Robin Andrews wrote: ↑Tue Apr 06, 2021 8:36 am
There are many things to object to about the government's response to Covid, but a particularly bad example, which I think is representative but which gets little coverage, is the Nightingale hospitals fiasco.
My understanding is that the whole purpose of lockdown is to "flatten the curve" - to slow down the spread of Covid so that the NHS doesn't become overwhelmed. In light of this, is seems utterly bizarre and deeply wrong to have built seven dedicated hospitals, costing £100s of millions in total, and then to make almost no use of them.
The argument that insufficient staff are available to use these hospitals fails on two grounds.
1. What kind of radical incompetence and irresponsibility would lead to commissioning the construction of these facilities without carrying out a feasibility study?
2. Since these hospitals are designed to treat one specific illness, the skills needed by staff are a very small subset of what would be needed for a general hospital. I am very confident that if there were a genuine will to use the hospitals to help Covid patients, a solution could easily be found, for example through specialised accelerated training programs and/or the use of military personnel.
To continue with lockdown measures supposed to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed while these Nightingales sit empty strikes me as an appalling state of affairs. I believe ministers should be held accountable for it, and the matter given widespread media attention.
I'm curious to know what can be done about this.
Is there grounds for legal action against the government?
What about a public enquiry?
Is there some way to get the government to prioritise the use of these resources over imposing continued lockdown?
Please let me know what you make of the situation and what you think can realistically be done about it.
Robin,
You mention, in connection with the NHS and the Nightingale fiasco
"Radical incompetence and irresponsibility" and ask
"...if there were a genuine will to use the hospitals to help Covid patients, a solution could easily be found, for example through specialised accelerated training programs"
There are a few facts worth noting
1. China energetically publicised its efforts to actually erect a temporary hospital in Wuhan in a few days using prefabricated building sections in early 2020. It is becoming evident that much of what happened in Wuhan has been distorted, exaggerated and propagandised. The hospital did not appear to be a treatment centre but more a mass isolation facility.
2. The government, self-panicked by MSM images from N Italy and SAGE's appallingly exaggerated 'modelling' predictions, felt that 'something had to be seen to be done' It called in the military Standing Joint Command (SJC) to provide these facilities. See
Building the Nightingale hospitals: Engineering on the fast track. Converting existing International Exhibition Centres such as Excel in E London and NEC in Birmingham, where large floor areas, existing infrastructure - Heating & Ventilation, electrical supply etc - was much easier than erecting buildings - partioning and beds were the main element of the project. Other pre-existing buildings were repurposed including an ice rink in my local area and a large marquee in a sports stadium in Cardiff.
3. The NHS Management had not thought about this idea. The SJC Lieut Gen stated
“We sat down with the NHS and asked them what they wanted. They said they didn’t know and asked what we could do”
4. It seems that NHS were happy to use their own facilities and simply set their faces against using these remote outside facilities instead of their own.
5. I understand that most of the enormous costs reported were paid to the owners of these buildings such as Abu Dhabi (ADNEC) in the case of Excel and the army of professionals and large civils contractors engaged.
6. A large events contractor told me that the Cardiff marquee should have cost £ 60-75k to erect and hire for 6 months; the
Final bill for Nightingale hospitals to top £500mshows the cost at £25m.
7. The Excel facilities were quietly cannibalised last summer and Liquid Oxygen vessels were removed, and could not have been used to their commissioned capacity over the winter even if the NHS had needed them.
8. The NHS Management did absolutely nothing to train or recruit additional staff to use these facilities even if the NHS had needed them.
I have dealt with the NHS over the last 12 months in assisting an expat to supply high grade FFP2 &3 masks at zero profit and trying to assist with predicatable winter ICU oxygen supply bottlenecks that have led to many avoidable deaths (
Whats gone wrong with Hospitals Oxygen Supply). It seems that despite excellent staff at the frontline, the mediochre procedure driven NHS management are incapable of improvement or even basic delivery of services, yet together with the counterpart public health junta that flourishes alongside will destroy the economy from which it demands so much. Can Stephens and Hopson on salaries of £400k be that inept ?
I believe miahoneybee's conclusion
The nightingale hospitals were smoke screen and likely if they remain to be used for other purposes ( detention centres) is close to the truth.
