This. All of the above.lpm wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:44 amAt yesterday’s briefing Gove was asked why ventilator capacity could be exceeded. We all know the answer to this:
NHS capacity is too low
- government under-investment for a generation
- 10 years of austerity worsening every metric
- coming into the crisis in Jan 2020 with almost no free beds
- complacent government response in Feb 2020
- government eventually sending an email wondering if anyone could make more ventilators on 16 March
- lack of PPE causing loss of capacity via illnesses and deaths of NHS staff
Infection rate is too high
- complacent government response in Feb 2020
- government thinking voluntary distancing and hand washing was the answer
- government abandoned test and trace on 12 March
- government deliberately letting the rate rise in early March to get herd immunity, the chief scientific adviser saying on 13 March ”one of the key things we need to do is build up some kind of herd immunity”
- government keeping pubs, football grounds, theatres, cinemas, events open - even while responsible citizens were voluntarily shutting and cancelling events
- keeping schools open as a deliberate way to keep infections going among the least vulnerable group - even while responsible citizens were voluntarily stopping their children from going
- government only entering the current partial lock down on Monday 23 March, two weeks after Italy, even though Italy had already shown us they were too late
- to this day government keeping public transport running to take employees to work, with people still being required to keep working if their employer demands and they cannot work from home, keeping schools partially open, not releasing prisoners from overcrowded prisons, keeping flights coming in from New York and USA without screening, keeping non-essential shopping partially going
But what was the response to the question of why ventilator capacity could be exceeded? It will be exceeded if “people do not self isolate properly”.
This is the same sh.t they pulled with climate change and it works. The blame for climate change was shoved down onto individuals. It’s the fault of people flying to Benidorm and not putting their recycling in the correct bins, it’s most definitely not the fault of the fossil fuel economy and government failure.
There’s a concerted government and tabloid drive on right now – to dodge the blame and point the finger at individuals. Nurses are not dying because the government is too incompetent to give them PPE, they are dying because you sunbathed in a park. Frail old people are not being denied ventilators due to underfunding of the NHS, they are dying because you drove to a shop to buy easter eggs.
It stinks. The horrific death toll is due to the government’s actions – which were partly gross negligence and partly deliberate running-hot to protect the economy. Shout back at them when they put the blame on individuals walking in the countryside. Don’t clap along with them when they celebrate NHS staff risking their lives without PPE. Keep the focus lasered-in on where it should be – that this is still only a partial lockdown with thousands of new infections being driven by people forced to mingle in the workplace, those people being mostly poorly paid, minorities and the powerless.
And remember how many thousands of lives we the public have saved by voluntarily acting many days earlier than the government demanded.
Every time they have acted days or weeks after they should have done, they have blamed the public, yet every time, it has been because the government has been to incompetent or cowardly to lead.