CoVID-19 Diary – week 19
The meme of a nurse checking her purse at the checkout apologising with the words “Sorry, will you accept a round of applause?” has been doing the rounds this week after it was revealed that nurses weren’t included in the pay rise announced by the government. Neither were junior doctors because both nurses and junior doctors had already been negotiating their own crappy deals.
The whole sorry story sounds incredible, like it was some crazy, off the wall lampoon written by Mel Brooks or some psychedelic Beatles movie.
The government had run a pandemic simulation in 2016, the conclusion of which was that it was not prepared for a pandemic. It needed respirators and PPE. It did nothing. It did less than nothing because the NHS had been running at 104% capacity before CoVID-19. Then for the first month after the virus had hit the UK the government sat on its hands with the prime minister not even attending COBRA meetings. It locked the country down a week after the Cheltenham races were allowed to happen and Athletico Madrid played at Anfield. London travel services were being withdrawn while people were still working and packing the trains and buses. Many black and asian bus drivers were forbidden from taking precautionary measures and died.
Elderly patients were shipped out of hospitals without testing (some known to be infected) and placed back into care homes thus incubating the virus amongst the most vulnerable. Many care homes were threatened with funding being witheld if they didn’t comply. At the same time care workers were going from home to home carrying the virus with them and without the PPE they vitally needed. People with special needs were treated even worse.
In the hospitals nurses were using bin bags as PPE and sharing masks.We know how many doctors (largely BAME) and nurses died directly as a result of lack of protective equipment while the government were lying about the sourcing of it. They ordered PPE from abroad that was useless and ignored calls from UK business who said they could produce it. Instead they placed millions of pounds worth of contracts with companies that wouldn’t know one end of a medical grade mask from another. And they kept lying and got their government experts to cover for them.
Student nurses who a couple of years before had their bursaries taken from them were offered contracts whereby they’d get paid to work in hospitals rather than paying to work but would have their contracts terminated early because they weren’t essential. Not only did the government lie and hand contracts to their mates they looked the other way when a government advisor broke the rules and made laughably feeble excuses.They knew that if they prevaricated and procrastinated for a few weeks a scandal the whole country were furious with would blow over. They did and it did. That’s a brilliant trick. When you do something so outragious that everyone is up in arms and then you ride it out you become almost untouchable.
All this time the prime minister, his cabinet and Tory MPs would clap for essential workers every Thursday at 8pm and applaud the work they were doing and the sacrifices they were making. They promised to ramp up testing and when they missed their target they lied yet again, double counting the equipment, counting individual tests as though they were individual people and counting tests that were in the post. Then they lost test results. Because they’d cut the NHS adrift in 2012 there was no central coordination and the health secretary was unbelievably no longer responsible for delivering health services to the British people. To add insult to injury Her Majesty’s official opposition refused to hold the government to account.
We All Live in a Yellow Submarine
Now you have learned to live in the awful realm of the absurd this week’s bizarre events should come as no surprise. Nurses, Doctors and care workers have been shown how much they are appreciated by giving them nothing. And we know how much the government value the NHS because they’ve handed it on a plate to US health vultures. But hey, we’ve now got the Russia Report. Whoopie. So rather than challenge the PM on selling off the NHS, the official opposition says it would not have presented a catalogue of documents previously published on Reddit that exposed what the government were up to but instead made a big thing about the big nothing that is the Russia Report. Apparently national security is top of the priorities — not much use when you’re unemployed, living on the streets or another coronavirus statistic.
As we live a life of ease
Everyone of us has all we need
Sky of blue and sea of green
In our yellow submarine