Well, here is some positive news for a change - private industry stepping up to the mark:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/dream-team-of-f1-engineers-race-to-the-rescue-with-coronavirus-ventilators-mcjqvglgj
"The greatest reward at the McLaren base, near Woking, is usually when one of their cars wins a Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Last week, though, the team experienced an altogether greater satisfaction when the first ventilator that they had helped to make came off the production line en route to save lives in the battle against Covid-19.
McLaren’s futuristic buildings have been completely transformed in the past five weeks of the crisis. Now, in the machine room where they normally build parts for the suspension of F1 cars, they are making manifolds and hose nipples for ventilators.
Next to the machine room, in the gearbox room, they are mass-producing trolleys on which the ventilators can be transported.
This is all a race against time. If you can’t move the ventilator, you can’t use it. So when 15,000 ventilators have been ordered, they need 15,000 trolleys.
...
Dick Elsy, chairman of the partnership of more than 50 companies, said they had squeezed 18 months of business planning into five weeks and were on course to manufacture a ten-year supply of ventilators in only ten weeks.
“We’ve got this fantastic capability in the UK and we should be proud of it — we have squeezed 18 months’ work into a month and now we’re handing over to production lines,” he said.
Using assembly lines around the country they will soon be making 1,500 life-saving machines every week — Penlon ventilators for intensive care and Smith ParaPac devices for ambulance crews.
..."