Something Very Wrong

[teacake44]

We blow our trumpet about having two of the biggest aircraft carriers QEs, and the F-35 stealth fighter jets on board, along with the best high tec equipment ever, at a cost of around six billion. Yet we're on our hands and knees begging China and Turkey for basic PPE to protect the very people we need to care for us should we fall victim to the virus.
Just goes to show how useless arms are against a germ. Still can't get my head round why we have the ability to produce such mind blowing equipment, but a sewing machine, and a little labour is so difficult to come by.

[mushroom25]

a sewing machine in Dhaka, operated by someone who gets paid a fraction of the UK minimum wage, can produce garments far cheaper than anywhere in the UK. not difficult to come by, just economic reality.

(we didn't produce the F35 btw)

[Prudie]

The conglomerate of teams and companies that got that defence equipment built will have been planning it for years and undoubtedly made many procurement errors along the way - and they, on the whole, knew what they were doing. This virus situation is a complete unknown and has hit us very quickly. I'm not sure anyone would have been better in trying to combat it, nobody has the experience. One thing's for sure, I doubt us lot on AB would have done any better.

[teacake44]

Every thing we've bought form abroad, test kits/ PPE has been useless and expensive to the country. buy cheap, buy twice. simple as.

[teacake44]

Not that this is has far as I know, but germ warfare has been on the cards for years.

[mushroom25]

// buy cheap, buy twice. simple as. //

willing to bet someone in NHS Procurement neglected to tell the supplier what standard the gowns were required to meet - and probably didn't involve their compliance colleagues in the process.

[teacake44]

Buy something before seeing samples of the product, and pay up front, the chances are you will get scammed.

[johnny.5]

"Every thing we've bought form abroad, test kits/ PPE has been useless and expensive to the country. buy cheap, buy twice. simple as."

what evidence have you of this ?

[woofgang]

teacake how do you know that samples were not seen and tested?

[Theland]

In 2003 in Iraq, six military policemen were murdered by a mob.
They each had only fifty rounds of ammunition, no radios, and no back up.
Meanwhile at home, our politicians were claiming expenses for duck islands, moats, taxis and second homes, along with everything that they hoped would satisfy their greed.
A shortage of PPE comes as no surprise.

[teacake44]

What evidence do you need when its ALL been rejected. Has for the expensive bit, as we've not been told that the millions spent on duff tests kits has not been refunded, then you can be sure it has not, or Hancock would have been bragging about it, same goes for all this PPE, you won't hear about it again. And you won't hear of how much it cost to go and get it either. Sweep a few more million under the carpet, slap happy politicians.

[fiction-factory]

What's the alternative?
Feel free to start sewing some and set up a business.
We, like most countries, were desperate, and I think if Hancock had said "yes we have someone offering us some test kits and gowns but we'd like to spend a few days to fly over there and test them all before we decide to order them, even though that risks them being sold to some other desperate country while we are thinking about it" I can think of some people on here who'd have gone mad at Hancock for being too cautious

[fiction-factory]

>What evidence do you need when its ALL been rejected.

So you are saying every single item we have ordered from abroad has been rejected and we don't make our own? Where did we get our stocks from then?

[teacake44]

Before he ordered those kits, he himself kept telling us all that a unreliable kit was a bad thing to have, and they wouldn't have any such tests until they proved reliable. He's told that many porkies since this whole problem started.

[fiction-factory]

Yes, that's why we didn't use the bad test.

[teacake44]

16.33 Ha ha, that's just it we haven't. that's why you have dead NHS staff. But don't forget we were all assured that the NHS was well prepared at the very beginning.

[Zacs-Master]

It’s not just the UK having problems, tea cake:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/german-doctors-pose-naked-in-protest-at-ppe-shortages

[MartinMillar]

Don’t you worry your pretty little head over it, go back to thinking about kittens and puppies

[fiction-factory]

Did you know death rates (deaths per million) for NHS staff are in line with those for adults who don't work in NHS? It's a risk I wouldn't like to take but have you thought they might not all have got it from work- and they are often in a more vulnerable group having such a high proportion of BAME. Do you know what proportion of NHS workers on the Covid frontline are working without PPE because I doubt you do.

[maggiebee]

FF that's exactly what some folk are doing. Not the starting up a business part, but a friend is sewing scrubs for the largest teaching hospital in Dundee to be used in the Covid wards. Sews at home then delivers.

[fiction-factory]

That's good, maggiebee- hope they all pass the safety tests. I think we need factories here churning out hundreds of thousands though rather than lots of people making them for the NHS in their living rooms/garages. We have plenty of people looking for work