Vile and insulting boast by Health Secretary about ‘success’ of spare NHS coronavirus capacity as hidden horror continues in UK care homes
Health Secretary Matt Hancock boasted during last night’s televised daily press farce of his ‘success’ in his claim that the NHS has had ‘spare’ capacity to treat coronavirus victims ‘throughout’ the UK epidemic – and that nobody has been unable to get NHS treatment who needs it.
And he did it again this morning in televised interviews – claiming that the NHS has ‘record’ spare capacity of over 2,000 beds. He was challenged on ITV, but the BBC simply amplified his claims.
‘Spare capacity’?
So why, Hancock, are thousands of people – believed to be as many again as have been reported in the official coronavirus death toll – dying in care homes, after either being refused admission or being sent back to care homes in spite of testing positive?
The UK government does not include deaths outside hospitals in its official figures. But data from five European countries that do include deaths in care homes show that as many people – and in some cases more – die in care homes as in hospitals:
Given the appalling lack of preparedness of the Tory government, it is unimaginable that the situation is any better in the UK – which means that the real death toll in this country is nearing 30,000, not including deaths of people in their own home.
The second-highest in the world behind only the US, in spite of having weeks longer to prepare than Spain and Italy.
At least two thousand UK care homes have reported coronavirus outbreaks – with many of them suffering double-figure deaths among their residents.
Thousands upon thousands of people not able to access hospital treatment because government-imposed policies deny it to them – and huge numbers dying.
Around 13,000 hidden deaths, perhaps even more, in care homes not equipped to treat them – or to prevent other residents becoming infected – while thousands of NHS coronavirus beds lay empty.
And Hancock is boasting about keeping hospital beds empty – and calling it a ‘success’.
There must be criminal trials, not just an enquiry.
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 am appalled at the flippant responses to the lives of the elderly and vulnerable from this couldn’t care government.I am even more distressed when I see the flippant attitude from our right wing moderateson here that echo the government and their experiments with people’s lives.Care homes are being used as a graveyard for this genocide government.Thanks to squawky .Iwe now realise just what’s happening to my relatives ,brothers and sisters in the UK,We have a moral responsibility to stop the murder of the vulnerable and elderly like my brother who died without his6 brothers and 2Sistersaround him.in a care home deprived of treatment because he was deemed expendable costly and not economically active..I am angry and yes I do blame a culture that has developed especially in the UK were a person unable to object can be disposed of like so much unwanted garbage .Wake up and stop being so bloodyanalytical when people’s lives are being taken for austerity and money saving The 21ST CENTURY AND WE CAN’T PROVIDE PPE but we can provide 10.000 p0unds for the parasites we elected to sit at home and calculate how much the peasants are costing them….?
Joseph, so glad to see you post. Keep u & yours well in body and mind.
This will be quick. The following needs repeating:
“”Thousands upon thousands of people not able to access hospital treatment because government-imposed policies deny it to them – and huge numbers dying.
Around 13,000 hidden deaths, perhaps even more, in care homes not equipped to treat them – or to prevent other residents becoming infected – while thousands of NHS coronavirus beds lay empty.
And Hancock is boasting about keeping hospital beds empty – and calling it a ‘success’.
There must be criminal trials, not just an enquiry.””
1️⃣ Deliberate secrecy re Govt instructions to NHS authorities ie OVERPAID NON CLINICAL detritus.
2️⃣ Deliberate scam to BLOCK very sick patients accessing Hospital Care. Many have died and are dying not only in nursing homes but in their own homes UNTESTED so though they had OBVIOUS Covid-19 absolutely dreadful symptoms… the most obvious being GASPING for BREATH and then unable to breathe, because the lungs are clogged with possibly thick mucus / slime … BUT despite dying in that horrible way, someone somewhere have given instructions to NOT put Covid-19 on the death certificate.
NB HEALTH PROFESSIONALS have also been REFUSED hospital admission. Ambulances summoned have REFUSED to take a selfless NHS health professional to hospital. The person who gave a lifetime caring for patients, died horribly not ling after the ambulance left. The emergency number was also of no lifesaving use.
3️⃣ NHS hospitals including ICU are being denied equipment which is being allocated to the makeshift field hospitals at the Excel in London and at another arena in Manchester or Birmingham. Yet the crux is this ~>
4️⃣ Someone somewhere, MATT HANCOCK and people above him, have set peculiar criteria to be admitted to the makeshift field hospitals. Thus patients are being kept out of the existing NHS Hospitals and out of the makeshift PR WHITE ELEPHANT field hospitals.
5️⃣ The “FREE” ICU beds ie the sudden slack / redundancy / resilience , which was never there during the last 11 years, is STILL not there. Hancocks numbers and charts are deceitful.
The “SUCCESS” the government is spinning, is a CON, a MIRAGE, a CRIMINAL FARCE. And as if that is not enough, patients understandably frightened, are staying away from seeking hospital treatment for serious illness as well as moderately serious ones.
Furthermore, elective procedures including surgery have been postponed. And further still, treatments which would compromise the immune response, eg oncological care are risky in these Covid-19 environment.
CONSIDER therefore, the Covid-19 environment has created hospital and ICU capacity not seen in decades … even without the field hospitals. Yet CRIMINALLY, Matt Hancock or someone above him, is REFUSING Covid-19 patients admission to NHS hospitals. Yet they have set some odd criteria for the field hospital admissions.
After ALL the FANFARE only approximately 22 patients, yes you read that right … TWENTY TWO patients have been treated in the Nightingale field hospitals.
If that is neither sinister nor heartless nor wasteful nor callous, then what is❓❓❓
Tha-a-a-a-nks for the brevity…
I know it must be tough…
it’s still not brief enough…
So-o-o-orry for the levity 🙂 🙂 🙂
I can’t remember the rest.
Sorry to hear about your brother, Joseph.
Yes, this is vile, as is the lying about the figures in the first place, a deception happening right in front of our eyes: there are the REAL number of deaths, and then the are the OFFICIAL FIGURES, which for no apparent reason other than minimisation, this government has decided should be the ones that are published. It’s remarkable that they are allowed to get away with doing this so openly. But then again perhaps not. Not questioning or criticising this dreadful government is now probably more fashionable than the mini-skirt was in the 1960s.
” there are the REAL number of deaths,”
Indeed. Around the norm for a bad ‘flu year up to press.
There’s a difference between criticising this government (whose main PR strategy has been to *emphasize* the lethality of this virus beyond the facts) and just conjuring up even more scary imaginary mortality figures out of thin air.
… then we have Joseph wittering on about ‘murder’ and ‘genocide’ on the basis of no evidence at all …. Could be a virus-induced fever?
R H you have overstepped the bounds of decency and morality with your sly comments No wonder society is being destroyed with comments like yours.
Oh please hurry up and croak, you unpitiable, insufferable eugenicism apologist prick, haywood
I’m not sure whether you’ve got the virus, Toffer – but you’re certainly sick and sad.
.. but that was pretty obvious already.
… or is it just incredible dimness that doesn’t understand the terms ‘murder’ and ‘genocide’ as opposed to ‘incompetence’?
If you don’t understand the importance of language, you’d best forgo posting until you do. (See ‘Orwell’)
…or is it just a case of another Tory posting shite on an alleged left-wing site in order to blow smoke?
If you simply haven’t got the ability at present to deal with fairly simple numbers and vocabulary, I understand – but better that you just Toff off in private ignorance rather than continue to struggle out of your shallow depth of understanding. The stuff I’ve posted isn’t rocket science – except to the hard of hearing/understanding.
Pretend ‘socialists’ like yourself and those whose main motivation results in a weird distortion of reality (for reasons best known to yourselves) are actually servants of the right riding on the back of protested radicalism.
Of course – if you want to argue against the case I’ve put – feel free, and come up with other numbers, alternative analysis. But if you’re just using this site for therapy and anger management – a substitute for Marjorie Proops – I can’t be arsed.
Inebriated by the exuberance of yer own verbosity, aren’t ya?
God, but you’re boring beyond belief. You’d turn singing ‘zip-a-dee-doo-da’ sound like a funereal dirge ffs.
Any chance you can sod off to a toerag website, where you and your contrariness would be far more welcome?!
Pompous waffle, & largely nonsensical. Evidently not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Yawn. Saddo self-indulgence and reality-dodging pretending to political wisdom. The Tories’ little helpers.
Even it we were to accept the published figures as the real figures. Still the UK has a higher percentage of deaths that anywhere in the World with a 13.18% of all those infected.
Italy follows with 13.12%, France with 12.75% and Spain with 10.46%.
Spain has recorded that 57% of its Covid-19 deaths have occurred in care and nursing homes, Italy 53% and France 45%. Therefore, I doesn’t take a 150IQ to extrapolate and to realise that a minimum of 20K Covid-19 related deaths are a conservative figure for the UK.
In Spain the percentage of deaths varies between area. Madrid has the higher percentage with 13.19% and it is also the area that has registered the most deaths in residential and nursing homes.
It makes me so angry that some high up Labour Officials deprived Corbyn of a chance to be PM in 2017. We will have had 3 years in which to stop the closure of beds and re-open beds, offer more training bursaries for nurses and doctors so we will have been better prepared and taken the necessary measures to limit the impact of Covid-19.
The only thing that I agree with you is on the lethality, the number of officially infected don’t reflect the real number either. In Spain when they have started doing massive testing they have discovered that nearly 75K have antibodies many of them have contracted Covid-19 without having any symptoms, very much like the common flu. We know that the common flu kills about 1% of those that contract it.
Still it kills and the government is massaging the figures and something more could have been done, like giving PPE to all essential workers including transport and supermarket workers.
RH,
Up to the 3rd April deaths are up 6000 this is from when Stats started in 2005. You are pushing a Dangerous Tory narrative, who funds you Scab.
This is from a doctor,
Regarding death certificates advice to doctors is that they can write pneumonia and do not have to mention COVID-19. Is that a deliberate attempt to underestimate deaths due to COVID-19?
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending3april2020
Go to HELL RH you deserve it.
Congratulations, dicky.
You’ve even succeeded in offending perhaps the most good-natured, unassuming and inoffensive poster that visits this site.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Du3s5nFVYAMmPgM.jpg
Well played, lad. Off you pop to claim your ‘guido fawkes fellowship of shithousery medal’ for that one.
I think we all need to take a step back, and consider how we represent the Left on here. There’s a lot of noise and arguing, which frankly makes no difference to a pandemic virus.
I know we encourage and enjoy the exchange of views and opinions here, but this isn’t the sort of situation where ideology matters most. Pragmatism, in managing a pandemic, is more valuable than people from their own personal moral high grounds.
I am so ANGRY with you RH the reason I told you to go to hell.. how dare you speak to Joseph in that manner he has just lost his brother to the virus & you say to him he was wittering on about murder & genocide & that he Joseph could have a virus induced fever??
HOW DARE YOU!
In my eyes you are lower than a snakes belly, you insignificant little man, do you get your kicks by coming on here & spouting vitriol you hateful spiteful horrible man.
Please go and join the Tory Party if you are not already a member, you will fit right in there, lacking empathy & human decency.
RH
absolutely vile
I haven’t the words
Joseph am so sorry
My mam who has dementia is in a wonderful home, where now essential, pre corona, unskilled, workers, care tirelessly for her and other vulnerable ppl
They have been asked to take in people with corona, thus signing death warrants for their residents
And RH thinks its scaremongering
I believe piers moron actually took hancock to task this morning; so credit where due, although no extra because it’s a journalist’s job to ask questions until they get a clear concise answer.
I’ve not seen it yet but will have a look on youtube in a bit.
As for hancock (and the rest of them), he’ll walk from any trial – if there WERE to be any trial…
Don’t forget, starmer – As DPP – Point-blank refused to press charges against damien ‘groper’ green and grant ‘bolly-eyed spiv’ shapps (Or whatever he calls himself this week) when they were ripe for a bit of jail.
He hasn’t got the bollocks as LotO to call for any trial of establishment figures over this.
Toffee did you read my reply to you over on Vox Political about the masks?
There has been an absence of figs. from Care homes etc. But I thought this week the ONS stated the numbers would be published .
On Wed, we are told the number in 237 over the last 2 weeks ?
Thus cannot possibly be correct. So are we ever going to find out the real numbers ?
Taipei (about 600 miles from Wuhan) – 395 cases, 155 recoveries, 6 deaths = National disaster
UK (About 5,500 miles from Wuhan) – 98,476 cases, (?) Recoveries (2 we’re immensely grateful for, oh yes, Churchill!) 12868 deaths = Comprehensive success.
Simply outstanding work, toerags.
Outstanding.
Vile, sanctimonious boasting based on lies.
Tories are as tories do.
Bastards.
Every government plays with stats and does trade offs on a cost benefit analysis of the economy. Don’t forget it was Comrade Joseph who said “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic”.
Only 9% of cv deaths are caused by the virus the rest have merely been hurried along by it to that care home in the sky, as Hancock might put it. The Nightingale hospitals are empty, plenty of room in intensive care and A&E. Time to lift the lock down lads, cease the furlough support and let’s get off to the pub.
That at any rate is what most of the country is thinking according to my ring round of a few Labour party members this morning. Saves the economy as well which will not be an afterthought in Rishi’s mind.
The next job is to think of a PR strategy for a 2nd wave in 3 months time.
That was a broadcast by the conservative and unionist party
Thank you Joseph, predictable as ever. Never let the facts get in the way of your sentimental ramblings. Well miss you when you go.
Let’s not forget, ONLY those who pass away in hospital are recorded by this toxic government as having died of cv-19! Now that explains all you should need to know about the callous attempt by those in charge to simply refuse aid and send home those who can at least “die within their own homes”. Disgraceful and what else would we expect from this lot?
I think he said there were 2,500 spare beds, in other words the NHS was up to handling the pandemic. However, if 5,000 died in care homes and in their own homes (by no means a ridiculous figure) then our friend Hancock was DOWN 2,500 beds! Question: Why did these people not reach hospital?
Amazing…
Even a bleedin’ airline can do better than this government on testing.
https://simpleflying.com/emirates-coronavirus-blood-test/
This really is the WW website. Most deaths are not CoV related and those that are, are overstated! Get real we are being corralled big time.
Sop it! Stop it!
You will send Toffer over the edge with that sort of reality check. 🙂
Au contrare, Monsieur dicky-tete.
I’ve already given people a heads-up about the restriction of civil liberties that will carry over in perpetuity once this crisis has passed, in another comment section on this very site.
However, I have zero problem with the current lockdown measures – other than they don’t go far enough, in some respects.
Do keep up, old man.
About the dangers of the restriction that will carry over….
I am delighted, Toffer, with some embryonic recognition that things are not necessarily the same as the Tory narrative would have it. This is the path of enlightenment.
Now – how about engaging with the data that I have highlighted, rather than just ranting?
You may be right on the government using the virus to corralled the population, but the report by Squawk box is both incisive and nails the legality of denying treatment or any form of relief of a distressing illness other than death. The pandemic is real and is being used to destroy lives physically andeconomicaly for financial gain….Their needs to be action,but with no opposition party and no leadership other than a compliant knight of the Realm legal action must be the route for the international court under the human rights laws that apply to both the elderly and the vulnerable..Shortness of breath used to be a joke for cause of death,now under this UK establishment government we are seeing shortness of breath a cruel and vile reality for the victims of this evil and despicable government .. Cherish the elderly and the vulnerable , don’t follow the path of having no respect for life .That road leads to destruction of all of us.
Yes Jo, but that focus on culling the non productive and using the resultant statistics to lock down everyone is how they are using what is going on to mask the global economic collapse and how ‘they’ will corral you and me. I ask you one question “how did Smarmer get elected?” Where were the vote distributions? As usual follow the money/muni/monet how ever yu want to pronounce it.
J Butties – I ask you one question “how did Smarmer [Starmer] get elected?”
The alternatives on offer were even less inspiring.
As for your follow the money comment, as I’ve said before I would rather that each candidate was given a fixed allowance from the NEC to cover election expenses. No donations allowed. For reasons best known to itself the NEC thought it was a brill idea to charge each of the candidates £5,000 + VAT for access to essential party membership data.
real facts intensive care 50% die survivors face long term damage and life long care source Hancock
Keir Starmer’s campaign donations as published 14/04/2020
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/200414/starmer_keir.htm
scroll gown to the highlighted section
Here is a link to several analyses of how ‘they’ are taking over all aspects of our lives. Question is ‘What can we do about it?’
https://thesaker.is/americas-rigged-democracy-the-oligarch-takeover-of-americas-political-system/
We could always go in the completely opposite direction to America and state fund election campaigns. It would only cost each voter a very few pence per week. The advantages would probably make it self funding.
J buttie….The American people have thrown off the hand of the tyrent once before and I would not be surprised if they did it again, Never forget that the people there have the power and weapons to do it.,and a written constitution to back them up.Most Americans are only 200 years in separation from the pioneers that struck out to tame the West and they maybe havestrayed from their heritage but the cowboy still exists waiting for the moment to arise from a long sleep.300 Million people and the guts to push back..?
Jonathan Cook on the leaked LP report:
How top Labour officials plotted to bring down Jeremy Corbyn
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2020-04-16/labour-officials-plot-corbyn-antisemitism/
PS I don’t know if anyone has already posted it – a link to it that is – but here it is anyway.
And medialens:
‘The People Have Spoken. Bastards’: Leaked Labour Report Shows Party’s Own Senior Staff Acted To Keep Corbyn Out Of Power
https://www.medialens.org/2020/the-people-have-spoken-bastards-leaked-labour-report-shows-partys-own-senior-staff-acted-to-keep-corbyn-out-of-power/
Thanks Alan
CIA Spying on Assange’s Privileged Legal Conversations
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/04/cia-spying-on-assanges-privileged-legal-conversations/
I wonder if the BBC et al will be running the video…….. don’t hold your breath!
Regarding these badges for care workers. Does Skwawkbox know if carers are really going to have to pay £8.99 for them and if so who is manufacturing them. Would be ironic if it’s a Tory party donor.
Would be ironic if it’s a Tory party donor
… And that the badges themselves turn out to be produced in a Xinjiang sweatshop.
https://www.thecarebadge.org/
If the same company they were sold for £1.25 in 2019
Is this something else with a supply problem
https://www.thecarebadge.org/buy-now/
Care workers and health workers need proper protection and the NHS is being bled dry The Tory fob the staff off with silly badges .What next . Glass beads for the natives. PPE not insulting the intelligence of the ordinary people with silly badges , whilst the Tory enablers are given a title and a gravey train trip to the Lords on the back of the very same workers,
What Health and social care workers would probably appreciate in addition to a badge,more money,protection and ongoing respect… is the repealing of Section 75 Health and Social Care act….. the route to privatisation through stealth.
His wannabe protege, my parish council leader and all round Hancock arse licker Ben Fraud, promoted himself using the claim he was an NHS Champion, despite holding no qualification in any health related area, whilst Hancock’s office paid for delivery of a document claiming to be designed to assess local housing need that asked questions such as, ‘how much more would you be willing to pay to stay in the locality’, repeating on every section the question ‘what is the ethnicity of those requiring housing’, and only bothered itself with the needs of those renting in the village in a passing, off hand way, focusing on the owner occupiers when assessing whether land proffered for housing would actually be used for that purpose. God help us with this lot as templates.