Hypocrisy of the general population

[cdtaylornats]

I keep seeing people bemoaning that the government hasn't got enough PPE.

However 6 months ago if the government had announced it was buying 7 million items of single-use plastic essentially the same people would have followed St. Greta in a march to Westminster against plastic.

Dammed if they do, dammed if they don’t

No win situation really 😳

6 months ago, they didn't know they were going to need it.

Sorry but in 2016 they knew they were going to need it. It was a conscious decision to ignore the recommendations of the pandemic exercise report.

Lots of medical equipment is single use.

And demonising Greta Thunberg completely devalues any point you might be trying to make. She's a young person with a perceived cause. No need to froth.

No, in 2016 they knew a simulation of a future flu pandemic would see an NHS under-resourced.

It is very hard for a government to spend money on theoretical happenings. People complain.

In Edinburgh in 1980ish a lot of snow fell and hung about for weeks. People said "why don't you have snowblowers" the answer was you don't by £40,000 machines for a situation that hadn't happened in 30 years..

Lots of medical equipment is single use and that is something that needs looked at - there seems little point in saving us from a pandemic if the oceans become choked by plastic.

On the other hand worldwide economic inactivity has shown the planet cleans itself remarkably well.

It really wasn’t hard to prepare with business continuity plans and a clear strategy.
They chose instead to close hospitals and reduce the number of beds, and particularly ITU beds, to fewer per capita than almost any other developed country. They chose to remove nurse bursaries and reduce intake size for nurse training.
They then decided not to follow international PPE standards for staff.
They chose to be reliant on 30% agency staff in London, who need to work whether they feel well or not because they need the money.
Hunt lost many junior doctors because he forced through new contracts.

How much better if some of those closed community beds were retail reduce accident and emergency pressures but also able to be rapidly transformed into isolation units at first sign of a problem? We didn’t put any entry testing or restrictions in place until far too late.
We could have safeguarded large areas of the country by having regional lockdown from first case. If our look at harder to reach areas (islands particularly) they have a much lower incidence. The loss could have been minimised by early, robust actions.
Instead Cheltenham went ahead and now Cheltenham is badly affected compared to other areas outside the big cities.

Apologies autocorrect. Retail has nothing to do with retaining beds.

Snow isn’t exactly the same level of risk as a viral pandemic. At the time it was based on SARS and MERS mortality rates. Thank goodness the mortality for this is much, much lower. Although the figures that we hear on the BBC not a true reflection of the disease, obviously.

Most governments have large stocks of 'stuff' to be used in any emergency, and every so often run reconstructions to test readiness. The results are analysed are recommendations made. Then stocks of whatever are adjusted accordingly, there's no secrecy but the public wouldn't be aware of it. It would not be an issue.

The reconstruction run in 2016 made recommendations about stock levels and Health Secretary Hunt declined to implement them.

Cherry is right, and we started this pandemic with 40,000 nurses short. In February Professor Helen Ward of Imperial College warned the government of the pandemic. When it was ignored, she told her staff to go home and self isolate. In March the PM told the country he was shaking hands with everyone and the British people should do the same.

Why don't they re-cycle PPE after proper cleaning procedures?