I’m as fed up as so many others must be at the moment. Actually, I have to say I am rather angry too, as well as frustrated, irritated and questioning. I’m angry that we are in this situation, frustrated that we seem so neutered in dealing with it, irritated that I personally can do nothing but sit on my backside at home and then I have so many concerns with no apparent answers to them.
In my view the United Kingdom is the best country in the world and yet I fail to understand why we are being hit so hard by this COVID-19 virus. Our people are fit and well in the main and we have the wonderful NHS to look after us. Surely, we could have averted the worst of Coronavirus but still, based on evidence being produced, we haven’t even reached the peak of the infection?
Should we have gone into lockdown earlier? The answer is possibly but I know the Government was strictly following medical and scientific advice. Should they have done so? Would the public have really accepted lockdown until people saw the swelling death rate? Many suggest they would not have done. That might have contributed to the reluctance to take away our liberty earlier. Was that decision to delay right? Who really knows?
One doctor has now suggested we will have done well if the death rate is less than 40,000 people. I suppose that’s better than the Spanish Flu, which lasted from January 1918 to December 1920 killing 228,000 Britons, over three times that number. Our then Prime Minister, Lloyd George, contracted it too but survived. Obviously, there is a parallel here to modern times.
Like so many I cannot understand why we might be on course to be the worst infected country in Europe. This was declared by Professor Jeremy Farrar, the Director of the Wellcome Trust and a pandemics expert on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) on Easter Sunday’s Andrew Marr Show. For goodness sake we have had apparently (I don’t trust Chinese figures) many more deaths than China where the virus originated. Why? Our Prime Minister was struck down and he says it was touch and go whether he lived! What have we got wrong? Are we more incompetent than other countries? I have always thought we weren’t; thus, my dismay.
We have strictly followed medical and scientific advice and yet 15,464 of us have died – in the best country in the World! What have we done badly and others like Germany, with significantly less deaths, done right? We don’t really know. It’s more than PPE availability! It’s not apparently to do with the respective health systems. Or is it? Why have we been infected so much?
I consider the very brave NHS staff to be like soldiers on active service not least because of their own casualty/infection rate! Far too many nurses and doctors have caught Coronavirus; including my nephew’s wonderful wife who works in Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Would better PPE have helped? I suppose so. Why did we not have it? Why did not the NHS mobilise industry here to get it much quicker? It seems to have been stuck on standard operating procedures which were barmy. Personally, as an MP, I apologise that we did not have enough PPE when it was needed. I am sorry. We got that wrong. Ministers should have gripped Public Health England, for instance, and told it to forget the standard procurement system from a few so-called trusted suppliers – get PPE from wherever it can be found or made and fast. Our own companies could have done it too but Public Health England seems to have procrastinated on such a decision preferring its normal slow procurement in far from normal times. I would say that’s a failure of leadership.
Do Germany and some European countries have better health systems than us? We take great pride in the NHS but are we a bit blind about this national treasure? Other countries manage – apparently better on the face of it. I do not know why. Is it to do with money alone or does the whole system need a revolution? Maybe it does.
How come, after 3 weeks plus of being locked into our homes we haven’t seen a significant drop in infections and deaths? Why not? I expected we would have done by now but we haven’t. I want to see the results of our incarceration translated into many less infections and deaths, and fast now.
The one thing that the scientific and medical experts have been right about is that we will follow an infection and death rate like Italy and Spain. They talk in terms of gradients and peaks. Why haven’t the drastic measures they advocated under lock-down mitigated these so-called gradients and peaks? What would have happened without us rigidly following what they advocated? Has scientific and medical advice led us down the wrong path or what?
We all suspect that post-Coronavirus society could be quite different in future. The crisis is bound to be a catalyst for many reforms and I wonder how far such changes will reach. My guess is that they will be pretty far reaching in all aspects of life including the NHS. Surely Public Health England really needs a radical shake-up at the very least?
Finally, I apologise if what I have written seems a bit of an exasperated rant. Please do not read it as a tirade against the Government which I believe is doing a good job in a very difficult situation. It may have made some mistakes but, if so, they were sins of good intention. These are unique times for ministers just as much as the rest of us. I think my rant is just simple frustration that I like so many others are just on the side-lines, feeling impotent and unable to help rectify the situation. We, stuck at home, simply have to wait and be patient. Boy is that infuriating.