Quote Cronus="Cronus"Like I said a few weeks ago, too many here are too biased or not paying attention.
In almost every briefing I've seen attended by Whitty and Vallance, they have openly and honestly referenced the global shortage of PPE and the difficulties in distribution and supply, as well as the difficulties faced by procurement. You must have somehow missed all of this. Yes, as you mention, China was in lockdown - but that's just part of the issue.
The initial issue wasn't supply, it was local distribution. We had plenty of stock but getting it out there effectively and efficiently was the challenge. Still, as of a few days ago 761 million items of PPE had been delivered to 58,000 different settings across the UK. Has it been perfect? No. Has any nation managed a perfect supply chain throughout this? No (except possibly those producing PPE en masse). Was this ever going to be perfectly managed, anywhere? No. But - not disregarding instances of shortages - have the vast majority of NHS staff had access to PPE equipment? Yes.
But let's also look at supply. The main producers of PPE - China, South Korea, Japan and others - were not only in lockdown, but they also blocked exports of PPE at various stages to protect their own interests (understandable). China even effectively nationalised the Shanghai 3M plant - and others - to prevent exports. Furthermore, China actually IMPORTED 2.5 billion pieces of PPE equipment in Feb/Mar from the EU, Australia and others - stockpiling. Add to that the billions of masks purchased by the public across Asia and later the world, and immediately available stocks are almost wiped out globally.
As an example of the challenges being faced, we have the current issue with gowns. Sufficient stock has been ordered (surprise, surprise - from China). But some has been mislabelled at source and others have failed safety tests and so supplies are low in some areas. Another example of the reliance on cheap but poor quality goods from China backfiring - as we have also seen with equipment and indeed tests across Europe, where millions of Chinese COVID19 tests had to be binned after being found to be useless.
Yes, in an ideal world every nurse, doctor, carer, etc, etc would have an unlimited supply of the very best PPE on tap - and by saying that in absolutely no way do I underestimate the challenges and dangers they are facing. Our NHS staff are outstanding and deserve every plaudit being sent their way (as well as a pay rise). But this is far from an ideal world; it's a feckin global pandemic and the entire planet is stretched. To expect everything to run perfectly is naive.
If there's one thing we must learn from this, it's that reliance on globalisation and cheap but shoddy Chinese/Asian markets is damaging. We've shipped our industries and jobs over there, leaving us exposed when it matters.'"
Dont know if this is the post that you wanted me to read.
You are letting Hancock and Patel off the hook completely.
As you suggest, the "story" that has been fed to us is that "there IS sufficient PPE to go round" and that any issues with lack of "equipment" is purely down to distribution and nothing at all to do with being a little slow out of the blocks or to do with not having sufficient.
There is an attempt to throw telephone numbers of total numbers of PPE is playground stuff and the bottom line is it doesn't matter how many boxes or pallets there are in a central warehouse, the equipment needs to be in the right place at the right time.
Of course, this cant all be controlled at government level, it's an absolutely huge task of procurement and distribution, made all the more difficult by both the urgency of the situation and world demand plus, problems in manufacture.
However, why not have some honesty instead of the "it's not our fault", which is all that the government ministers have said, deflecting all blame away from themselves.
As for being flanked by experts, you clearly aren't a cynical as me (probably a good thing) but, for all other government issues, they are usually happy to take their advice in private and then decide policy and while accepting that the current crisis is on a whole new level, given the crap that Johnson & Co have come up with of so many previous occasions, you can easily see that, given the gravity of the situation, they dont want any of the brown stuff sticking to them.
