The honeymoon will be shorter than most

It’s rubbish ( John Crace) to say that care home deaths were not thought to be worth recording.Because elderly residents die all the time ( for various reasons) early on the cause of death may have been recorded as heart failure / stroke etc because that’s what happened ( even if they happened to also have the virus.) Later, the figures were recorded but obviously were not so easy to be counted as deaths occurring in hospitals.

Exactly boat. Stop the spin and do your best.

I do wonder though what you mean by ‘unnecessarily’
How were those ‘thousands’ of deaths to be prevented?The NHS have been working hard to save as many patients as they can.

The emoji is for WWM2 mission......nothing to do with covid19 ( neither is the mission!)

I think 'laughing emojis' are inappropriate Lemon, when so many thousands of lives have been lost unecessarily
Of course the Government should be questioned, their response has been woeful
So I support Whitewave and anyone else who will hold them to account

It appears to be Whitewaves mission to start as many
Threads along these lines as possible.I imagine they will carry on for the next five years......and if the LP don’t get in then, for the following five years.

The way things are going the NHS is going to outsource everything else---then what happens when there's nothing left for anything else ?

Can you explain this statement, EV?

It was a government decision to inaugurate a central supplies organisation. If you read the Guardian article you see the statement 'The government owns the stock'. One naturally assumes that not only does the government own the stock but it was also responsible for purchasing it. If so, it is the government which has failed to purchase sufficient PPE. It also seems that the government has failed to monitor the private company which was responsible for managing the stock, a responsibility which includes updating it...
We also know that the government failed to act on the recommendations of the report on the Cygnus exercise, on the grounds that increasing the stock levels wouldn't be cost effective, and that it failed to take action on recommendations last year to purchase items such as gowns which weren't stocked at all. It could, in all fairness, be said that this happened under a slightly different government, but the current one took no action on emergency stocks when it was obvious that a pandemic was on our doorstep.

Look. I don't care if you are Left or Right or any other possible political orientation.

Watch Panorama on iplayer. Is this made up? I don't think so.

Our government failed to to keep a stockpile of PPE for the NHS when it was clear a pandemic was on the cards.

When the Covid-19 pandemic broke out they reduced the level of safety kit required for front line staff.

NHS staff are dying and will continue to die. I'm not into the blame game. I just want the government to really work day and night on this rather than just claiming that that is what they are doing.

The U.K. has not done well responding to Covid 19 in fact it could be argued that only the US is doing worse. The restrictions of movement have proved inadequate and the lack of PPE negligent, despite a major simulation 2 years ago responding to a pandemic PPE was not ensured.

Germany along with other countries has taken different strategies with a much lower death rate and sufficient PPE not only for front line workers but the population at large. There is no doubt that successive Tory governments have failed us, were they distracted by other politics, or was it all part of the austerity drive.

But the Govt didn’t do nearly enough in terms of pandemic planning, having the correct stocks of PPE and having testing facilities - not necessarily running, but there to deal with surges. It just didn’t.

You seem to take any criticism of this Govt very personally.

Yes, I fully understand what you're saying Maizie but I also object to the blame being laid at the feet of the government.

The way things are going the NHS is going to outsource everything else---then what happens when there's nothing left for anything else ?

Ah well, never mind, we'll still have a free NHS if nothing else !!

Thanks for that, SirChenjin.

It's all very well being impressed by big figures but when looked at in real terms and considering that the NHS has been deliberately underfunded in real terms for the last 10 years the £160 billion EV is quoting (where did that come from, BTW?) doesn't really look so very impressive.

I've realised why there is such unreasoning support for this government and an attempt to shift the blame onto other people. Having voted this shower in some people are beginning to realise that they are responsible for the state of the NHS. That the lack of PPE can be laid at their door, and therefore that they have indirectly caused the deaths of health workers. It must be difficult dealing with the guilt, and lashing out, blaming others is understandable, but wrong.

According to the King’s Fund “While the new NHS funding deal will ease current pressures, it is not enough to both restore performance against key waiting times standards and deliver widespread changes to services to deliver better care”

And the Nuffield says “Just getting back to spending of 7.6% of GDP over the next three years would require a real increase in funding of £15.1 billion – £11.4 billion more than current plans – and equivalent to an average annual real increase of 3.3%, rather than the 0.8% currently planned”

So yes - I’d call that underfunded.

Do you not understand what central purchasing is all about, EllanV?

Hospital managers can order from them but if the central supplies department doesn't have the required items it is not their, the managers, fault. The central supplies department didn't have enough of the PPE items (or any at all of some of them) to supply all the hospitals with what they needed. Is this difficult to understand?

What is more, after a few weeks, as the hospitalisation and death toll rose, Covid-19 suddenly got reclassified to a level which supposedly needed medical staff to wear a lesser grade of PPE. Why would that be?

That's a possible £160 billion without the usual charitable donations.
Not enough ?

Summerlove, the government estimates costs of £160 billion to the NHS this year. Do you call that underfunded ?

The statista.com figures are wrong for the UK, Oopsminty. It gives the figure for Covid deaths at 21,092 (data as of 28th April). But the ONS figure for deaths registered as Covid related at 17th April is 22,351. That is some 1,000+ more than the statista figure and it must be even more by now, 10 days later.

It's director is one Kamaljit Singh Hunjan and the dispute is over accessing the warehouse where medical supplies are kept.
If there's a dispute over unpaid storage dues then what has this got to do with the government ?

There was a ship docked in the Mersey a couple of weeks ago where another dispute was going on over a shipment of medical supplies which couldn't be unloaded until charges for docking were paid. Is this also the fault of the government ?

The argument going on with Movianto has nothing to do with the government.

Its all in Bojos plan,herd immunity by a different route then blame the NHS for being uneconomical and unviable ..he'll sell it off piece by piece to the USA or anyone of his mates who wants it .Watch this space !

You have no idea how I vote. What does that have to do with anything anyhow?

Ellan, I’m just saying that the hospitals are underfunded. How would you like them to individually procure everything with no budget.

As you stated in your response...it is the govts job.

What do you think of the 'UK government’s decision to outsource the management of the emergency stockpile. In three years, the stockpile appears to have been stored in three different warehouses. Meanwhile, management of the stock has been passed from a German–owned multinational to an American one'? Oh, and the sale of Movianto two weeks ago?

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/revealed-private-firm-running-uk-ppe-stockpile-was-sold-in-middle-of-pandemic