THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO

Matt Hancock Says Asking Him To Apologise For Care Home Deaths Is Illogical

Matt Hancock has refused to atone for the Government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak and he refused to apologise to the relative of a frontline NHS worker who fought for more PPE.

Approximately 3,096 people have died from the coronavirus in care homes since the inception of the pandemic and when Matt Hancock was asked if testing was inept or if he planned to apologise, he stated that the Government had not left people unprotected.

And when asked if he would apologise to the families of care home residents who had died because the Government hadn’t properly protected them, he stated that he thought it was an unreasonable question and stated that care homes had been a top priority right from the start.

But he then stated that testing would finally be made available to all care home residents and staff in England, including those with no symptoms. He further stated that the Government would include the number of deaths in care homes and the community in its daily figures, to bring as much clarity as possible to the data.

It came only hours after Matt Hancock was confronted live on air by the son of a doctor who died after begging for PPE.

Dr Abdul Mabud Chowdhury warned the government about the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for NHS staff days before his passing.

The 53-year-old consultant urologist is one of more than 100 NHS and social care workers who have died after getting coronavirus and his son Intisar asked for the Health Secretary to make a public apology during a phone-in on LBC Radio.

Intisar stated that when his father was sick he penned an open letter to the Prime Minister urging for more PPE for NHS frontline workers but it was a request that was disregarded and two weeks later his father passed away from the coronavirus.

Since then, over 100 NHS and social care workers have passed away from getting the virus.

Intisar said, “Do you regret not taking my dad’s concerns, my 11-year-old sister dad’s concerns and my wife’s husband’s concerns seriously enough for my dad that we’ve all lost?”

The Health Secretary seemed momentarily lost for words before he responded: “Intisar, I’m really sorry about your dad’s death.

“I have seen the comments you’ve made and what you’ve said in public and I think it’s very brave of you to be speaking out in public.

“We took it very very seriously what your father said and we’ve been working around the clock to ensure that there’s enough protective equipment and in the case of anybody who works in the NHS or in social care and has died from coronavirus we look into it in each case to find out the reasons where they might have caught it and what lessons we can learn.”

He continued the government was “constantly looking and learning” and it was a “very complicated logistical effort”.

But Intisar said he just wanted the Health Secretary to admit mistakes were made and he told the Health Secretary: “Mr Hancock, the public is not expecting the government to handle this perfectly.

“None of us is expecting perfection – we’re expecting progression.

“We just want you to openly acknowledge that there have been mistakes in handling the virus.

“It’s actually for me and so many families who’ve lost so many loved ones as a result of this virus and probably as a result of the government not handling it seriously.

“Openly acknowledging a mistake is not an admission of guilt. It’s genuinely just making you more human.

“So could you please do that for me, maybe today at the press conference today? Maybe a public apology?”

Matt Hancock faltered temporarily before replying: “I think it is very important that we’re constantly learning about how to do these things better.

“And I think listening to the voices on the frontline is a very very important part of how we improve.”

Matt Hancock was asked by host Nick Ferrari whether he accepted that blunders were made in the preparation of PPE.

He responded: “Well, there are things that we’ve changed as we’ve gone through, both because we’ve learnt more things about the virus, also because things didn’t work out as we expected.”

Matt Hancock gave the example of changing guidance on funeral attendance after seeing 13-year-old Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab buried without his family due to the earlier unclear guidance.

Pressed by Mr Ferrari on whether mistakes were made with PPE, Matt Hancock stated: “A huge amount of people are doing everything they can and have done since the start of this crisis, and of course this is a very, very complicated logistical effort but I don’t want to play down the enormous efforts of many thousands of people.”

The 53-year-old was a locum urologist who worked at Homerton Hospital in East London. He died at Queen’s Hospital in Romford after testing positive for coronavirus. He was survived by his wife and two children.

Taking to Facebook last month, Dr Chowdhury penned: “Dear and Respectable Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“Please ensure urgently Personal Protective Equipment [PPE] for each and every NHS health worker in the UK.

“Remember we may be doctor/nurse/HCA/allied health workers who are in direct contact with patients but we are also human beings trying to live in this world disease-free with our family and friends.

“People appreciate us and salute us for our rewarding jobs which is very inspirational, but I would like to say we have to protect ourselves and our families in this global disaster.”

The Muslim Doctors Association gave praise to him in a statement, saying: “We are deeply saddened by the death of Dr Abdul Mabud Chowdhury, Consultant Urologist at Homerton Hospital, after fighting for his life from Covid-19.

“He leaves behind his wife and two children. Our thoughts and prayers are with them.

“Two weeks before his admission to hospital he wrote a message to the Prime Minister urging for better PPE.

“May he rest in peace.”

The preponderance of care homes in the United Kingdom are privately run and usually, the care and protection of the elderly people, staff and provision of PPE, cleaning materials et cetera would be the establishment’s responsibility, but in situations like this government should be holding out their hands, providing free provisions because this is a grave pandemic and if one gets sick, we all get sick or die.

Matt Hancock should be getting his finger out of his backside, but then he’s only the monkey but the buck stops with the organ grinder and Boris Johnson should atone for the way his inept government has handled this and then quit his position completely because the buck does stop with him.

The problem is these rich fellows are so superior and misled and who think of themselves as self-entitled and they’re full of disdain for anyone that didn’t go to a public school.

In fact, there’s no point in him trying to apologise because we all know that at best he failed dreadfully, at worst he simply didn’t care because it wasn’t his family dying and it wasn’t his family on the front line.

And how this man Matt Hancock has the temerity to stand and answer interrogatories regards his direct responsibility for many of the deaths simply by allowing infected COVID 19 patients to be released from hospital straight back or into care homes is shameful.

And why has none of the big kahuna’s (journalists) asked Matt Hancock if he’s guilty of gross neglect in office, and he should quit for numerous catastrophic reasons?

Royal Mail Scraps Saturday Letter Deliveries

Royal Mail has scrapped Saturday letter deliveries until further notice due to coronavirus and from this weekend onwards, the group will provisionally no longer deliver letters on a Saturday.

Deliveries already don’t happen on a Sunday, so more people will face waiting into the following week for their letters to arrive. Nevertheless, Royal Mail maintained that most packages, as well as Special Delivery, Tracked and all non-account services, will continue being delivered six days a week.

Saturday collections from businesses, post office branches and post boxes also remain as normal and it’s understood the firm decided to reduce the strain on its workers.

The nature of some posties work has had to shift due to social distancing practices and some are also off sick or self-isolating due to the virus, which means there is less staff to deal with incoming mail.

However, the move was blasted by the Communication Workers Union which stewards posties and warned it could even lead to a walkout, and a CWU spokesperson said: “We will be seeking urgent discussions with the government on this issue. The reduction of the Universal Service Obligation was a key factor in our live national strike ballot.

“The last thing we want to do is call strike action at this point but we will not sit back and see our members’ jobs put at threat and the service to the public worsened.”

The CWU announced in March that household deliveries would be lowered to a three day week because of the COVID 19.

A union spokesperson maintained the service would have still run six days a week under that plan, but that deliveries would have happened on alternate days, rather than being dropped on Saturday.

The CWU stated it has since dropped that request after further adjustments were put in place and it’s believed managers were told the move had been settled on Tuesday afternoon.

In a video for staff, Nick Landon, Royal Mail’s chief customer officer, said posties have been under “incredible pressure” for a month and “need some relief”.

And now it appears they want to reduce the load for deliveries across that weekend making them focus on the packages to clear all of that traffic.

The video said there will be some “temporary changes” to delivery duties from May 11 and that staff would be given more information soon.

Postmen and postwomen are working extremely hard across the United Kingdom particularly in these challenging conditions and of course, there’s bound to be disruption to services because of the coronavirus.

Customers should, of course, continue to post both letters and packages as normal on Saturday because the post office will still be continuing their Saturday collections from businesses, post offices and post boxes as normal.

And we should be giving a thought to our lads and lasses at the Royal Mail because they always do a splendid job all year round and it’s heavy work on the arms, legs and back, trudging up and down garden paths, rapping on people’s doors because their doorbells don’t work.

So, give a big shout for Postman Pat, and I think it’s prudent to restrict our postie’s movements as they’re possibly delivering COVID 19 contaminated packages and letters to our door, going into flats, houses and residential areas emitting spritzes of the virus amongst the general population.

We may even see Sunday Trading laws abolished just to kickstart our economy once this virus has been destroyed.

But Postman Pat won’t be getting rest, they’ll still be delivering packages, special deliveries and so forth, plus Saturday’s letters will be delivered along with Monday’s mail, so two days delivery in one.

Carrie Symonds Gives Birth To A Baby Boy

Boris Johnson’s fiancée Carrie Symonds has today given birth to a healthy baby boy with compliments flooding in from across the political divide, which happened earlier than was widely expected in Westminster.

The baby arrived only days after Boris Johnson returned to work following an intensive care battle with coronavirus and it’s understood that the 55-year-old Prime Minister was by Carrie Symond’s side during the delivery at a London hospital and both mother and baby are doing extremely well.

It comes weeks after the Prime Minister emerged from intensive care with coronavirus and Boris Johnson will miss PMQs in the Commons today with his deputy Dominic Raab taking his position.

The baby appeared two months to the day after the couple announced she was pregnant and they were engaged and at the time, the couple said the baby, her first and at least his sixth, was expected in early summer, that implies the arrival may have been a few weeks early.

But Carrie Symond’s due date was never openly published, and today’s announcement comes nearly nine months to the day after the couple moved into No 11.

It’s not yet been established whether Boris Johnson will take paternity leave but when questioned in March if he would, he stated that he most certainly would.

But the country has since been overwhelmed by the coronavirus crisis and Boris Johnson has only recently regained the wheel after almost a month off, where he’d recovered from COVID 19.

And it comes three weeks after Boris Johnson was sick in intensive care with coronavirus. Carrie Symonds also experienced symptoms and sent him letters before they were reunited at his country escape Chequers just over two weeks ago.

It’s understood the baby was not born at St Thomas’s Hospital, where the Prime Minister battled coronavirus but which hospital the delivery happened has not been published, nor whether it was an NHS or private hospital.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recommends that partners can be present throughout the birth if they don’t have symptoms, but some hospitals have constraints on how long they can stay.

Hospitals also have limitations on birthing partners visiting antenatal or postnatal wards.

The birth also comes weeks after the Prime Minister concluded his divorce from wife of 25 years Marina Wheeler, first announced in September 2018.

The court gave Marina Wheeler, the mother of four of Boris Johnson’s children consent to formally terminate the marriage in February after the pair settled a disagreement over their finances.

The couple, who married in 1993, have four children together. Laura, Milo Arthur, Cassia Peaches, and Theodore Apollo but Boris Johnson has also had many affairs, including the one with Petronella Wyatt which led to a pregnancy that was terminated.

A 2013 court judgment further said the people were entitled to know about allegations that one affair, with art consultant Helen Macintyre, produced a daughter who was Boris Johnson’s.

While they were not romantically associated until early 2019, Carrie Symond’s and Boris Johnson have known each other for some years and as ex-Conservative Party Director of Communications, Carrie Symonds served on the Prime Minister’s triumphant crusade to be re-elected as London mayor in 2012.

She stayed working in politics after, first as a special advisor to then-Culture Secretary John Whittingdale, and then to Sajid Javid. Carrie Symonds ultimately became the Head of Communications for the Conservative Party HQ but left the position in 2018 to work for ocean conservation charity Oceana.

Boris Johnson turned headlines when he attended Carrie Symonds 30th birthday party before they were romantically entangled but the couple scored the headlines again last June when police were called to a domestic disturbance at Carrie Symond’s south London flat where neighbours could hear crashing and yelling from inside the property.

Boris Johnson will be the first Prime Minister in nearly 200 years to get married in office, but certainly not the first to have a baby.

The last Prime Minister to have a baby while in office was David Cameron whose wife Samantha gave birth to their daughter Florence in the summer of 2010, several months after he entered Downing Street.

Tony Blair and his wife Cherie welcomed Leo into the world in May 2000, three years after he became Prime Minister.

Cherie Blair infamously announced that the child was superfetated while they were visiting with the Queen and Prince Philip at Balmoral.

Political associates and rivals hurried to felicitate the Prime Minister. Keir Starmer sent his well-wishings, the congratulations of the Labour Party and everyone in his House to the Prime Minister and Carrie Symonds.

And he stated that whatever disagreements they have in the House, as human beings, it was thought that they should understand the fear the Prime Minister and Carrie Symonds must have gone through in the past few weeks and the unbelievable stress and he hoped that the new baby could bring them unimaginable happiness and pleasure.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock tweeted: “So thrilled for Boris and Carrie. Wonderful to have a moment of unalloyed joy!” Chancellor Rishi Sunak added: “Great to hear Downing Street is getting a new resident.”

Sir Ed Davey, the acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, tweeted: “Many congratulations to the PM & Carrie Symonds on the birth of their son!”

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: “Some good news – sending congratulations to Carrie and the PM. And wishing health and happiness to the wee one.”

The Prime Minister’s father, Stanley Johnson, told the PA news agency that he was delighted and excited by the birth of his grandson.

Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle said: “Such happy news amid so much uncertainty – 2020 is certainly a year they will never forget.”

The arrival derailed Boris Johnson’s first prospective Commons clash with Labour leader Keir Starmer, so the Prime Minister has opted to send First Secretary Domonic Raab to field Prime Minister’s Questions instead.

However Downing Street left it less than three hours before PMQs to confirmed with the Labour leader’s office that the Prime Minister would not be attending and it was considered No 10 was leaving it late to evaluate Boris Johnson’s well-being ahead of the exhausting 30-minute assembly in the chamber.

Nevertheless, it later became clear the mystery was because of the approaching baby.

Dominic Raab will encounter difficult questions over whether the Government will meet its promise to carry out 100,000 COVID 19 tests a day by Thursday and the tally won’t be known before the weekend but ministers face a tremendous struggle to hit the benchmark, announced by Health Secretary Matt Hancock earlier this month.

Congratulations to Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds, it’s a wonderful thing giving birth to this new bundle of delight, but how many other women are out there giving birth? – the majority of them won’t be born with a silver spoon in their mouth, but let’s touch our tresses, bow and celebrate, there’s another Boris in the world, way to go!

And we have more pressing matters at hand, other than Boris Johnson having another baby with his unwed live-in lover and another reason for him to disappear from scrutiny.

That was one auspicious birth daddy who now doesn’t have to face Prime Minister Question time again. Now he’ll get two weeks off for paternity leave, just in time to be back to give out the news the country has been waiting for, the first stages of lifting lockdown – then he’ll look the hero again.

It only takes one appendage to produce a child, it takes expertise to manage a country.

And this must have been the fastest pregnancy ever, talk about having children haphazardly and how does Boris Johnson expect people to believe that he’s solid in his way of managing the country when he has children all over the place, and if he can’t stay with his wife and partners he unquestionably won’t stay with this country and this will be another overprivileged child who’ll be taught it’s his destiny to rule over us.

Although it’s not the baby’s fault, he didn’t choose his parents but hats off to the Prime Minister and of course, Carrie Symonds. Now there’s a bouncing baby boy to append to the acquisition of children and no doubt he will soon be back in the saddle to add to the merry ensemble.

I guess every parent has the right to bond with their child and work should always come second regardless of whether he’s Prime Minister or not but he is the Prime Minister and his role as Prime Minister must always come first particularly when the country is in crisis.

And no matter how rubbish he is, he should be at the rudder but now it appears as if we will have to deal with the virus with a Prime Minister in name only and please Boris, do us a favour, don’t send your son to Eton, pupil’s there have a history of leaving without any common sense.

To be fair, perhaps we should let Boris Johnson go because he’s been as much use to us as a chocolate fireguard anyhow and I often wonder if he took time off to bond with his other children. Let’s face it, he just loves taking time off and he doesn’t seem to need much of an excuse.

Boris Johnson is the Prime Minister of this country, although God knows how and whilst NHS workers are endangering their lives every day, the very least he could do is do his job.

UK Lockdown: Government Promises More Detail

The government has promised more detail in the coming days around its strategy for when and how to facilitate the UK’s coronavirus lockdown.

Ministers are supposed to set out more information by the end of the week after Boris Johnson faced requests to name a strategy and in his first statement since returning to work, the Prime Minister announced the government would be announcing much more about this in the coming days.

He gave little detail and neither did No 10, but his spokesperson gave a few further hints about the nature of the information that might be coming shortly. The spokesperson further stated any modification to the lockdown would mean refining it, not axing it altogether and emphasised it could be tightened in some areas and relaxed in others.

The No 10 spokesperson continued that the next set of documents and evidence from the government’s scientific advisors, SAGE, would be published this week.

SAGE’s advice is a critical tool in determining whether the United Kingdom has met the government’s five tests before lockdown can be relaxed, and they are that the NHS can cope, that there must be a continued fall in deaths, that new infections are plummeting enough, sufficient testing and PPE as well as there being no chance of a second peak.

SAGE’s minutes are not being published in full, provoking a dispute over the lack of clarity at the core of government. Nevertheless, the government is also anticipating a report from the Office for National Statistics on the infection rate in early May, this is set to be published in full.

Boris Johnson’s official spokesperson stated that the key is clearly to have satisfied the five tests and to be certain that in refining the social distancing measures we won’t be doing anything that could lead to a second peak.

The Prime Minister’s spokesperson said there could be an easing in some regions and toughening in other regions but that we would not be immediately returning to life as we once knew it.

People will have to acclimatise to what Dominic Raab called a new normal.

The law says the UK lockdown must be examined by May 7. Measures could be eased, strengthened or not altered at all, and asked when the changes might be revealed, a No 10 spokesperson stated that May 7 was the time where they’re expected to have conducted the review.

It’s understood that it will be made transparent by the end of the week how ministers will assess the ability to move into the second phase.

The Prime Minister returned to Downing Street three weeks after being taken to hospital and it’s understood that his fiancee Carrie Symonds is back living with him at their No 11 Downing Street flat after they spent weeks apart with symptoms.

They were reunited at the Prime Minister’s country retreat Chequers about two weeks ago and he’s now back full time, and in terms of obligations and responsibilities, he will be doing all of those.

Boris Johnson is supposed to chair Cabinet this week, but the plan for PMQs is not yet transparent.

He’s been under extreme pressure from Tory MPs to set out how the lockdown will be eased to prop up the economy, while still protecting lives, but Boris Johnson indicated that it would be a creeping process and promised the best possible transparency with attempts to seek consensus across party lines.

Labour leader Keir Starmer has been invited for a briefing with the Prime Minister and medical chiefs next week, followed by more briefing with other opposition leaders next week.

And more Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) participants will be named in the coming days, though only if they’re happy to be identified.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesperson said: “This is to safeguard the personal security for the individuals and to protect them from lobbying which may hinder their ability to give impartial advice.”

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson and everyone who works in government will take part in a minute’s silence for NHS staff, carers and key workers who’ve died of coronavirus on the frontline.

Mr Johnson said: “When we are sure that this first phase is over and that we are meeting our five tests… then that will be the time to move on to the second phase.

“In which we continue to suppress the disease and keep the reproduction rate down, but begin gradually to refine the economic and social restrictions and one by one to fire up the engines of this vast UK economy.

“And in that process, difficult judgments will be made.

“We simply cannot spell out now how fast or slow or even when those changes will be made, though clearly, the Government will be saying much more about this in the coming days.”

However, COVID 19 could reconstruct our social and economic model forever because it’s such a devastating virus, and the nature of it is deadly and none of us has any idea when this virus will be over and primarily experts don’t have a clue either.

All we do know is that it’s going to be baby steps at first but if the lockdown is lifted too quickly we’ll be back to square one, but then if we wait for a vaccine to be proven to work, what on earth will happen to our economy?

Boris Johnson Returns To No 10

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It was a subdued, thinner and washed out Boris Johnson who stepped out from behind the world’s most prominent front door – the Prime Minister is back following his very real skirmish with death, and his priority was to give a hurriedly, orchestrated televised speech as a real display he had recovered and was very much in charge.

His two weeks in rural recuperation at Chequers in the Buckinghamshire countryside may have revived him mentally, but he looked like he was making a Monday morning effort as he greeted the country from a podium in Downing Street.

This was a contrast from the typically rambunctious and enthusiastic figure who has always seemed fired up and enthusiastic, and with who we have become so accustomed over the past decade.

Frantic to communicate an air of authority, the Prime Minister’s wooden podium bore the Government seal rather than a hazard labelled “Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives” slogan which has been radiated into our living rooms for the last month.

“Good morning, I am sorry I’ve been away from my desk for much longer than I would’ve liked,” he stated, looking straight into the camera in his first public words for 15 days since a Twitter video following his Easter Sunday release from St Thomas’ Hospital, London.

There were flashes of the old, pre-COVID 19 campaigners, as he attempted to use strong imagery to communicate a pressing point.

“If this virus were a physical assailant, an unexpected, invisible mugger – which I can tell you from personal experience it is – then this is the moment when we have begun together to wrestle it to the floor,” he explained.

But it seemed constructed and forced rather than the friendly, cracker-barrel manner on which he prides himself and behind the Prime Minister’s left stood a policeman, much more than the necessary two-metre range.

And in the Downing Street windows were displayed children’s portraits of spectra, a logo of the support which has supported the country at these most challenging, unfamiliar and unusual times.

Boris Johnson’s idol is supposed to be Winston Churchill, the leader who led Britain through the Second World War.

Conscious of the modern-day parallels that the country is locked in the fight of a generation, it will have been no accident that Boris Johnson adopted from Winston Churchill for a segment of his eight-minute, 23-second speech.

Talking to the Commons after victory at El Alamein in November 1942, Winston Churchill told MPs: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Boris Johnson told viewers: “I believe we are coming to the end of the first phase of this conflict, and despite all the suffering we have so nearly succeeded.”

Boris Johnson had three aims in his address, to thank the country for its efforts so far, to convince people to stick with the lockdown for a while longer, and to offer them support.

He further wanted to face down commentators and critics demanding an exit plan, promising “maximum transparency” as the Government charted a course out of the shutdown.

But the prevailing message was to keep going: “I know it is tough – and I want to get this economy moving as fast as I can, but I refuse to throw away all the effort and the sacrifice of the British people and to risk a second major outbreak and huge loss of life and the overwhelming of the NHS.”

It’s great that he’s back, but now comes the laborious work, and it starts now and let’s hope that Boris Johnson is well enough to carry on with what he was doing before he became unwell.

This Is Our Future!

These are all faces of frontline workers who have selflessly laid down their lives in the fight against COVID 19, as the death toll amongst NHS staff and private care workers rise, it brings home the horrifying hazards these warriors face every day.

And that’s why the Sunday Mirror is starting a campaign for a scheme to be launched to reward them now, the same way in which our heroic troops are paid more for risking death in battle.

The campaign is asking for a special daily allowance to be paid immediately to nurses, doctors, support staff and care workers who are putting their lives on the line to get us through the coronavirus crisis.

The campaign will be taken up in Parliament, in a Commons motion deferred by senior Labour MP Jon Trickett.

Health workers are our first defence in the struggle against this disease and they require much more relief presently.

Mr Trickett, a former Shadow Cabinet minister, stated: “Next week is May Day.

“What better way to celebrate the new month and the internationally recognised workers’ day than by supporting this excellent initiative by the Sunday Mirror?”

And Fire Brigades Union leader Matt Wrack added: “Clapping is great, but clapping is not enough.”

Delivering the special supplement would be based on the extra tax-free daily operational allowance given to our Armed Forces in war zones.

Acting Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey stated: “I fully support the Sunday Mirror’s campaign to recognise the bravery of Britain’s health and care workers.“

The General, Municipal, Boilermakers (GMB) union, which stewards more than 100,000 workers in the NHS and care sector, also back them, and if we sincerely value these workers they need a service allowance now.

The calls for more money came as tributes were given to two of the newest health warriors to give their lives.

Married father Larni Zuniga, 54, who was a senior nurse at a care home, died at St Thomas’s Hospital in London, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson was treated.

Larni, of Godalming, Surrey, was praised by his NHS theatre nurse cousin Christian as a true professional who touched the lives of many. His wife Edith said he was now enjoying Heaven while daughter Mutya said she couldn’t stop crying because it was too raw.

Meanwhile, it emerged that the most recent victims had included a nurse who had kept valiantly working at 66.

Mahadaye Jagroop, who was known as Mary, died at Birmingham’s Heartlands Hospital, where she had cared relentlessly for coronavirus victims.

Former co-worker Thalia Zong composed in a eulogy to her: “The memory of you and your beautiful smile, which has always inspired me, will continue to do so through these tough times.”

While it’s now widely acknowledged that all frontline workers warrant a more generous pay deal reviews will take time to be introduced. This way those most at risk in caring for coronavirus victims would get extra money in their pockets now – there’s a precedent for finding money rapidly.

When banks faced collapse through the financial crash of October 2008 they got an immediate £500 billion in bailouts and with 44,000 nursing posts vacant, frontline medical workers were already overstretched even before the coronavirus crisis started.

Our nurses are on £11.63 an hour, that’s less than other countries because in Germany, for instance, they get £12.60 an hour.

Australia pays their nurses £14.80 an hour, in Italy, their nurses get £14.86. Norway their nurses get £18.64 and Sweden £23.95, that’s nearly twice what our nurses get and hospital support staff are on pitifully poor earnings with porters, healthcare assistants and cleaners getting around just £18,005 a year.

Care work is an immense enterprise with about a million workers supporting some of the most vulnerable people in society, usually for incredibly low payment and now there’s a real opportunity to create a lasting difference in the sector.

Numerous carers are paid what the Government calls its National Living Wage, the legal lowest for workers aged 25 and over is £8.72 an hour. Workers aged 21 to 24 on the minimum salary get just £8.20 an hour, while those aged 18 to 20 are paid only £6.45.

In contrast, the Real Living Wage, a voluntary rate determined by independent experts as the minimum needed for a decent standard of living is £9.30 an hour for all ages, arising to £10.75 in London.

A poll for the GMB union revealed that 79 per cent of workers in the care sector fear it will be plunged into a manpower deficit, with workers reluctant to put themselves at risk for poverty levels of pay.

The army expects to have enough guns and ammunition when they go to war, in the same way, that health workers expect to have satisfactory protection when they asked to treat people who are infected with a dangerous and extremely deadly virus and to not give them this protection is felonious.

I realise that the Sunday Mirror wants our brilliant frontline warriors to get a cash reward because they’re jeopardising their lives to fight coronavirus, but it’s not only nurses and doctors that brave the frontline, it’s the firemen and the police et cetera, the list is endless and that’s how everything is working right now, but if they all quit, then everything would come to a crunching standstill, and the government should remember that because without these extremely talented people the world would go to pot.

Whoever we are, whatever we do, whatever walk of life we come from, we all put something into our society, including our children who are our tomorrow. The dilemma is we don’t treat our future with the reverence they merit, yet our government control them.

And whoever we are, we allow the government to be alive in our minds, we walk with our government and we bring meaning and vitality to their thoughts, and we are moulded by their presence in whatever we do, and whatever we see.

And then there’s our children’s schools and education and the problems that arise from the lack of resources, reduced academic achievement and language difficulties – these are the things that are regulated by our governments, and without us even realising it governments directly or indirectly controls YOU!

Clearly, we don’t own our children, but as parents, we’re given the wonderful privilege and responsibility of taking care of them as best we can, but now parents have a partnership with their government.

There was a time when parents could provide their children with a healthy, stable and balanced home to live in, but now our governments have taken that away from us, and most are living in poverty or out on the streets.

Children must be allowed to play in the open, no longer tortured by pangs of starvation or destroyed by illness or threatened with the punishment of ignorance, molestation or exploitation.

Our children are the foundation on which our future is built and they’re the greatest asset as a nation. Some will become leaders of our country and many of whom will care for and defend the people.

Our children who sleep on the streets, reduced to begging to make a living, are a declaration to an unfinished job and that’s a reminder that the past lingers to plague the present.

All around the world is known for its beauty, its true legacy and productive resources, but equally, the image of its suffering children permeate the conscience of our world.

And our governments should be reaching out to these children, doing whatever they can to support their struggle to climb above their hurt and misery because they’re the future of each country, who will guide us into the next century if only our governments would allow them to.

Because the true character of society is revealed on how it treats its children and each of us has a purpose to play in shaping a better world for our children.

Our children are our greatest wealth, they’re are our future and those that exploit them tear at the fabric of our society and weaken our nation.

Then we have the families of 20 to 40,000 victims of the deliberate heard of death policy, or maybe those that have been slain by the DWP with sanctions or being pronounced fit for work as they step into their coffins, or the poor hammered with bedroom tax because they’re unable to move to a more modest property, or the thousands sleeping on the streets due to government and local council disregard.

With politicians giving themselves a 10K pay increase when this pandemic started and these nefarious criminals should give that money back and give the NHS more money and this country is being run pretty crudely with politicians believing they can steal or just take and take.

What – does it take a pandemic to show the excellence of every NHS worker. Yes, they might have signed up for the work that they do but they certainly do need a permanent pay increase despite what they do, day in and day out because they work tirelessly to serve others and never get acknowledged for it.

They do an astounding job and should be given more money, but the dilemma is that this country is going to be broke after the coronavirus has gone, and there will be huge tax hikes to cover what’s been spent or lost, so there will be no money in the pot to give to these people that have put their lives on the line to serve others in need.

And it’s got absurd now because where’s all the money going to come from? The NHS is already dirt-poor, so who’s going to pay for it?

While we’re at it we may as well say that they’re going to build more houses as well, eradicate food banks whilst they’re at it, it’s simply not going to happen but all carers or anybody who’s dealing with COVID 19 should be entitled to a pay increase because carers don’t get enough praise and they’re on paltry wages and it’s utterly shameful.

CDC Sent Useless Test Kits To States, Tainted With Coronavirus

As the novel coronavirus took root across America, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention sent states in the US tainted test kits in early February that were themselves seeded with the virus.

The contamination made the tests cryptic, and because testing is essential for containment efforts, it lost the country precious time to get ahead of the advancing pandemic.

But the CDC has been hazy about what went wrong with the tests, originally stating that the problem was in the manufacturing of one of the reagents which had led to failure.

Subsequent reporting inferred that the problem was a negative control, that is, a part of the test meant to be free of any trace of the coronavirus as a critical reference to validating that the test was working properly overall.

Now, according to investigation results, federal officials verified that poor laboratory practices at two of three CDC labs involved in the creation of the test led to contamination of the tests and their uninterpretable results.

Shortly after the problems became obvious in early February, the Food and Drug Administration sent Timothy Stenzel, chief of in vitro diagnostics and radiological health, to the CDC to investigate what was going wrong.

He discovered a lack of coordination and incompetence in commercial manufacturing. Problems that led to the contamination included researchers coming and going from the lab working on the test kits without changing their coats and researchers sharing lab space to both assemble test components and handle samples containing the coronavirus.

The CDC said in a statement that the agency did not manufacture its test consistent with its protocol. Although the CDC seemed hesitant to admit contamination was at the heart of the problem, and it was noted that in a separate statement the CDC seemed to admit such problems, saying the agency has since implemented enhanced quality control to address the problem and will be evaluating the issue moving forward.

After the CDC first sent its test kit to states in the US in early February, it took the agency about a month to fix the problem. By then, the virus had penetrated numerous communities unimpeded and any possibility that the US had at containing its spread had practically vanished.

By mid-March, many states applied mitigation attempts, such as social distancing, to attempt to blunt, rather than prevent the life-threatening, healthcare overwhelming impacts of COVID 19.

It was simply tragic, and all the time they were sitting there waiting. Here they were at one of the most crucial crossroads in public health history and the biggest tool in their toolbox was missing.

As of the morning of April 20, the US has confirmed that there have been more than 760,000 cases of COVID 19 and more than 40,700 deaths but the numbers are expected to be underestimates due to the slow and still insufficient amount of testing.

But goodness me, who would have believed that electing an intellectually inert fraud who went on to gut everything could get his hands on and refuses to take the blame in any way, shape, form or fashion would end badly?

And it’s such a disgrace this once revered agency could fail so spectacularly in the one time of real need and as much as I want to get on the blame train, this is one of the things that have no one to blame for but the researchers and lab techs for messing up procedures while manufacturing the test kits and allowing cross-contamination.

Perhaps if you were talking about funding, then it might be somewhat different but it wasn’t because of lack of manpower or equipment that caused this, it was human oversight and when in a few years when this pandemic is forgotten, the grand old party will use this failure as evidence that the CDC should be defunded.

However, these blunders cost them weeks of testing and this is genuinely unfortunate and hopefully, the CDC will learn from this and much less forgivable is the CDC and FDA’s stubbornness to allow other labs to test.

And if lab techs aren’t following their procedures, then it’s a breakdown of leadership and oversight and the failure on this scale isn’t only the result of a few lab techs being careless about their gloves, but I’m sure there will be lots of blame to go round.

The Trump administration has been attempting to decimate the CDC ever since it took charge, so I can envision a situation where the best and brightest, under those circumstances, jump ship, leaving them understaffed, demoralised and scarcely functional.

The administration has repeatedly and systematically destroyed important elements of the CDC and this was just begging for an epidemic to hit us and it was a perfect storm and absence of preparation.

This was a multi-element cock up and part of the blame was kingdom-growing because the CDC didn’t want anyone else’s tests to be available, they wanted the power that comes with being the single source.

Then they buried their technical screw up, misinformed about what was going wrong, and repeatedly gave bad estimates about when it was going to be fixed.

Only they had the information needed to diagnose the testing defect and with that knowledge, it was obvious that a contaminated negative control reagent was the most probable error.

Instead, they insisted that 24 of 26 external labs got it wrong, which by the way, disturbingly implies that the 2 good labs were either failing or altering the results.

People kept pointing out that Donald Trump was unsuccessful at actually gutting the CDC’s resources as he proposed each year but he was stifling staffing efforts on a huge scale and an agency under-staffed by hundreds of workers and given incompetent leadership is bound to stumble and fall and I don’t see how you can argue otherwise.

And it’s odd how one party is all about jacking up spending on national defence, yet the pandemic response is not part of that but Donald Trump never admits that he might have done something wrong, instead, he blames a fractured system that the US acquired years ago but they had time to fix.

Donald Trump stated: Leadership, whatever happens, you’re responsible and if it doesn’t happen, you’re still responsible, so therefore, he’s not prepared to take any blame at all.

Everybody should be extremely clear on where he stands now because his digits are unmistakably pointing at you and there’s a broad fertile land between ‘There shall be only one source of testing’ to ‘Hey, it’s cool. Do whatever you want because we’re not going to take any position on any test that anyone comes up with’.

And evidently, the President’s authority is total but you don’t get to claim total authority and then deny accountability but this is what happens when you gut the 3 letter agencies.

Not only is the very top inefficient, but many of the other authorities or technocrats then see the writing on the wall and start to bail. This is why 4 more years of Donald Trump will be fatal to the US because executive agencies are being sabotaged from within and you can’t undo 8 straight years of institutional teardown.

Others have pointed out that Donald Trump’s behaviour more and more parallels someone with Alzheimer’s or dementia. It may have nothing to do with volume but with a memory store that closely approximates the mythological goldfish.

But in Donald Trump’s briefings, he maintains he did a magnificent job.

No one anticipated a pandemic coming, but evidently other people did and told him, and every time he’s asked a question about one of his comments he doesn’t respond but instead mocks the person asking it.

It’s pretty simple actually. Responsibility moves upward. The techs in the CDC chain of command report to political appointees, who report to the Trump administration, which reports to the American people.

Failure at any level is also the failure of oversight, and those holding responsibilities need to fix the dilemma or oust the people in charge and reinstate them with someone who will mend it.

And if Donald Trump can’t or won’t admit responsibility in fixing things, electors will have to accept accountability and choose a different administration in November.

I would urge every American and every interested international citizen to tune into these briefings because every American that has a functioning hippocampus they should follow these briefings from one week to the next on how increasingly muddled and inconsistent the pandemic response is becoming.

And following state failure play out on live television is an opportunity you rarely get because normally it happens in places that they don’t have live daily briefings.

It’s such a disgrace that the US, a once admired nation could fail so spectacularly in the one time of actual need but it’s simply another in the long list of obvious, to those with a functional brain that America is in decline, along with the fools who follow the evil behind the decline who are feverishly working to grease the skids.

I mean, how evil can one get but then hate and greed has no bottom.

From the greatest generation to the worst in one generation and how was it that the boomers sold out? What happened to the idealism of the 1960s and how did they get so corrupt so fast, and how did they screw it up so bad?

I’m aware that there were lots of problems with that generation but when you compare the two, them and their children (boomers), it’s difficult to disregard the stark difference in disgusting, irresponsible behaviour.

The previous generation had opportunity, education and hindsight, so why did they screw it up so much? And to end up with Donald Trump, it seems pretty clear something went seriously awry.

But this screw up with the CDC doesn’t shock me and I’m guessing that most people at the CDC arrived there straight from academic postdoc positions.

Academia begets pretty bad habits, weak standards for success and has virtually no quality control and a lot of this comes from positively minuscule budgets and having to use expired reagents is common or balances going years without calibration because they need to use the money on other things.

And allowing coefficient of variance of 20 per cent between samples and not doing any analyst to analyst variance testing is normal because it previously worked that one time and they need to publish as soon as possible.

The industry has extensive precision but in the lab at least, corporate practices are a different can of worms and just having Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in place for every little task eliminates so much of that human oversight.

Each instrument has to be calibrated and pass QC testing before use every day but some academic scientists us a pH probe that hasn’t been calibrated or tested for a year.

The point is, all scientists are trained in academia and unless they’ve been exposed to the rigidity and the steadfast dictates of working in a certified cGMP system they’re going to still have bad academic habits.

And some heads should be rolling and yes, some of their efforts have been great, but numerous vital points were utterly lacking or non-existent.

Officials Draw Up Three-Stage Traffic Light System To Lift UK Lockdown

Government officials have reportedly drawn up a three-stage traffic light system to end the UK’s national coronavirus lockdown and the system could see some non-essential businesses re-open in early to mid-May.

The first phase ‘green’ would reportedly include small, non-essential shops, hairdressers and nurseries, although travel would still be discouraged.

The ‘amber’ phase would see schools open, as well as small businesses and restaurants with stringent seating rules and wearing a mask on public transportation would reportedly be mandatory in this phase, expected towards the end of May.

The last phase, reportedly pencilled in for mid-June, would see cinemas, theatres and pubs open with some constraints – weddings and funerals could take place and gyms could reopen with heightened hygiene rules.

But Education Secretary Gavin Williamson stated that no decision has been made on when they will open schools – he stated that he can reassure schools and parents that they will only open schools when the scientific advice indicates it’s the right time to do so.

And asked if the government was considering such a plan, Michael Gove stated that it wasn’t and he went onto say that it was a case that they were looking at all of the evidence and they’ve set some tests which have to be passed before they can think of lifting restrictions on this lockdown.

He said that it’s necessary when they’re still in the process of making certain they can decrease the speed of infection, and further decrease the number of deaths, and that they maintain the measures that they already have.

But once Brexit secretary David Davis who has joined Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, in demanding that ministers cast some light on proposals to restart the economy and get the country back to work, urged a step by step blueprint to help small businesses and shops to re-open amid signs that coronavirus mortality in the United Kingdom are approaching their peak.

He said that we must kill off this virus threat and move heaven and earth to protect those most at risk but we must not kill off our economy in the process.

Implying that the two million people who are most vulnerable to COVID 19 could remain in self-isolation while others return to work, David Davis warned of the possibly disastrous long-term harm this could have after this extraordinary economic shutdown.

The Conservative MP has even urged the Prime Minister to consider giving tax cuts to small businesses and large-scale spending on infrastructure projects to boost the economy in the style of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, which came following the Great Depression.

It comes after another former cabinet minister, Iain Duncan Smith told the government not to treat the public like children and the ex-Tory party leader advised ministers to reveal their departure plans so the UK public knows that there’s life after lockdown.

In the meantime, Sir Keir Starmer, who was named as Labour leader two weeks ago, has stated that while he supported the decision to prolong lockdown measures, a definite strategy for what comes next was needed.

He further said that other nations have started to set out a roadmap to lift constraints in some areas of the economy and for some services, particularly social care, when the time is right.

He said that of course this must be done in a careful, considered way with public health, scientific evidence and the safety of workers and families which must take precedence and that the UK government should be doing likewise.

This country is going to be so ruined at the end of all of this. Financially, physically and mentally and Boris Johnson will have no idea how to rectify this mayhem and he will simply make it up as he goes along.

And after this virus is brought under control and some sort of normalcy is renewed, anyone returning to or wanting to enter our country should be tested at their point of departure before they permitted to come to the United Kingdom.

Although I suspect that won’t happen because our borders are still open, there’s no testing and no advice on entry and I doubt when we do get through this, that our government will do anything differently.

And the number of flights between the United Kingdom and China are to rise from 40 each way to 100 in a new boost for global Britain following Brexit and it seems that the United Kingdom and China have struck a new agreement on the number of flights in London and that the cap on passengers flights are to be lifted from 40 each day to 100 each day and an infinite number of cargo flights will also be allowed and there will now be no constraints on destinations for British flights into China.

And Transport Secretary Chris Grayling stated that this was a deal that was a huge moment for the United Kingdom and that powerful connections with emerging markets like China are essential for us if we’re to stay competing on the global economic stage.

But what’s the purpose of allowing hairdressers to open if we’re to stay indoors and if allowed out, how can people social distance in places like hairdressers?

All these resources are contradictory, that’s if any of this is true in the first place and Boris Johnson seems to be of the strange notion that the coronavirus will stop infecting people because he tells it to and if on his direction, the shops, restaurants and pubs are to reopen then he’d best tell the sun not to rise in the mornings because when it does, it will prove that the virus has embraced the challenge to spread, daily, through a few thousand more victims.

And the unfortunate, celebrant people will be waking up with something a lot more dangerous than a hangover to remind them of their regained freedom and just look at the nonsensical plan to start reopening in 3 to 4 weeks from now.

Simply look at the histograms – Britain would need a daily rate of decline of the daily new infections of about 5 per cent a day to rap the level down from 5,000 per day to below 2,000 per day in three weeks.

But there doesn’t appear to be any daily rate of decline in Britain, yet in Italy, the stringent lockdown has reduced the daily rate from the virus from about 6,000 to 3,000 per day in the past three weeks.

In Britain the daily rate of new infections remains steady at between 4,500 and 5,000 per day – ease the lockdown and it will go up even higher – slacken the lockdown and the crisis will continue even longer.

The problem is, the longer the lockdown goes on there will be more risk of mass poverty, joblessness and the death toll from the resulting health problems will overshadow the current figure.

So, it’s always going to be a judgment call and a choice that none of us would like to make, including Boris Johnson, yet it still seems to give people the licence to whine about the decisions that are being made.

Now Is Not The Time To Discuss Pay Rise For Nurses

Matt Hancock stated that it’s not the time to discuss a pay rise for nurses, although he said he was sympathetic to the argument and the Health Secretary did pay tribute to the work being done by those in the health service but wouldn’t be moved on whether they warranted more money.

The starting salary for a nurse will be £24,900 in 2020/21, but nurses suffered like the rest of the public sector from the coalition, and the Tory government pay freeze which lasted from 2011-12 and then a 1 per cent pay cap for the next five years.

They eventually obtained a pay rise in 2018 with an increase of 6.5 per cent agreed but that’s a trivial amount compared to the work that they do and nursing has lingered behind other NHS staff groups over the past decade, with the workforce increasing by just 6.2 percent between November 2010 and November 2019, compared with 20.6 per cent for hospital doctors.

Chief nurse Ruth May paid tribute to two of her co-workers Aimee O’Rourke, 38, and Areema Nasreen, 36, who died from coronavirus after treating patients and warned that there were likely to be more.

Presenter Andrew Marr told Matt Hancock that nurses are paid about £25,000 a year at the moment and did he consider as a consequence of this experience they deserve to be paid more in the future?

Matt Hancock responded that everyone wants to support nurses right now but he was sure there would be time to discuss things like this. He continued that at the moment they’re just struggling to get through this.

He stated that he was extremely sympathetic to that argument but that at the moment it wasn’t a time to enter into a pay negotiation and that now is the time for everyone to be doing their very best.

But appearing on the same programme, the new Labour leader Keir Starmer asserted that the NHS required more money and that many of those who have been vital during the crisis deserve to be paid much better.

He said the pandemic had shown who the key workers actually are and that they quite frequently have been neglected, underpaid and there’s going to be a change. That they were last and now they’ve got to be first.

He continued that the NHS urgently requires more investment and that they’ve got to look at funding because the NHS has struggled for funding over the last ten years, so that had to be looked at and they had to think about how they can reimagine the economy going forward.

Keir Starmer advised against responding to the immense public spending to tackle coronavirus with another decade of biting Austerity and he said that they don’t know what the final figure will be and that they can’t simply make the mistake they made in 2010 and go for another decade of Austerity.

He said that they’ve seen what that’s done to the country and that we can’t go down that path again and that we can’t go back to business as usual after the pandemic and he said that it’s inevitable that we have to ask those that have more, to pay more.

The fact is that at the moment we don’t know how big this challenge is going to be until we’re through the crisis but when we do get through this, there’s going to have to be a reckoning and we’re all going to have to do things differently so that we can build a better future.

And this country needs to see politicians and political parties pulling together to face coronavirus.

Matt Hancock said this is not the time to pay nurses more money, yet they found time to give millions to private companies and increase their own expense allowance and perhaps they should tier tax up by 80 per cent for those earning over £200,000, with it being used to finance nurses and medical staff, whose pay has deteriorated despite growing need.

A Phlebotomist works on the front line and gets paid band 2 which works out less than most shop assistants, so a substantial pay rise would be nice and it’s odd how the government can swiftly find hundreds of billions of pounds, yet the NHS has been struggling for years.

The NHS has been begging for more money for basic items for as long as I can remember. They can’t even order a pencil if there’s no money in the budget, you just wouldn’t believe how they have to work, and now they’re expecting them to commit suicide for £25,000 a year.

I can guess what’s going to happen next, the government will say they’ve put enough money into the NHS, that Austerity must start again and all money must be invested to help business grow – therefore no money for a pay rise in the NHS sector – so they must have another pay freeze for 3 years.

So, it’s not a good time to consider pay increases for NHS workers who are saving lives and are fighting this virus without enough or the wrong PPE, but it’s acceptable for MPs to vote themselves a 20 per cent pay increase.

Well, if now isn’t the time, then when for pity’s sake is it? And the last time NHS pay was discussed in the House of Commons it was rejected and Tory MPs cheered the decision enthusiastically, which they shouldn’t be allowed to forget.

But what the government should be doing is giving NHS workers protective equipment so they don’t die before pay rises can be given.

NHS workers might be recognised and honoured by the public with their clapping and cheering but the government won’t consider giving them a pay rise, they’ll simply be told to take a hike when this virus has gone away.

But what the government should have done in the first place was to give them recognition by giving them more money that suits the job they do, yet it appears that it’s the perfect time to discuss more wages for politicians.

This argument has been brought up time and time again and the Tories have scorned it, like they’ve snubbed the calls for the funding of the NHS.

Danger money should be paid so they can go out and purchase the necessary safety equipment they need to do their job safely, but it appears the government aren’t interested in providing them with any.

And it’s disheartening that we’ve got such a swine as Health Secretary at such a fraught time.

Doctors and nurses and other NHS workers are dying but this isn’t the time to address what a magnificent job they’re doing and how they should be compensated suitably for it.

So, what is the cost of selflessly jeopardising your life for a total stranger?

The fact is that as much as we value those who work in the NHS, and never so much as now, ordinarily we don’t pay much attention to those nurses who find it difficult to survive on their despicable wages.

But our government could have made a substantial difference to those who do such an excellent job but have repeatedly chosen not to and generally the public at best show a ‘so what’ attitude, yet they all come out on a Thursday night and cheer and display their support, perhaps because it makes them feel better for letting them down.

There’s No Magic Wand

Britain’s health minister said that he would like to wave a magic want to get huge quantities of personal protective equipment for health workers fighting the novel coronavirus outbreak but that there was a global deficit.

Matt Hancock defended plans for NHS staff to reuse personal protective equipment (PPE) because he doesn’t have a magic wand to make it fall from the sky and a leaked Public Health England (PHE) document, published, revealed it was being regarded as the last option.

Downing Street verified it was being examined, but would only be permitted if it was safe and Matt Hancock announced to the Commons Health Committee it was a clinical decision.

And he told the committee that in some instances, the reuse of PPE is recommended by clinicians, so the point was that it had to be a clinical decision and he said that given we have a global situation in which there’s more limited PPE in the world than the world needs, clearly it’s going to be a tremendous pressure point.

He further added that there was nothing that he could say that would take away the reality that we have a global challenge and they’re doing everything that they can to resolve that challenge to get PPE to the front line.

The Health Secretary indicated he would look at the guidance around PPE for those working in care homes but Committee chairman Jeremy Hunt questioned why the Government guidance doesn’t require PPE to be worn in care homes for non-COVID patients and if it was suggested that risk is being taken with residents in care homes.

Matt Hancock replied that he didn’t believe they were taking a risk in that way with residents in care homes but that he was extremely happy to look at that particular point in the guidance.

But in the end, what it’s going to boil down to is that medical workers are going to have no alternative but to recycle their PPE or simply not wear any at all because the Tories have starved the NHS and Public Services for 10 years, and by their admission, the Tories must acknowledge, without giving us the line ‘It wasn’t me’.

Having to re-use PPE in hospitals or care homes is the equivalent of re-using toilet paper and re-use effectively indicates there’s no PPE worn by the staff a second time around.

And now it appears that we have to be Houdini to recover from 10 years of Austerity, and instead of using this magic wand, Matt Hancock could have phoned the EU to accept their proposal of bulk buying PPE.

But it seems that Boris and Co chose not to accept their offer in case they upset the Brexiteers. They’ve clearly made some poor choices and they’ve let us down with the cupboard being bare even before the lockdown, due to Tory decisions on Austerity.

PPE isn’t a rare commodity, it’s made of simple materials and its deficit is solely due to no strategy, inadequate planning and poor organisational skills by this Tory government.

Matt Hancock might not have a magic wand, but he did tell us at the start of this virus that there would be plenty of everything, so more lies by the Tories.

No magic wand, well perhaps the Tories should be shaking that magic money tree. You know, the one they used to influence the DUP with £1.5 billion to keep them in power, or the one they use when buying missiles to bomb other countries, or even still, perhaps they should be emptying those offshore bank accounts they have.

And since when has this pretentious little man been paid to cast spells – magic wand my heinie. He’s paid to ensure that front-line health workers have all the protection they need and if he can’t do his job properly, then he should move along so someone more qualified can do it.

The United Kingdom is a highly developed and industrialised country and it shouldn’t be incapable of mass producing and distributing protective gowns at short notice but instead, some nurses were having to use black bin liners as an apron.

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