Matt Hancock….

Whitewavemark2

Cummings has waited for Hancock to hang himself and is now going to publish the evidence of Hancock’s. Lies and incompetence.

Oh dear?

Are you citing something there, WWmk2 or are you just hopeful?

Hancock might have convinced himself but I doubt he convinced anyone else. He's never going to get a Bafta.

Cummings has waited for Hancock to hang himself and is now going to publish the evidence of Hancock’s. Lies and incompetence.

Oh dear?

Chardy

Talullah

Yes, we all know about the lack of PPE. What many seem to forget is the whole world had a problem obtaining PPE.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7314445/

There were PPE suppliers in UK trying to contact the govt, who could not get through or get their calls returned. They ended up exporting to USA.

There were PPE contracts given to companies who supplied substandard PPE, which had to be thrown away.

Last week I read about a company in the UK that had £14 millions worth of PPE in stock (they manufactured it) They contacted the govt who said no thanks, we've already placed an order. With one of the cronies.

Now he’s really annoyed me.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-57429539
Wales hasn’t stockpiled vaccines. More people are protected. The total cases, and variant numbers here are low compared with England.
It’s apparently all thanks to the UK Government taking a responsible approach and Wales being profligate. More than just his pants should be on fire is all I’ll say.

Talullah

Yes, we all know about the lack of PPE. What many seem to forget is the whole world had a problem obtaining PPE.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7314445/

We wouldn't have had such a big problem if our emergency stock of PPE hadn't turned out to have been so mismanaged (management contracted out, of course, by the tories) that masses of it was out of date. Some of it so out of date that the new labels that had been stuck on over the out of date labels were themselves out of date...

Or even if the government had taken up offers from UK PPE manufacturers instead of bunging huge amounts of money to potato crisp firms and jewellery makers (coincidentally run by people known to them) to procure PPE...

And one of them died several weeks later Casdon.

I was there, working in a hospital in the NHS at that time, and there were major issues with PPE supplies, particularly masks, gloves and hand gel. The government guidance was changed to a lower specification so that only those staff in very acute roles were allocated FFP3 masks, they couldn’t be changed with the frequency they should be, and they were in incredibly short supply, made worse by the fact that the pandemic emergency stock was out of date so didn’t meet specifications, and much of the stock purchased from abroad was sub standard. Ward staff were wearing FFP2 masks because that was all that was available. The situation was so bad that staff were very scared about their own safety as well as protecting patients adequately, and were crying on a daily basis.
There’s no doubt that staff contracted COVID from patients, as contacts were traced, and in many areas there was no Covid in the community until patients were transferred from other areas who were infected. The ease of spread in a hospital environment wasn’t properly understood in the early days.
Does anybody else remember the consultants and nursing leaders who went on TV to say how dangerous they thought the PPE situation was? I’m sure there are some NHS staff on this site who are still working who will bear this out.

"It would be impossible to say that any health workers who contracted Covid did so at work or from home life."

..and again, Hancock has said that any health worker who died of COVID did not contract it at work. Which is impossible to say.

Hospitals said at the time ( including my own DIL...as a nurse)
That there was PPE but not so much that they could constantly throw them away and apply new. However she also said that some workers constantly touched and took off and fiddled with masks and didn’t always use the hand gel in and out of wards.
It would be impossible to say that any health workers who contracted Covid did so at work or from home life.
Even if not used properly in hospitals there were more precautions taken in hospitals than when nurses were at home and out and about.

I think his pants are actually on fire Petera and there is absolutely no way he could sit on the telephone wire

Hancock states that no health worker has died due to lack of PPE

Can we just follow the logic of that statement?

Option 1: There was no lack of PPE. Even people supporting Hancock in this thread are posting the opposite saying there was a global lack of PPE.

Option2: There was a lack of PPE but no health worker died because of this. Are our health services stupidly wasting money on PPE when it’s unnecessary? Or does it only prevent transfer of infection in a vanishingly small number of cases? And, if that’s the case, how does Hancock know that no health worker has died due to lack of PPE?

Option 3: He’s lying

Talullah

Yes, we all know about the lack of PPE. What many seem to forget is the whole world had a problem obtaining PPE.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7314445/

There were PPE suppliers in UK trying to contact the govt, who could not get through or get their calls returned. They ended up exporting to USA.

There were PPE contracts given to companies who supplied substandard PPE, which had to be thrown away.

Operation Cygnus in 2016 - uk preparation for pretend influenza pandemic showed not enough PPE in storage then! Found info on www.gov.uk site and also referenced in Hansard. Surely a “world beating” country such as ours should have actioned this. I believe it was during Hunts time. Sorry can’t add specific references.

I shall agree to disagree with you about the delta variant.

You only had to see the rate of infection rate in India to realise that India should have been red-listed like it’s neighbouring countries. One has to question the reasoning behind that especially as some Indian dignatories were invited here unnecessarily and they even had the virus.

Yes Maybee is correct lemongrove. Despite warnings our Government didn’t act quickly enough to close the borders, resulting in a huge rush of people back from India, who weren’t hotel quarantined. That didn’t happen in other countries, who stopped travel sooner and hotel quarantined, and is the reason why the variant has taken off so quickly here. It was already here in small isolated pockets, but the rise was dramatically hastened. You only have to look to Europe to see the difference in numbers.

I agree Talullha the world was scrambling for PPE at that time.
If anything can be learned by an inquiry then good-o, but when so many PPE were needed by all the NHS in every hospital and clinic, then it’s not surprising there was an initial shortage.
PPE cannot be stored and then used after 30/50/100 years or whenever a pandemic happens.

Talullah

Yes, we all know about the lack of PPE. What many seem to forget is the whole world had a problem obtaining PPE.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7314445/

So why does he feel the need to lie about it when there's a perfectly good reason?

No, it isn’t actually ?
Even if flights back from India had been stopped weeks before, the variant was already here, brought back and spread especially in the Asian community.As many Asian people do not want ( or rather fear) having the vaccine, then they were an instant target for Covid, probably spread by younger people from household to household.Then it was quickly in the wider community from schools and Colleges perhaps.
The vaccination programme was going as fast as possible, so nothing wrong there, but impossible to contain until just about everybody has now had two jabs.Variants in other places have proved to be the same.
I also think that flights from India and elsewhere should have been stopped earlier, but that wouldn’t have helped much and it would have been a very unpopular decision to leave UK residents stuck in India.

Yes, we all know about the lack of PPE. What many seem to forget is the whole world had a problem obtaining PPE.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7314445/

Doodledog

lemongrove

I doubt that Maybee as once a variant is here then it’s here and spreads.
Probably spread by younger people who wouldn’t be getting jabs yet in any case.

I don't follow this. If vaccinations slow the spread of a variant, then surely the longer they are delayed the better, so that more people can be spared - including the young? If they don't slow transmission, what is the relevance of the fact that young people are further down the queue for vaccination?

I might be slow of thinking, though - I have a pressure headache today ?

No your logic is entirely correct. What maybe said is right.

lemongrove

I doubt that Maybee as once a variant is here then it’s here and spreads.
Probably spread by younger people who wouldn’t be getting jabs yet in any case.

I don't follow this. If vaccinations slow the spread of a variant, then surely the longer they are delayed the better, so that more people can be spared - including the young? If they don't slow transmission, what is the relevance of the fact that young people are further down the queue for vaccination?

I might be slow of thinking, though - I have a pressure headache today ?

I doubt that Maybee as once a variant is here then it’s here and spreads.
Probably spread by younger people who wouldn’t be getting jabs yet in any case.

lemongrove

Just read online ( unverified!) that the delta variant is 60% more transmissible Maybee ?

And all because Johnson was desperate for a trade deal with India. I know the variant would eventually have got here but it could have been contained until more people had been vaccinated.