Back, and refreshed after the Easter weekend…
2 big stories
The Guardian is claiming as an exclusive its story that the United Kingdom missed three chances to join the EU scheme to bulk-buy PPE. Given that there are evident shortages and that, as a result, health and care workers are going unprotected, this is another reminder that the Government have been slow to act, and equally slow to co-operate where there might be advantage in doing so.
Bernie Sanders has endorsed Joe Biden. Now that may seem obvious, but given that Hillary Clinton lost as much because Sanders supporters stayed at home then because of much that Donald Trump’s campaign did, if they can be persuaded to support, and better still, work for the Biden campaign, the prospects of a Democratic success in November increase noticeably.
2 blog posts
Richard Kemp wonders what we should make of the various statistics relating to the Coronavirus, but concludes;
That is why we must watch what is happening and ensure that due scrutiny is now held of decision making at all levels. The Press cannot do it but MPs at a national level and Councillors at a local level can and should be taking action to shine a torchlight on the decisions being made by those in control.
Jonathan Fryer reminds us of Nietzsche’s words, “there are no facts, only interpretations”, and wonders what Donald Trump would make of such a concept.
Trump — probably not an avid student of German philosophy — has taken the concepts of “facts” and “truth” one stage further, by arguing that there can be “alternative facts” and apparently believing that anything can be true if you believe it. Does the President actually realise he is lying when he utters his endless string of alternative facts and deceptions? I suspect not, half of the time. But if he does, I doubt that he cares.
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5 Comments
Someone in government has clearly screwed up in getting orders for sufficient PPE in time, and when we get the opportunity to be more forensic, some in government are justifiably going to get the grilling of their lives.
In the mean time, I’d just love to ask a question at one of those Downing Street video briefings.
Mr. Hancock, ….you say the logistics of replenishing front line staff with PPE is problematic, and yet the logistics of replenishing the shelves of Asda and Tesco with toilet roll seems to have been solved.
Do you think front line staff would, in the interim, be advised to wrap their whole head with toilet paper ‘invisible man’ style, until, you are able to get your s..t together and supply them with ‘the good stuff’?
And a supplementary question to Chris Whitty Chief medical officer.
Mr. Whitty, … would you agree with me that a head wrapped in toilet paper is a poor substitute for approved PPE, but is infinitely superior to Covid-spittle directed into the unprotected face of front line staff, slowly losing the will to live, as they wait for PPE that never arrives?
Not wishing to defend poor decision making, I question whether joining the EU bulk purchasing scheme would actually have delivered anything (to the NHS) quicker.
The problem with bulk purchase schemes is that they tend to focus on price, which means the order quantities with any one supplier have to be large, which in turn tends to make buyers look at the large multi-national companies who have the resources to sign off a large order (eg. 3M who it is reported diverted shipments of PPE there were going to fulfil orders from Germany, to the US…), rather than split the order into many smaller orders and place these across a wide range of companies. At least the entire production of the UK Formula 1 designed CPAP masks now being assembled in the UK are going to the NHS, whilst at the same time creating jobs, retaining skills and keeping some money flowing through the UK economy…
“Someone in government has clearly screwed up in getting orders for sufficient PPE in time,”
I think it goes much much deeper than that. Fundamentally, we’ve become accustomed to a particular level of usage, which in turn has largely determined worldwide production capacity . Additionally, it has become cheaper to use disposable PPE than re-usable PPE – plus we can make a good pitch as to why using disposable PPE is so much better than the overhead of maintaining reusable PPE.
Roland 15th Apr ’20 – 12:47am
“Someone in government has clearly screwed up in getting orders for sufficient PPE in time,”………..I think it goes much much deeper than that…………
And even deeper than that! The ‘rehearsal’ for a pandemic (Cygnus) showed a woeful lack of PPE equipment and the subsequent failure of the NHS to address the pandemic…
The NHS’s request for an increase in stocks to mitigate the problem was refused, on cost grounds, by the then Health Secretary (thank you Jeremy Hunt)…
We were in Government why did we not in 2014 or there abouts check on stocks of PPE?
Why did we not raise this consistently over the last few years?
If we did then I am glad about that but of course to no avail.
Now a simple question, a friend has a daughter a senior nurse, single parent one daughter, elderly
parents. How do I counsel him with regard to her attending hospital to nurse coronavirus patients without adequate PPE?
Bearing in mind the RCN advice to refuse to go on a ward without proper PPE?