To be flabbergasted by this Government’s incompetence.

[Cam77]

*2000 of 500,000 NHS staff tested.
*Germany performing nearly TEN TIMES the number of tests as the UK. despite the WHO saying for weeks and weeks that they key is to “test test test”
*Continuing shortages of basic PPE for health workers (who are being threatened if they speak out)
*Thousands of people still cramming on to public transport, with not one metre let alone 2 metre distance.
*The Government failing to sign up to the EU ventilator scheme.
*Being one of the last Western countries to close schools and implement any kind of lockdown.

I know it’s tough for everyone but this is a level of criminal negligence from the British government. Absolutely shocking.

We can critisize because it's a shitshow. Ye are making a total balls of it.
Absolute bunch of morons running your country. Throwing your elderly to the wolves. Ye are a total disgrace to the entire world.

Every Western govt - left, right & centre - was unprepared for a 1 in 100 years disaster
and many will be punished by voters later

However, this govt has added its own special cockups to the cockups everyone else made

Every single post on here that you make points out a Black member of Labour for criticising in a situation that they have no power over? You are not very subtle

Blossom if that shit is aimed at me (and I assume that your later 'blame Obama' comment means that it is) then wind your fucking neck in.
You have proven yourself to be a tin foil hat conspiracy theory fruitcake on here - best ignored - otherwise I would be genuinely annoyed.

Greggers2017

As I said before this has happened before we have had multiple pandemics this century and this crisis WAS PREDICTED. This govt ran a pandemic simulation in 2016 and then refused to act on the advice given. DAVOS ran a pandemic simulation last year and the WHO have been advising govts in this PREDICTED crisis since 2005.

Yes, exactly what has Corbyn got to do with it? He has many faults but no one knows how he would have reacted to this.

I have a feeling that he would have acted quicker and followed the science more but it is a completely irrelevant question.

Regarding Boris and co I think that the obsession Brexit and fallout at a political level with Cummings now pulling the strings has left a pretty weak cabinet personality wise with too many yes men / women. Decisions probably came back to Boris / Cummings and they seemed to pussyfoot a bit.

koshkatt

You seem angry and sweaty and a bit overwhelmed. Go and have a cup of tea and calm down before you keel over dear.

With that and lock down we are nearer to communism than we ever have been under Labour imo

Or y'know, people are staying in to stop spreading a killer virus around. Just a thought.

@Cam77 you’re not sure what the government has been doing?!

I guess you don’t know anyone that will need to benefit from furlough, self employment help etc then.

No government in the world could be prepared for this. Corbyn would have been a disaster handling this.

Oh and btw, in case the penny hasn’t dropped... China lie.

At least we can be grateful that Corbyn is not in charge. It's some comfort to me in this awful time.

So Johnson is messing up and Corbyn might have messed up. Well we can't blame people for things they haven't done so the blame stays with Johnson.

China lie And Johnson?

Can't believe some posters think this is going well.
Read these and tell me if you think Tweedle dum and Tweedle dee are doing a good job.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30727-3/fulltext

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/27/advice-on-protective-gear-for-nhs-staff-was-rejected-owing-to-cost

twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1244163627483045889?s=20

Testing required the govt to order labs around the country to test

and to give orders to the huge UK pharmaceutical / chemical industries to produce the necessary reagents etc

This is what happened early in Germany - and what they can do, the UK should have managed too
Germany of course also had the staff capacity to carry out the tests - 500,000 per week atm - because they hadn't spend 10 years cutting back public spending so much

The UK is a major modern industrialised country, but led by people who seem to believe in the Fridge Fairy
i.e. if they want something, they assume it will magically appear without them having to organise it

You seem angry and sweaty and a bit overwhelmed. Go and have a cup of tea and calm down before you keel over dear

Well you did just imply that I am racist but as I said - virtually everything that you have said on here is laughable so...

Even The Torygraph is lambasting him today. When that happens you know how bad things are.

I’m no Corbyn fan but I do get the rage every time I read “thank god it’s not Corbyn in charge”.

Be honest...he’d have done exactly what Boris is doing which is take direction from medical professionals and public health.

I am also getting the rage that the NHS has nowhere near enough capacity to treat people who would ordinarily survive because we don’t have enough ventilators.

Likewise staff treating COVID 19 patients wi5 no protective equipment.

That’s what I judge this Govt on.....they’ve known for years another pandemic was due and the pandemic preparation has been sidelined due to underfunding. And these clowns have been in charge for the last decade so yes I can and do judge them for it. We know at least four medics have died as a result.

What Corbyn would or would not have done is irrelevant. Anyone using his name and “thank god he’s not in charge” in the same sentence shows they are hard of thinking.

I am not going to comment because at this stage we do not know any facts as to whether the UK had ordered a zillion sets of PPI and testing kits from China or from wherever else in the world, only to find, just like all your shopping orders and slots that were pre-booked, they were just cancelled under your nose.
I'm quite sure some suppliers would have been forced to send their supply locally in favour of completing overseas orders.
Other suppliers would I'm sure cancel and re-sell at a higher price to the highest bidder.
Or maybe they didn't order them?

Either way we can find out in due course. Truth will out

Does anyone know the reasons behind PHE insisting that all testing goes through their labs and why hospitals can’t do their own testing? That seems to be creating an artificial limited capacity.

I think the government have gone a bit off message and I do wonder if it is since Dominic Cummings has been self isolating.

The government have to make sure that what they are saying is true because as soon as they don’t, they start losing credibility. For example Gove saying there was no reagent available and that’s why testing was delayed, then the chemical industry say that’s utter rubbish.

It suggests some managers in the NHS are not suitable to lead a crisis

Or to lead at all, come to that
You mentioned getting them to explain what they're doing at daily briefings, but have you ever actually spoken to some of these people? Their minds are like some Lost World layer where verbal caelocanths still roam, with common sense nowhere in sight

Forget any idea of accoutability when this is all over too, because IME it simply won't happen

koshkatt

If you are the kind of person that thinks that me posting about my family member dying alone in hospital of Covid is laughable you have more in common with Cummings than I thought. Yes that is hilarious.

We have a family member who is a nurse and she is depressed by the managers who seem so totally incompetent and procurement in particular is an issue in her opinion.

Does anyone know the reasons behind PHE insisting that all testing goes through their labs and why hospitals can’t do their own testing? That seems to be creating an artificial limited capacity

Would love to know this too. The private labs want to help. I cannot see why PHE has not enlisted them. I can only assume it’s about control or that the optics of private firms helping the NHS undermines the NHS and leads to accusations of privatisation by the left.

Ariela I’d like to think truth will out. Unfortunately I don’t think it will - we haven’t seen the Russia report yet which Johnson said he’d publish straight after the election. The way they are lying and lying agin - proven lies - about their response to this crisis doesn’t give me confidence in that.

What a shame they didn’t come to Mumsnet for advice. I presume that there will be a Mumsnet party in the next election/. Because you all know so much better than, you know, the experts.

People were clammering for us to lock down like the Italians, because the Italian lockdown is going so well isn’t it? They have the 3rd highest rate of infections and deaths in the world, below the US and Spain.

Interesting the UK rate is 8th below China who people are applauding.

The fact is that it was always made clear that the progression couldn’t be stopped, only slowed.

It was always made clear that there would be deaths from CV, and you know what? Even after this is all over, after there is a vaccine, there will still be deaths from CV, just like there are still deaths from other viruses such as the flu which are controlled by vaccination.

Testing is a bit like a DBS. It’s only valid on the day it happens. You could test negative this morning and pick up the virus in the supermarket this afternoon.

There is a corallation between country dynamics and death rates. In Italy the death rate has been attributed mainly to the aging population, even though younger people have died from the virus, the majority of deaths are happening in the north, there will be a reason for that.

When China locked down the rules were clear. You didn’t leave your house, the streets were patrolled by the army who also delivered food.

In this country that would never have flown. People are already criticising the police for issuing a fine to a woman for not declaring where she was going on a train. And on another thread people are saying how alcohol is an essential.

You have to make lockdown a balancing act. There’s only so far you can curtail people, and you can only push the economy so far.

But actually no other country is doing any better than the UK. Even china didn’t recover until a matter of weeks ago, despite the fact the outbreak started there in September. Given it first started here in February maybe we ought to re-assess in June which would be a similar timeline to China.

September december

@BerryCatHolly no, it’s not because of that. Cooperation is totally different from takeover. In fact, private hospitals and health capacity could/should have been nationalised for the duration as in some other countries instead of the NHS paying out millions to rent private hospital beds. It’s ideological, but it’s right wing, not left wing, ideology driving it.