dr_feelgood wrote:
Interesting that this morning on Andrew Marr, Sir Jeremy Farrar, Head of the Wellcome Trust and a Govt and WHO adviser said that mass testing and tracking down and isolation of infected individuals and their contacts was the way to go to reduce the number of cases and that finding effective medication that is allready on the market would be the best treatment in the short term as production of a vaccine would take much longer.
You have to question the decisions of Govt ministers. Advisers are there to advise but Govt ministers don't necessarily need to follow that advice. Furthermore, I would guess that the advisers gave several scenarios ranging from mass testing with a total lockdown to just leaving the pandemic to run its course without intervention. I guess that the government then balanced deaths vs economy prior to making their decisions.
What has become apparent is that globalisation has left us without the capability to mass produce cheap items of PPE as this is now done mainly in China and that the Govt had no effective emergency plan due to running down the NHS budget , public health budget, privatisation/abolition of Govt agencies and not keeping adequate emergency stocks of PPE.
Hopefully this will see increased funding for the NHS in the future and more manufacturing jobs kept in the UK rather than increasing globalisation that has seen these manufacturing jobs move to China with its cheap labour and lack of workers/human rights.
On the subject of government advisors, it was clear from the start that, Boris Johnson chose to flank himself with 2 health experts, so that he couldn't be blamed if things didn't go to plan.
Quite amazing that "we will go with the science" on this one but, on EVERY other aspect of government, they do as they please.
The scientists and experts on climate change, still remain largely ignored and if they are correct, the effects of the world heating up could be equally as catastrophic, albeit, not necessarily in the UK.
The UK is on course to suffer the highest number of deaths in Europe, despite Germany and France having larger populations, Germany seemingly getting through this rather better than the UK.
Lets see how it all unfolds and hope that the peak is getting very close and that at some point in the next few weeks, the light at the end of the tunnel will get a little brighter.
