the need for the Nightingales falls somewhere between politics & policy.
The civil service does a lot of contingency planning: Nightingales were a very public piece of contingency planning.
We were within a hair's breadth of an explosion in infections - and even as we were, the capacity of the Nightingales was used to ease pressure on hospitals.
Imagine the outcry if that explosion had happened and there had been no planning to provide the capacity?
It would've been like the testing fiasco :-/
But with very public images of people dying, who should've been in hospital/Nightingale
The greater political challenge is how to manage health service staffing as the epidemic ebbs & flows. The Farages of this world think it's a disgrace that the NHS is staffed by foreigners (yes, he really did say that) yet the reality is that without overseas expertise at all levels of the NHS it would cease to function.
(look at fruit picking for an example of the reality of how the UK really works)
How's that going to play out as Boris continues to drive his government to a Dec 31 EU exit?
(all opinions personal; informed by my work, but not representative of my work)
