And of course people are promptly complaining about it not being enough, why aren't they getting road tax rebates, etc.

Turkish PPE flight: only 'slim' chance goods will arrive in UK today

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ve-in-uk-today

UK’s scientific advice on coronavirus to be secret until after pandemic

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/u...emic-35fwl8rn9

In the drawer with the results of the probe in to Russian interference and Boris grant misappropriation no doubt.

Ya dancer, £25 per car, £50 for me! But on a less selfish note, maybe a sign that other companies who have found the virus is making them more money than usual will act to help support the country.

Hopefully the sensible companies will see some of the PR disasters others have had and want to make sure their customers stay.

Then, "For the Love of Scrubs" is a UK campaign to have volunteers sew uniform for NHS staff.

https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/21/coron...home-12587464/

At least selling off the NHS to the US seems less likely now.

You sure?

I mean look at how bad it was being run, couldn’t even supply PPE for its staff, didn’t have enough ventilators or even beds....

And sadly I am not joking.

Any evidence there are not enough ventilators or beds?
https://www.hsj.co.uk/service-design...027398.article

I suspect you are missing the point.

What a surprise

I have tried rereading it, but twitter is not the easiest to sort through. I still think this has the aura of fake news. There appears to be no objective facts that one can check. There seems to be no actual link to the government, just claims that it is with no evidence to back it up. Most of these things on twitter turn out to be nonsense. But the author claims to have lots of data that he can't share, so either it will come to nothing because there was nothing there or perhaps we'll get some real facts.

Very likely, I am not good at understanding statements that are not saying what they appear to be saying.

Mate!

Can you give any idea as to what's actually happening there? I do not believe a bar of the official numbers, but there should be some signs locally.

And another country whose president is making an ass of himself, supporting protestors and trying to downplay the disease, the Trump of the south, Bolsonaro.

What are the odds he actually has the disease?

And how many people did he infect?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN2210V1

New Zealand and its government are being widely praised and for good reason. But why not Australia and Latvia? This table of deaths per million;

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...n-inhabitants/

Confirmed deaths/population/deaths per million

Australia - 67/24.99/2.68
New Zealand -13/4.89/2.66
Latvia - 5/1.93/2.6

Why do we never hear about those countries apparent success?

Hancock tonight announcing the trial of a vaccine didn't even fool himself. He knows now that he is the fall guy, the Patsy for Boris who will only emerge when it is safe to do so and he can bask in some kind of glory.

Because NZ has a much more photogenic leader?

This is one reason why closing the territory anomaly thread is bitter to me - I've been including them all the way through.

Top effort considering they have land borders, unlike NZ, Aussie & Iceland.

Why would you sell it to the US though? We don't have enough PPE or beds either. Seems like it would be a bad deal.

So, they've sent one plane that can carry about 30 tons of cargo to pick up 84 tons of PPE and it's been sitting there like a letter in suspicious handwriting saying the dog ate the homework since Sunday!


Turns out the government announced PPE would arrive from Turkey on Sunday and then on Sunday they ordered it?

That's some impressive Amazon Prime account they must have!

But despite my asking in what specific way was the contact tracing process incompetent, you just come back with generalities. You seem to think that the government is incompetent, therefore those health care staff who carry out contact tracing are incompetent. What are the criteria for competence you judge contact tracing on? What is the evidence that those carrying out the contact tracing in the UK failed to meet your standards?

The state of Kerala has one a commendable job in arresting the spread by ensuring proper quarantining, source tracking, monitoring, medical support and also ensuring that the general populace have not been indisposed by the quarantine. For instance, even my parents received a free provisions packet comprising a months supply of essential food and hygiene products. Since they did not have any use for it as they had already stocked up and are affluent enough to get their own provisions, they returned it and asked that it be given to those who actually needed it. Same story in the neighborhood. As a state with one of the first cases reported as early as January, and the largest numbers in early March, the state authorities have been quick to bring it under control. As of last week, there have been only two deaths a score of new cases reported. They tried a partial lifting of quarantine and realised that the people lacked the self discipline to maintain proper precautions so restrictions were reintroduced. Manipur and a couple of other states in the north east have also been quite successful in arresting the spread with limited loss of life.
The state of Maharashtra has begun taking proactive steps to arrest development and ensure the safety and wellbeing of its populace. While the effect will take time to show. Most of the northern states though are not faring very well, particularly those governed by the BJP. In Telangana where I stay (a southern state) haphazard quarantine with little backing of medical strategies does not seem fo be helping as much ad it should. Number of cases are still increasing though at a slower rate. Rumor has it that the chief minister is relying more on his astrologer for advice than medical experts.
The BJP seems to be more interested in using the epidemic to target muslims and dissidents and also create panic in non BJP states. Non BJP states are receiving very little aid from the centre and the central government seems more keen on finding ways for their corporate cronies to monetize the pandemic. Yesterday, a number of journalists and anti CAA activists were arrested.
For numbers of cases:
https://www.covid19india.org/

Thanks for all that - I'm pleased you're in the smartest place!

How believable are those numbers? The mass exodus and the virus being in the slums had me convinced it would be showing much more widely by now. I'm sure hiding a few hundred dead in the slums wouldn't be too hard, but if the numbers are wildly under, there would be some signs, I expect.

It might just be earlier in the chain and the early data showing no cases was accurate.

I a m not currently residing in the "smartest place", my parents are (and I am really thankful for that). The numbers are the most reliable available, unfortunately they do not include testing rates. Kerala and Maharashtra have the highest testing rates while Gujarat, UP and MP have the lowest ( the last state got a BJP government through a near coup facilitated by a delay in declaring a lockdown for Covid by the centre). Since the main source and spread of the disease is among the upper castes and affluent, and as casual casteism and untouchability is still a thing, slum dwellers have not been as affected. They are more prone to starvation deaths and deaths from other ailments as government hospitals and public health centers are inundated with Covid cases. Another group that is in grave danger are the frontline medical staff with lack of PPE. There have also been cases of them being evicted from their residences and or harrassed by neighbours. In one instance, a community in Tamil Nadu refused burial of a doctor who died of Covid. The police had to intervene and arrests had to be made to ensure the doctor received some dignity atleast in death.

Again I have been clear where I believe the incompetence in leading is.

I wouldn't claim to be sure of anything. But Johnson's speech where he praised the NHS in general and some doctors and nurses specifically for saving his life seemed genuine. I believe this makes him less likely to gut the NHS for profit.

Furthermore, IIRC it was Matt Hancock who at the start of all this said that the situation would have to be looked at (or words to that effect) when talking about changes that had been made to the NHS which left it unprepared for this.

Of course it's easy to say that the Tories are proven liars and dismiss it all out of hand, but I do honestly think that this crisis has hammered home to them that it is actually a vial service that has a real purpose, rather than a commodity that should be used for political and personal gain. I genuinely think that they will be less likely to harm the NHS and more likely to push it in the right direction after the dust settles.

If for no other reason than that there's a considerable amount of goodwill from the public towards the NHS at the moment, including from the right-wing press, and attacking it after it's saved so many constituents or friends and relatives of constituents would be a risky strategy from anybody who is interested in retaining power.

An alternative take: https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-away-patients

That's a false dichotomy, but I'm glad you've finally got more or less to where I was when I posted it.

Profit. And winning the political goal of severing ties with the EU.

It's not about that.

For the NHS and patients, sure. Not for the people who would profit from selling it off.

But, as I say above, I consider it less likely now that the Tories have realised that the NHS serves an actual purpose beyond generating profit for private firms, and while it's so popular with the general public.

No, that's not quite right. When they said it was on its way they hadn't yet asked the Turkish government to help facilitate the export. The PPE was not ordered from the Turkish government, and they were only asked to help after there were problems with the export.

I don’t disagree, it’s just sometimes the cynic in me can’t help it. I said when I watched his recovery speech that I thought for once he was being sincere. So yes I think we may see at least funding for the NHSs increasing significantly again, but that doesn’t help with all the added costs the governments of the last 20 years have added into the system. One dreads to say it but especially in England, Wales and NI the NHSs do need a reorganisation to remove the so called “market” as much as possible.

Unlike the far right crackpots with whom he is surrounded, Johnson is not wedded to any ideology other than "whatever's best for Boris Johnson". I think there is indeed a real possibility that his close brush with death will change his attitude to the NHS.

Maybe, and maybe he'll keep his changed attitude for a few weeks, or even months. Then again, as soon as the US insists on access to the NHS as a prerequisite for a post no-deal Brexit trade deal - he'll throw the NHS back under the bus in a heartbeat IMO.

So this seems to imply there is no shortage of beds, or ventilators with hundreds unused in the Nightingale hospital, and as I referenced some London ICUs less than half full (Though the fullest at 90%). Since there are beds and ventilators at established ICUs why would hospitals want to send experienced ICU nurses (which I accept will be in relatively short supply) to the Nightingale hospital. The usual process in this situation would be for a nearly full ICU to transfer patients to a neighbouring staffed ICU with empty beds. My criticism would be the opposite, are patients being sent to the nightingale to address a political agenda because there would appear to be little clinical need to do so? It would be more effective to keep ICU nurses in established ICUs whilst there is occupancy in established units.

Slightly off the point, but I read (BBC) that there are approximately 1,000,000 UK citizens that the government has been involved with having to repatriate. Many from relatively high risk areas such as India. I understand HMG charges a fixed rate of £600 fo flights home. I was surprised at the number, nearly 2% of the UK population. Quite a considerable challenge negotiating with local authorities, organising taxis and linking flights. I think that this is quite an impressive exercise. I know there has been criticisms of how quickly the government has been able to achieve this, but I would like to learn more about what the challenges are in retrieving 1,000,000 scattered round the world.

Although I hate to spoil your comment with facts, care homes are not part of the NHS, so staff are not paid on NHS salary scales. Most are private organisations and so can pay their staff whatever they want. (Which given the nature of capitalism will be the least they can get away with I guess.) Some will be local authority owned, job for job, local authorities tend to pay less than the NHS, but will be on some sort of national scheme.

FWIW all NHS staff except doctors are on a single pay scale, with the point on PayScale dependent on things like managerial and clinical responsibility.
https://www.nhsemployers.org/pay-pen...-scales/hourly
Doctors work a longer basic week than other NHS staff, and if they were paid on the same scale as the rest of the NHS staff their pay would mostly go up! (Even the most junior doctor takes a degree of clinical responsibility that shoots them right up the pay scale.)

An RAF aircraft has landed in the UK with a delayed delivery of personal protective equipment (PPE) from Turkey amid a row over a shortage in the NHS.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52378491

I believe it was reorganisation that Hancock was talking about. I wish I could track down what he said exactly, but it was a month or two ago, and I may have heard it on a podcast.

The point is that the article you posted cited the Nightingale hospital being empty as evidence that ICUs are coping. The article I posted suggests that the Nightingale hospital is turning patients away because it is understaffed.

I've been waiting for an appointment to get an ultrasound on a large lump in my leg, I got a letter today telling me that I won't be getting one for the foreseeable future. I'm pretty sure it's just a souvenir of a bike accident years back, and I do understand why this is a lower priority at the moment, but, well, big lump... And even if I'm lucky other people in a similar situation won't be.