7 ms·

>If the government failed in its duty to protect the public, it also failed to protect staff in the NHS and social care by not delivering sufficient amounts of

>If the government failed in its duty to protect the public, it also failed to protect staff in the NHS and social care by not delivering sufficient amounts of personal protective equipment (PPE) of the right specification, again deviating from WHO advice The government is currently telling anyone who will listen that hospitals have all the PPE they need. However, local nurses and doctors are co-ordinating with volunteers to supply hand sewn PPE because they've been told they can only order PPE for the autumn. My mother is having material delivered and is hand-sewing PPE for the local hospital. Yet the government claims this isn't needed. So whilst this review is pretty damning, let's remember this situation is far from over. The fact that the PM's political advisor was in the scientific advisory meetings tells you all you need to know.

CodeGlitch 6y ago
The lack of PPE is a world-wide problem. The UK imported tonnes of the stuff for Turkey, but it was deemed to be not fit for purpose. Other countries have been asking for water-proof coats, that can be used as washable over-garments. I don't think any government is going to come out of this scoring 100%.
- makomk 6y ago
  It's a world-wide problem that the media in every Western country seem to be spinning as a unique failure of their government, often for cynical and stupid partisan reasons. Same with the global shortage of everything needed to carry out widespread coronavirus testing.
  - teruakohatu 6y ago
    Agreed. We had the same stories here in New Zealand, a country which currently has 40 active cases and less than one new case per day (7 day average). Yet we constantly hear how we are running out or going to run out of X or Y. More often than not I think it is logistics. Despite being a small country with centrally funded healthcare, the management of the health system is very decentralized geographically. So some doctor somewhere runs out of something, and runs straight to the media who are happy to run it on the homepage.
  - 7952 6y ago
    But then the government also politicise it by telling lies about there own performance. If there isn't enough PPE then they should admit to that.
- TLightful 6y ago
  The UK response has been terrible in all respects. Please don't sugar coat it.
  - Angostura 6y ago
    Nope, in many repects it's been pretty good. The respects that it has been very poor at was: * Being complacent about the country's testing capacity * stopping testing outside of hospitals once the containment phase was deemed over * PPE logistics. (tough global problem) * Support for care-homes. * Westminster's lack of care when it comes to coordinating the loosening of lock-down with the devolved countries It was arguable that they should have started lock-down earlier, but given that the number of acute beds in the NHS wasn't overwhelmed, that's arguable. If you look at stuff like the furlough scheme, support for individuals and freelancers so people don't suffer too much economically by being locked down, it a pretty good and swift response.
    - TLightful 6y ago
      So, "nope", but, actually, "yeah". * unclear and delayed response to pandemic, * frequent lying and misinformation put out by ministers, * considering herd immunity with no vaccine, The list goes on and on ... Yes, the furlough scheme, is decent. But smacks of just throwing money at the problem to save the day. It's not a coordinated response, and we'll be paying for it for generations. I repeat my assertion. Thanks.
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      Yet we still have the worst death rate in Europe. Why was Germany so much better off than us.
      - arethuza 6y ago
        Isn't the answer at the moment "we don't know" - I'm no fan of the current government but I don't think it helps blaming them before someone has analysed the relevant facts.
- yread 6y ago
  Letting Cheltenham festival (13-16 March) and other sport events go ahead with 10s thousands of people visiting should criminally punished
  - DanBC 6y ago
    In 2020 there were over 240,000 attenders for Cheltenham festival. The town has a population of about 100,000. Each day there were about 60,000 people at the track. People say the festival is outside so it's lower risk. That's ignoring the fact that people take trains to get here and they take buses to get from the town centre to the race track. They also meet in cafés, pubs and betting shops, although this year that was far quieter than previous years. Letting it go ahead was a baffling choice.
- DanBC 6y ago
  Lack of PPE is a world wide problem. That problem is made worse in the UK because of the lack of planning and political disruption to NHS infrastructure. See for example the fucking shambles of Movianto[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/coronavirus-uk-privately-run-ppe-stockpile-chaos-movianto https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/coronavirus-uk... We used to have NHS Logistics Authority, which changed to NHS Logistics, which was sold off to DHL Supply Chain (but managed by NHS Business Services Authority) and that was a disaster so we now have NHS Supply Chain. This waxing and waning of ideology (centralised control vs localism; NHS provision vs private provision) causes huge amounts of waste and harm in the NHS. It's also not as simple as tories=bad, labour=good. Selling it off to DHL happened under a Labour government; bringing it back under NHS Supply Chain happened under a Conservative government.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    "centralised control vs localism; NHS provision vs private provision" I've known some unscrupulous management consultants who would just recommend the opposite of what the current state was just to generate work.
Angostura 6y ago
My wife is a doctor in a London hospital, from what I gather, there is no particular PPE problem there at the moment.
- TLightful 6y ago
  I'm sure the situation is uneven. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52671814 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52671814
  - Angostura 6y ago
    I absolutely agree the situation is likely to be uneven. So this is a tough one. Most organisations will have general rules about not bad-mouthing the organisation publicly and running comms through s comms office. I absolutely agree people should be able to whistle-blow, but if you were managing a hospital you'd probably be wanting people not to go grumbling to the press.
    - TLightful 6y ago
      Transparency is key right now. Your "grumble" is likely someone else's "professional concern".
      - SiempreViernes 6y ago
        Arguably accuracy is more important than transparency, and people in general have a strong tendency to interpret a single account of "we're all out of PPE" as "there is a general shortage".
        TLightful 6y ago
        Agreed. This thread started with an n=1 datapoint of there being no shortages in London. Works both ways.
benmmurphy 6y ago
Is there any evidence that there has been excess deaths for NHS staff and that this has been caused by a lack of PPE? There is this study (https://www.hsj.co.uk/exclusive-deaths-of-nhs-staff-from-covid-19-analysed/7027471.article https://www.hsj.co.uk/exclusive-deaths-of-nhs-staff-from-cov...) that suggests deaths are amongst NHS staff are not over-represented. There is also a remarkable correlation between the cumulative UK deaths from covid-19 in the UK population and among health and social care workers. Accepting a lag of one to two days, the ratio is very close to 1:200 so the deaths among health and social care workers are approximately 0.5 per cent of all deaths, suggesting they are not overrepresented. That is the only study I could find that tried to look at excess deaths for NHS staff. I think their suggestion that deaths are not overrepresented is not backed by their data because it doesn't look like they are adjusting for difference in base mortality rates between NHS workers and the general population. However, considering how people are claiming lack of PPE is killing NHS staff you would think someone would have checked by now whether NHS staff are actually dying at a higher rate! When NHS deaths were around ~80 I ran my own model adjusting by age and found 10 excess deaths. However, the way I interpolated the deaths in the population to NHS age bands was very dirty and I didn't adjust for sex and race. The NHS has BAME groups overrepresented in their work force and these groups have higher mortality rates.
aries1980 6y ago
> If the government failed in its duty to protect the public Most governments failed when they didn't start to tax the sh*t out of unhealthy food and ingredients. "Preliminary evidence suggests that the severity of symptoms associated with Covid-19 and the eventual outcome of being infected with this virus are associated with the health status of individuals prior to infection. Among the factors linked to an increased risk of hospitalization and mortality are overweight/obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes: these lifestyle-related diseases [...]" https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/oby.22849 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/oby.22849

CodeGlitch 6y ago

The lack of PPE is a world-wide problem. The UK imported tonnes of the stuff for Turkey, but it was deemed to be not fit for purpose. Other countries have been asking for water-proof coats, that can be used as washable over-garments. I don't think any government is going to come out of this scoring 100%.

makomk 6y ago
It's a world-wide problem that the media in every Western country seem to be spinning as a unique failure of their government, often for cynical and stupid partisan reasons. Same with the global shortage of everything needed to carry out widespread coronavirus testing.
- teruakohatu 6y ago
  Agreed. We had the same stories here in New Zealand, a country which currently has 40 active cases and less than one new case per day (7 day average). Yet we constantly hear how we are running out or going to run out of X or Y. More often than not I think it is logistics. Despite being a small country with centrally funded healthcare, the management of the health system is very decentralized geographically. So some doctor somewhere runs out of something, and runs straight to the media who are happy to run it on the homepage.
- 7952 6y ago
  But then the government also politicise it by telling lies about there own performance. If there isn't enough PPE then they should admit to that.
TLightful 6y ago
The UK response has been terrible in all respects. Please don't sugar coat it.
- Angostura 6y ago
  Nope, in many repects it's been pretty good. The respects that it has been very poor at was: * Being complacent about the country's testing capacity * stopping testing outside of hospitals once the containment phase was deemed over * PPE logistics. (tough global problem) * Support for care-homes. * Westminster's lack of care when it comes to coordinating the loosening of lock-down with the devolved countries It was arguable that they should have started lock-down earlier, but given that the number of acute beds in the NHS wasn't overwhelmed, that's arguable. If you look at stuff like the furlough scheme, support for individuals and freelancers so people don't suffer too much economically by being locked down, it a pretty good and swift response.
  - TLightful 6y ago
    So, "nope", but, actually, "yeah". * unclear and delayed response to pandemic, * frequent lying and misinformation put out by ministers, * considering herd immunity with no vaccine, The list goes on and on ... Yes, the furlough scheme, is decent. But smacks of just throwing money at the problem to save the day. It's not a coordinated response, and we'll be paying for it for generations. I repeat my assertion. Thanks.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Yet we still have the worst death rate in Europe. Why was Germany so much better off than us.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      Isn't the answer at the moment "we don't know" - I'm no fan of the current government but I don't think it helps blaming them before someone has analysed the relevant facts.
yread 6y ago
Letting Cheltenham festival (13-16 March) and other sport events go ahead with 10s thousands of people visiting should criminally punished
- DanBC 6y ago
  In 2020 there were over 240,000 attenders for Cheltenham festival. The town has a population of about 100,000. Each day there were about 60,000 people at the track. People say the festival is outside so it's lower risk. That's ignoring the fact that people take trains to get here and they take buses to get from the town centre to the race track. They also meet in cafés, pubs and betting shops, although this year that was far quieter than previous years. Letting it go ahead was a baffling choice.
DanBC 6y ago
Lack of PPE is a world wide problem. That problem is made worse in the UK because of the lack of planning and political disruption to NHS infrastructure. See for example the fucking shambles of Movianto[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/coronavirus-uk-privately-run-ppe-stockpile-chaos-movianto https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/coronavirus-uk... We used to have NHS Logistics Authority, which changed to NHS Logistics, which was sold off to DHL Supply Chain (but managed by NHS Business Services Authority) and that was a disaster so we now have NHS Supply Chain. This waxing and waning of ideology (centralised control vs localism; NHS provision vs private provision) causes huge amounts of waste and harm in the NHS. It's also not as simple as tories=bad, labour=good. Selling it off to DHL happened under a Labour government; bringing it back under NHS Supply Chain happened under a Conservative government.
- arethuza 6y ago
  "centralised control vs localism; NHS provision vs private provision" I've known some unscrupulous management consultants who would just recommend the opposite of what the current state was just to generate work.

Angostura 6y ago

My wife is a doctor in a London hospital, from what I gather, there is no particular PPE problem there at the moment.

TLightful 6y ago
I'm sure the situation is uneven. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52671814 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52671814
- Angostura 6y ago
  I absolutely agree the situation is likely to be uneven. So this is a tough one. Most organisations will have general rules about not bad-mouthing the organisation publicly and running comms through s comms office. I absolutely agree people should be able to whistle-blow, but if you were managing a hospital you'd probably be wanting people not to go grumbling to the press.
  - TLightful 6y ago
    Transparency is key right now. Your "grumble" is likely someone else's "professional concern".
    - SiempreViernes 6y ago
      Arguably accuracy is more important than transparency, and people in general have a strong tendency to interpret a single account of "we're all out of PPE" as "there is a general shortage".
      - TLightful 6y ago
        Agreed. This thread started with an n=1 datapoint of there being no shortages in London. Works both ways.

benmmurphy 6y ago

Is there any evidence that there has been excess deaths for NHS staff and that this has been caused by a lack of PPE? There is this study (https://www.hsj.co.uk/exclusive-deaths-of-nhs-staff-from-covid-19-analysed/7027471.article https://www.hsj.co.uk/exclusive-deaths-of-nhs-staff-from-cov...) that suggests deaths are amongst NHS staff are not over-represented. There is also a remarkable correlation between the cumulative UK deaths from covid-19 in the UK population and among health and social care workers. Accepting a lag of one to two days, the ratio is very close to 1:200 so the deaths among health and social care workers are approximately 0.5 per cent of all deaths, suggesting they are not overrepresented. That is the only study I could find that tried to look at excess deaths for NHS staff. I think their suggestion that deaths are not overrepresented is not backed by their data because it doesn't look like they are adjusting for difference in base mortality rates between NHS workers and the general population. However, considering how people are claiming lack of PPE is killing NHS staff you would think someone would have checked by now whether NHS staff are actually dying at a higher rate! When NHS deaths were around ~80 I ran my own model adjusting by age and found 10 excess deaths. However, the way I interpolated the deaths in the population to NHS age bands was very dirty and I didn't adjust for sex and race. The NHS has BAME groups overrepresented in their work force and these groups have higher mortality rates.

aries1980 6y ago

> If the government failed in its duty to protect the public Most governments failed when they didn't start to tax the sh*t out of unhealthy food and ingredients. "Preliminary evidence suggests that the severity of symptoms associated with Covid-19 and the eventual outcome of being infected with this virus are associated with the health status of individuals prior to infection. Among the factors linked to an increased risk of hospitalization and mortality are overweight/obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes: these lifestyle-related diseases [...]" https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/oby.22849 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/oby.22849