Covid: UK start to pandemic worst public health failure ever, MPs say

Thank you, Grow-stuff, and sorry for being so far behind the times in corporate jargon, but what does group-think actually mean? If, as one might suppose, it means that the group considered the problem and agreed what to do - well, that isn’t how it was presented at the time. The inference of course is that no member of the group takes responsibility.

Alegrias1

I'm not going to get drawn into a "surely you knew!" discussion.

I left work on the 16th March and went into a self imposed lockdown with DH. Never went back. Its one thing knowing that there is a serious contagious disease around and its a whole different thing closing down our entire society and practically bankrupting the country.

Johnson's actions were stupid and we all knew it at the time - all the handshaking and what have you. We can discuss it from now to Kingdom Come but anybody who says they knew what was coming is using selective memory.

I'm afraid I disagree with you. There are videos available of people who foresaw what was inevitable, but they were dismissed by people such as Steve Barclay and, of course, Johnson himself. I remember discussing the situation with my current partner right at the start. We don't live together and we discussed what it would be like not being able to see each other for months. As it was, he worked flat out because his own research is related to coronaviruses and vaccines. By the second (?) week of March case rates were doubling every two or three days and we were both horrified that nothing was being done.

One of the biggest factors was the fact that the government had cut funds to the NHS year on year since it took office in 2010. All the good done by Labour was totally undone.

Staff shortages are the biggest issue and nothing is being done even now to mitigate this crises.

Thanks for that, JaneJudge. Interesting reading.

And I think the loss of Rory Stewart is very sad, MaizieD

He certainly knew what he was talking about. Frightening really. I'd not seen that interview. Thanks for posting.

How can those in position of authority been taken by surprise? They just needed to watch the film Contagion made in 2011. Obviously fiction, but based on forecasts and as it turns out very accurate. A pandemic has been predicted, preparations made. There were plenty of warnings. It was always a case not of if but when.

I just don't understand Johnson. I am willing to think that he must be intelligent, he got a 2.1 degree and although I feel it is easier for a kid from Eton to get into Oxbridge than one from my local comp I'm not sure they would inflate the grades to that extent.

He just doesn't seem to have any sense. He makes me think of C.P.Snow's The Two Cultures. He just doesn't seem to comprehend Science.

I went into my personal lockdown three weeks before the Government which was probably a bit late but I wasn't privy to all the information the Government had.

I hold him personally responsible for at least 20,000 deaths. I have no statistical evidence it's just a personal conviction and I'm sure he has no trouble sleeping at night.

Rory Stewart knew what should be done, but then, he'd been involved in dealing with Ebola.

twitter.com/PoliticsJOE_UK/status/1238085538957139968

The fact that it was a novel virus is no excuse for lack of preparedness - scientists have been dealing with novel viruses in many countries for many years, and had been predicting that UK would be hit at some point.

I don’t think anyone knew how things were going to develop because it was a novel virus. However, by the beginning of March, we could see what was happening in other countries, like Italy and how rapidly the virus was spreading.

None of us knew how the virus might spread and behave, but the government did because they had access to scientific reports on other pandemics and potential pandemics.

sorry it is here

Zoejory [[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/ourselves-scientist-says-human-intrusion-nature-pandemic-aoe this article is interesting too] My friend worked for a company that rolled out testing for another pandemic and she said there have been concerns about international travel into places we shouldn't be for years too. It isn't my area of expertise though

This article was very interesting. I'd been googling way back at the beginning of the pandemic and this popped up.

We don't know for sure how this virus started. But wet markets were mentioned at the start. Researchers wrote a paper discussing the possibility of problems back in 2004.

I don't think anyone paid attention to this either.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14738798/

I'm not going to get drawn into a "surely you knew!" discussion.

I left work on the 16th March and went into a self imposed lockdown with DH. Never went back. Its one thing knowing that there is a serious contagious disease around and its a whole different thing closing down our entire society and practically bankrupting the country.

Johnson's actions were stupid and we all knew it at the time - all the handshaking and what have you. We can discuss it from now to Kingdom Come but anybody who says they knew what was coming is using selective memory.

Whitewavemark2

Someone from NHS England just suggested that the government should learn that the delay in lockdown cost lives and they should show that they have learned this lesson going forward into winter and take action quickly as the cases start to rise.

That's progress, I suppose.

Someone from NHS England just suggested that the government should learn that the delay in lockdown cost lives and they should show that they have learned this lesson going forward into winter and take action quickly as the cases start to rise.

Zoejory

If we lived in a country the size of NZ many thousands would have survived as well. It's absurd to compare. I recall a Professor on TV getting quite annoyed when it was mentioned. Tiny country, lots of sheep. No comparison can be made

The Delta variant has been found all over the world. We can't blame our government for that, can we?

www.euronews.com/2021/07/21/expert-view-how-the-delta-variant-has-changed-the-game-in-europe

We can't blame our government for the Delta variant, but we can blame it for not being prepared and for poor management and communication.

winterwhite

This expression "group-think" is a new one on me and I don't care for it. Presumably means that no one was answerable for anything.
Not the impression we were given at the time. The PM kept telling us that he himself made decisions after listening to everybody, or "following the science".
Civil servants were sidelined so they weren't party to any upper levels of group-think, and a weak Cabinet. Those were the realities.

It's been used to describe what can happen in meetings for many years.

If we lived in a country the size of NZ many thousands would have survived as well. It's absurd to compare. I recall a Professor on TV getting quite annoyed when it was mentioned. Tiny country, lots of sheep. No comparison can be made

The Delta variant has been found all over the world. We can't blame our government for that, can we?

www.euronews.com/2021/07/21/expert-view-how-the-delta-variant-has-changed-the-game-in-europe

Jaylou

I think the Gov were damned if they do and damned if they don't. They will never please all the people. This pandemic was so unprecedented and took the whole world by surprise, and it was a huge learning curve for all Governments. A lot of lessons will have been learnt. If (hopefully not) there is another one and Labour are in and do things differently, this will be because they have learnt from what the Conservatives did, but of cause they won't say that.

It shouldn't have taken the UK by surprise. We had the advantage of not being the first country to be affected, but our government thought we were oh so special. The Conservatives didn't learn anything by the time a second lockdown was needed, so I would hope that Labour would have learned something.

Alegrias1

I find myself in the unusual situation of not blaming the government for this. None of us had seen anything like this pandemic before and its easy to look back and say they should have done this or that. Of course they should, but nobody had any idea what was waiting for us.

Oh yes, they did know! I don't know how you can claim otherwise. We all saw what was happening in Italy, so why did we think we'd be any different? Did some people really believe in British exceptionalism? Do you think people shouldn't have been told what the scientists and government already knew, in case it caused a panic? How do you justify the delay to the second lockdown, when the government knew very clearly what was waiting for us?

It's true that it wasn't realised that the virus didn't spread mainly by contact, so the advice about hand washing and personal contact was misguided, but Johnson tried to shake it off in his normal laissez faire, jocular way. On 3 March he was still boasting about shaking hands with people in a hospital where there were Covid patients. A couple of weeks later he was in ICU.

All the time, Johnson was more concerned about politics and his own position than being a mature adult in charge of a crisis. There were loads of people telling him what we were facing, but he chose to ignore them and cherry picked his scientific facts.

I think the Gov were damned if they do and damned if they don't. They will never please all the people. This pandemic was so unprecedented and took the whole world by surprise, and it was a huge learning curve for all Governments. A lot of lessons will have been learnt. If (hopefully not) there is another one and Labour are in and do things differently, this will be because they have learnt from what the Conservatives did, but of cause they won't say that.

This expression "group-think" is a new one on me and I don't care for it. Presumably means that no one was answerable for anything.
Not the impression we were given at the time. The PM kept telling us that he himself made decisions after listening to everybody, or "following the science".
Civil servants were sidelined so they weren't party to any upper levels of group-think, and a weak Cabinet. Those were the realities.

Esspee

At the beginning we had the advantage of watching what was happening in other countries such as Italy. We knew what was coming but the government didn’t act decisively.
Remember when the Indian variant was causing so much concern? Boris delayed putting the affected area on the red list and multiple plane loads of our nationals returned every day without any control.
There were so many times that Boris wouldn’t take action until it was far too late.
If we had a leader like Jacinda Arden many thousands of people would have survived.

He delayed it because he was desperate for a trade deal with India I believe.

When it started I had fairly recently read the 2017 book Pale Rider by Laura Spinney about the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. Plenty of parallels there.

I do not agree with this: I find myself in the unusual situation of not blaming the government for this. None of us had seen anything like this pandemic before

We had not seen it before; but we should have been prepared for this. It has been known for decades that this would happen. My doctor OH had been predicting it as long as I had known him.

Exercise Cygnus in 2016 was a national effort to co-ordinate pandemic preparedness and see where the gaps in provision and in coordination lay. The chance to put our house in order several years before the pandemic was there; the warnings as to where the UK was falling down on preparedness were there. We have to ask whether these recommendations were acted upon.