The Nightingale Hospitals and Covid-19

~ beetleypete

When the government spent untold millions converting and equipping various large indoor spaces to provide specialist intensive care for for Coronavirus patients, everyone thought is was well done indeed. Using the Armed Services, the buildings were turned into hospitals in record time, and it was promised that they would take all the pressure off of regular hospitals, allowing them to continue to treat non-Covid cases.

That didn’t happen of course.

As the pandemic continued, and the death rate increased, little mention was made of the once-lauded Nightingale Hospitals. Then time passed, and it was discovered that they were actually empty of patients.

When pressed, the government claimed they would be used as testing centres instead.

Then they were going to be used as vaccination hubs.

Some journalists investigated, and found them closed up, guarded by security officers. When asked about this, the government claimed that they were being used to store PPE. And they didn’t even look embarrassed when they said that.

The government was lying all along. The Health Minister was lying all along. As they dished out lucrative contracts to their friends to stock the Nightingale Hospitals, most thought it a necessary expense to provide the care needed. But nobody told us when all the equipment was later removed, after only a tiny number of patients had actually been treated. Where is all that expensive equipment now? And what about the public money spent on the whole fiasco?

I found an article today that brings the woeful story of these ’emergency hospitals’ up to date. It makes interesting reading.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nightingale-hospitals-covid-patient-numbers_uk_605a0dd6c5b6cebf58d220eb?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

73 thoughts on “The Nightingale Hospitals and Covid-19”

  2. Corruption is rife the world over and all we need is a pandemic or a war an environmental crisis or just certifying that food is sustainable when it isn’t and the wheels are in motion…x

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  3. Here the army set up emergency hospitals attached to quite a few of the other hospitals, and they used some of the locked hotels to look after patients already recovering from the illness. But there was a hospital built specifically for this in Madrid that is still causing controversy now, as staff members were forced to move there even when they didn’t want to, and it came to light that the building was fairly deficient and the contract had been given to friends of the community governor. It’s still going though. So yes, Pete, corruption around this is a nightmare, and don’t get me started on scandals because of big cheeses jumping the vaccination queue. Keep safe.

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    1. I have yet to hear about a country where corruption and waste did not feature around the issue of the pandemic. It seems that human nature never changes, even in the face of a crisis.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  5. I remember the previous time you wrote about these. It seems that the situation was even more grievous than you knew then. I second everyone who observed that greed seemed to spread even more effectively and quickly than the virus.

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    1. Thanks, Elizabeth. I have been ‘on the case’ of these unused hospitals from the start. A shameful waste of resources, and a blatant misuse of public money for private gain.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  6. I was used to corruption living in Africa for so many years, so I was totally shocked when we arrived in Europe to learn it happens here as well. I was expecting better, but it seems people are the same the world over.

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  8. I’m afraid this just serves to illustrate how corrupt this government is, and continues to be, and yet a significant portion of the British public public is either acquiescent or too unconcerned to demand the dismissal of this criminal conspiracy: hardly credible, but the Conservatives’ approval rating is on the rise; meanwhile, avenues for legitimate protest are being criminalised. How is that not incipient fascism? Cheers, Jon.

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  9. Well we also had our scandals here with masks being bought by the government from corrupted companies and later on, masks that were revealed to be harmful for people’s health with some material in them…

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  12. Shameful behavior all over the world, Pete…using a worldwide pandemic to line their pockets…hopefully they will be uncovered and punished, but based on what we’ve gone through here, seems unlikely…

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    1. They have been uncovered here, John. But they laughed in our faces, and kept their jobs. Boris has such a large majority, it would take an earthquake to bring down his government. And the people who voted for him are not reading the ‘bad news’ about him and his cronies.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  14. Politics, contracts, and prior personal/idealogical connections show up in the same ways, to me, over time -I got requests from long time contacts, last year, who wanted a ‘quick quote’ on what I could do for them, and ‘get some $ into my pocket” – ASAP please [on the quote] – as they were submitting a grant – or emergency loan request, etc.

    Sigh – I turned them all down politely – Why? For a variety of reasons – but predominantly because – 1. Just because I give a SWAG guess, doesn’t insure I will ever see that money, myself.
    2. I had OFFERED them, before, sometimes over years! a free consultation to see where I could help them and come up with a plan that could be done, on budget/phase

    They never had the ‘time’ for such things in the past, and showed no indication they had time for such things, now –

    Could I have used the ‘money’ at the time?

    Sure – was I willing to submit a blind, WAG [wild-arse-guess] quote? That I might be held to do 10x the work than what the grant/emergency loan paid for, later? Sigh – I wasn’t facing starvation, death from exposure or homelessness at that time (this year has been very hard for me, overall, but I’m managing to live really small!) AND I don’t have a staff available to do WAG quotes, with on-retainer lawyers to protect me/my biz when it’s determined I somehow committed fraud by association, etc.

    Thus – easy for me to just turned them all down –

    But…..well….. my personal belief system, my personal experience and observations and my personal opinion on how bad systems CREATE the thriving soil for bad behavior to grow in – well – I said Thanks, but No Thanks – – but while very frustrating for you – to me?

    This is not just about politics, countries or anything else —

    to me the root problems and challenges lie BOTH in the individual and the systems we collectively build/support, in which we choose to participate in and/or support politically.

    Systems cannot survive if no one ever participates within them – – Thanks for listening!

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    1. Thanks for your thoughts on this, TamrahJo. The callous way that so many people jumped on the bandwagon to siphon-off money from the pandemic crisis was breathtaking to behold.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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      1. Aren’t you the kindest soul – Me? I’m grumpy when I read this stuff on so many fronts and, I confess, ‘breathtaking’ was not the first adjective I thought of – Nor do I think it would have been the 25th choice either – but that’s just sailor mouth me being honest and admiring your …um…restraint? – LOL.

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    1. I am not surprised by Tories stealing the money, Mary. Only by the way that they don’t try to cover it up, and virtually laugh in our faces. I would have them hanging from lamp-posts, as a warning to others.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  16. It’s shameful Pete. So much money given to government ‘friends’ for contracts they didn’t even fulfil. Surely it would have made sense to use the Nightingale hospitals for Covid patients on ventilators and allow the other hospitals to keep treating other illnesses and diseases. They could have used military trained medics in Nightingale surely?

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    1. That was supposed to be the plan. But it made more money for the underhand Tories if they just paid out on the spurious ‘contracts’ for their cronies and families, then didn’t actually have to fund the running of the hospitals. So many multi-millionaires were made from that, funded by the taxpayer. And don’t get me started on the corruption around ‘Track and Trace’. Anyone involved in that should be in prison for theft of public money.
      Best wishes, Pete. x

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            1. With Starmer leading the opposition, I think we can expect 8 more years. At least. Boris will probably resign to spend al his ill-gotten gains, leaving us with Sunak, who is married to one of the richest women in India. It’s all over for the Left in this country, Jude. x

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  17. I did wonder, when these ‘hospitals’ were being setup, who was going to staff them, seeing as the NHS has been chronically under staffed for years.

    I can confirm, though, that the Excel is a vaccination centre now (at the opposite end of the building from the ‘hospital’) because I had my vaccination there.

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  18. In India, PM Modi made several million dollars through his NGO PM Cares during Covid 19 fiasco. none of the money was spent on people. It was an unaccountable organisation and hence the money unaccounted for.

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  19. Much the same over here, I think they refused to take you if you were really ill, you could be positive, but if you needed any special treatment they took you to a real hospital!
    They are now using it as a vaccination centre (in between football games) 🙂

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  20. We had a similar debacle here, Pete, albeit on a smaller scale. Every government in the world has failed dismally during the Covid period which shows us all how ineffective our leaderships are. It is actually quite frightening.

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          1. Too much influence from the Tory press, I guess. Assuming they can actually read. It’s only going to get worse when the new tv ‘news’ channels start, feeding them a daily diet of lies and conspiracy theories in the Fox model.

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  25. Shocking Pete. The one here is about to close soon with folk being transferred to a Belfast hospital. I did wonder how they would manage staffing these given the shortage of nurses etc but this report says it all.

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    1. They claimed staffing issues of course, but they should have known that would happen. Just a way to award big contracts to their friends. And they didn’t even try to cover that up!
      Best wishes, Pete.

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    1. The Royals go to private hospitals, and Boris and other ‘VIPs’ were treated in NHS ‘normal’ hospitals, no doubt trying to prove a point. They had their own rooms though.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  27. Sounds familiar.
    Here governors begged for COVID/hospital/staff relief…but as it turned out in NYC, that was all political – the extra/military hospitals/ships sent and set up, staffed, and ready to go only to not have any patients show up…extra beds not actually needed…especially if you can send old sick seniors to nursing homes…facilities which are not set up/staffed for COVID patients…not to mention others at the facilities ( multiple in several locations it turns out) were infected and died.
    Our local authorities paid huge amounts of money to a private company to construct and staff “tents/facilities that will be desperately needed for the incoming surge…”. Never happened. Never used. The Med center consortium groups managed and shared and moved patients to less strategic/COVID prepared hospitals and freed up beds/ICUs as cases rose. Those expensive private “crisis extra units” empty…and costly to taxpayers.

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  28. It seems that the processing of possible omissions will take much longer, as the virus itself causes us problems. But it is no different here than with you. ;-( Thanks for the information, Pete! Indeed: Happy Easter! I hope you had a nice first holiday! Michael

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