Cuts led to crucial shortages

• WHEN the country does finally emerge from this dystopian health nightmare –which we are told will be later rather than the sooner – our world will have drastically changed.

On the surface most things will look the same, but planted indelibly within the British psyche will be the knowledge of having been badly let down at a time when the country faced one of its greatest crises.

Consequently people will feel not only less trustful of this govern­ment but also less secure and more vulnerable, both physically and economi­cally, than ever before.

If there is one important lesson this government could learn from this pandemic it is that their present policies will be inadequate to meet the myriad of needs and challenges that loom on the horizon.

They will soon find that the public will no longer tolerate the NHS being forced to run on a shoestring, which has been the case during the past 10 years when it was purposely allowed to fall into a state of virtual collapse under the guise of “austerity” to try and align it more closely with the USA type of medical insurance-funded system, where cash is put before care.

Trying to impose this type of market fundamentalism on our non-competitive NHS in the hope of trying to gain future USA quid pro quo trade deals have led directly to cutbacks, which has restrained the NHS from ordering crucial supplies of personal protective equipment, PPE, despite the warnings from the government’s own chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, leaving NHS and care workers dangerously unprotected at a vital time of need in the fight against this pandemic.

This lack of action, plus their shambolic late attempt to halt the spread of the virus, resulted in us having the highest death rate in Europe.

On the economic front, we know that even if the country returned to work tomorrow, the economy would still have suffered a massive loss in revenue near three times worse then that of the great financial crash of 2007-2008.

But unfortunately, no one knows when the country will get back to full working capacity as we are still amid the pandemic which will last until we find a vaccine.

Trapped by these facts, and under constant pressure from the business sector, especially large construction, to ease the lockdown, the government is naturally trying to find some wriggle room; but there seems to be a sense of panic reflected in their latest contradictory and ambiguous message, which in the end may only serve to confuse the public, who still believe in our NHS, and that health still comes before wealth.

MIKE GEORGE
Queens Crescent, NW5