Let's be honest Brian, we are lone voices in the Wildnerness. And yes it is ultimately the government's fault that the NHS is the way it is. But the government rather than a government. There is no political party in the UK that has the balls to raise these issues. From the green party to UKIP every single one has the view that the NHS is untouchable. And the reason for this is because the public believes the NHS is perfect and this opinion is held by those from the far-left to the far-right. Nothing will ever change because the NHS is a religion that cannot be critisized. Its like how the gun problem in America will never change.

Source for this? I don't subscribe to the NHS religion btw, but as Brian says even if that's true the govt would still have to shoulder some responsibility for that catastrophic decision. 

Keeping down the STIs for a year is an added bonus.

Sure and I accept that point. But what you would be asking for the government to do is go against this religion that everyone subscribes to. And as I say no government of any colour would do that. Hell, Cummings is probably the closest you can theoretically get to trimming the fat and even he seems to only focus on the blob within the civil service rather than the NHS. I fully think the government, a government, every government subscribes to the religion too. Hell there is no way you are becoming an MP of any party without being a member of the church.

I’m so sick of you just writing bilge off the top of your head. The decision was made by the Department of Health and PHE - both arms of the Govt. Managers were instructed in March to try to keep care home residents away from hospital.

Your posts have little if any credence. They rarely have. It’s just a stream of noise.

How much influence do you really think a government minister has over the likes of PHE? A government minister can only macromanage the situation, the fine details of how the policy is implemented is all the civil service. PHE was ordered to ramp up testing and they failed because they refused to engage with universities and the private sector.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/neil-fergusons-imperial-model-could-devastating-software-mistake/

Remember how I brought this up weeks ago and you all laughed at me because the website was written by a 'lockdown skeptic' (despite the fact I'm about the furthest thing away from a lockdown skeptic as it is possible to be).

As I said it doesn't take much investigative work to verify that the claims that this model was a shambles is true. The fact that this was simply described as 'stochastic' was a huge red flag to me.

So, no source for what you wrote?

You just make this sh1t up and I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an idiot. Just repeat your off-the-top-of-your head cr4p over and over until you go into one of your bipolar sulks.

It’s garbage. Think about it. Work it out. Do some reading. Do you honestly believe that NHS managers in scores of trusts, foundation trusts and college hospital foundations all made the same decision independently.

It wouldn’t matter it this was a Labour govt or the MRLP. Our government has effectively condemned thousands of care home residents to death. Your slavish loyalty to the Tories shows you are unable to reason or think for yourself.

Only 3 years for me and I was lucky - I didn't get any more colds than normal. I suspect one key difference is that I'm not a social person, so rarely went to a bar and generally just hung out (if at all) with a few friends.

Working in a school, on the other hand... it's one of those tropes that new staff get everything under the sun and I certainly did! I started there aged just under 30; I had maybe one or two colds a year. That first year was hell, I had at least half-a-dozen colds and proper flu over that first Christmas. After that the number of colds gradually fell and I'm now back to just one or two a year, sometimes none. I think I had mild flu earlier this year, of course.

It's not just me either: new starters often look like they're at death's door shortly after starting at the school.

This is what our PM just said in the HoC: "I can tell him also that by June 1, already we have recruited 24,000 trackers and by June 1 we will have 25,000. They will be capable of tracking the contacts of 10,000 new cases a day."

Great I thought, but are we talking about proper contact tracers here or just call centre stuff? The countries that have been applying this strategy successfully (since back in Feb!) are using local teams which intervene quickly, test properly the infected people and their contacts and get the results quickly and then seperate the infected from the healthy.

I just hope that we won't mess this up too, we cannot just have contact tracers calling people up and trying to get contact details and then just send test kits in the post for those contacts to take swabs themselves. 

No more fcking incompetence!

There are many sources. Here is one example

https://madeinheene.hee.nhs.uk/Portals/0/COVID-19%20patient%20transport%20services%2027%20March.pdf

The case manager has responsibility over discharge.

PHE has issued advice to local authorities, in late march and early April they did not advise against transporting suspected COVID cases into care homes. But you are right, some local authorities, particularly those that were less worried about being overwhelmed would have. The care home situation is by no means uniform. Some care homes are completely COVID free, others are completely overrun.

So are you saying that the case managers took that decision by themselves without the govt knowing about this?

And this was not a blind defence of the Tories, I never claimed that had Labour been in power this would not have happened.

And I am not above critisizing the govt, which I have. My problem is the implicit understanding the NHS and civil service are completely blameless. They have obviously also made mistakes and that needs acknolegeing. It doesn't really need me to point out the govt has made mistakes, that's obvious. Had I been in charge you know I would have handeled things differently.

Its not the governments job to micromanage every descision. The government's main responsibility is broad policy outlines. Could the government have been more explicit? Yes, its clear the govt was myopic about a potential care home epidemic. But in localities where being overwhelmed was not likely (i.e outside of London outside of that first week in April) its not too much to ask for some basic initiative.

You underestimate the capacity for jobsworthism that goes on in the NHS.

Speaking of which... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/13/covid-19-crisis-raises-hopes-of-end-to-uk-transmission-of-hiv

The NHS is the problem - too big, too hard to manage, a political football. With the best will in the world, Ministers cannot know what on earth is going on in such a vast, amorphous entity. Sometimes they like to pretend to be in charge, but they are not - all they ever do is to push on a piece of string.

Can't you just disagree without resorting to personal insults? 

And think about this JustinW, if the Tories are as callus as you think they are, then why the hell would they try to kill off their own vote base? To suggest some sinister motivation by the government is truly ridiculous. This whole mess is a story of incompetence not deliberate malpractice. And some of that incompetence lies with the government but not all of it.

And no I'm not bipolar, I am a little cabin fevered though after enduring months of this lockdown. I appolgise for some of my more egregious outbursts last week.

The government issuing statements about schools reopening without doing the necessary consultation and getting support first is scarcely any less deplorable.

I just cannot accept this premise, it's very unlikely for such a monumental decision to be taken at lower levels. Also contrast our govt's approach with that of other countries (Sweden, France, Belgium), where the governments have repeatedly apologised for their mistakes.  

You have to understand the government has priorities. Think back to end of march, early April. None of us, here, on TWO had care  homes on our mind and at that time the virus did not seem to be endemic in care homes. Our main concern, at that time, was the very real prospect of the NHS becoming overwhelmed. And that was likely the government's priority too. Discretion for most descisions is with the relative authority. At the time the advice from PHE was that care homes were low risk. But it takes some common sense, if bed capacity was not overwhelmed (again I'm talking outside london, outside of that first week) then that discretion was left to lower level manages within the NHS and in some cases higher level managers on a more national scale. The NHS has to bear some responsibility for screwing up by failing to use simple common sense.

Really?  I have to say I think you've got that entirely wrong.

People recognise the NHS has its faults and limitations but it still does an incredibly good job in the circumstances.

I've said many times that it would help if our leaders addressed the 'mission creep' in the NHS.  It is doing far, far more than it was created to do and doing so against a backdrop of an increasingly overweight, unfit and ageing population.