The honeymoon will be shorter than most

Nobody anywhere has nailed it!

We've done a lot better than many others though

Our food and utility supplies were maintained throughout which is no small thing and shouldnt be taken for granted. Black markets did not get to swoop in to fill a vacume like they did elsewhere

I didn’t say they had nailed it. I’ll leave you to it, I need to get on with work.

SO much work will have gone into so many things that we didnt even notice because they werent disrupted at our end

E.g. the national grid kept going despite sickness levels causing new challenges

Even our bins still got collected

Our phonelines stayed open

We got our regular prescriptions

None of that came easily behind the scenes. Keeping those things running in a pandemic took huge logistical input

When this is all over and the political inquests start, I think different countries will fare differently on particular aspects.

For example, on the NHS not being overwhelmed I think the UK will do better than some countries. on testing I think it will do worse, on lockdown probably a week too late, on PPE be only one of many who had inadequate supplies. (I googled other countries who were complaining of lack of PPE then gave up after the US, Canada, India Italy, Spain and the WHO statement "The chronic global shortage of personal protective equipment is now one of the most urgent threats to our collective ability to save lives".)

Comparisons are invidious. It is nonsense to try and compare densely packed global hub cities such as London, New York and Brussels with, say, New Zealand with its tiny population smaller even than London and spread out over a country the size of the UK.

It is also probably unfair to compare Europe with south east Asian countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong with their
experience of dealing with epidemics such as SARS.

The best we can hope for is that every country's governments are willing to admit where they got things wrong, where they could have done better and how they will learn from each other for the future.

Thank you for your understanding SirChenin

Well said PurplePatch - reading about the different problems in other countries it’s obvious that they all could be held to account on many things.

The people who want a heros Vs villans situation simply wont want to hear a thorough analysis as it wont be as simple as blame the government.

They wont want to hear about PPE missuse and theft and disagreements about its use at clinical level which had nothing to do with the government. They wont want to hear that there WAS PPE in areas where that was the case. They wont want to hear that the hero carers in nursing homes didnt bother using PPE before CV when it was only other residents, and not themselves at risk, so it wasnt needing to be regularly reordered and restocked.

They want goodies and baddies.
The truth wont pain a goodies Vs baddies picture. It'll be shades of grey from top to bottom. And that will be dismissed as an "attack" on the NHS to defer from the government.

notanan I think most people have accepted that any government would have found this crisis very difficult to deal with.

However, had the government, which has been in position since 2010, taken seriously the warnings given in 2016 and in the summer of last year that this country was severely unprepared for a major health crisis, we would at least not have started on the back foot. Also, the government was well aware that there is a severe crisis in the recruitment and retention of nurses yet did nothing to address that issue, instead imposing wage restraints that in effect meant nurses were both taking a pay cut whilst working in an increasingly under staffed and stressful environment.

I don't agree with the concept of heroes and villains either but in fact some sections of the population are treating the prime minister as if he were a hero, when in fact he could just as easily be characterised as ineffective and irresponsible. When, for instance, you compare the prime minister's briefings to those of Angela Merkel, who has a firm understanding of the science and of the use of statistics to identify trends, his contribution is often what some commentators have described as "waffle".

Why is it that the mainstream press (which is almost always highly supportive of the Conservative Party in both donations and editorials) has also severely criticised the government's handling of this crisis? The Mail and the Telegraph are hardly left wing rags.

The number of deaths in the UK now stands at over 26,000 and will presumably continue to rise for some time, since we are still in a state of disorganisation re PPE, staff to patient ratios and testing. This is despite the fact that we are an island with no borders with other countries - unlike the rest of Europe whose open borders obviously pose more of a risk of transfer of the virus from one country to another.

I would imagine that many people who have friends and family working in hospitals and care homes will take great exception to you implying that theft and misuse of PPE is responsible for the shortages. Your sarcastic reference to "hero carers" in nursing homes, suggesting that that they only care about their own safety and not that of their residents is, I think, way beyond fair comment.

Carers and NHS workers are a mixed bag as much as anyone else.

Supply issues arent just about getting supplies IN. Its also about not wasting what you HAVE. Sharing and using it correctly. Not missusing it. Not damaging or contaminating it. Its not just about have or dont have.

Lots of issues went on at ground level too. Thefts went on. PPE and hand gel had to be collected up and locked away in some hospitals due to staff taking it home in the early days. There ARE bad care workers who DID underuse PPE when "only" service users were at risk out of laziness or apathy, meaning that it wasnt getting re-ordered as often as it could have been, who only cared about using it when THEY THEMSELVES were at risk.

No accurate review will find any tier not lacking or having weak links.

There isnt one villan responsible for shortages. Not only that but some claims of shortages werent shortages at all but missmanagement of stock that WAS in place. Its lots of contributing factors: swiss cheese effect. From global right right down through to users.

Care workers who claimed to have "no PPE" at the START of the crisis couldnt have run out yet

They obviously werent using it before. And they should have been. And why didnt that bother then before it was themselves vulnerable?

How many vulnerable people were they cross contaminating before hand with MRSA flu noro TB MARO ESBL KP etc....

Why did they have "no PPE" right back at the BEGINNING?
2 possibilities:
1. They had a stock to start with and they or their colleagues stole it when the outbreak started
2. They werent using it before when they should have been

Had they run out 2 weeks in, that would have been different.

@Whitewavemark2 - exactly!