Five Weeks Of Lies

[teacake44]

For five weeks now Matt Hancock has insisted that there wasn't a shortage of PPE, nearly every hospital and care home in the country was saying there was, he also insisted that it was a logistical problem only, and that was with 20 thousand army personal drivers ready to deliver. When the army joined us, we were told, this is what the army are brilliant at ( logistics ) ?

Today he says he wished he had a magic wand to produce PPE. When will Mr Hancock face up to the fact that the UK was oh so slow off the starting block, and the cost of that, was peoples lives, especially NHS lives. When will he start telling the truth, ( never).

They've also been telling us that we don't need to wear a face mask,(now their thinking about it), but waiting for the science to tell them. Common sense tells me that face masks can help stop the spread of the virus, if they didn't, then the rest of the world wouldn't be wearing them, or nurses wearing them in hospital or care homes, ( when they can get them) We all know about the top of the range mask that they need to wear in ITC, but the rest of the nurses are wearing bog standard face masks.

There are now UK manufactures pulling out all the stops to produce PPE, they say they have be ignored by Matt Hancock for weeks now, even after making it known to him that they could make what was required. How many more lives need to be lost before they supply the nation with face masks like every other country is doing.

I've changed my mind about Mr Hancock,( give someone a chance to get sorted,) he's had five weeks, and all we've had is five weeks of lies. Whatever advice he or the government give out, I for one will take with a pinch of salt, and do my own thing.

[Old_Geezer]

The WHO said masks weren't much use. Beware of trusting common sense, it isn't that common, and doesn't always make sense when more is known.

[Spicerack]

Don't think everyone else in the world are wearing face masks. You keep saying this, it's not true.

[fiction-factory]

Common sense doesn't tell us we should wear a face mask (unless we use them properly, replace them regularly, wash hands, maintain social distance) especially when the WHo and the experts were saying they don't. And of course if it reduces the supply to care staff.
The process of organising PPE has fallen short of what we needed but generally the PPE is there- we only here about those times when somewhere runs short. It's probably the same in other countries. There just weren't stocks of billions of gowns and masks etc across the world.
Maybe a bit more honesty might have helped with hindsight if they did know that shortfalls would still be an issue at times

[fiction-factory]

D'oh- we only HEAR about

[fiction-factory]

You may want to read this Teacake.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/879221/Coronavirus__COVID-19__-_personal_protective_equipment__PPE__plan.pdf

As of 10th April "Since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak, we have delivered over 761 million items of PPE to ensure our frontline is protected.1 This has included 158 million masks, 1 million gowns, 135 million aprons and 360 million pairs of gloves.

Not enough, but probably not too far off what was needed.

[diddlydo]

Matt Hancock is so inept and incompetent - even Boris must be squirming in disbelief at Chequers at his daily press conferences. Get rid of him.

[Theland]

He gives politics a bad name.

[douglas9401]

Common sense would suggest that we all go around wafting fans to keep the virus on the move, stopping it from landing and infecting us.

Get all Three Little Maids From School on it's ass.

Common sense.

[jim360]

The Public Enquiry that follows this will be brutal.

[teacake44]

China must think the British government are stupid, I'm inclined to also believe it. What government would hand out million of pounds for a test kits without first acquiring samples to test if they even work. Ruddy idiots. Now they say they are hoping to get the money back. In your dreams Mr Hancock.

[Spicerack]

You might think or hope that, jim. You can't know it.

[fiction-factory]

If the press had reported we'd been offered millions of kits and we were going to hang around testing them for a few weeks the government would have been criticised then for being dilatory with people saying "no we need them now".

But I agree with jim about the enquiry afterwards

[jim360]

It depends what you mean by "hope". I don't hope that people's political careers are wrecked. I *do* hope that the many clear lessons from this, some of which were obvious even without hindsight, are learned for future inevitable pandemic threats.

There's no political spinning here. I've said I support the Government and I stick by that. But I support the Government by following their guidance and by criticising it when it falls short of what it needs to do. Moreover, it's also clear that these are long-standing issues that Governments of any colour have signally failed to address. The Tories drew the short straw here in that regard, but, rest assured, a Labour Government (especially a new one) would have fared little to no better and would have been equally deserving of scathing and well-earned criticism.

[fiction-factory]

It'll be interesting to see whether many countries will be judged ultimately to have handled this well.

[Spicerack]

I'm sure lessons will be learned with hindsight. Not sure pointing fingers with hindsight is very useful.

[jim360]

Oh, and one more thing: the entire world, save perhaps a mere handful of countries, has failed in its approach to this. It's been disjoint, uncoordinated, argumentative, ineffective, slow, and any other of a host of negative adjectives I can pluck from a thesaurus. The UK in that regard is far from unique, and is far from the worst culprit. At least its failures, as I see them, have been honest, from a Government that's overstretched and underprepared rather than a Government filled with strongmen *** incapable of appreciating the threat, and incapable of caring even if they did. Witness the disgusting sight of Bolsonaro firing his Health Minister for caring about people's health, or China's attempts early on to suppress and threaten those warning of the danger. The leader in Belarus's repeated denials. Orban's brazen attempt to use the medical threat to seize dictatorial powers. And so on.

[teacake44]

22.01 ff with respect, Hancock himself told the public that they were testing kits, at one of the daily briefings way back, what they didn't tell us is that they had already bought them If he worked in industry and paid out this sort of money out, he would be up the road in no time.

[fiction-factory]

I think the government has tried to sort all this out by itself, maybe because (like many countries) it underestimated the size of the future problem and felt it had to be seen to be in charge, but it should have adopted a more cross-party approach and allocated more responsibility to NHS managers- eg made it clear in Jan/Feb that a few £ billion would be put aside for PPE and tests but the managers, not Matt Hancock, should be responsible for purchasing and logistics, or a cross party group should have been given that responsibility

[douglas9401]

If anyone imagines for a second that Armani clad spivs are going to take any criticism for the fast developing shambles they're deluded in the extreme.

All possible measures will have been taken etc. etc.

[Theland]

My name is Hancock not Goebells you know,
I'm the face and the voice of assurance,
And through this pandemic we'll go,
With true Brit perseverance.

We had enough masks for every poor nurse,
And every poor sister and doc,
I could never let things get worse,
My name is Matt Hancock.

But the staff really did not play the game,
And they all used too many masks,
They should have known to use the same
Masks for hundreds of tasks.

My name is Matt Hancock, and heres how it goes,
I'll face up!to seeing the press,
But I seem to be getting a longer nose,
And its causing me some distress.