To think this statement by Matt Hancock is incorrect?

[greenback]

From the BBC today: Mr Hancock said he understood that "people are yearning to know how long this will all last", but that "the answer is entirely dependent on how much people follow the rules on social distancing"

Bur I don't see that there is a direct connection between these two things.

I can see that the lockdown will dampen the spread of the virus, enabling the NHS to cope. It will also mean that the peak (of the first wave of cases) will come sooner rather than later. But that still doesn't tell us how long the lockdown will last. After we've passed the peak, the length of the lockdown is still entirely dependent on an exit strategy that hasn't yet been fully defined, and which is in turn dependent on antibody tests that haven't yet been successfully developed, or on social tracing apps that haven't yet been proven to work. China may have their new infections under control for now (assuming their numbers can be believed) but they still have tighter measures than ours in place and so are a very long way from getting back to normal.

Disclaimer: I didn't vote for this government, but generally think they're doing a good job in difficult circumstances. I think Matt Hancock comes across as genuine and honest. So I'm not making a political point - I just don't think this one statement is correct. Am I missing something?

There isn't a vaccine YET

China and now Austria are both following the same path and Denmark is close, and Germany seems to be preparing for it with the recently announced quarantine for border crossing

It's actually what South Korea did from the start, they avoided the first "peak" by acting quickly

If you assume we will never get a vaccine it takes over 10 years to let the virus go through the uk population without crashing the NHS. And such an approach would be inherently unstable, leading to successive periods of lockdown , which would damage the economy each time

If we crash the NHS the emotional and economic impact would be much much worse than anything we have seen so far

Or we just do what is most likely to work, most likely to get the country up on its feet quickest

they avoided the first "peak"

No, they just had a lower first peak. They were more prepared for testing, tracking and tracing, a legacy of their experience with SARs.

Hancock wants to divert attention from the UK's failure to have any meaningful testing (Germany had the same information at the same time as us, and is testing ten times as many); the failure to order supplies of ventilators, gloves, masks and scrubs; and the fact that the NHS is already overwhelmed.

I can only suppose that it is government policy to keep us all cheerful and smiling through.

They tell us we don't need masks or tests. This is not because it's true; but because they have none to give us, and they want us to keep calm and not panic.

See if you can find a commitment that has actually been achieved.

Under no circumstances must anyone mention that ten years of Conservative government have left the NHS (like all public services) underfunded, under-resourced, and under-equipped. You must not compare UK hospital beds per million with rates in other prosperous European countries; nor ICU places; nor ventilators. You must not comment that we were at peak capacity even before the coronavirus came.

Hancock wants to divert attention from the UK's failure to have any meaningful testing (Germany had the same information at the same time as us, and is testing ten times as many)

Germany had a testing industry. We have to create one.

the failure to order supplies of ventilators, gloves, masks and scrubs

Order them from where? There's unprecedented demand from every country on the planet and huge competition for resources. That's why we've got companies that normally make vacuum cleaners and car parts now churning out ventilators, hobbyists with 3D printers churning out visors, and schools donating their meagre supplies of plastic gloves ... not because anybody 'failed', but because the demand is unprecedented, supplies from abroad can't be relied on to turn up and we need to become self-reliant, fast.

Any clothing maker can turn out scrubs. When do you think they were asked?

When do you think Hancock spoke to Glaxo and AstraZeneca?

Hancock "We can't get the chemicals"

Chemical suppliers "Sure we can. Tell us what you want"

Hancock "We are working with the Supermarkets"

Supermarkets "No you're not"

Greenback a rare thread where I agree with many statements by an op. Agree re herd immunity, simple message and situation re blame. Ok going to read on

Hancock "millions of items, including face masks, have been shipped to NHS staff across the country."

NHS workers "So why am I wearing a bin-liner and diving goggles?"

Hancock "We're working with the car manufacurers"

Car manufacturers "First we've heard of it"

Dr Rinesh Parmar, chair of the Doctors’ Association UK and an intensive care doctor, applauded the health secretary’s remarks on the procurement of extra ventilation equipment and additional beds, but said that without more specialist staff such efforts would be “pointless”.

“This announcement will be welcomed by doctors across the country who have been shouting from the rooftops about the lack of intensive care resources,” he said.

“Whilst NHS hospitals make emergency plans to create ITU [intensive treatment unit] beds and the government purchases more ventilators, the elephant in the room is the lack of highly trained intensive care nurses and doctors. The NHS faces this pandemic on a background of severe understaffing with almost 43,000 nurse and 10,000 doctor vacancies. It is pointless acquiring new ventilators without enough highly trained staff to operate them.”

I guess forcing junior doctors onto an unfavourable contract, and ending nurse training bursaries, didn't help. Neither did the anti-foreigner attitude that dried up the supply.

Lucky we've got those 50,000 extra imaginary nurses coming, eh?

The shortage of scrubs highlights this government's incompetence.

They're not hard to make, they're not made of precious gems. In fact, scrubs are actually so easy to make, that one nurse has resorted to sewing them for colleages at home, and is organising volunteers to sew more of them across the country via facebook. Which makes sense, as they are basically easily sanitised pyjamas.

But why was no company like this one whose staff are volunteering now approached through official channels in, say, February.

But why was no company like this one whose staff are volunteering now approached through official channels in, say, February.

In February that company were still making clothes, Dyson was still making vacuum cleaners, car part companies were still supplying car manufacturers, distillers and perfumers were still making whisky and perfume. They all moved over to making PPE equipment when the shutdown happened. The turnaround has happened amazingly quickly.

I said earlier "Under no circumstances must anyone mention that ten years of Conservative government have left the NHS (like all public services) underfunded, under-resourced, and under-equipped. You must not compare UK hospital beds per million with rates in other prosperous European countries; nor ICU places; nor ventilators. You must not comment that we were at peak capacity even before the coronavirus came."

now I see:

"Doctors and nurses are being warned by hospitals and other NHS bodies not to raise their concerns publicly, according to a dossier of evidence collated by the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK).

Tactics being used to deter staff from voicing their unease include “threatening” emails, the possibility of disciplinary action and in two cases being sent home from work. Some doctors have been given a ticking-off after managers were irritated by material they had posted on social media.

“Doctors across the frontlines are extremely concerned about the lack of personal protective equipment [PPE]. Many have told us they have tried to raise concerns through the proper channels but have been warned against taking these concerns further,” said Dr Samantha Batt Rawden, DAUK’s president"

www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/31/nhs-staff-gagged-over-coronavirus-protective-equipment-shortages

Very disheartening.

Of course he is right. It is not that complicated.

In February that company were still making clothes

Scrubs are clothes! They're not particularly specialist!

This is a capitalistic society. If you need extra uniforms for your business, voluntary organisation, or NHS Trust, you can ring around a bunch of clothes factories and say, 'I am in procuring for [x], and we want to offer a contract to order y outfits for z date. Can you quote for this?"

Or you could even be more efficient about it, and this could have happened centrally. UK civil servants could have sent out emails to the whole UK clothing manufacturing sector, asking companies that had spare capacity to email back if they wanted government contracts to make scrubs.

I don't think that every single business was rushed off its feet until now.

Yanbu op. You're exactly right.

Poor Doris, it's not her flipping fault the government started off with 'herd immunity' and took weeks to realise they were gravely misguided. She's doing no harm as long as she keeps 2m from everyone else. Leave her alone.

Doctors and nurses are being warned by hospitals and other NHS bodies not to raise their concerns publicly

It's extremely unprofessional for individual employees to raise concerns about their working environment on social media ... all employers take a dim view of it, so it should be no surprise if there are sanctions for doing so. There are processes for concerns to be raised internally (including whistle blowing mechanisms), and hospital trusts have official communications channels. I have no doubt they will be making sure their needs are communicated loudly and clearly to the government and, if they don't get the response they want, to the public too.

Scrubs are clothes! They're not particularly specialist!

They are made from specific fabric, which is in high demand.

One of my elderly relatives is making face masks out of spare floral quilting fabric and sending them to her local hospital. But I'm not sure the nurses will inspire much confidence if they wear them on the wards!

greenback

I feel that we must be seeing very different parts of current events.

A nurse resorted to sewing scrubs for herself and her colleagues with her sewing machine, and set up a group via facebook to ask people to do the same. Floral scrubs may not inspire confidence, but it is what they are going to be wearing at this rate. She's not making any demands about pattern, just asking for sturdy polycotton.

m.facebook.com/groups/1500699350098765/?ref=group_header&view=group

Daily mail link, dated www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8168937/Nurse-gathered-thousands-volunteers-make-scrubs-NHS-workers-homes.html
Thousands of costume designers, tailors and seamstresses have come together to make urgently-needed scrubs forNHSworkers in a nationwide effort coordinated by an A&E nurse.

Ashleigh Linsdell, 29, who isa nurse at Pilgrim Hospital in Boston, Lincolnshire, set up Facebook group,For The Love Of Scrubs, last Monday.

More than 9,000 people have since joined tohelp make PPE clothing from their homes, but they are in desperate need of funding.Self-taught seamstress Ashleigh, said she started making scrubs for her colleagues a week ago, after they ran out and had to wear 'undignified' paper clothing.

She said: 'Imagine wearing a set of paper scrubs for an entire shift.

'They're not dignified - if you bend over they split, it's just horrible.

Ashleigh who has a four-year-old daughter, said she appealed for help sourcing wholesale material for her homemade scrubs on a Facebook group, and within two days received messages from hundreds of people who were 'desperate to help.'

Having been a nurse for seven years, she revealed that healthcare workers can get through more than 10 sets of scrubs per shift, especially those working in 'covid zones' who have to change more than usual to avoid spreading the virus.

Ashleigh said within the first two days of setting up For The Love Of Scrubs, an army of volunteers made 260 sets of scrubs for their local hospitals.

They will be posted directly to launderettes at 20 hospitals around the UK, where they are washed before being used to ensure coronavirus is not passed on through them.

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Again, it shouldn't have been allowed to get to this stage, should it?

We're not disagreeing with each other about the lack of kit. We're disagreeing over whether the Government should be blamed for it. The demand for scrubs has increased because doctors who don't normally wear scrubs are now wanting to wear scrubs. In response to their requests, their hospital trusts immediately ordered more, but those orders were delayed because the demand is high and supply chains are interrupted. When that was reported to the Government, and to the public, the Government responded by asking other suppliers to start making scrubs, and the public responded by getting out their sewing machines. If you want to blame the Government for not anticipating the problem earlier than the hospital trusts or the doctors did, then that's up to you, but I don't. They rely on the NHS to tell them what they need, and they responded to the request for more kit when they got it. Short of waving a magic wand I don't know what else you expect them to do.

I am afraid I am baffled by the idea that it should have come as a surprise that staff who didn't normally wear scrubs would now want to wear scrubs during a pandemic.

I can't get my head around that at all. It's as obvious as, "everyone will want to buy pasta". So yes, I will be blaming them for their incompetence. It's up to you if you want to be generous, but I don't think it requires psychic abilities or a magic wand to predict.

I read this earlier. Italics my own, and it echoes comments from many other people during this crisis.

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According to emails and more than a dozen scientists interviewed by Reuters, the government issued no requests to labs for assistance with staff or testing equipment until the middle of March, when many abruptly received requests to hand over nucleic acid extraction instruments, used in testing. An executive at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford said he could have carried out up to 1,000 tests per day from February. But the call never came.

“You would have thought that they would be bashing down the door,” said the executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. By April 5, Britain had carried out 195,524 tests, in contrast to at least 918,000 completed a week earlier in Germany.

Nor was there an effective effort to expand the supply of ventilators. The Department of Health told Reuters in a statement that the government started talking to manufacturers of ventilators about procuring extra supplies in February. But it was not until March 16, after it was clear supplies could run out, that Johnson launched an appeal to industry to help ramp up production.

Charles Bellm, managing director of Intersurgical, a global supplier of medical ventilation products based outside London, said he has been contacted by more than a dozen governments around the world, including France, New Zealand and Indonesia. But there had been no contact from the British government. “I find it somewhat surprising, I have spoken to a lot of other governments,” he said.

Countering such criticism, Hancock, the health minister, said the government is on track to deliver about 10,000 more ventilators in the coming weeks. One reason Britain was behind some countries on testing, he said, was the absence of a large diagnostics industry at the outbreak of the epidemic. “We didn’t have the scale.”

Full article from Reuters:
www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-path-speci-idUSKBN21P1VF?fbclid=IwAR3Rob-fzU7LwdSoUSnGVe4wyE37418LzABbZklsldf1Tudsh6p5PsvQlmU

Order them from where? There's unprecedented demand from every country on the planet and huge competition for resources.

This is the kind of situation where quick reactions are important, where using contacts we already had (EU) could help, where swift responses to local manufacturers and cooperation with them from the start would have been really helpful. There is a good deal of evidence that firms contacted govt at an early stage and never got an answer.

As for why didn't we try to cooperate with the EU, when questioned on this, some government ministers lied (never got the email- after British govt reps had attended 8 meetings!), others chose to tell the truth which appears to have been not "we had a more effective route" but "we could not cooperate with them as they were the EU". Or else they lied to.

Everything I read suggests the government mobilised halfway through March. For example...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-52082248

29th March.
UK clothes makers say the government has wasted time in ordering personal protective equipment for NHS staff.

Fashion and textile firms believe they could have begun making gowns and masks for front-line workers 10 days ago.

"The government is dragging its heels and it is really, really frustrating," said Kate Hills from Make it British, a trade group.

But the government says it is working "around the clock" to provide support to the NHS and social care staff.

However, factories are receiving calls directly from local hospitals saying "can you make us anything, we are desperate for any protective equipment, anything that you can provide", according to Make it British.

Image copyrightMAKE IT BRITISH

Ms Hills believes the government does not have the expertise it needs to source the products from UK firms because it is so used to importing goods from overseas.

"Everyone in the whole world is looking for the PPE [personal protective equipment]," she says. "We need to look at local suppliers and mobilise supply here."

Two weeks ago, the Cabinet Office distributed a survey to manufacturers asking what protective equipment they would be able to make.

Factories responded, yet the government has so far failed to get in touch or order anything from them, they say.

Meanwhile, staff in hospitals have complained they lack basic protective gear such as face masks or medical scrubs, with some evenbuying their own.

Make it British said that some senior medical staff in the UK had even resorted to paying cash for face masks sold on the black market in China.

But, speaking on Sunday, Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said the government "will not stop" to get personal protective equipment to frontline workers.

"We simply cannot and should not ask people to be on the frontline without the right protective equipment," he said at the daily Downing Street press conference.

He said 42.8 million gloves, 142,000 gowns and 2.3 million pairs of eye protectors have been delivered to 58,000 "health care settings", including hospitals and GP surgeries.

Like many sectors, the NHS and its suppliers have relied on imported stocks of that equipment from factories in Pakistan, India or Bangladesh, where it is cheaper to produce.

But as those countries fight the coronavirus pandemic themselves, the factories have closed and local hospitals are buying all the stock they can.

'Waste of time'

Tamara Cincik - a consultant, and adviser to a Parliamentary group for the textile and fashion industry - said the government needed to act more quickly.

"Waiting for supplies from China, Turkey, Egypt is a waste of time, prices will escalate and ultimately run out," she said.

The British Medical Association also warned that the deaths of frontline medical staff in Italy "served as an urgent warning" to British government over the supply of PPE equipment.

In response to the UK shortage, manufacturers across the country have come forward to tell the government they can make the scrubs, gowns and masks that nurses and doctors have said they need

But there is a complex supply chain behind the production of those items.

It is not just the job of one single factory. The process requires spinners, weavers, finishers, cutters and sewers.

It is likely the garments will then need to be washed and sterilised. But Make it British says it has the supply chain in place and that it is just waiting for the go-ahead from government.

One of the UK's biggest fashion brands, which did not want to speak publicly, said its staff had fielded calls from local hospitals and nurses who are desperate for protective supplies.

Jenny Holloway runs Fashion-Enter, a garment manufacturer in North London. Like many factories, it has seen orders from normal retail clients collapse.

They are currently working on a small order of masks for a private client. But Ms Holloway said she had applied to the Cabinet Office because her firm would love to work for the NHS.

"We have lots of single ladies and disabled staff. We can furlough them but they want to work and be part of this effort."

On Saturday, business secretary Alok Sharma said the government was easing the restrictions on those who could supply protective gear to the NHS.

The government would not comment on the discussions with manufacturers.