This is the most serious public health
crisis that this country has ever seen,
since the creation of the NHS.
And it's coming at a moment when
the NHS is at its weakest.
We're 10 years into a campaign to
defund and to degrade the NHS,
and the attacks on staff and also
the attacks through privatisation.
If you talk to staff at the moment
there are a couple of things,
that are really on our minds.
The first one is the staff shortages;
there are 100,000 NHS vacancies
at the moment.
The other issue is access to the
personal protective equipment.
Even staff who've been exposed they're
saying that they are having to ration,
the number of masks
that they're using.
And that they're no longer able to use the
full gear the gloves and the aprons,
and they're just using the basic
surgical masks as protection,
which is just completely inadequate.
The other thing that's a real concern at
the moment is the access to testing.
Mass testing is what we should be doing
we should be doing that for everybody,
but at the bare minimum we need
to be ensuring that NHS staff,
are having access to the tests so
that we're not unknowingly,
spreading it to at
risk patient groups.
And also making sure that we're not self
isolating at home with symptoms,
when we don't need to be.
I've got colleagues where I work
who are absolutely desperate,
to get back on the wards.
But they're being told to stay at home
and they're having to isolate,
because of symptoms but there's no
confirmation that it's down to Covid 19.
It's not in the public interest that
access to the test is only limited,
to those people who have £375 to
spare to be able to access the kit.
Those who are in control at the moment
cannot be trusted to safeguard us,
it's taken collective pressure in order for us
to be able to shut the schools for example,
and to get the isolation
measures put in place.
So we need them to act now and
the only way that we can do that,
is for all of us to keep applying
pressure collectively,
and to be making these demands.
So the Covid 19 virus differs from
the flu in a number of ways.
Covid 19 is a lot more contagious
than the common flu,
it's about two and a half
times more transmissible.
The mortality rate is significantly higher 
with Covid 19 then common flu.
The mechanisms by which that happens
is by causing a chest infection,
by causing pneumonia which causes
in turn respiratory failure,
which means that your lungs
have essentially shut down,
and you're not able to
breathe independently.
Hence the need for mechanical ventilation
that's a tube down your Trachea,
and into your lungs to
help you breathe.
I think it's a serious error to think that
this just effects older people,
we've seen from the data
coming in across Europe,
that patients that are needing
to be hospitalised,
that group is not limited to older patients
or even the immunocompromised.
it's really important that we
don't become complacent.
What this crisis has shown us has been
who the most important most valuable,
public servants are who
those key workers are,
it's not right that when we come
out of this NHS students,
are starting their careers as nurses
or doctors heavily in debt.
Nurses and those who are putting their
lives at risk actually it's not right,
that they are left having
to rely on food banks.
We shouldn't need to wait for there to be
a crisis such as this in order for us,
to be sounding the alarm about the
impact of austerity on the NHS.
We don't have to operate purely as
individualists in an atomised society,
we can support each other and great
things can come of that.
The health and the welfare of
our most disadvantaged,
is the health and welfare of all of us.
It's important that we not only just stop thinking
about ourselves as purely individuals,
but also thinking about us as
an entire human species,
beyond just the borders of this country
or beyond the borders of Europe,
understand that we are all very,
very closely interlinked,
and we rely heavily on each other.
Information and knowledge is our
power and now more than ever,
it's absolutely crucial that we have
good independent media.
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