Department of Health confirmed to SKWAWKBOX that it claims to have delivered masks, not that it plans to deliver – yet frontline staff say no way and video evidence supports them
Furious NHS staff are dismissing the Tory government’s claims to have delivered 170 million FFP3 face-masks to NHS staff on the front line of the fight against coronavirus.
And within minutes of the government’s claim, video evidence supported the staff’s angry rejection of the government’s boast.
The Department of Health confirmed that Robert Jenrick’s claimed deliveries did mean deliveries actually completed – during the last two weeks.
The Department also said that all the masks are FFP3 standard – the highest protection available. The World Health Organisation recommends a minimum of FFP2 grade and preferably FFP3.
Yet minutes after Jenrick’s claim during the government’s televised afternoon press conference, staff were shown wearing simple ‘surgical’ face-masks – which provide minimal protection against coronavirus protection.
Even staff taking samples from those with suspected infection:
Medical staff also appeared on TV to confirm that they and their teams are still without the right kind of protective equipment – and in some cases without any at all.
Jenrick also claimed to have delivered “42.8 million gloves” – not the usual ‘pairs of gloves’.
Since NHS staff will need to change gloves far more often than masks, the smaller number of gloves is curious.
But the Department of Health was not able to confirm whether Jenrick meant ‘pairs of gloves’ – or was stating the number of individual gloves to make the total delivered seem larger.
The SKWAWKBOX needs your support. This blog is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here for a monthly donation via GoCardless. Thanks for your solidarity so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.
If you wish to reblog this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
I do hope that the Squawkbox keeps up holding the establishment to the task of protecting the ordinary people who like the staff here who are increasingly becoming expendable in the fight to stop the spread of the virus….thankyou and stay in the forfront of common sense.
I’ve just looked at Skwawkbox’s pictures of the masks above.
The FFP3 type shown has an exhale valve. I know because I’ve worn out hundreds of the damn things in industry. The valve is to provide extra comfort to the wearer and stop the mask getting soggy BY ALLOWING FREE UNFILTERED FLOW OF AIR OUTWARD.
NOT SUITABLE, NOT SAFE for a hospital when the wearer might be infectious.
I’ve made this point before and I apologise for repeating myself but valved masks are NOT SUITABLE where the possibility of the wearer being infectious exists – which MUST be the case if either the wearer isn’t tested between every patient or every patient tests negative.
Valved masks don’t stop droplets being exhaled because the whole purpose of them is to make exhaling easier.
Please don’t dismiss this Skwawkbox, talk to one of your contacts in the NHS. Some clueless fucker in procurement’s responsible for staff infecting patients and somebody has to stop it.
Coronavirus pandemic leading to huge drop in air pollution
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/23/coronavirus-pandemic-leading-to-huge-drop-in-air-pollution
Coronavirus UK lockdown causes big drop in air pollution
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/27/coronavirus-uk-lockdown-big-drop-air-pollution
Air pollution likely to increase coronavirus death rate, warn experts
Lung damage from dirty air may worsen infections, but isolation measures improving air quality
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/17/air-pollution-likely-to-increase-coronavirus-death-rate-warn-experts
The headline is perhaps a bit misleading, but an interesting article never-the-less:
Is factory farming to blame for coronavirus?
It’s possible – though by no means certain – that flu first became a disease of humans after the Chinese domesticated ducks about 4,000 years ago – drawing that animal reservoir into human communities for the first time. But humans can also catch flu from, and give flu to, pigs – another animal we have lived alongside for millennia.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/28/is-factory-farming-to-blame-for-coronavirus
Evolution’s a bitch, isn’t it?
A constant, back-and-forth war between predator and prey at every level from virus to human.
There may already exist an organism one mutation away from wiping us off the face of the Earth in a month – I wonder if having been the only species able to recognise its own extinction event will be any comfort?
On factory farming – and live markets, pet keeping and every other human/animal interface – and on whether they’re “to blame” for pandemics…
The obvious follow-up question is whether humanity would be safer avoiding such close contact with other species in future.
I don’t think there’s any way to know.
It may be that by not adapting to mutations as they appear – weekly, monthly, yearly, randomly – our immune systems would be overwhelmed by the sum of a decade’s or a century’s mutations in a single random contact with an infected animal.
Or the next virus may get us, or we may develop a genetic “supervaccine” – or maybe a 22nd-century “DDT” for viruses that inadvertently wipes out all life on the planet.
BBC’s going on about the wonderful new Nightingale Hospital “built from scratch” in Tory Britain in only a few weeks.
It’s an adapted existing building ffs – an empty conference centre.
The Chinese built the hospital building itself, and equipped it, and staffed it, and opened it in only 10 days.
We need also to spare a thought for the cleaners risking their health and whose work is absolutely vital at this time, not just in our hospitals.
https://novaramedia.com/2020/03/29/cleaners-are-having-to-fight-for-the-own-protection-in-the-fight-against-covid-19/
When I started work a long long time ago the conversation in the mess room got on strikes & essential services et alia. Quote from an older manual worker ” If the water & sewage workers went on strike for any length of time, all the Doctors wouldn’t be able to treat/cure the dying people” True then true now but of course this is not to disparage our fine medics without whom I wouldn’t be here. Indeed I am a 1/2 million dollar man at US prices and counting
Yes, cleaners porters and care (home) workers seem to have been put on the back burner.
Every one of them more use than any MP.
Another delivery of vaccine :
https://swprs.org/open-letter-from-professor-sucharit-bhakdi-to-german-chancellor-dr-angela-merkel/
What else are they lying about? The number of COVID tests they are able to perform, perhaps.
The last year saw a remarkable instance of media unanimity over one issue : that the Labour Party was ‘institutionally antisemitic’, and Jeremy Corbyn, as leader, a prime example.
Even a trivial bit of actual research showed that this was nonsense – a myth constructed by particular interests and then enforced by a degree of media control that surprised even a lot of cynics.
The Guardian was a particular canary in the mine. A paper that once had a reasonable record of independence was remarkable in toeing the party line on this myth.
Have a look at the Guardian now (forget the rest of the predictable bog papers). Where are any of the available multitude of seriously questioning views from experts about the nature of the Covid-19 virus and the social measures aimed at its control? Any half-competent researcher/journalist could build interesting and credible features about the uncertainties involved – as they could have done over the ‘antisemitism’ story.
The situation is eerily familiar. Is that a rat smell?
Yes. Speaks volumes that Peter Hutchins and MoS are questioning power more effectively (intentionally) than the once relevant Guardian.
Ironically, I discovered Hitchins’ article through OFFGuardian where rigorous questioning of epidemiological data is stimulating impressively vigorous discussion – unlike the Guardnog’s own CiF forum.
That ‘canary in the mine’ analogy shows how total is the Guardian’s fall from grace under Viner and her team.
We live in the ‘Post Truth Era’ of lies & Fake News……..& that’s just the BBC.
Absolutely. The BBC is not using the public broadcasting philosophy to COUNTER the billionaires’ press. It is using its authority to ENDORSE it.
Your slowly getting there lads and lasses
In America where the financial pandemic is being bailed out to the tune of £5 trillion, there is no oversight of where the money is going
Bet you a pound to a penny it’s the same here and across western Europe
Bottom line central banks will shortly own everything, but it cannot be called nationalisation, they are a pawn shop for billionaires
Bit like me mams charm bracelet when we were short of money
If RH and his source are correct, China started a worldwide panic over nothing.
If MMGW deniers are correct the climate isn’t changing and we’re wasting trillions there too.
The retired professor contends that the part corona virus played in a death must be precisely determined for the death to be attributed to the virus.
Statistical analysis is hindsight and its assumptions affect its results as much as any other form of modelling.
I would contend that if the death was unanticipated and the patient was infected and symptomatic that’s sufficient to attribute the death to CV.
The fact that a lot of the deaths are of people made more vulnerable to CV by other illnesses doesn’t make inaction acceptable.
Sitting back and allowing CV to run its course would make us no better than Nazis disposing of the sick and otherwise economically inconvenient.
Very interesting report tucked away in sky news by a statistical analysis expert who claims looking at the true growth figures we are following the Italian and Spanish growth rate and its just a case of ..We are 2weeks behind..Now I hope that the figures man is wrong because he admits to having no knowledge of medicine,just exponential growth figures.What we can all see clearly is that the government did too little to late and continues to push forward with inadequate provision of stopping the spread of the virus..One thing is I do know is that the masks provided for frontline Health workers and many others are little more than the “Placebo effect” and give no protection.for themselves or the people they come into contact with..And here in Cambodia the Germans and the French have flown out on chartered flights and the British tourists do what the British do best “Wait for help and hope for the best” ,whilst the British embassy seems in a muddle.ITs a sad 😢 reflection of the non government of Boris Johnson and his misfits.