SAGE advised the should, or their decision to discharge elderly patients to care home with no advice or PPE. 

It's true almost all governments have faced criticism for their handling of coronavirus, but it's also true that many countries have managed better than we have, including the likes of Germany and Greece.

In terms of the "success's" I think we must read different data sources. Taking them in turn:

1. Sourcing of ventilator. What sourcing? Dyson were the only company the government "contracted" with. They were given the wrong specification so none were delivered

2. Building of additional ICU capacity (Nightingale hospitals): The building was undoubtedly a major success by the army, but the capacity was none existent as they lzcked the resources. The result was the London Nightingale treated just 38 patients, none of whom required ventilator,  they were sent to hospital ICU's. In addition the cost of these is unknown, except for the Scotish Nightingale, as the governments has refuse to make this information public.

3. Not exceeding NHS ICU capacity: Whilst this is technically correct, it was only achieved by stopping all non-emergency admissions. One result of this is a backlog of cases the NHS has said will take 10yr to clear. Other impacts i.e. cancer deaths from those that went untreated, will not be know for sometime it ever

Now I accept there are some positives here, like notvexceed ICU capacity. But this was more due to the efforts of the NHS who repurposed whole wards to create the addiitional capacity.

On your last point about who could have lead us better, that's an interesting question. Certainly I doubt Jeremy Corbyn or Jo Swinson could. But sticking with what we have, I'd go with Rishi Sunak. Of all the "yes men" in the current cabinet I'd say he's the only who's looked broadly competent during this period. 

Stay safe

Paul

Hi,

The idea of the nightingale hospitals was to add additional beds/ventilators/care where required, the numbers you quoted seemed to point to the fact that the nhs was able to cope largely without them. A success surely....

The trouble with this debate and others is we can all cheery pick newspaper articles etc to suit our point of view, historically some of these newspapers have been found to lie/embellish and invent stories, media outlets too.

The fact remains thou that the current govt is a Tory govt with a huge majority, if you don’t like it ..tough that’s what democracy is(please apply the same principle to the brexit referendum).  It’s scary to hear people quote that spain is doing really well with the Covid-19 virus and how shite the uk is, when spain has just locked down areas in the Catalan region with an estimated population of 4 million.

So that’s cheery picking news articles and ignoring facts....

Terry

I would have to agree with Terry. But, and it's a big but, if a result was achieved by out and out lies, as is the case in the brexit result and really, the GE (Where is this oven-ready deal?) it is perfectly reasonable to call these results out. That is also democracy.

Regards the Nightingale Hospitals... If the government didn't do this, can you imagine the response from the media? Now let's say they regular hospitals did get over-run, the media would crucify them. These additional hospitals were absolutely the right thing to do, and maintaining them until there is a vaccine or even just a reliable therapy is the right thing to do. And just like an insurance policy, let's hope they need to be used.

Regards PPE. There was a brilliant blog post written by an ex-PPE industry leader a few months back. It was picked up on by quite a few experts, no one has disputed it, which means it might be correct.

Without boring everyone, the crux of it was... Large PPE users drove manufacturing offshore (China mostly) by driving down prices. Fo ten years they haven't invested correctly in PPE, instead placing large orders with many months lead-times and then running down local stocks to the absolute minimum. For some years some tried to encourage if not a return to manufacturing in the UK (prices go up a bit) they all join together and form a central stock-pile for emergencies. For financial reasons they all refused.

Corona Virus hit Japan in Dec, around the same time the large PPE users place their order for the next quarter (and by which point local stock is dangerously low). China started to need more PPE itself, then there was the Chinese New Year, then the local lockdown. The result was even if additional PPE was ordered in Dec, before Corona was recognized outside of China, delivery has already slipped to June.

The reason the no PPE in the early months of the pandemic was not the fault of the government but of the purchasing system the large PPE users had developed (against much advice) over the preceding decade.

Why did lots of local government say masks didn't work in the early months? To stop people stockpiling what little stock there was. Why has that advice now changed? Because in the last three months an entirely new industry has been built around the product of consumer-focused masks.

Did the UK government feck up getting emergency stock of PPE? Not really, there was none to be got, but there was a hell of a lot of bullshit PR from places like the EU about it.

Whoever was in power at the time would have had the most difficult job to to get the pandemic under some sort of control and please the Country in their chosen actions. There will always be people with difference of opinions and it's easy to criticise those in power of the actions they took. We can all comment on how things should have been done but that's easy from the sidelines when you haven't got to stand up and be counted. 

Good morning Terry,

You appear to have read the first part of my response to Aitch only. Had you read on you would have seen that I explained that the Nightingale hospitals were a "white elephant" as they lacked the resources, people & ventilators, to treat Covid-19 patients. The result was NHS trusts repurposed existing facilities and stopped all non-emergency treatment. This is what prevented overcapacity in ICUs 

As regards the chronology I posted, it only highlighted the governments stated actions and compared them to what actually happened. If you believe these are incorrect or that there are examples where they have delivered as promised, feel free to quote them.

As to your last point. The government does indeed have a huge majority. But that does not exempt them from scrutiny and challenge. Democracies have leaders who the people are free to challenge and call out when they act badly. You appear to suggest this should not happen because one side has a majority? That would be a dictatorship where the people accept the decision of their rulers and subseviently follow. Last time I looked we were still a democracy. 

Paul 

The right wing press has spent the last 10 years criticising Labour's handling of the 2008 world banking crash and folk have a problem with others questioning Bojo's actions over the last few months. 

What can you say?.

Hi Ray,

re your post:

      read the story on https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52409359 regarding ventilators in the UK, your statement does not match the facts. Never ran out of ventilators and had several suppliers. Dyson actually did all their work for free which did not get a great deal of mention in the press.

  there is a earlier post that explains the PPE situation, UK were in the same position as the rest of Europe in that area.

- the Nightingale hospitals were set up in 7 locations around the UK, they were additional capacity in case of need. There would have been a lot more criticism had they not been built. There were staff available but not used as there were never enough patients. The owners of the London Nightingale building quickly decided to cover all costs for the building, initally it had only been offered rent free. See attached from the Guardian.

 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/05/excel-owner-scraps-all-fees-for-nhs-to-use-nightingale-field-hospital

 The NHS coped with the covid19 pandemic but your are right they had to do that at the expense of other patients in some cases. The NHS secured the additional facilites in private hospitals around the country to give more capacity for other treatments. They were working and treating other essential illnesses. NHS consultants were doing remote consultations. They tried to avoid people going into hospitals in the first instance to cut down the risk of them catching covid19. I think this was actually how most countries worked so I don't understand why this is a criticism of the NHS in the UK particularly.

  The government have made many mistakes in handling the pandemic and they will have to be held to account for those mistakes but at least lets try to get all the facts out correctly rather than say everything the government did was wrong.

Rgds,

Aitch.

I have read a post ,but am. Unable to post the link . It states that the goverment ordered 1 £ billion of Ppe from very dodgy companies based in Caymen  islands ,and other dubious sources . Including companies. Who have been penalised for not supplying  tax returns , and a company who have NO record of any transactions for anything ...ie c rooks ! Of that Billion £ s ,NONE of the Ppe ,ordered from these companies actually materialised ! Now that opens up a Question or two , Where has the money paid to these companies Gone ? Where is the ordered PPE , . And is this another scam from the goverment lining their own pockets ,with OUR money ? ..you decide !

Are our goverment out and out crooks ,or what ?