There's no government on the planet that plans for the consequences of a pandemic.

This must be the first time that so much PPE has been needed in the recent history of the world so it is understandable that governments & medical authorities have been wrong footed.

Every government has plans. There's a team in the Cabinet Office that plans for all sorts of things. There's a plan for what happens if the National Grid goes down (which involves urgent action as you have about 5 days before the cooling towers in nuclear power plants melt down and Sellafield becomes Chernobyl). There's a plan for what happens if terrorists detonate a nuclear "dirty bomb" in a city centre. There's a plan for foot-and-mouth style agricultural diseases that can wipe out livestock and food supply.

They've had pandemic plans for years. In the mid-2000s they were very concerned about avian flu developing into human-to-human transmission. I remember going to a talk a number of years ago about civil contingency planning where the speaker said pandemic of a new virus is the highest on the potential impact ranking in terms of potential deaths and economic impact. The other big threat like that is antimicrobial resistance because if superbugs develop that are resistant to our limited range of antibiotics it will knock medicine back centuries as we wouldn't be able to do most hospital treatments without risk of infection that couldn't be controlled.

Emergency planning gets undermined by being low down politicians' priorities, there aren't votes in it and it costs money, and also there's an attitude that anything that sounds really bad "could never really happen", they think "yeah they told us the millennium bug was going to knock planes out of the sky". We'd have been better prepared for this in the mid 2000s than now, because capacity has been degraded and the health system has become more fragmented after the Lansley reforms in the early 2010s.

In a crisis, the more centralised a system is the better for co-ordinating action at pace, and more fragmented health systems are more exposed in something like this (the US is especially vulnerable). Ours has got fragmented with multiple "reforms" which get brought in every few years that introduce more separations between different bodies, usually under the premise of driving efficiency, creating an internal market for competition between providers and so on - but when trying to work fast like now it means lots of different bodies, each with their own limited budgets and targets, are needing to work together but also have their own vested interests.

Also running down capacity over time means you haven't got spare capacity to respond at speed to crises.

There was a review of pandemic capacity a few years ago when Jeremy Hunt was Secretary of State for the NHS, it concluded that the NHS would be overwhelmed and identified a lot of things that needed to be fixed. The response then was the classic "defensive lines": NHS is the best in the world, world-class healthcare infrastructure well placed to deal with anything blah blah. Hunt is now doing a decent job of asking questions as chair of the health select committee, but the elephant in the room is that if he'd taken this seriously back then we would have been better equipped to deal with things now.

It would still be tough but the better prepared you are the more the NHS can cope with an increase and less severe lockdowns we'd have had to have.

The antimicrobial resistance is a real threat too - health professionals and scientists are very concerned, and the big risk factor comes from the overuse of antibiotics of which a large part comes from intensive farming practices adding antibiotics in to animal feed. They have been saying for a while now that this should be banned but the large agrifoods companies have strong lobbying power and so nothing gets done. If we are hit with a superbug down the road, no doubt we'll also have governments claiming "nobody could have forseen this, stop trying to make political capital out of it".

Especially one that has underinvested in the National Health and Care Service.
Though funding for the Department of Health and Social Care continues to grow, the rate of growth slowed during the period of imposed Tory austerity. Budgets rose by 1.4 per cent each year on average (adjusting for inflation) in the 10 years between 2009/10 to 2018/19, compared to the 3.7 per cent average rises since the NHS was established.
This meant, amongst other things screwing nursing staff wages, knowing how devoted they were to their chosen career.
Now they are applauded as heroes.

They always have been.

Aaaaaah, the NHS, the great British religion, that is now considered blasphemous to talk down...



Truth is, it's now simply a political football, that as far outgrown its initial purpose.

Hopefully, after this has ended, it might receive a total review of its purpose and how it's funded, because it's been desperately needed for years.

Quote ="MorePlaymakersNeeded"There's no government on the planet that plans for the consequences of a pandemic.'" Germany are far ahead of us and even taking Covid 19 patients from other EU states; https://www.eurosurveillance.org/conten ... 1.00353-en [iA functional preparedness plan initially assumes a worst case scenario. On the basis of the key data from the pandemic of 1918-20 (4), we propose the following situation with respect to the current population of Germany: 20 to 25 million cases of influenza, 200 000 admissions to hospital with a total of 1.6 million days' hospitalisation, 120 000 deaths from influenza, and an annual excess mortality of 175 000. About 1.2 million cases of pneumonia as a secondary infection should also be expected.[/i

Quote ="MorePlaymakersNeeded"There's no government on the planet that plans for the consequences of a pandemic.'" Germany are far ahead of us and even taking Covid 19 patients from other EU states; https://www.eurosurveillance.org/conten ... 1.00353-en [iA functional preparedness plan initially assumes a worst case scenario. On the basis of the key data from the pandemic of 1918-20 (4), we propose the following situation with respect to the current population of Germany: 20 to 25 million cases of influenza, 200 000 admissions to hospital with a total of 1.6 million days' hospitalisation, 120 000 deaths from influenza, and an annual excess mortality of 175 000. About 1.2 million cases of pneumonia as a secondary infection should also be expected.[/i

Indeed. The NHS being free at the point of use is sacrosanct.

But it's mismanaged with its funds poorly allocated. Needs an overhaul but that's very hard to do politically.

I voted Labour, but this government has been in charge for 116 days.

I think you know what I mean Jack, i.e. where the responsibility lies.

The responsibility for the way the NHS uses its funds is down to the NHS Procurement teams, turning the NHS into Trusts was and still is a big issue the Trust leaders are only interested in making profit. There are departments within the NHS that are spending huge funds during Feb and Mar each year to prove their dept needs the funds and therefore receives the same level of funding the following year. Don't forget there are those in the NHS who use the 6 months full pay sick leave every year, which is a cost as they require agency to cover the positions.

Successive governments regardless of their flavour have treated the NHS with bursts of contempt. There have been increases in funds however the increase population and therefore to £'s per head is out of balance. There are many non UK nationals treated by the NHS whose respective governments should eventually pay, sadly there is a massive gap in the treatment and the cost recovery this also has an effect on the way the NHS works.

When you look at the none frontline staff, some of their salaries would make your eyes water when some on the frontline are on low salaries. Revising this area would massively help the funding issues.

The NHS is not something this or the next government can put right without returning it to a nationalised operation.

Again this Thursday we should all







the frontline staff

The NHS does try and do a lot of campaigning on prevention and healthy lifestyles and doctors lobby government for increased regulations/taxes on things like sugar, saturated fats, tobacco, alcohol.

However they come up against powerful lobby interests and media commentators who describe this as "the nanny state". Often the same type of voices who like to slag off the NHS all the time. One of the ironies which they haven't understood, in their simultaneous campaigns against the nanny state and NHS and 'red tape', is that insurance companies want deregulation of data privacy rules so they can use 'big data' to learn more about peoples lifestyles.

If they get their way on this and on private insurance replacing the NHS, then they may end up in the dystopian nightmare where every transaction they make is being monitored with an eye to setting their health premiums. Then the 25 year old teetotal vegan millennial with subscriptions to yoga classes and fitness clubs pays a lot less than the 50 year old who is a bit overweight and enjoys beer, a full English breakfast and the occasional fag. Probably not the world they were hoping for.

Sounds perfectly fair to me. By all means, enjoy your unhealthy lifestyle, just don't expect others to fund your self abuse.

We currently have a system that rewards neglect, with a free route out of it. .. that can't be right?

Couldn't agree more.but to throw another angle on it aren't we all guilty of this in some sort of way...I.e going for a few beers on a Friday having a chippy tea some smoke..when on holiday drink and eat more Christmas we do eat and drink more...not meaning to pick an argument but aren't we all guilty of this...

This is getting a bit serious but we do seem to live in an 'entitlement' and 'not my fault' society. The counter balance is some people genuine need help.

I see today Premier League footballers have come together to make a charitable donation to the NHS. Wonderful gesture.

However the NHS is not a charity and should not have to be funded by charitable donations in the midst of a crisis. A sickening indictment of 10 years of Tory rule.

Indeed if only Corbyn and Abbott had been at the helm

They couldn’t have done any worse than Johnson and his pals have during this pandemic.

This dispute / discussion take me back to my schooldays when the headmaster would drop into the class and gave his words of wisdom regarding healthy living ..he was whip thin, didn't drink or smoke and advised us to leave the dining table still feeling a little hungry....He retired at 65 and his funeral was just a few weeks later.

When it comes to the question of who would you trust with your life, Jeremy Corbyn, Diane abbot, or Boris Johnson?

You might want to take some advice from Boris Johnson’s dumped partners and abandoned children

No argument with this. However, there is a vast difference between this situation and one where some lard turns up at the GP's, with a BMI in the 30's, his blood pressure through the roof and not being able to walk 100 metres without gasping for breath.

Wasn`t Diane Abbot abandoned by a former lover:- the totally unelectable Corbyn?

Dont forget there is also a social inequality aspect to this. Poor education, poor parental guidance, limited life chances are all factors. Cheap processed food also needs to be thrown into the mix.

You tell me



Are you comparing it to the slime bag Boris, admittedly this is a bit watered down being in the Sun.



[urlhttps://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9552307/boris-johnson-wives-romance-mistresses-affairs/[/url

And that’s before we start on his children

[i[uOH, THANK YOU[/u[/i

I WAS enjoying my tea!!!!