Covid Inquiry

Yvonne Doyle has (I believe) given evidence. She claimed that the NHS was aware from an early stage that the virus was spread by the aerosol effect. However, this isn't consistent with the advice which was being given to hospitals at the time, who were told to concentrate on hand washing. Even in the later stages hospital workers were only supplied with medical masks, not FFP2 or 3.

The NHS might have been aware early on, growstuff,but the public weren't told. Which seems odd and inexcusable.. Perhaps a lot of tory ministers had shares in hand sanitizer manufacturers

Have you seen this twitter thread:

twitter.com/DRTomlinsonEP/status/1599108540253077504

growstuff

Yvonne Doyle has (I believe) given evidence. She claimed that the NHS was aware from an early stage that the virus was spread by the aerosol effect. However, this isn't consistent with the advice which was being given to hospitals at the time, who were told to concentrate on hand washing. Even in the later stages hospital workers were only supplied with medical masks, not FFP2 or 3.

I was there, and the issue at the beginning was that high protection masks were not available. As I recall in the early days revised guidance was issued very frequently, the NHS was literally learning as it went along. Staff have to be individually fitted for Ffp3 masks, which were in any case in extremely short supply for months. Hand sanitiser and protective aprons were also in very short supply initially - hand washing was a first line defence only, when nothing else was available.

MaizieD

The NHS might have been aware early on, growstuff,but the public weren't told. Which seems odd and inexcusable.. Perhaps a lot of tory ministers had shares in hand sanitizer manufacturers

Have you seen this twitter thread:

twitter.com/DRTomlinsonEP/status/1599108540253077504

I hadn't seen it, so thanks for posting. It's frightening that something like that probably was going on behind the scenes.

I knew it was airborne (possibly because my partner knew) and I remember I kept going on about it, but people thought I was making it up, as they insisted on bleaching their groceries.

I gave up listening to the official announcements, so I never knew what the rules were, but just kept myself to myself.

PS. I still haven't had Covid (to my knowledge) so I must have been doing something right.

I was there, and the issue at the beginning was that high protection masks were not available.

And there was Simon Stevens telling us yesterday that PPE was fine...

Even so, why weren't the public told about aerosols until a long time into the pandemic, and even then nothing much was made of their significance?

In fact, I'd ask, (not you, Casdon, because I know you can't do anything about it) in view of the fact that covid is far from over and is still highly transmissible, why aren't our children in schools better protected with good air filtration devices? I note that the Houses of Parliament got state of the art air filtration installed...

MaizieD

^I see that she has already given evidence to the Inquiry, I shall have to check if masking was mentioned and what she said about it.^

I can't find that Harris has given evidence. The article I got the info. from must have been confused.

I shall be interested to hear what she says.

And yes, you're right, we were getting mixed messages - along with all the conspiracy theories that were emerging.

Gosh, it was an awful time wasn't it?

MaizieD

^I was there, and the issue at the beginning was that high protection masks were not available.^

And there was Simon Stevens telling us yesterday that PPE was fine...

Even so, why weren't the public told about aerosols until a long time into the pandemic, and even then nothing much was made of their significance?

In fact, I'd ask, (not you, Casdon, because I know you can't do anything about it) in view of the fact that covid is far from over and is still highly transmissible, why aren't our children in schools better protected with good air filtration devices? I note that the Houses of Parliament got state of the art air filtration installed...

Why indeed?!

Apparently Williamson didn't want masks worn in schools because it would look like giving in to the unions.

There was so much dishonesty about schools and pupils it made me soooooo angry. The government's response was to get the media to demonise teachers.

If decent air filtration systems had been installed, the disruption to schools could have been minimised. Schools were promised laptops for pupils who did have to stay at home, but most of them never materialised.

Is Gavin Williamson being called as a witness to the inquiry? If he is, I'll put the date in my diary now.

Will they have to call him Sir at the enquiry ?

MayBee70

Will they have to call him Sir at the enquiry ?

Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhh!

I remember BJ's father Stanley being interviewed on tv. He as asked if he would be following the rules and replied jovially that no, he would be heading for the pub that night.

None of what is coming out surprises me.

I love the piece on here that says he couldn't even run a whelk stall !! So very true.

What is emerging from this Inquiry is a picture which is so contradictory to the belief that Johnson was "doing his best".

The allegations / revelations / are so awful, so bloody depressingly awful. They reveal not only the chaos in government under Johnson's captainship - but the culmination of years of privatisation and spending cuts in the health sector.

In May 2020 the senior CS, Mark Sedwill, sent a note stating the the Department of Health and Social Care was not structured or resourced to deal with a public health crisis of this magnitude...

"it straddles the byzantine bureaucracy of the post-Lansley NHS, the underpowered Public Health England and the fragmented public/private provision of social care."

... that fragmented social care system meant that thousands of vulnerable elderly people were stuck in hospitals as the pandemic approached, he said.

Years and years of underfunding, cuts, re-organisation, and the refusal to deal with the problem of social-care - not to mention Brexit which, it must have been anticipated, would result in the loss of human resources within the NHS, resulted in "old people" stuck in hospital beds.

Johnson's witness statement blames the decision to impose a national lockdown (March 2020) on the NHS for "failing to grip" the problem of bed-blocking.

Let this just sink in. Johnson is blaming the NHS - those that administer and work in it - for the bed-blocking caused by successive Tory governments' privatisation and cost-cutting in the health and social care sector. It has long been known that elderly and other vulnerable people are stuck in hospital beds because there is nowhere for them to go and not enough resources to provide for them in their own homes. But according to Johnson, this is the fault of the NHS.

Prior to this (February 2020) - as the pandemic was becoming an obvious crisis - Johnson chose to go on holiday, "to work on his Shakespeare book"... alleges Cummings. Apparently, he - Johnson - didn't think Covid was a 'big deal' and would be like "swine flu".

Whether Johnson did or didn't work on his book, who knows, these are allegations made by Cummings, but he did damned well go on holiday. I have no reverence for Cummings - he was a bloody Svengali character.

I've stopped reading about it for the while. It's dominating my thoughts and making me depressed, and so very angry.

Ah well, it's all clear now. Johnson was set up by a "dark arts" cabal, led by Cummings and Gove.

According to Nadine Dorries...🙄

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12708657/Sex-parties-ruthless-Tory-clique-secretly-make-break-Prime-Ministers-Revealed-Nadine-Dorries-bombshell-book-assassins-wanted-Boris-No-10-straight-landslide.html

DiamondLily

Ah well, it's all clear now. Johnson was set up by a "dark arts" cabal, led by Cummings and Gove.

According to Nadine Dorries...🙄

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12708657/Sex-parties-ruthless-Tory-clique-secretly-make-break-Prime-Ministers-Revealed-Nadine-Dorries-bombshell-book-assassins-wanted-Boris-No-10-straight-landslide.html

According to Nadine Dorries ...🙄

There's probably a element truth in that but what it means in fact is that they were all working against each other, undermining one another and not as a team for the good of the country.

DiamondLily

Ah well, it's all clear now. Johnson was set up by a "dark arts" cabal, led by Cummings and Gove.

According to Nadine Dorries...🙄

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12708657/Sex-parties-ruthless-Tory-clique-secretly-make-break-Prime-Ministers-Revealed-Nadine-Dorries-bombshell-book-assassins-wanted-Boris-No-10-straight-landslide.html

The GN detectives knew about this three years ago:

www.gransnet.com/forums/news_and_politics/1281633-WHAT?pg=2

I’ve no wish to derail the thread, but coming back to it this morning I absolutely have to thank the kind posters who responded to my post about how lockdown affected our family. MaizieD, LizzuDrip, MerylStreep, and SheepyIzzy I just want to say thank you for your kind words, and SheepyIzzy the children are all UK born as are both their parents. We keep in very close contact with our daughter and grandchildren and visited for nine weeks last winter and will be going again for six weeks this winter. Also we paid for our daughter and the children to come home for a three week visit in October, so they’ve only just returned to NZ. She had a fight to get him to agree even to a three week visit but was eventually successful. Lockdown affected us all in so many different ways, my elderly mother was left alone in her flat for three months ( we got her food and delivered it), other people lost loved ones, family breakdown was common, children were left in homes where they were abused and sometimes killed, education was seriously neglected although I think the teachers did their best, people with other illnesses were not treated or diagnosed, one of my grandsons is an only child and lives with his parents in a house that has no view even over the road and was completely isolated for months in a house that shielded them from a view even of passers by, no children and no family to mix with, and then the loss of his cousins to NZ.

This must never happen again.

Callistemon21

DiamondLily

Ah well, it's all clear now. Johnson was set up by a "dark arts" cabal, led by Cummings and Gove.

According to Nadine Dorries...🙄

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12708657/Sex-parties-ruthless-Tory-clique-secretly-make-break-Prime-Ministers-Revealed-Nadine-Dorries-bombshell-book-assassins-wanted-Boris-No-10-straight-landslide.html

According to Nadine Dorries ...🙄

There's probably a element truth in that but what it means in fact is that they were all working against each other, undermining one another and not as a team for the good of the country.

Exactly Callistemon21.

There's always a kernel of truth in these conspiracy stories which is what makes them so enduring.

They are a cabal of back-stabbers, jostling to keep their positions - or vault them.

The last thing on their minds is the wellbeing of the nation and its inhabitants. We are a means to an end, that is all.

Maddyone. 💐
My cardiologist told me that no-one had anticipated the detrimental effects of shielding on those who were CEV or vulnerable.
My own physical health has deteriorated greatly because I was unable to have treatment for my comorbidities during lockdown, which consequently affected my mental and emotional health.
There must be so many in the same position and should never be allowed to happen again.

Hopefully some answers and possible solutions will come out of this Inquiry.

There's always a kernel of truth in these conspiracy stories which is what makes them so enduring. They are a cabal of back-stabbers, jostling to keep their positions - or vault them. The last thing on their minds is the wellbeing of the nation and its inhabitants. We are a means to an end, that is all.^

Does anyone think that the Labour party is any different?especially when you think back to the Corbyn era, ro when Peter Mandelson was running free in the party?

We went into lockdown a week early, ironically at the insistence of our daughter, who had attended GP/doctor training in our area. She was told that no one of 60 years of age would get a ventilator should they become ill enough to need one, because there simply weren’t enough. She was terrified we would die, especially so because I have asthma that can be difficult to control. As it happened, this scenario never became true, but national lockdown was brought in the following week. And when I was admitted to hospital with Covid I received exemplary care. However whilst we were on a cruise to Norway in September we met a lovely lady whose 60 year old, very fit, no health conditions, husband died from Covid. They lived in Liverpool and the care her husband received sounded almost, if not, negligent, certainly compared to my care. Six months later her 63 year old sister died in the same hospital. This begs the question, were there regional differences in quality of care? If so why? What was Mike Hancock and government doing to ensure the same quality of care across all regions?

She was told that no one of 60 years of age would get a ventilator should they become ill enough to need one, because there simply weren’t enough.
That probably explains why a DNR notice was put on my file. 😪

Marydoll
I’m so sorry your health conditions have deteriorated as a result of lockdown. I know you are CEV and you needed the care your physicians normally gave to you. It was never right to prevent people with ongoing conditions, or new conditions, to be neglected the way they were neglected.
We need a plan for how it would be managed should such a serious new illness emerge again. But as Monica says all the people being interviewed are jostling for position and trying to whitewash anything they were involved in during lockdown. And so many of them simply ignored the rules blatantly, including people in the media (Kay Burley) and advisers and government ministers, not caring a jot for the damage being done because of lockdown. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have had a lockdown, but it went on for two years with the rules constantly being changed so half the population didn’t understand them anyway.

This cannot happen in this way ever again.

Marydoll

^She was told that no one of 60 years of age would get a ventilator should they become ill enough to need one, because there simply weren’t enough^.
That probably explains why a DNR notice was put on my file. 😪

Yes.

I understand why that decision was made from a clinical perspective, it doesn't mean I was happy with it!

I did catch Covid after sheilding for two years from my asymptomatic DGD, who had also been shielding.
I was fortunate to be in hospital within twenty four hours of testing positive and an an infusion of anti virals was administered, because anti virals in tablet form were unsuitable for me.
That is one part of the strategies, which worked and I have nothing but praise for everyone who facilitated it. It was very slick.
You can criticise the Scottish Government all you wish, but that and priority online deliveries made my life much easier and bearable.
The treatment prevented me from becoming critically ill.
I am fortunate to live within the Greater Glasgow Health Board area which meant I did not need to travel far for treatment.
However, I do wonder how those in more rural areas fared.

However, it does impact on one's self worth to know taht you are deemed disposable dispensable

M0nica

There's always a kernel of truth in these conspiracy stories which is what makes them so enduring. They are a cabal of back-stabbers, jostling to keep their positions - or vault them. The last thing on their minds is the wellbeing of the nation and its inhabitants. We are a means to an end, that is all.^

Does anyone think that the Labour party is any different?especially when you think back to the Corbyn era, ro when Peter Mandelson was running free in the party?

Does anyone think that the Labour party is any different?especially when you think back to the Corbyn era, ro when Peter Mandelson was running free in the party?

... I don't know, frankly.

However, Tony Blair and his "spin doctors" manipulating and deceiving the public? MPs being 'warned' not to mention the word "socialism"? All part of the "new Labour" , erm, spin. Springs to mind immediately.

And he's made a small fortune since leaving Downing Street.

But is this on the same level as the chaotic last few years under the present government?

There is of course the 'machinations' which propelled us into the Iraq War. The apparently non-existent WMDs. Blair's buddy-buddy relationship with Bush. And, the late David Kelly - has his death ever been satisfactorily 'explained'?

I really don't know.

But my comment about the current government and it's initial PM was not an attempt to recommend, condone or justify anything the past or present Labour party has done, or will do!

I'm not a Labour voter.