UK calls in army in COVID-19 fight, NHS staff feel like 'cannon fodder' over lack of coronavirus protection

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/23/cannon-fodder.html

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We’re in lockdown now.

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Except he kept saying ‘should’ not ‘must’. And he did not use the word lockdown. There will still be fuckwits using his list of reasons to go out of the home as an excuse for more fuckwittery all the while claiming the messages were not clear.

But a step in the right direction.

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Can we get one of those with a picture of Vera Lynn as the image? Or John Bull? :wink:

OR THE QUEEN!

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I like it because that guy looks like my Uncle Fritz, he was a real no nonsense type o’dude.
I quote Uncle Fritz, “If you see something wrong, fu@king do something about it”.
You can take the boy out’a New Jersey, but you can’t take the Jersey out’a the boy.

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If only more of the world had a good ole Uncle Fritz!

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You know, that’s true.

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I realize at this point that expecting value-rational behavior from the great and good of the world is unrealistic; but that still doesn’t really manage to dampen my bafflement at the willingness to send in medical personnel without adequate equipment.

Even if you are being mustache-twirlingly coldblooded about it; medical staff are in relatively modest supply, vital to both pandemic response and day-to-day medical practice; and the lead time for getting more is several years(and you might have recruitment problems if everybody knows that you are trying to ramp up production because you killed off the last batch).

Pretty much anything else is cheaper and faster to ramp up production of; and some of the more challenging goods at least have the virtue of only being in extreme demand for pandemic response(eg. running out of ventilators or doctors would be disastrous for present-day response; but running out of ventilators today is much less likely to affect care 2-3 years from now than having a bunch of doctors die today is).

If anything, the utilitarian-if-grim move would seem to be telling medical staff to avoid the sick until PPE production can be ramped up; preserving their ability to continue providing care in the medium and long term, rather than risking compromising that by sacrificing them in the immediate term.

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I hope something useful comes out of this idiocy Maybe people in the UK will finally realize what a moron Boris Johnson actually is maybe the same could happen in the United States.

If I’m going to die just let me dream for a little bit please. Humor is the only thing decent left.

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Oh they have known that for years. The problem is finding a credible alternative.

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Your cold, logical rationality is indeed a correct solution to this particular trolley problem. But try telling that to voters! Actually I’d like to see them try - there would certainly be pitchforks and torches before dawn, which in itself would be a good thing if it removed the in-power bastards from power. But the mob being a replacement is not likely to be good for anyone in the medium to longer term. Basically, humans en masse have no capability to think or act in their long-term interests. It’s an evolutionary flaw which actually helped us evolve to where we are. Sigh.

We clearly need more forceful communication from the centre of government:

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Perfect timing - just after Alastair Campbell (the inspiration for Malcolm Tucker) was interviewed on TV last night talking about principles of crisis communication and how better communication was needed from govt.

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