Sal Paradise wrote:
You seem to be suggesting that the government should have planned for a once in generation epidemic - The US has the most advanced medical system in the world and it can't cope.
We have a low number of ICU beds but not massively out to what we normally use - why would we have thousands of unused ICU beds just in case - it madness - yes for three months out decades of use it might not be enough but you well know you design systems around the norm with an element of flex not around a doomsday scenario.
It seems to me this is a great opportunity to attack the Tories and by God you haven't wasted that opportunity.
Snip
This once in a generation arguement you use is a straw man.
Sars 2003
H1 N1. 2009
Mers. 2012
Now these once in A generation Incidents you talk about occur every 6 or 7 years So unless you are a forest elephant they occur a lot more often than once in a human generation.
The US system of poor national health services , approximately 20% of the population with no free health care, poor levels of social security, etc is one of the worlds countries most unlikely to be able to cope in a First world country. Although the size of it.s economy means it can then mobilise lots of resources to deal with things after the event.
Countries that can cope are those with more national systems of organisation.
The NHS failed a government test of its ability to handle a pandemic. Exercise Cygnus, a three-day dry run for a pandemic carried out in October 2016, examined how hospitals and other services would cope in a flu outbreak with a similar mortality rate to coronavirus. Results were never made public.
a 2019 parliamentary inquiry into biological security was postponed and then cancelled because MPs were focused on Brexit.
Your arguement about not maintaining extra resources just in case is a justification for cutting all public services to the bone the problem is when this is done across all services you end up leaving all services unable to cope .
So when the grenfell fire breaks out the fire service has problems getting enough fire engines of the right type to attend quickly.
In the health service every year for 3 or 4 months in the year at winter the health service has a crisis which means it cannot cope and ends up cancelling 1000s of operations. This does not happen in many other countries that invest more in their services.
None of this is rocket science. None of this is unexpected . None of this could not be foretold. None of this could not have been better prepared for .
The responsibility for this does lie with tHe government who has been in charge of all of this for the last 10 years.
It has happened on their watch and they should be held to account.
Let me give you one further example of where the government is failing.
Floods
These are now not one in 100 year events.
They are likely to be 1 in 3 year events or twice in one year events.
Yet the government has not banned building in flood plains.
When these new houses get flooded who is responsible ?
Much of this is due to the fact that the government in the UK for the last 40 years has been focused on one thing only short term decisions and actions to remain in power. There is no long term planning or strategy to manage any of these things. All governments have been culpable in respect of this BUT it is the Tories in the last 10 years who have taken it to this to its s denouement and left the public services cut to the bone and unable to effectively respond to any crisis.
