Breathtaking: facts and lies re COVID in the NHS

Caleo in response to your comments “your medical training lacked education in control,of infection.” - my infection control colleagues would be very very disappointed to hear you say this. They worked tirelessly and guided us all through those long hard times. But I repeat again no one knew what we were dealing with. It was unprecedented times. The hours and hours of planning and thought and care that went into trying to do the right thing is completely being ignored by people like you who did not work in that environment and will never know what it was like.
And as for sending people to hotels - who was going to look after the patients who went there? Hotel staff? We tried to get families to patients home but the majority did not want to take them.

It’s great to be able to criticise our actions now but I wonder if you would have done any better?

And as for people saying again that the Govt and Boris were trying to kill people it’s just ridiculous.

Have seen all 3 episodes. Very dramatic and felt anxious at the end. Would suggest not to watch at night especially if you had close involvement with hospitals for any condition during Covid.

Wonderful programmes which told the truth about what really happened.Heartbreaking that so many people died unnecessarily because of the ineptitude and greed of Boris Johnson and his cohorts.

Optomistical, I and my friends most certainly thought it a great mistake to not quaratine patients who were probably incubating a highly infective and acute fever.

These patients should have been placed in quarantine facilities, such as hotels, requisitioned for the purpose .
Your medical training lacked education in control of infection.

Too much optimism is dangerous.

Thank you to those who have supported my post. I know that many of my colleagues from all areas of the hospital - clinical, cleaners, mangers etc are very upset by the inference that we sent people out of hospital to die ….
I can’t tell you how hard everyone worked and I mean everyone to keep patients alive and safe 24 hours a day.

How we all long for moral leadership! How can we get a government that tell us the truth?

Optomistic1

As a clinician in a senior management role I worked all throughout covid in one of the biggest teaching hospitals trusts in the country.
It has been hard to watch this series and I was concerned that the dr who wrote it who is a known Labour political activist would have a particular slant on things….

Having watched it all I can say is that not all hospitals were the same. Our hospital had joint working between clinicians , managers and one of the most important people in this time the supplies team who did an outstanding job sourcing PIP.

People need to remember that those early days were uncharted territory for the govt, hospitals, and patients. We looked to the govt and scientific advisors for advice and guidance.

People seemed to think that the govt wanted to kill people and that hospitals were agreeing with this. Our only aim was to keep people safe. Sending patients to care homes was what we ALL thought was the best thing for patients - hospitals are dangerous places at the best of times and in those early days of covid the aim was to get patients who didn’t need to be there out and away from patients in hospital who did have covid. Dont believe everything you have seen on the TV.

Hear hear good post. .. I too worked through out Covid in my local large regional hospital as a Cardiac Physiologist.
I recognise in the program the close care given by all the Medical teams, in this program but the Drama around events was just drama.
The Trust I work in gave everything they could to keep the staff well, happy in awful cerumstanses, and the support they gave the patients families was beyond guidelines.

Of course hospitals were not out to kill patients. I doubt anyone thinks that apart from the lunatic fringe. Doctors, nurses and other staff worked hard and courageously at great personal risk without the right PPE and some died. Dr Rachel Clarke may be a 'Labour activist' but she was a front line hospital doctor of 20 years experience recording in diary form her observations at the time. I have no doubt she tells the truth. It may be that some hospitals overcame supply problems through the actions of exceptional managers but I recall concern at the time about the lack of adequate PPE, out of date PPE, and about decanting untested patients into care homes and Hancock claiming he had thrown a ring around care homes. I doubt that 'all' agreed. And there were several TV documentary on the spot interviews on several channels with hospital staff which clearly supported Dr Clarke's experiences.

This drama made me cry as it brought back terrifying memories. I lost 3 family members at 3 different hospitals around the country, during this period. Not to COVID but to the fact that it was policy to take staff off the cancer wards to deal with COVID patients, and there was none else to help them., in truth they were abandoned. My brother, only 60 had 'do not resuscitate' on his notes, not of his own choosing,
In the last few days I was allocated an hour visitation. When I went to the hospital it was silent and ghostly no staff . I then waited an hour after my allocated appointment before I was told that he had died. The situation was repeated by the other family members who also died alone .

I don't blame any of the NHS staff, who were on their knees by this time whilst BJ and government including Rishi Sunak were partying.

It's is these so called leaders who need to be sacked at best or locked up for neglect duty of care and total incompetence.

An excellent docu-drama showing so many sides of those Covid ridden times.

well .. thank you
Optomistic1 for this.. I am not medically trained, but was thinking along those lines.. hindsight is a wonderful thing. the one thing I can agree on is the clapping, I did not do it, I think it was not the right thing at all.
watching a Midwife episode, I am no avid watcher of it,, and way back then, some nurses/midwives were saying similar things.. pay us a living wage..

I sobbed on the second one- less so the third. It is still quite raw for me but needed to be done. Very powerful and emotional so I understand why some can't face it, but I still think it had to be done and we need more stuff like this. People have to get their heads out of the sand.
People are now dying for lack of cancer screening and speedy treatment- this makes me cry every day because I know it is happening in my own family. It makes me so angry.

Like Grannygravy, I found it too soon. It was just like being back watching the same depressing news day after day and week after week- listening to excuses and useless recriminations. Every country in the world had similar problems- some did better - some did worse.

Most of all, there must be sufficient PPE with high-grade masks.

JulesJ

I have watched all of it and do not believe that it is too soon. I think that it needs to be shown now so that the government who was in power then is still in power.
We have every right to be furious with the lies told to all of us and to see the reality of working in the NHS at that time and the conditions that they had to work in.
We should be doing everything that we can to make them accountable. Just because it is uncomfortable watching, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be shown

I couldn't agree more. DD is a nurse, and I know how awful it was for them (& also how much I worried about her). So many medical staff - and obviously, as a pp said, anyone working in a role where they were face to face with lots of people (e.g. taxi and bus drivers, shop workers, teachers) died as a result of the slow and self-serving actions of people making millions from their misery..😡

Let's hope there are joined up contingency plans for the next pandemic. There will surely be another one.

I was lucky in that I didn't lose any close family during Covid, though my DIL lost her father who contracted it whilst in hospital.
My husband has heart failure and I was very, very careful at all times, to the extent of having all our groceries delivered, not going on public transport for several years and keeping my husband away from food that was delivered to the house.
It was clear to us very early on that it was much more serious than the government were letting on. One friend travelled on a train with many of those who went to Cheltenham Races and caught the virus - previously she was fit and well but was ill for several months with covid.
My daughter and I travelled by taxi and the driver told us that he had lost three taxi driver friends already. This was in mid-March before any lockdown.
It was reported that quite a few bus drivers died very early on during the pandemic, before the screens were put on their driving cabs.
The government seem to have ignored these indications that the disease was very infectious and ignored lock-down calls.
I don't think that I could bear to watch the programme, there is nothing we can do about the government's failures now, but I hope that our knowledge will help us to minimise the deaths in the next pandemic.

I have watched all of it and do not believe that it is too soon. I think that it needs to be shown now so that the government who was in power then is still in power.
We have every right to be furious with the lies told to all of us and to see the reality of working in the NHS at that time and the conditions that they had to work in.
We should be doing everything that we can to make them accountable. Just because it is uncomfortable watching, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be shown

I tried to watch it last night but found it a difficult watch. I was already angry with the government especially Boris, what an absolute disgrace he was and is. I found it triggering and I didn’t even lose anyone to Covid. But I knew about what was happening to other people and it made me sad, and mad. I don’t think the government have been held to account nearly as much as they should have. Some of them deserve to be in prison on manslaughter charges. None of them have shown genuine remorse for their decisions and actions. It’s utterly despicable what they got away with. I ended up switching it off because it was giving me the rage. Will anything happen as a result of this? I doubt it.

Of course there were empty beds and empty wards during Covid. Even before Covid staff numbers were not high enough to keep all beds occupied. Once Covid took hold staff numbers dropped off a cliff with staff testing positive or having to isolate awaiting negative tests. There is a fallacy that increasing bed numbers is always a good thing, but that’s only true if there are sufficient staff to resource them. I got quite infuriated watching the Nightingale Hospitals being built, with all the surrounding hoo ha, when it was apparent that the shortage of staff meant that in many of them their beds would not be used to capacity.

On the Covid and non-Covid wards clinical and ancillary staff put in Herculean efforts to maintain the very best service they could under the circumstances; as is well demonstrated in the programme.

Shocking. I lost two family members.

Greenfinch I’m glad you found my post informative. I’m not a medic, I can only repeat what my daughter told me. It’s good to be informed I think in case we find ourselves in the position of having to deal with this situation with a family member.

Excellent post Optomistic.
I, for one never believed that hospitals were out to kill people, nor indeed did I think the government wanted too either.
My care in hospital with Covid was exemplary. My chest consultant had come out of retirement to work at the hospital.

We all lived through it and we shall probably live through similar pandemics in the future if scientists are right about species virus jumping. So it's important UK government makes adequate preparations for the next one. The Tories would like us to forget their COVID mess, PPE frauds and their underfunding and understaffing of the NHS for 14 years. I have no confidence in them.

Sorry PPI