O/T Cumbria and the virus

[Sakhalin Shrimp]

I notice how you don't mention Germany or all the other countries who have been pro-active and have significant less death rate than the uk.

As for the death rate, do I need to explain about ONS Figures /Average death rates etc etc, the figure they give out is know where near the amount of people who have died.a

Just asking again, who’s checking other countries figures?
Is every country using the same calculation of all settings or are some just counting hospital deaths as we were initially?

[Phil Anderer]

I notice how you don't mention Germany or all the other countries who have been pro-active and have significant less death rate than the uk.

As for the death rate, do I need to explain about ONS Figures /Average death rates etc etc, the figure they give out is know where near the amount of people who have died.a

Just asking again, who’s checking other countries figures?
Is every country using the same calculation of all settings or are some just counting hospital deaths as we were initially?

To be fair, even if Germany are only counting hospital deaths they've done startlingly better than us, US, Italy, Spain, France and, worst of all (on the basis of declared deaths as a percentage of population), Belgium. I think the time and place for an inquest over the government's performance is when we're through this, rather than distracting when there's still a lot of work to be done. I do have to say it's very easy to snipe from the opposition benches when you're not being tested and haven't had to make the decisions yourself, but at the same time I do think there are mistakes that have been made. It'll be 2 years at least before we get a real picture of where those errors were made.

[Posh]

I notice how you don't mention Germany or all the other countries who have been pro-active and have significant less death rate than the uk.

As for the death rate, do I need to explain about ONS Figures /Average death rates etc etc, the figure they give out is know where near the amount of people who have died.a

Just asking again, who’s checking other countries figures?
Is every country using the same calculation of all settings or are some just counting hospital deaths as we were initially?

This is absolutely the right question as this is how our government are trying to get away with their performance. "We showed you comparable death rates with other European countries because they... errr... weren't comparable", when actually it was the awful PR for the government of saying every day how bad they were performing.

So, how do you compare. There is one rock solid piece of information, which is the above normal death rate. Basically you take the average number of deaths in a country over the past 10 years for any given day, week or month and then show how much the number of deaths has risen over that period. Unless you're stealing bodies and falsifying records then this is rock solid data and this is what the Financial Times, Economist, New York Times etc. are using.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... gures.html

https://www.ft.com/content/40fc8904-feb ... 3e48bbc034

The simple fact is we are at the top for this, its horrendous and it can't be spun by politicians.

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[Brian S]

Political point scoring in the middle of a pandemic. Really? Let's just hope we never have to find out how anyone else would have handled it.

[KenH]

Hardly surprising non covid deaths have increased - the NHS closed down for everyone else. I know two cancer patients who've had their treatment cancelled and have received no contact/information from the oncology dept. One is now very ill - whereas had the treatment not been cancelled, there was high chance of recovery. Did the other European healthcare systems shut down like the NHS did?

[Keith]

does the NHS have it’s own procurement department to control/ monitor stocks of PPE?

The last Labour government set up a central 'emergency pandemic' store of PPE & other essential items. A pandemic was listed as the highest risk the UK faced, above terrorism & war. Unfortunately, once 'swine flu' & 'bird flu' didn't become that pandemic, government took their eye well and truly off the ball. Once set up, the structure was that as items got close to the end of their shelf life, they were supposed to be fed in to the separate, general NHS system. Instead, some items were left completely (not one needle or syringe in date) or items were fed in to the general system but not replaced.

I'm not one for bashing the government's handling of the crisis for ideological purposes, in fact, I've said elsewhere that I thought they had done a generally reasonable job. But their response to PPE was diabolical and a failure to quarantine people coming in to the UK was simply crazy.

The Isle of Man is doing reasonably well. We began mandatory quarantining in March and closed our borders a week later. As a result, we're now loosening our restrictions (groups of up to ten people can meet from Wednesday). Our number of 'live' cases is dropping and we had zero new cases again today.

Isle of Man's emergency PPE stock appears to have held up well.

In the UK, in general, normal PPE stocks would be maintained by individual Trusts I would think, but I don't know for sure.

[Sakhalin Shrimp]

does the NHS have it’s own procurement department to control/ monitor stocks of PPE?

The last Labour government set up a central 'emergency pandemic' store of PPE & other essential items. A pandemic was listed as the highest risk the UK faced, above terrorism & war. Unfortunately, once 'swine flu' & 'bird flu' didn't become that pandemic, government took their eye well and truly off the ball. Once set up, the structure was that as items got close to the end of their shelf life, they were supposed to be fed in to the separate, general NHS system. Instead, some items were left completely (not one needle or syringe in date) or items were fed in to the general system but not replaced.

I'm not one for bashing the government's handling of the crisis for ideological purposes, in fact, I've said elsewhere that I thought they had done a generally reasonable job. But their response to PPE was diabolical and a failure to quarantine people coming in to the UK was simply crazy.

The Isle of Man is doing reasonably well. We began mandatory quarantining in March and closed our borders a week later. As a result, we're now loosening our restrictions (groups of up to ten people can meet from Wednesday). Our number of 'live' cases is dropping and we had zero new cases again today.

Isle of Man's emergency PPE stock appears to have held up well.

In the UK, in general, normal PPE stocks would be maintained by individual Trusts I would think, but I don't know for sure.

Thanks Keith, regarding the feeding stock back into the general NHS system, who would be in charge of that? Cameron/May/Boris or some NHS manager not doing his job?

[morecambegeek]

or some NHS manager not doing his job?

#everydaysexism

[KenH]

Thanks Keith, regarding the feeding stock back into the general NHS system, who would be in charge of that? Cameron/May/Boris or some NHS manager not doing his job?

Our neighbour is a branch practice manager at one of the local GP surgery groups. She's been giving us "out of date" stuff for years. Boxes of gloves, masks, sticking plasters, cotton wool, disposable sick bowls, hand gel, etc. Despite stock rotation being a pretty simple activity, it seems a very low priority in the NHS. Really how hard is it to put new deliveries at the back of the shelf and bring forward the older stock to the front. Supermarkets mostly manage it as do cafes, restaurants, etc.

[redrobo]

On a far wider scale than just this virus. I've often questioned if our Civil Servants are at times fit for purpose.

It's all well and good blaming Governments etc but it's the CS who carry out the day to day instructions passed down the line who are responsible for undertaking what appears on the face of it a simple logistical task.



Many, many years ago I worked in the admin department of BT and the amount of paper shuffling that went on to do what was basically a simple task (in this case filling out endless forms of the number of long distance calls made from the local exchange}. It was incredible the amount of paper work and endless form filling that went on throughout the department.

[Keith]

Thanks Keith, regarding the feeding stock back into the general NHS system, who would be in charge of that? Cameron/May/Boris or some NHS manager not doing his job?

I'm not entirely sure, but from what I can gather, this warehouse sat outside of the NHS, however who was responsible for stock rotation and feeding it in to the general system, I don't know. There was a Ch4 News report a few weeks ago which said that funding to replace stock had been refused by then government. It didn't say 'when' but the impression I got was around Cameron era, so presumably the then Health Minister? But that is a guess. Jeremy Hunt was interviewed recently and asked about the store. He answered very honestly, that he was aware of its existence, but just assumed it was working correctly. Which, to be fair, is probably a reasonable assumption for a Minister to make?

[Posh]

Political point scoring in the middle of a pandemic. Really? Let's just hope we never have to find out how anyone else would have handled it.

Well said. The government have been politicising it for weeks, rather than leading on it. If they'd put as much effort in defending care homes as they have Dominic Cummings, who knows how much lower death rates would have been?

[HALMA 1983]

Political point scoring in the middle of a pandemic. Really? Let's just hope we never have to find out how anyone else would have handled it.

Well said. The government have been politicising it for weeks, rather than leading on it. If they'd put as much effort in defending care homes as they have Dominic Cummings, who knows how much lower death rates would have been?

Edited due to being sick and tired of politics but mainly because other recent events take precedence over this.

[Brian S]

A week's silence then an opportunity for Labour to gain from a situation comes along and my comment's used as the road in to another dig.

This forum's no longer for me.