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

It is clear, there is going to be a UK wide inquiry, which will include all the nations of the UK. In the early days of the pandemic all the devolved governments followed the UK Government guidance. Although the initial report concentrates on England, it refers to the other nations as well, and is relevant to all of them as it is about UK Government actions and response. Health is devolved, but there has been a lot of all UK work on Covid management. It’s massively complicated, but the decisions made by the devolved governments will be included in the UK report, the aim being to evaluate which strategies have worked best.

Right, there's this.

The report from yesterday is an internal parliamentary report from two internal parliamentary bodies. Johnson et al have consistently avoided any commitment to an independent Public Enquiry.

In Scotland, we're going to have an independent Public Enquiry before the end of this year. Independent. So you won't have to wait too long for a proper enquiry GG13, certainly not as long as you'll have to in England. And given that about 50% of the members of the committees who complied the latest report are actually Conservative, we'll all be waiting to see what an independent inquiry says. This'll look quite friendly in comparison, I think.

I expect the independent Scottish enquiry will highlight the issues in the Scottish response, primarily returning people to care homes, I suspect. Or perhaps they'll say the same as the commentator on the report on radio yesterday, who said that Scotland's response had been better than the general UK one all the way down the line, but they were hobbled and restrained by the UK-wide rules.

Deflection, indeed.

One major beef I had from the start, was that we were never nearly tough enough about masks.

Far too many people who just didn’t feel like wearing one - (how many of us ever actually liked it?) could say they were exempt, and nobody could challenge them.

Even at the height of the first lockdown, hardly anyone except me and the bloke on the till, ever wore a mask in our local corner shop, and nobody ever said a word. I simply refuse to believe that they were all - or even a quarter of them - were genuinely exempt.

On a visit to France during summer 2020 I saw ‘Masks Obligatory’ signs outside a lot of shops and e.g. motorway services, no fannying about with ‘please….’

The only place I’ve ever seen such a sign here was on the door of a local pharmacy. ‘No mask, no entry.’

We have got to look at this. There are lessons to be learnt. I was not in favour of having an enquiry during the pandemic as some were but I think the timing is now right. This is not about what other leaders may or may not have done in similar circumstances but about what actually happened.

Regarding the NHS it is always a problem as new sophisticated and expensive medical treatments are discovered. Can we afford to treat everyone and everything? There is not a bottomless pit of money whoever is in power but we should not be running our NHS down to a shoestring. You are right Sarnia about extraneous staff. This first stated with reorganisation in 1974. The new office of Regional Works Officer saw a person come in from private industry on a high salary who was permitted to spend as much fitting out his one room office as would have fitted out a whole ward!

United States, Brazil,UK
All with gobby 'populus' leaders
All with catastrophic outcomes

Dan Snow (history man) puts it succintly and well. And his 'short' theory has been so apparent here on GN

''Criticism before the crisis was 'scaremongering'

Criticism during the crisis was 'unpatriotic'

Crisicism after the crisis :ah all-very-well-with-hindsight'!

Exactly, Halfpint1 and Kali2! Of course, we started from a bad place as well. Everything cut to the bone:

'life expectancy rose in most places during the first decade of the millennium, from 2010 it began to decline in some places.

Declines in life expectancy used to be rare in wealthy countries like the UK, and happened when there were major adversities like wars and pandemics," said Prof Ezzati.

For such declines to be seen in 'normal times' before the pandemic is alarming," he said - and he called for action to be taken.'

www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(21)00205-X/fulltext

(2010 - hardly a surprise.)

Kali2 like it. How will we learn though if we don’t look back at what happened. Btw a lot of people don’t realise criticism can emphasise the positive as well as the negative. Then it can become constructive.

Alegrias1

Right, there's this.

The report from yesterday is an internal parliamentary report from two internal parliamentary bodies. Johnson et al have consistently avoided any commitment to an independent Public Enquiry.

In Scotland, we're going to have an independent Public Enquiry before the end of this year. Independent. So you won't have to wait too long for a proper enquiry GG13, certainly not as long as you'll have to in England. And given that about 50% of the members of the committees who complied the latest report are actually Conservative, we'll all be waiting to see what an independent inquiry says. This'll look quite friendly in comparison, I think.

I expect the independent Scottish enquiry will highlight the issues in the Scottish response, primarily returning people to care homes, I suspect. Or perhaps they'll say the same as the commentator on the report on radio yesterday, who said that Scotland's response had been better than the general UK one all the way down the line, but they were hobbled and restrained by the UK-wide rules.

Deflection, indeed.

It really isn’t deflection, I am just curious as to how three closely linked nations handled the pandemic, did they do things that different from each other at certain times, and if so what was the outcome.

I would also like to see what NHS discharge managers in all nations have to say about discharging untested people back into the community, particularly care homes. Who’s decision was it, and why were the care/nursing homes accepting them back?

(I have a particular interest in this as when our step-father was in a dementia home each time he was hospitalised my family and the discharge officer had to jump through so many hoops before the home would accept him back., and the onus was on them accepting him back not the hospital discharging him. This was pre Covid)

You’re right GG13. A few years back the care home and myself had to fight tooth and nail to get mil out of hospital where she was shoved in a corner to die. I suppose with the pressure on hospitals during the pandemic things changed. Management by crisis springs to mind. It should be fully investigated.

The thing is, noone knew or knows what the best solution is, everything has been trial and error. Really don’t think Boris should be taking the blame, let the man have a break.
Considering though these so called scientists must have research knowledge on Coronavirus I am surprised they didn’t have a clue. All the government have done is be guided by the so called experts, all political part would have had to take the same sort of guidance

Horse racing and a football match were more important at the start of Covid. They should of been cancelled and people should of been tested arriving in from Italy, etc, where it was so, so bad. I know it still would of landed in our shores, but maybe not to the extent that it did and all those poor people losing their lives

I think care home managers were very worried about the discharge of untested patients back to their care homes. and foresaw the problems.

www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/29/care-homes-refusing-to-take-in-patients-discharged-nhs-hospitals-coronavirus-risk

As the report says:

In practice there was no expectation that patients should be tested as a precondition to discharge. The Government’s first set of guidance, issued on 19 March 2020, included no reference to covid-19 testing except to state that “where applicable” covid-19 test results should be included in a patient’s discharge documents.398 Guidance issued subsequently on 2 April 2020 reiterated that “negative tests are not required prior to transfers / admissions into the care home.”

Matt Hancock fudged his answer when questioned on discharging of untested patients

The then Secretary of State for Health and Social Care confirmed that this policy had been “agreed at the highest level in Government” but told us he could not specifically recall what advice was given regarding testing at this point. However, he did note that testing capacity was only around 1,000 tests per day at the time of the policy being agreed, and stated:

There is no doubt that the testing capacity would have featured, but also remember that the clear clinical advice at the time was that testing people asymptomatically might lead to false negatives, and therefore was not advised and was seen as not a good use of the precious few tests that we had at that moment.

So, basically, there was some inkling in government that discharging untested patients to care homes might be a bad idea, but they did it anyway because they were desperate to free up beds in the woefully run down and under resourced NHS.

Hindsight my backside. I was screaming at the TV to lockdown when they were determined to keep everything opened. I cancelled a trip to London to speak at a conference the week before lockdown (the conference went ahead). I remember the shambles of trying to get tests. I remember the completely inappropriate DNRs for people with learning disabilities.

I'm completely unconvinced about the policy now. Mandating masks in shops and on public transport would almost certainly have made a difference.

Awesomegranny

The thing is, noone knew or knows what the best solution is, everything has been trial and error. Really don’t think Boris should be taking the blame, let the man have a break.
Considering though these so called scientists must have research knowledge on Coronavirus I am surprised they didn’t have a clue. All the government have done is be guided by the so called experts, all political part would have had to take the same sort of guidance

There are errors in your post.

Firstly, everything has not been so random as "trial and error". It's true that nobody knows the best solution, but the issue in in the UK is that planning has not been coherent. We had the benefit of being hit a few weeks later than other countries, but learnt very little.

These "so called" scientists have spent years researching, so of course they have knowledge. Scientists have been responsible for avoiding a catastrophe. They most certainly did (and do) have a clue. Unfortunately, the government didn't listen. It is not true that the government was guided by scientists. They ignored the bits they didn't like. Some of them even broke rank and spoke in interviews. You have absolutely no evidence that any other political party would have acted in the same way.

No, I most definitely won't be giving Johnson a break (he's quite capable of taking his own breaks ). Rather than talking about blame, how about talking about responsibility? He wanted to be PM and the person at the top should always be responsible, rather than acting like a spoilt toddler.

Nezumi65

Hindsight my backside. I was screaming at the TV to lockdown when they were determined to keep everything opened. I cancelled a trip to London to speak at a conference the week before lockdown (the conference went ahead). I remember the shambles of trying to get tests. I remember the completely inappropriate DNRs for people with learning disabilities.

I'm completely unconvinced about the policy now. Mandating masks in shops and on public transport would almost certainly have made a difference.

It would appear that the government is hoping that the population is suffering from collective amnesia.

Katie59

He’ll just brush it off saying “we followed scientific advice”.
It would have been better to lock down in the way Australia did, but was that practical with the tens of thousands returning each week.

Australia are in constant lockdown in one state or another. My cousin in Melbourne thinks they’ll be like that forever!

Kim19

The only major mistake that lingers with me is that we didn't completely close our borders and quickly. No brainer.

Agree! Was tearing my hair out at the time. When the Delta variant hit we were allowing flights in and out from the Indian subcontinent as if nothing was happening.

It would appear that the government is hoping that the population is suffering from collective amnesia.

I'm afraid, growstuff that from some of the responses on this thread (and the many others that have discussed covid since spring 2020) that the government is justified in its hopes.

It can certainly be confident that some people have a very vague idea of what governing a country involves and will allow it a large amount of leeway for it failing to discharge its duty to its citizens.

Planning for emergencies is a vital part of any organisation's responsibilities. Reading the report it is clear that the government fell down badly in this respect.

I wondered if some people are in shock. I certainly feel like I am a bit.

HannahLoisLuke

Kim19

The only major mistake that lingers with me is that we didn't completely close our borders and quickly. No brainer.

Agree! Was tearing my hair out at the time. When the Delta variant hit we were allowing flights in and out from the Indian subcontinent as if nothing was happening.

That's because Johnson was desperate to meet the Indian PM.. Potential trade agreements being much more important than protecting the UK's citizens.

MaizieD

^It would appear that the government is hoping that the population is suffering from collective amnesia.^

I'm afraid, growstuff that from some of the responses on this thread (and the many others that have discussed covid since spring 2020) that the government is justified in its hopes.

It can certainly be confident that some people have a very vague idea of what governing a country involves and will allow it a large amount of leeway for it failing to discharge its duty to its citizens.

Planning for emergencies is a vital part of any organisation's responsibilities. Reading the report it is clear that the government fell down badly in this respect.

I'm afraid you are probably right.

If they're not suffering from amnesia, it appears some are suffering from a form of myopia aka rose-tinted spectacle syndrome or maybe "looktheotherwayitis".

HannahLoisLuke

Kim19

The only major mistake that lingers with me is that we didn't completely close our borders and quickly. No brainer.

Agree! Was tearing my hair out at the time. When the Delta variant hit we were allowing flights in and out from the Indian subcontinent as if nothing was happening.

It was a major mistake, but it most certainly was not the only one.

I'm just horrified and disgusted by the way this gov't treats people, from the lies they told in the election campaign to the way they ignored covid, then said it would be ok if we washed our hands and sung happy birthday, & how they didn't interfere but lied and said they'd 'put a protective ring around care home residents' when they hadn't & last week sung happy songs at conference whilst cutting £80 a month from poor people. They cheated to get into power aided by the billionaire press & the sooner they're gone the better

We already know all this, especially upsetting is the care home failures, no stocks of PPE and then mates rates for creaming off the contracts.... But the most shocking thing is how the greased piglet has got away with such incompetence. What has happened to our critical faculties that so many still support this dysfunctional government!