The news agenda has moved on but the PPE disgrace in the UK continues. This tucked away in The Times today: 

Fifth of frontline doctors complain of unusable coronavirus PPE

A fifth of doctors say they have been given unusable personal protective equipment amid concerns that faulty facemasks and surgical gowns are being delivered to hospitals.

A senior nurse’s FFP3 respirator mask failed while intubating and was later discovered to be out of date, and doctors have complained of PPE smelling of mould and being visibly degraded, according to a survey of almost 900 frontline medical staff.

Rebecca Lewis, of the Doctors’ Association UK, which carried out the survey, said that doctors were concerned about the equipment. “This includes mouldy masks sometimes many years out of date, gowns with holes in and PPE that has failed during high-risk procedures,” she said. “Doctors are having to attempt to repair these items themselves, or work without PPE.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fifth-of-frontline-doctors-complain-of-unusable-coronavirus-ppe-wxf09qbb3

 

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So, today will no doubt see a de-facto easing of the lockdown, meaning the police will have their work cut out!

The Guardian has an article bemoaning the leaks. The thing is, though, *all* the papers carried the story yesterday, including the Guardian. I very much doubt they'll be able to stop them either, as it's human nature to want to be the first to say "breaking news - this is what's happening"...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/07/no-10-scrambles-to-control-amid-fierce-criticism-of-lockdown-mixed-messages 

"“It’s really unhelpful to have bits and pieces of information leaked,” a member of the Sage advisory committee told the Guardian. “It’s incredibly damaging. If people are primed to look at things in a certain way, it will shape how they receive the information. So on Sunday they will be looking for the green lights and they won’t notice the red lights. It’s a really powerful way of influencing people.”"

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Indeed, it was in the Guardian that I read the reports yesterday. (It was also was rather lacking in fact checking re. the school terms north of the border).

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Indeed, it was in the Guardian that I read the reports yesterday. (It was also was rather lacking in fact checking re. the school terms north of the border).

Journalists were briefed by Downing St that the lockdown would be eased in an announcement on Sunday. Now Johnson has taken fright. Another total debacle in a litany of them.

More lives will be lost because of the ineptitude of this appalling government.

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Arlene Foster has also now just stated that there will be no change in the lockdown in NI over the next three weeks,

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Journalists were briefed by Downing St that the lockdown would be eased in an announcement on Sunday. Now Johnson has taken fright. Another total debacle in a litany of them.

More lives will be lost because of the ineptitude of this appalling government.

If a slot was created for incompetence in the Guinness Book of Records, these incumbents would walk it!

 

Journalists were briefed by Downing St that the lockdown would be eased in an announcement on Sunday. Now Johnson has taken fright. Another total debacle in a litany of them.

More lives will be lost because of the ineptitude of this appalling government.

That's what it seemed like even without the benefit of inside knowledge. Throw in some wishful thinking on the part of Fleet Street and you get total confusion. 

Whatever possessed Downing Street that it supposed that the media would run a restrained version of any leaks?

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I’m a cynic, but I’d considered that the leak surrounding the lockdown was designed to divert attention away from this : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/all-400000-gowns-flown-from-turkey-for-nhs-fail-uk-standards

 

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We were talking about IT yesterday. Following on from that, the Guardian mentions this about the free laptops coming for disadvantaged children:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/may/07/families-sue-government-over-little-or-no-education-for-their-children

"The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, told MPs that 200,000 laptops would be distributed at a cost of £85m."

That's £425 per laptop, presumably ex-VAT.

Now, I buy laptops as part of my job at the school. That's more than we spend on teacher laptops, so in theory we should be getting i5s with 256GB SSDs and 8 GB RAM. (eBuyer has a Lenovo meeting those specs right now for £392 ex VAT).

Anything less - especially bearing in mind the bulk purchasing power the gov't has - would mean the government's been ripped-off.

Let's see what we end up with next month...

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Journalists were briefed by Downing St that the lockdown would be eased in an announcement on Sunday. Now Johnson has taken fright. Another total debacle in a litany of them.

More lives will be lost because of the ineptitude of this appalling government.

Out of interest when you say journalists were briefed, was that a written press release or don't things work that way anymore?

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This virus really is an evil beast - now a chance it can be added to the list of STDs

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/covid-19-found-in-semen-of-infected-men-say-chinese-doctors

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Out of interest when you say journalists were briefed, was that a written press release or don't things work that way anymore?

No. Not any more. They were briefed by one of the Downing St advisors. The usual unnamed source.

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Journalists were briefed by Downing St that the lockdown would be eased in an announcement on Sunday. Now Johnson has taken fright. Another total debacle in a litany of them.

More lives will be lost because of the ineptitude of this appalling government.

I agree. Unbelievably inept and dangerous.

Further, almost anything Johnson says in Sunday will now feel negative because I cannot believe there will more than a token easing.

But, for balance, the media must shoulder some responsibility for several weeks of growing clamour for answers on the way out of the restrictions when it should have been blatantly obvious that the focus needs to be on crushing Covid-19 first.

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We were talking about IT yesterday. Following on from that, the Guardian mentions this about the free laptops coming for disadvantaged children:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/may/07/families-sue-government-over-little-or-no-education-for-their-children

"The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, told MPs that 200,000 laptops would be distributed at a cost of £85m."

That's £425 per laptop, presumably ex-VAT.

Now, I buy laptops as part of my job at the school. That's more than we spend on teacher laptops, so in theory we should be getting i5s with 256GB SSDs and 8 GB RAM. (eBuyer has a Lenovo meeting those specs right now for £392 ex VAT).

Anything less - especially bearing in mind the bulk purchasing power the gov't has - would mean the government's been ripped-off.

Let's see what we end up with next month...

Please keep us updated. 

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I agree. Unbelievably inept and dangerous.

Further, almost anything Johnson says in Sunday will now feel negative because I cannot believe there will more than a token easing.

But, for balance, the media must shoulder some responsibility for several weeks of growing clamour for answers on the way out of the restrictions when it should have been blatantly obvious that the focus needs to be on crushing Covid-19 first.

 Agree with all of that. A number of people have raised questions around the science of lockdown and those deserve to be discussed. However, I suspect the clarion calls from some sections of the "right wing media" (perhaps not the sort of Tories you or I would be more likely to support) have more to do with money and less to do with science. Some of those shouting the loudest that things "must get back to normal" appear to be squirrelled away in their country mansions or even out of the UK completely. 

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Second coronavirus wave feared as lockdowns ease: Live updates

Europe, US loosen lockdowns amid reports of continuing rise in deaths worldwide including 75,000 in the US.

As Europe and the US loosen their lockdowns against the coronavirus, health experts express growing dread over what they say is an all-but-certain second wave of deaths and infections.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/deaths-hit-75000-covid-19-wave-feared-live-updates-200507231219399.html

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No. Not any more. They were briefed by one of the Downing St advisors. The usual unnamed source.

Thanks...I just wondered if it was a case of "fill in the missing blanks". As has been mentioned before Nicola Sturgeon's emphatic "the lockdown stays in place message" appears to have forced the Govt into re-thinking the content of Sunday's "announcement"

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 Agree with all of that. A number of people have raised questions around the science of lockdown and those deserve to be discussed. However, I suspect the clarion calls from some sections of the "right wing media" (perhaps not the sort of Tories you or I would be more likely to support) have more to do with money and less to do with science. Some of those shouting the loudest that things "must get back to normal" appear to be squirrelled away in their country mansions or even out of the UK completely. 

I agree with all of your comments.  It’s depressing that the UK should be essentially in the same place as the USA and Brazil: all with incompetent, reckless, populist leadership.

I’m convinced that the USA will be plunged into a larger scale pandemic and, as the basic characteristics of the SARS-Cov2 virus haven’t changed all I can see is a growing policy battle about how to proceed.

Here, given the R value is barely below the critical threshold of one, I worry that anything more than a token gesture will be followed by the car being thrown into reverse.

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We were talking about IT yesterday. Following on from that, the Guardian mentions this about the free laptops coming for disadvantaged children:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/may/07/families-sue-government-over-little-or-no-education-for-their-children

"The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, told MPs that 200,000 laptops would be distributed at a cost of £85m."

That's £425 per laptop, presumably ex-VAT.

Now, I buy laptops as part of my job at the school. That's more than we spend on teacher laptops, so in theory we should be getting i5s with 256GB SSDs and 8 GB RAM. (eBuyer has a Lenovo meeting those specs right now for £392 ex VAT).

Anything less - especially bearing in mind the bulk purchasing power the gov't has - would mean the government's been ripped-off.

Let's see what we end up with next month...

That would be unsurprising, it's always been the case at local level!

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Journalists were briefed by Downing St that the lockdown would be eased in an announcement on Sunday. Now Johnson has taken fright. Another total debacle in a litany of them.

More lives will be lost because of the ineptitude of this appalling government.

I still expect some easing - garden centres for example. It was always going to be a minimal easing though.

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