If the Tory government had been honest from the beginning, it would have been better for them. Boris Johnson would have said something like this, “Look, we’ve not got enough testing kits, enough protective equipment, enough hospital beds, enough ventilators or enough hospital staff. But we’re going to do our best in the coming weeks to roll out all these vital necessities.” They were not able to be honest about the mess we’re all in, because it would have needed another sentence. “This is all because our government has starved the NHS of cash for a decade, run it into the ground and we’ve made sure our pals in the private sector have large juicy contracts to syphon off even more money.”
Instead of the honesty, we’ve got this never-ending blagging, giving everyone the very understandable impression that they are improvising and making it up as they go along, as indeed they are. Still behind the curve as ever, the British government is now saying that it is “unlikely” to reach its daily target of 25,000 daily tests before late April.
Straining to get anywhere near 10,000 a day
On March 18, Johnson told the House of Commons that “we’re moving up to 25,000 a day.” But now a Downing Street spokesman is saying that this target will not be reached until “mid to late April”, which, on the basis of past promises, probably means May. Public Health England said on Monday that 8,278 tests had been carried out on 4,908 people as of 9am on Sunday. This was down from 9,114 tests at 9am on Saturday.
This means three or four more weeks not knowing how widespread the epidemic is and where the hotspots might be. Not having regular testing means that there may be some workers, particularly in the NHS, who should not be at work because they are risking the spread of infection, while there may be others who are self-quarantining needlessly. The UK is well behind other countries on testing. Germany, for example, is testing 70,000 a day.
Coming hard on the heels of the testing fiasco, the Office of National Statistics is now saying that the reported death rate is probably an understatement. Based on doctors’ death certificates – where a doctor outside a hospital environment attributes a death to coronavirus – they arrive at a number higher than the government’s published figures. By March 20, for example, where the government figures indicated 170 deaths, the ONS had counted 210 “where
Priti Patel drops immigration rule to keep NHS staff
On a completely different note, Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has been forced by the crisis to suspend some of the anti-migrant measures planned, just so NHS staff can be retained. When there is no crisis, so many NHS from the EU and overseas are made to feel unwelcome by this government, but as soon as the crisis kicks off, all of a sudden they are desperately in demand.
Patel announced today that the government would be introducing a raft of measures to keep overseas health workers currently in the NHS, so they could assist in the fight against the Covid-19 outbreak. They will be offered automatic (and free) extensions to visas nearing expiry. This will help around 2,800 doctors, nurses and paramedics as well as their families, to whom the new regulations apply.
According to today, Financial Times, “The NHS has depended heavily in recent years on the arrival of doctors, nurses and other staff from outside Europe. NHS staff have taken around 40 per cent of the 20,700 Tier 2 visas for skilled migrants coming from outside the European Economic Area – the European Union plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein”.
The Home Office has said that the new measures would give these workers some “peace of mind”. This is hypocrisy in the extreme. They should be offered, heartfelt thanks, a 10% pay rise, along with other NHS staff, and an apology for having to jump through “hostile atmosphere” hoops for visas in the first place.
Zoom and its security concerns
As the labour movement moved into lock-down, active trade union and Labour Party members all over the country have resorted to meetings with Zoom. But American experts are calling into question its privacy and security protocols. Zoom has suffered a number of cyber security and privacy-related gaffs in the recent past.
The New York regulator has written to Zoom raising issues and asking whether or not the company can cope in security and privacy terms with the massive increase in traffic on its platform. The communication noted that Zoom had been ‘slow’ to address security issues in the past.
In reply, Zoom has said that it “takes its users’ privacy, security, and trust extremely seriously. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we are working around-the-clock to ensure that hospitals, universities, schools, and other businesses across the world can stay connected and operational.”
Zoombombing
But users of the platform, according to the Financial Times, “have also complained recently of a trend — dubbed “Zoombombing” — whereby trolls are exploiting its screen-sharing feature to share disturbing content such as pornography or extreme political views.” It is something worth noting. Although for the moment, it is vitally important, in the absence of face-to-face meetings, that the greatest possible discussion and organisation proceeds on line. A fragmented and atomised labour movement is effectively a dead labour movement. It is important to maintain the greatest degree of cohesion and organisation that is possible. If it has to be Zoom, then so be it.
March 31st, 2020
