Week 19
The meme of a nurse checking her purse at the checkout apologising with the words “Sorry, will you accept a round of applause?” has been doing the rounds this week after it was revealed that nurses weren’t included in the pay rise announced by the government. Neither were junior doctors because both nurses and junior doctors had already been negotiating their own crappy deals.
The whole sorry story sounds incredible, like it was some crazy, off the wall lampoon written by Mel Brooks or some psychedelic Beatles movie.
The government had run a pandemic simulation in 2016, the conclusion of which was that it was not prepared for a pandemic. It needed respirators and PPE. It did nothing. It did less than nothing because the NHS had been running at 104% capacity before CoVID-19. Then for the first month after the virus had hit the UK the government sat on its hands with the prime minister not even attending COBRA meetings. It locked the country down a week after the Cheltenham races were allowed to happen and Athletico Madrid played at Anfield. London travel services were being withdrawn while people were still working and packing the trains and buses. Many black and asian bus drivers were forbidden from taking precautionary measures and died.
Elderly patients were shipped out of hospitals without testing (some known to be infected) and placed back into care homes thus incubating the virus amongst the most vulnerable. Many care homes were threatened with funding being witheld if they didn’t comply. At the same time care workers were going from home to home carrying the virus with them and without the PPE they vitally needed. People with special needs were treated even worse.
In the hospitals nurses were using bin bags as PPE and sharing masks.We know how many doctors (largely BAME) and nurses died directly as a result of lack of protective equipment while the government were lying about the sourcing of it. They ordered PPE from abroad that was useless and ignored calls from UK business who said they could produce it. Instead they placed millions of pounds worth of contracts with companies that wouldn’t know one end of a medical grade mask from another. And they kept lying and got their government experts to cover for them.
