Minute Silence for NHS staff who sadly lost their lives to Covid-19

Minute Silence
There was a minute silence at 11.00am on 28th April 2020 in recognition of the NHS staff and key workers who have sadly lost their lives to Covid-19.
Minute Silence
Panorama last night found that people in healthcare jobs were forced to put their lives at risk because of insufficient PPE. Our country has not built up, or procured, sufficient stock of the right type of equipment, and healthcare and social care workers are being asked to make do with what is available There have been 100 lives lost so far. The Panorama Reporter asked how many lives have been lost because of the shortage of PPE?
Minute Silence
Oxford West and Abingdon MP Layla Moran’s started a petition back in March asking for compensation for families of NHS staff who die from Covid-19. The petition was signed by 60 MPs. Yesterday, it was an announced that this has had some success. Families will now receive £60K. Layla Moran called this a good start and says more needs to be done to bring them into line with armed forces personnel who die in active service.

The video shows the minute’s silence looking out onto a rainy West St Helen Street. I expect there was something more significant at Abingdon Community Hospital. They will know people who lost their lives. It was announced on April 19th that Margaret Tapley, from Witney Community Hospital, lost her life to Covid-19.

The NHS pictures come from
* Penlon Place, Abingdon (Penlon make Ventilators and so provide an important part of NHS equipment to fight Covid-19);
* Steventon Road, Drayton
* The Abbey Fish Ponds Nature Reserve on Radley Road, Abingdon.

24 thoughts on “Minute Silence for NHS staff who sadly lost their lives to Covid-19

  1. Chris John

    I think there’s going to be some rich lawyers when all this is done with claims against the government

    Reply
  2. newcomer

    The attrition that the NHS frontline has suffered due to lack of proper logistical support needed to do their jobs stands alongside the paucity oif equipment supplied to our soldiers when they fought in the Middle East and both are a tribute to the inadequacy of our politicians to lift their attention from their petty squabbles and look at what is happening in the Real World.

    The current remake of ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’ (Tony was funny, ‘Matt’ is just inept) has been an embarrassing catalogue of being long on promises and short on delivery.

    Compensation for the NHS victims of this political charade goes some way, but we need proper politicians in the future, not excuse-makers.

    I’ve lifetime friends who have children working in the NHS and I’m so angry that they are being put into danger due to our dullard politicians.

    Tuesday evenings at 8:00 pm we should all go out and boo the politicians.

    Reply
  3. newcomer

    Booing is fair comment on our politician’s’ handling of this pandemic, John. I think there’s a growing realisation in the population that the Government were slow off the mark, fumbled when they got going and have been selective with the truth ever since.

    What are we supposed to do? Congratulate them?

    There’s an economic theory appropriately called The Trajedy of the Commons: a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action.

    So everything wiill be okay when our leaders unload their responsibility for the NHS on Richard Branson and his fellow philantropists.

    Reply
  4. moan again

    i didnt vote for this goverment but i accept democracy, however maybe newcomer should be the prime minister as he/she seems to have all the answers. this is the time regardless of your political persuation to stand together to try and pull everyone through this

    Reply
  5. rudi

    not to be too political but just count your lucky stars that we don’t currently have the corbyn and abbott comedy hour navigating us through this storm……

    Reply
  6. Daniel

    yeah, I am kinda curious…who exactly would we “rather” have in charge? You’ll have to forgive me, I forget who the perfect choice is/was and I also forget why we chose someone awful when we had the opportunity to chose someone perfect…

    I assume that “Jo Swinson”, or Jeremy would be handling this immaculately? Is that what is being said?

    Reply
  7. Chris John

    Saying thanks we don’t have etc etc in charge is just ignoring the fact that the government have failed and is letting them off. Are you really content with how they’ve performed?

    Reply
  8. Su

    I know, in these difficult times, why don’t we try and limit ourselves to constructive, positive and even informative comments? Just a thought.

    Reply
  9. Iain

    All is clearly not well, but equally our politicians are making decisions without the luxury of certainty. We shouldn’t let them off the hook, but we should also avoid applying 20-20 hindsight.

    At least no-one in power here has advocated injecting people with bleach.

    Reply
  10. Daniel

    No one’s still said nuffink about who it is we ‘could have had’ that would be dealing with this all not only differently, but entirely better….

    Reply
  11. Julian Annells

    I’d also like to know what it is that would be done ‘better’. Lockdown/no lockdown? More PPE? (But where from when there’s a worldwide shortage?) Vaccine? Yes, but scientists around the world are working flat out for that. What exactly do the Negateers want? I’m intrigued!

    Reply
  12. Iain

    It’s not about blame, but it doesnt seem to me that everything has been git right.

    Vaccines- they seem to be doing right things here so far
    PPE – a few big errors – preparedness post pandemic ‘war game’, not being part of EU buying deal, not picking up small ships uk manufacturers, wearing masks to prevent spread in closed spaces
    Testing – seems slow off the mark, big difference vs germany for example
    Lock down – no complaints, maybe a bit too much optionality in early days but very clear since
    Travel bans/quarantine- looks to me like jurys out on this one, so cant complain as difficult to know whats right
    Care homes – looks like they didnt put enough resource here which seems a predictable issue
    Economics – i think they’ve done pretty well on this, and have made some bold calls, but early days to see if it will have worked. Whatever they did will still mean big economic shock ahead

    Reply
  13. Julian Annells

    PPE. I have heard many news agencies blaming the PTB for not listening to advice given in 2016 that a pandemic WOULD happen at some time. So they should have stockpiled PPE then. Now, I don’t know as I’m no expert, but I would imagine PPE has a shelf life and so buying millions of pounds worth of gear would have been a complete waste of money, and so jumped on by the Negateers.
    Small manufacturers have bleated that they’ve made PPE and TPB have not got back to them. That’s because theirs hasn’t been tested/approved. Any Tom, Dick or Harry could say they’ll provide it, and what happens when that PPE isn’t good enough, and people start dying because it was faulty? I saw a report whereby a reporter could “buy” millions of pieces of PPE off the internet….it was a scam. They took money and weren’t sending any.
    Testing…. what is the point. If you test negative, that test is only valid until you walk out of the door and bump into someone positive/asymptomatic. And so you need a daily test. If you test positive you quarantine……we do that anyway. Germany tested…they thought they were coming out of it so relaxed the lockdown…..now it looks like they will need a second lockdown. So the 1st lockdown/testing was a waste of time.
    Care homes have been let down, as have hospices, but with limited resources, you have to concentrate on the front line.
    It was deemed at the start that these were closed facilities and less likely to get CV. Unfortunately when an outside person takes CV in, then because these are vulnerable people, it is a worse outcome.
    I for one think that ‘our lot’ are doing a pretty good job in the circumstances. And don’t forget, if it was the reds or yellows(God forbid!) In power, they would be taking the same advice from the same scientists? So probably wouldn’t actually have done a lot different?
    Rather than knocking them, I’d much prefer the opposition, and media especially, to support them and come up with constructive help!

    Reply
  14. newcomer

    When he should have been on the case Boris was gung-ho, going into Covid wards without PPE and shaking hands with the medical staff. But it wasn’t all work and no play … he went to a rugby match (with Cheltenham going ahead about the same time).

    Now he’s had the plague, but not like thee and me would have it …he had top treatement with wall-to wall nurses and specialists on tap. The penny might have dropped for him.

    The dittherers who were left in charge are just a desparate circulating cast of excuse makers trying to look decisive.

    Government procrastination will needlessly cost this country dear. I just hope that herd immunity isn’t now the plan.

    Reply
  15. Daniel

    Or, more pertinently, what was teh far far better plan, proposed by who, that was ignored and we shoudl have voted in instead as “they would have done it better”?

    Name a name?

    I want to hear about the “plan” that was ignored in favour of choosing a bad one on purpose?

    One assumes, by the comments above…of all the plans for this that were “on the shelf” our current government chose a bad one on purpose.

    Please, just let me know what all the other options were…

    I am not really a political animal. I am not overly interested in what “the meadya” has to say when their prime objective is to sell copy above and beyond “the facts”, and, probably most influencing is that I have (so far) been blessed and truly luck enough to not have immediate front-line contact with the “illness”…Perhaps my opinion would be different if I had. But, that said…I actually feel quite well “governed” at the moment…

    Reply
  16. newcomer

    I’d like to think that I would have taken the news from Wuhan a lot more seriously, after all, it wasn’t a well kept secret in January when some top medics were expressing serious concern in The Press. I’d like to think that I would have taken recommendations from medical advisors seriously and acted on them … been proactive rather than reactive as we are now
    .
    Churchill pushed for rearmament when he saw the danger from Germany in the 1930’s. What did our ‘Modern Churchill’ do when the signs were clear from China? Went to a rugby match and made light of things.

    Reply
  17. Chris John

    Saying it could have been worse if ……was PM is making excuses for this government’s failure. Why when Italy was going into full lockdown did we have Cheltenham festival and why did we allow 3000 Spanish fly in for a match at Liverpool when Football in Spain was banned. Why did the Tory government ignore the Recommendations from their own exercise in 2016. Why were we not prepared with PPE when we knew this was coming in January, oh yeh cos the heath secretary said it will have little impact on the U.K. Shall I carry on?

    Reply
  18. PH64

    Clearly Labour should be dissolved as a political party because of a global financial crisis in 2008

    The Tories should similarly be dissolved due to the pandemic of 2020

    That just leaves Layla and Jo “stretch target” Swinson to run the show, with the SNP and Plaid Cymru in support.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Chris John Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.