NHS supplies; reporting contradictions

[mtbc]

In the UK: Do healthcare staff get adequate PPE^* for treating patients presenting with suspected COVID-19? Do traveling care workers treating the vulnerable-demographic patients isolating in their homes get adequate PPE? Are there still enough mortuary bags for the cadavers? What is the current official advice on all this? Etc.

It is hard for me to tell. I see reports of Her Majesty's Government and some healthcare providers saying that everything is fine, from other people on the ground saying, probably with extra expletives, no it surely isn't, and I wonder if they all think they're correct, if there is some incompetence in between, regional variation, whatever. Clarity on what the facts are would much assist in figuring how to proceed.

Then there are the reports of people sourcing their own PPE only to have their workplace disallow it. I have every sympathy with those wishing to help but not feeling that they're provided what they need to keep themselves, thus their family and patients, safe. I am reminded of related scandals of our sending soldiers into combat zones with inadequate PPE.

^*Personal protective equipment, yet another badly overloaded acronym. For example, at Cambridge I took a Professional Practice and Ethics course, thus amusing me that the part of the building housing my desk at work warns me not to enter with PPE. Indeed, Oxford offers a whole bachelor's degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Comments

[wpadmirer]

It's bizarre, isn't it? Our governments try to convince us all is well, and yet, we can clearly see it's not.