Bletch stop watching the news - you will give yourself an ulcer
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With the # of UK Suppliers getting blanked, calls not returned and shipments getting delayed, Iām coming round to the opinion that somewhere in Whitehall is an Art graduate Intern in charge of procurement, with a Commodore Pet PC & a phone with a dial on front of it
This article is probably the most complete and damning indictment Iāve seen of the governmentās incompetence and culpability. Which is interesting in itself, given itās The Times.
Ought to be mandatory reading (per Philās paywall-exploit link)ā¦ But for those that donāt have the time to pore through it in depth, hereās the most choice cuts:
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Cobra first met on 24th January. Boris Johnson didnāt attend a meeting until 2nd March.
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By the time of that first meeting in Jan, both medical journal The Lancet and Professor Neil Ferguson had already assessed the virus as comparable in infectiousness to the 1918 Spanish Flu.
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Prof. Ferguson warned then there needed to be a lockdown. The government dismissed this as something out of a post-apocalypse movie.
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In February, The government pursued herd immunity, maintaining this was essentially regular flu, so abandoned a testing and contact tracing strategy.
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On February 26th, with just 13 known cases in the UK, ministers were again explicitly warned by key experts that without a lockdown there would be catastrophic loss of life.
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Conservative austerity caused āpandemicā stocks of PPE to diminish or expire.
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Scientists pleaded with the government that mass casualties were coming. That they needed to obtain emergency supplies of PPE. Instead the government exported supplies to China.
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We knew we didnāt have enough PPE and intensive care ventilators because a pandemic rehearsal was conducted in 2016. But the recommendations werenāt implemented.
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The government failed to obtain the testing equipment needed, even though we had the capacity to mass produce it. The government didnāt approach most of those firms until 1st April.
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Get this: Singapore COPIED the UKās pandemic preparedness plan. The difference is they actually implemented it, and we didnāt.
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The key line from a senior department of health insider: āWe could have been Germany but instead we were doomed by our incompetence, our hubris and our austerity.ā
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Trouble is, we knew that this is what the Conservatives are about, didnāt we? Itās not a strange veering of course. The public saw what they had been offering and voted for more.
The systematic underfunding of public services and negligence of welfare has been no secret across their time in government. And still Iām flabbergasted by just how much theyāve managed to fuck this up.
Clapping once a week ought to wipe the consciences clean though, ehā¦ 
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There are several, after all this settles down who will face a metaphorical firing squad. I hope we all live to see the reckoning.
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You really think so, my wife still thinks that Boris is doing a good job, I keep trying to educate her but she comes back with āheās been handed a hard job, Corbyn wouldnāt have done any betterā¦ā
Yep, this is a continuation of the thing people voted for.
I donāt want to tar everyone with an enormous brush held in my clumsy hands but it was largely a case of āIām alright Jack so we need lower tax, a smaller state and less government interferenceā but as soon as pain is spread a bit more evenly, itās āIām not alright Jack, the state needs to help me. Now!ā.
As Iāve said before, everyoneās socialist nowadays.
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Donāt forget the NHS funding via nonagenarians either - werenāt we meant to have an extra Ā£350m a week for it? The results of purposeful and chronic underfunding are truly galling to witness.
The NHS is meant to be a public service not a charity, Iād imagine there will be a strike after this has calmed down and hopefully working conditions will improve but thereās still likely to be significant numbers of people departing from nursing/the medical profession in general after the trauma theyāve endured.
The sad thing is that while you canāt blame them, just watch the Telegraph and Spectator et al do it anyway. Would any of us really want to treat patients that could result in our own deaths for Ā£24k a year IN LONDON.
Itās insane and what with the scrapping of bursaries for nursing students and the new post-Brexit immigration rules I really struggle to see how weāll replace all of these qualified and experienced staff that decide that either the profession or the UK arenāt for them.
Anyway, rant over and time for a beerā¦
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Great post. Re the scrapping of bursaries for student nurses, worth pointing out that as a result of this, far from being paid for putting themselves in the front line, risking their lives, student nurses are actually paying for the privilege.
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Well at least that article mentions Poland.
It has caused a bit of āangerā here that Poland announced that over a week ago, yet EU msm all said Denmark was the 1st.
But seeing as the locals only talk to TVP the National TV channel that nobody watchesā¦
OK, which one of you kidnapped the real Piers Morgan?
This must be some hack/AI construct, it cant be that a tosser is stating the obvious
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No reason given, that I can seeā¦seems they are blaming it on the Turkish endā¦
We can all stop panicking now, according to Prince Harry, that well known expert, things are not as bad as we are led to believe
And yet up in Scotlandā¦
https://www.gov.scot/news/delivery-of-critical-nhs-supplies/
Those interns at Public Health England may be passed their sell by dates
Iceland reckons 50% of cases are asymptomatic.
Mind you, Iād want to hear from Farm Foods before taking that as gospel.
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Love this little bit about why Iceland donāt have such an agressive lockdown policy
āTesting and contact tracing are one of the key reasons why a lockdown has not been considered necessary up to this point,ā its Directorate of Health said in a statement to CNN.
āThere is also another reason, no less important, we have pursued a very aggressive policy of quarantine for individuals ā suspected to be at risk of having contracted the virus ā for much longer and at a higher scale than most other countries we are aware of.ā
Iceland began testing its population in early February, weeks before its first coronavirus-related death, StefƔnsson said, adding that health officials have aggressively contact-traced and quarantined confirmed and suspected Covid-19 cases.
Government data shows that there are 1,086 confirmed infections in Iceland and 927 people currently in isolation, while more than 5,000 have left quarantine.
"The only reason that we are doing better is that we were even more vigilant," he said. "We took seriously the news of an epidemic starting in China. We didnāt shrug our shoulders and say, āthis is not going to be anything remarkable.ā"
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