Monday, July 20, 2009

One thing Govt has learnt from NASA

And that's new management.

The endless delays on the original Shuttle project are now largely forgotten. But at the time the style of dealing with such government agency failure was know as "doing a NASA".

The trick was not to announce each bit of bad news as it came long. Instead you stored them up and got them all out of the way at one time.

Hence the first flight dates for the shuttle would go back in jumps every so often.

A similar thing is happening with Swine Flu in the UK. The HPA is in no rush to issue a day by day set of updates. every week or so will will get sudden jumps in figures.

Now the cause of preventing panic is a good one - so their actions are not necessarily irresponsible. But they are also very convenient for the failing state organisation that is managing this outbreak.

Many of us are now getting first hand stories of the mess that handling swine flu has become. Some people get Tamiflu - others don't ( different GPs - same town ).

One person I heard of yesterday had tried 4 different health care contact points (NHS direct, GP etc ) to get help for his wife who showed symptoms of Swine flu and has MS. Eventually he had to refuse to leave a hospital before they would issue any.

Health care people I know report confusion and a lack of information.

And the governments response ? To send their minions on camera to say we are best prepared. ( As ever they ignore specifics ).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Symptoms of 'swine flu' are like many other viruses and can only be confirmed by laboratory testing.

Good health practitioners will only prescribe in confirmed cases. It's been widely reported that 100,000 vaccines expiry date ends shortly, a financial incentive for prescribing.

Man in a Shed said...

All no doubt true.

However - the government (of and for but never mentioning England )'s self medication flu helpline is warming up.

Confirmation by testing is no longer possible due to the scale of the outbreak. (Only sampling is now apparently being undertaken).

Or is it just to give people the run around.

I also notice that updates on estimated cases and suspected fatalities is now coming once a week ( hence the NASA comparison on storing up bad news ).

The school holidays might help ....

Letters From A Tory said...

I'm a little surprised that Cameron doesn't remind Brown about how well prepared he told everyone we were for this recession. It would really resonate with the public.

Man in a Shed said...

I'm guessing Cameron is keeping much of his powder dry. Its only us politicos who notice all these things normally.

Labour will be hoping everyone gets amnesia over Summer. Much of whats said and done now will be ignored ( hence Norwich North by-election on Thurs ).