I'm afraid to say the culture in the NHS is toxic.
It has been for many years and unfortunately it won't change in the short term.
But in the face of this, the people on the front line - doctors, nurses, auxiliaries - do a sterling job.

The next 2 weeks are critical for us and the NHS, and with reports today of bbq's in parks, and idiots like Kyle Walker (and the Scottish chief medical officer!!!) breaking the social distancing instructions I couldn't blame the government if they took a harder line.

I'm fortunate - I have an enclosed garden and live in the countryside - and feel for those living in towns / flats but the actions of a small minority could end up impacting on everyone.

It's like that in a lot of areas of the public sector. Management like to deal in threats.

With management in the NHS or social care services, the intimidation doesn't only extend to staff - you get cases where bereaved relatives have made social media posts complaining about failings in the system that lead to one of their relatives dying, and management gets in touch to threaten them with legal action. They prioritise protecting the reputation of the organisation above all. There is a weird thing where some people who work in the public sector interpret their duty or the civil service code or whatever as being an oath of loyalty to their organisation rather than one of public service. So their instinct will be to deny/cover up and protect the reputation of their organisation even when it comes to issues of patient/public safety, child protection or bullying/harassment in their own ranks. People like this are invariably in management, rather than those involved with delivery on the front line, whose priorities are the other way round.

But also, one of the unfortunate aspects of the cabal around Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour party, was that this was how they operated as well. It was difficult for them to have credibility when challenging lies and bullying from those in power, when any issues that surfaced around antisemitism, bullying or sexual harassment in the Labour party was met with a response of: deny, issue defensive lines, undermine the credibility of the whistleblower, rather than tackle the underlying problem. If they had got in to No.10, I fear that Seamus Milne and Karie Murphy would have been command-and-control bullies like Dominic Cummings. Hopefully the arrival of Starmer will clear out some of the toxic individuals and lead to a culture change there.

As a public sector worker what Sally says is depressingly true and highly frustrating on a daily basis. To see what this cowardly style of middle management, and those at the top surrounding themselves with sheep, can lead to see 'The Trials of Gabriel Hernandez'. Set in the USA of course but can and has happened here.

Bernie Sanders does all that, and sure he gets a few 'anti semite' labels thrown at him from Fox news and various Republican figures, but the wider Jewish community in the US and within the Democrat party doesn't think he is a problem. Whereas with Corbyn many of the complaints came from the Jewish community within the Labour party and its supporters, which is a signal of a problem not a stitch up.

I don't think Corbyn himself dislikes people for being Jewish, but he turns a blind eye to it in his party. One of the central tenets of the hard left is 'solidarity' but in the Labour hard left this translates in to solidarity with political allies even when they do things which are wrong. There's a crank element of the left that is into the same online conspiracies about Rothschilds, Zionists, control of the media and banking system that the alt right are in to. These are historic racist tropes which were used by Nazis so the Jewish community is sensitive to them especially when they are being accepted and propagated by people standing for public office. A lot of the cases of antisemitism in the party involved Labour prospective candidates particularly at council elections. Most of the time these were people involved with the Stop the War or Friends of Palestine movements and they are understandably angry at human rights abuses carried out by the IDF and this makes them buy in to theories of a global cover up of Western countries supporting Israel because they are under the thumb of the Jewish media/financiers which is why they indulge in the antisemitic tropes. Corbyn has been marching with these groups for decades so his instinct is to show solidarity to them which is why he hasn't really been bothered to tackle the issues. A lot of Jewish people on the left are concerned about Netanyahu and the policies of the Israeli state but when they have family history of the Holocaust they are going to be upset and afraid at this attitude being allowed to spread within the Labour movement.

I think the reason why Corbyn and his cabal don't take it that seriously is because they take the view that when the IDF are carrying out atrocities against children in Gaza, peoples priorities are wrong if they get worked up about someone's history of spreading antisemitic tropes on facebook. But that is the same argument that the EDL / right wing Islamophobes use when they say "but terrorism/child grooming gangs" etc. The Corbynites would see that as racist but not when its a trope about Israel controlling the world.

I know there was always a media agenda against Corbyn - they said he was a Czech spy, moaned about him not singing the national anthem or bowing deeply enough at the Cenotaph - its par for the course from the right wing media against a Labour leader. But when long standing Labour party members and supporters were raising concerns about antisemitism for about 3 years he should have recognised that something was seriously wrong and this wasn't just something fabricated by the right wing media to throw mud at him and he should have got to grips with it.

Starmer, because he doesn't have the factional background and comes from a background as a barrister and public prosecutor, will take measures to sort things out, and there will be a lot of announcements from people in the crank left that Starmer is in the pay of Israel and they are going to tear up their membership card, they will leave, Labour's membership numbers will plummet, but that will remove the problem.

I don't know anything about life in the public sector so it's interesting to hear about the culture.

When it comes to the two main political parties there seems to be an interesting symmetry though. Within Labour we see a fight between the far left and the moderates (Momentum and Blairites ?) whilst the bonfire that Cameron lit to get rid of his garden waste (and ended up burning the country down) led to a fight between Conservative moderates and Nationalists. Have both these situations arisen because of public apathy and disinterest perhaps ? There was certainly a surge in Labour Party membership prior to the recent party leader election as moderates woke up and attempted to take back control, but I think that has some way to run yet with a left wing deputy in place.

He has/had to, because the core vote for his branch of the Labour party, is the heavily populated, Muslim dominated inner cities & he knows going against their natural cultural instincts would be political suicide for him & his ilk.

The simple fact is, the people who vote for Labour in places like London & then those who traditionally voted for Labour in the 'heartlands' like Warrington and Wigan, actually belong to 2 different parties.

The problem for Labour is that their claim to being a broad church, is actually the thing that has brought them down to the laughing stock they now are - The fact the likes of Corbyn ever remained in Labour under Blair/Brown and vice versa with the likes of Cooper and Benn under Corbyn, shows how dysfunctional they are.

Labour's best hope is a tactical progressive alliance at election time with the Lib Dems and Greens - However, it's obvious the thick as bricks on the Corbyn left would never be satisfied with such compromise. Hopefully, under Starmer, that branch of the party will soon be back in the political wastelands where they belong.

But it's not Boris making those decisions. It was the experts who went down the herd immunity route and who quickly backtracked. It literally doesn't matter on bit who is in charge, they would have had the same issues the Government had. Once the experts realised they needed more equipment the Government placed ridiculous amounts of orders for things, but by then it was too late and the supply chain was already choked.

The blind Labour statement about year on year cuts for the NHS isn't true either. I'm not sure if actual spending on the NHS has never been cut. They've asked NHS departments to become more efficient and reduce costs and again any sane Government would have done the same. There is enormous wastage and inefficiency in the NHS. As with the current supply chain issues, NHS performance varies drastically between areas. Some areas have plenty of PPE, plenty of NHS staff have said they have plenty of PPE, more than enough, whilst other areas/hospitals are massively lacking and are in crisis. That's not a Government issue, it's an NHS issue. It's a much bigger and more complex issue than saying 'It's the Conservatives fault, vote Labour'.

It's a lose-lose situation for whoever is in power. Different countries have tried different approaches and the one similarity is that all of them are facing criticism for their handling of the crisis. The UK is trying to balance distancing and lockdown with not ending non-essential businesses and is being criticised for it. Other countries have stopped non-essential work and are being hammered for it, there's no win in this. I'm no Conservative, I've never voted for them, but for me politics is irrelevant right now. All we're seeing is how dysfunctional our NHS is (Despite the brilliant people within it and the righteousness of the idea) and how spoilt and selfish the people are here now. We'll be in lockdown for months longer than necessary here and thousands more will die than necessary just because so many see themselves as being above the rules. The goes from all levels from employers to the man on the street. So many are 'it's only like flu' or 'i need to exercise, I've bought a bike despite not riding since I was 8' or 'I'm just sunbathing in the park' or 'I don't want to live in a Police state, they can't tell me what to do, I'll spend 7 hours a day walking round because they tell me I can't' and 'I'm going to go to every shop in Warrington, because I might miss something if I don't. I'll use the third freezer that's in the garage'. And because of those people the millions being good are being let down.

To anybody on here... how do you expect to come out of this situation without some sort of herd immunity being used?

Unless, you all reckon that hiding in our homes until we get a vaccine is an actual solution?

Herd immunity required a vaccine. Not once in human history have we developed herd immunity naturally without a vaccine. Once you have had corvid19 you are unlikely to get it again in the short term but are not immune.

So we have to wait it out until a vaccine is found. The lickdown is not to get rid of covid 19 but to slow the spread relieving pressure on the nhs.

That's fair enough. But do you seriously think you can extend this present situation over the next 12-18 months and not expect far more damage than any virus will inflict?

The fact is, herd immunity will have to be used, while we build towards finding a vaccine. You cannot just simply hide, unless you are happy living in a third world nation, with third world death tolls?

If a large number of people get infected without suffering any, or extremely mild symptoms, eg 40%, then perhaps you can see a way through the problem using herd immunity (around 65% required). At the moment Porton Down have the only assay to check for individuals who have immunity against the virus. They can do 500 tests / day, so the scientific advisors are using this to try and get some sort of figure of the size of the immune population.
Once we have definitely passed the infection peak expect to hear what strategy they are going to take.

I think the strategy will be that once the daily deaths and hospital admissions has stabilised / started to decline to a point where there is some spare capacity again in the NHS, there will be a controlled reduction of restrictions, with restrictions reapplied to put the brakes on if cases start to spike up and the NHS is threatened with being overwhelmed again.

The virus will be steadily working its way through the population and with each cycle of reimposing and relaxing restrictions, there will be a greater proportion of people who have immunity (assuming immunity lasts a reasonable length of time and the virus hasn't mutated) which will slow the spread through the remaining population, so it will be possible to relax restrictions more and for longer than the previous cycle.

In addition there may be research breakthroughs and improvements in treatment that increase the NHS ability to deal with the disease.

I expect we'll be in this for several months perhaps a year.

That would also be my guess. I don't think we can really copy China simply because they have the advantage of being able to track all their people through mobile 'phones, internet, cameras, identity cards, checkpoints etc so suppression and isolation of outbreaks will be more difficult.

My guess is that relaxation of the lockdown will be next and that it will be tailored to allow key industry workers to get back to work as we badly need to restart the economy. I suspect once we have a rapid, large scale assay for immunity I think we will see people issued with 'passports' showing that they have been tested and are immune and can return to work. Perhaps a sign of this approach can be seen in their intention to reach 30,000 ventilators and the work Porton Down are doing. They will also be watching Holland carefully as they also seem to be favouring some form of herd immunity approach.

Lots of views on here under the Coronavirus topic, some medical and some political. Let's be quite clear, the present government has been in power for 10+ years, not other parties. The preparedness or otherwise to deal with this plague is down to them, the tens of thousands of vacancies in the NHS, the lack of ventilators, test kit, PPE is their responsibility. The culture of NHS management, the medical advice given to them and the decisions made from it is their responsibility. Fortunately we have fantastic people who work in the health and care services, all being praised by everyone, but not rewarded pay and condition wise over the last 10 years, hence many leaving and working overseas where they get the appreciation they deserve. Meanwhile, the NHS has recruited from overseas to second and third world nations who can ill afford to lose the nursing staff they have trained.
I know that some people will be saying we all need to pull together at this terrible time, yes we should, but don't forget as we all feel sorry for the PM, and yes I wish him and every one else who is fighting this virus a speedy recovery, that the lack of preparation and ongoing management for this virus is the party who has been in power for the last 10 years.