Failure on a monumental scale

The UK has 21% of COVID-19 deaths.

That a country with 0.8% of the population can have so many deaths shows that some, something has seriously gone wrong.

Questions are being asked by the press and media. Not by them all, but by some. Like this week, BBC's Panorama program did an expose on how bad the PPE situation is for NHS and care home staff. It was shocking, it is on the i player and I think you should watch.

That the Government and Conservative politicians think is was, and is OK to send doctors, nurses, critical staff out to work for, in some cases, minimum wage, and risk their lives. And to think that being photographed standing on their doorsteps at eight on a Thursday night, or minting some medals or a Red Arrows fly by will make things better.

One nurse said, we don't want to be heroes, we just want to be able to do our job safely. And the Conservative Press attacks people who too part as they are Labour activists, as if there is just a political agenda, not over 100 doctors and nurses who are lying either in mass graves or still in a morgue. Their attitude is fucking sick, as they are saying, you voted Labour, you cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

Wankers.

And the reason for questioning how the country has ended up with nearly 50,000 dead by the end of April is important, as the people who got us to this point are now making the decisions on what to do next. I don't know about you, but I have ZERO confidence on them getting the next stage right, seeing they got the implementation so wrong.

The UK had months of notice from the WHO, and years to prepare after the Operation Cygnus in 2016. This has been a failure of monumental proportions, and one which the inquiry, which will happen, and will take the best part of a decade. But if we want to stop more deaths, the people who got us here have to explain how they got it so wrong and how we can be sure they won't fuck up again going forward.

But instead, this morning the papers are full of Johnson and his girlfriend announcing they have a son, pictures of a smiling Johnson climbing the Downing Street staircase like there is nothing in the world to worry about.

It is beyond shameful.

And yesterday, COVID-19 came close to Jools and myself, more on that in my later post.