PPE equipment

[Borin' Baggie]

Read back what you have just typed .

WHAT IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW IS IRRELEVENT .

read it back again and give your fucking head a good wobble .

In terms of the global PPE shortage that is occuring right now. That is irrelevant to the mistakes that the government have made that have seriously exasperated the situation regarding PPE.

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Theres no doubt mistakes have been made but they're damned if they do and damned if they don't, if the government had stockpiled ppe in Jan or earlier and then this pandemic  had not got over here or been anywhere near this bad they would have been vociferously attacked for wasting vital NHS funds by the very people who are now attacking them for the shortfall, like i said there are no easy answers or solutions and hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Hindsight is a very wonderful thing, it shows that the government massively dropped the ball regarding PPE. Much the same as it shows that the Whig government dropped the ball on addressing the Irish famine, or that Galipoli was a stupid idea, or that Suez was a stupid idea, or that forcing BSA out of Birmingham was a stupid idea, or that privatising BT was a stupid idea, or that bailing out BL was a stupid idea, or that invading Iraq was a stupid idea, or that building the water purification facilities for HK island on the New Territories was a stupid idea.

Just because the government may or may not have been criticised for being proactive should the situation we're in not occured, doesn't mean that is a get out of jail card for them if they do make mistakes. They got it wrong, they should be held to account instead of hand waving away the issues.

[Derek Hardballs]

There will never be enough  PPE in this world we live in at the moment every country in the world apart from china will be chasing our tails it's not just us struggling

Let's look at some facts shall we.

1. FOI requests to Public Health England has shown that stockpiles (the vast majority of which are PPE) have reduced in value by 40% over the last 6 years. Extrapolating that information, we have less PPE stockpiled now than we did in 2014.

2. The government simulated a pandemic in 2016 to determine what the effect on domestic health care would be. Dr Phillip Lee, a minister who helped with conducting the simulation, has confirmed that one of the problem areas was PPE. This was ignored.

3. The government said we had more than enough PPE a couple of weeks ago, this was strongly disputed by public and private care figures and now the government has said it has never had enough PPE resources.

4. We knew this was going to happen around January/February time, potentially earlier, yet we didn't act and secure additional PPE during that time. The blame for that falls on Matt Hancock and the government.

What is going right now is irrelevant. The government has massively dropped the ball on PPE resources up to now and deserve heavy criticism for it.

Theres no doubt mistakes have been made but they're damned if they do and damned if they don't, if the government had stockpiled ppe in Jan or earlier and then this pandemic  had not got over here or been anywhere near this bad they would have been vociferously attacked for wasting vital NHS funds by the very people who are now attacking them for the shortfall, like i said there are no easy answers or solutions and hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Who would angry at a government buying more protective equipment than we need? The only numpties who would be criticising given the circumstances would be fruit loops saying we should not be wasting more money on the NHS

[Ossian]

In a political context "Hindsight is a wonderful thing" is just a euphemism for don't subject us to scrutiny - it invariably makes us look bad.

[Protheroe]

This is going to go on for months on end we will need as much as we can get

Then why didn't we order any in January and February, before there was a global shortage, based on the pandemic report recommendations from 2016?

How do you know we didn't? Perhaps our orders were sequestered - like Macron did with our Valmy order.

It remains my understanding from my colleague brought in to help distribute the stuff that there is still more than enough to go round, but not necessarily in the right places.

[Borin' Baggie]

This is going to go on for months on end we will need as much as we can get

Then why didn't we order any in January and February, before there was a global shortage, based on the pandemic report recommendations from 2016?

How do you know we didn't? Perhaps our orders were sequestered - like Macron did with our Valmy order.

It remains my understanding from my colleague brought in to help distribute the stuff that there is still more than enough to go round, but not necessarily in the right places.

The Valmy order wasn't sequestered, the NHS order wasn't subject to the requisition order and the shipment that was blocked last month was done so by accident and has since arrived in the UK.

As for whether I know, the fact that our pandemic plan didn't kick in until the 22nd and we were still exporting vast quantities of PPE, despite our severely depleted stockpiles, in mid-February kind of hints at the low ordering numbers. Either we weren't stockpiling in preparation by increasing orders at the start of the year, or we were just acting as a big distribution centre for PPE to ship to other countries. The logic doesn't line up. 

Whether we have enough PPE remains to be seen, it clearly isn't in the trusts where it's needed and PHE advice has changed to reuse as much as possible even if its single use. A second distributor has been drafted in to help the first and the situation has yet to improve.