@DMcG:
In response to your post on that thread which must not be mentioned you raise a couple of interesting points. My simplistic response is that you demand a black and white answer to subject matter, that at this moment, can only be expressed in shades of grey.
1)Experts: The government has theirs and rightly or wrongly follow their advice. To try to change course midway, before modelling outcomes can be tested, keeps everyone in a permanent limbo. It has to follow cause, effect response. Many of the counter experts rolled out by the media are there simply to advance their party line and attack the government, as are the media.The media are constantly taking an adverserial approach in their line of questioning and trying to find flaws in everything the government says or does. The impact of this is the right dismiss it all as bullshit and the left are baying for blood. Anyone can see this is nonsensical. Whether the opposing experts are correct or the government experts are correct is a total unknown at this stage.I find it hard to believe the opposing experts have better data than the government simply because of the dynamics of the situation. All report to government first, media second.( and if not what the hell is going on?) What course of action was best/worst will not be known until the crisis has abated and all the facts are collated and studied. Only a fool would say the government action is flawless - no country was prepared for this pandemic no matter how thorough the previous gaming may have been.(and internationally the UK was reckoned to be better prepared than most) We will see just how accurate that was some time down the road.
2)Testing:
This presents major problems. Do they work? What is their accuracy and repeatabilty? Are there enough kits, are the mechanisms in place to test, analyse, distribute results, assess priority, repeat test? collate results. Superficially this appears shambolic - so was Dunkirk! How much is due to conflicting advice, the fluidity of the situation, the uncertainty concerning the accuracy of scarce testing kits? That will not be answered for months I suspect.
3)PPE shortages: The fault of government or the fault of NHS
procurement. The NHS employs a host of "experts" in procurement on salaries vastly in excess of the PM. Automatically blaming the government is far too easy - who let procurement off the hook? Sitting on the sidelines carping is a pastime anyone can indulge in. Perhaps sitting in the trenches for a day or two might sweeten their dispositions.
Most of our drug manufacture is offshored, as is PPE, and likely most NHS equipment.
It is sad that the EU does not insist on competitive tendering for strategic items(ie defence) but stategic items to keep patients alive
can be made in Timbuktu for all they care. Globalisation and offshoring is going to have a major poke in the eye when this little lot is over.
4)WHO advice: My expert is better than your expert/your expert is better than my expert. The reality most likely is that there are   no experts. They are all groping in the dark with an unknown quantity, relying on untested models and developing treatments on the fly. It is a shit world we inhabit - getting the right answers takes time. Perhaps some of the ansers are wrong and people have died as a result. You can hardly label it murder. Someone gave it their best shot and was wrong. We have all been there, done that and got the T shirt.
Government does not hold the answers to everything, neither do doctors.
As far as I am aware there have been sufficient ventilators to date. Wether that changes in the weeks to come is unknown.
My prference is for a lot more transparency on carehome deaths and the reasons for nonhospitalisation, and the extent to which the basic day to day running of hospitals has been stopped due to covid-19 patients. Delaying cancer operations and other life threatening issues
also kills. This necessitates a juggling act that must cause sleepless nights for those involved in decision making.
Automatically blaming the government and accusing them of being murderers is nonsense. The virus kills people and despite intensive care and the best of medical attetion people die. 14000 die of flu every year in the UK. The mortality rate for covid-9 will only exceed thise figures tomorrow. If the vulnerablr catch the virus they will die regardless of how much medical science is devoted to their care.
The government is trying to minimise the rate of exposure in order that everyone has equal care. To turn around and accuse the same gvernment of being murderers is somewhat bizarre, as is saying the government has cut funding. The graph of NHS expenditure shows a year on year increase for decades. It rather stifles debate before it has even started if these two accusations are contunually advanced. No democratic government murders its electorate and if a graph shows a clear increase it can hardly be argued it is decreasing at any moment in time.