FaceTimed my brother earlier today, who is a doctor at Preston Royal and whose wife is an anaesthetist. Both lifelong Labour voters and he is a pretty left wing one too - and he thinks overall the government have performed pretty well.
Thinks it’s pointless trying to compare the numbers with Italy for a number of reasons, that they may have gone into the ‘lockdown’ five or six days late but they got that about right - and would have been acting on advice thereto, and that if the numbers plateau around a thousand a day then that is a huge result. Thinks for a number of social and demographic reasons we were more exposed to this (in terms of potential spread) than any other major European country and people should take that into account when evaluating the figures at the end. He thinks the PPE situation is troubling and unsatisfactory, but that alone isn’t sufficient to change his view.
He also said the G-Mex (which he may end up working at) looks like it is going to be use as a depository for for IUC patients recovering from Covid-19 who are too unwell to be discharged, in order to free up beds within hospitals, which seems to make sense to me.