COVID-19: Integrated Response Required.

It's quite clear there is still a disconnection between demand for PPE and supplies.

The fiasco of the RAF plane waiting in Turkey to be loaded. Turkey! Fucking Turkey!

Where's the PPE being made in the UK?

The rumour is there are warehouses of the stuff here in the country, but it's not being procured by the NHS. They prefer other means of supply.

Like acquiring shit quality Chinese products that don't work, or burning fuel and spending money on putting up RAF personnel while they wait in fucking Turkey for PPE to be loaded.

There's a guy in Portsmouth working in a shed producing face shields for local health providers. He's making 50 shields a day. IN HIS FUCKING SHED!

Now surely it's not beyond someone in government to set up a company in the first instance to co-ordinate supply to the NHS and to commend it if necessary to acquire premises and equipment to manufacture those supplies?

An N95 mask is not a hard thing to produce. Not with 3d-printing technology.

The face frame gets 3d-printed out of polyurethane, then the material gets laser cut and glued to the mask frame with polyurethane adhesive. It's not fucking hard.

But of course the beaurocracy kicks in. Are those masks certified? Is the supplier a trusted/recognised NHS supplier?

Look, the masks can be certified/tested whatever in quick style if you talk to the right people.

And fuck whether the supplier is on the NHS list: It will be a fucking government funded company so I hope to God NHS procurement managers don't ignore it because I'd be naming and shaming those fucking jobsworths.

As you can tell I'm a bit fucked off about the PPE situation and how ludicrous it is. Especially when the solution appears so simple.

In my previous life I was an installation manger. I know how these things are done. I also know how easily the situation is gamed to make it hard. Time to end the bullshit and crack on.

COVID-19: Official Advice Behind the Curve.

I see that official advice for carers is still lagging behind scientific evidence.

Advice for carers is not to use PPE unless the carer or the person receiving care are symptomatic.

I'm not sure advice to carers to continue caring whilst symptomatic is particularly good advice. You shouldn't just be slapping PPE on whilst suffering from the virus. You should not be in work. Period.

But the risk is still asymptomatic people. PPE should be worn at all times. But I assume there's hardly enough PPE to supply the NHS let alone carers. Back to my idea of creating a production facility in the UK.

I see that Portsmouth is getting it's own sample collecting site, that should be up and running this week. Possibly.

There's a site next door to work that has had a lot of activity over the past few weeks, which is associated with the virus outbreak. The building has just been sorted and sports a nice lick of fresh paint and has had a ton of concrete poured to level the floors.

I suspect this will be the testing facility that samples from the Portsmouth collection centre will be brought to. However no equipment has been installed yet, the building is a bare shell.

That may not be up and running this week, because the lab equipment is pretty delicate and takes time to get up and running both staff-wise and equipment-wise.

But for fuck;s sake, can we have some sensible advice for carers please?