Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
Most of those comments could apply to Vietnam. And they have a large land border with China. But their ruthlessness in closing borders and enforcing quarantine mean they’ve been practically unaffected.
Whether a democratic government could have got away with locking travellers up in army camps with no WiFi for two weeks is another question, but it worked for them.
A year ago was probably the time to close borders. Whether there would have been any appetite for it on 4 February 2020 I don't know.
If the choice had been close pubs, tourist attractions and schools or close borders, I think people would have taken it.
And that was the choice, and it’s a choice that’s only become starker with hindsight.
There were many choices made in the pandemic, some good some bad. One issue I have though is people are trying to lay all the bad ones, or all the good ones on politicians depending on their tribal affiliation.
I think if an enquiry is to be any use we need to find out who made the bad decisions, look at the information at the time and then judge if it was reasonable.
For example
Not closing the border.....bad....definitely Tory fault
A Normal christmas.....bad....definitely Tory fault
Initial poor test.....well I am not so convinced as we have heard that was due to PHE wanting to keep all testing in house.
Shipping covid positive people from hospitals to care homes...again I want to know who made that decision. I can well imagine it might be at a trust level, nhs level. It may well be the first thing politicians knew about that being done was when care home patients started dying.
In short there will be mistakes being made all the way up and down organisations. If we are to do better we have to identify all the bad decisions and work out where we could have done better.
I don't think trying to lay it all on politicians actually necessarily helps
Yep, that pretty much seemed to be what he was about to say until he realised he shouldn't.
Right mess of an interview to be honest.
Meanwhile:
Sir Iain Duncan Smith: "We have to be careful we don't hand over the Government to the scientists. When we say we're following the science, sometimes it has been a case of following the scientists."
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
Most of those comments could apply to Vietnam. And they have a large land border with China. But their ruthlessness in closing borders and enforcing quarantine mean they’ve been practically unaffected.
Whether a democratic government could have got away with locking travellers up in army camps with no WiFi for two weeks is another question, but it worked for them.
A year ago was probably the time to close borders. Whether there would have been any appetite for it on 4 February 2020 I don't know.
If borders are still open now, then tomorrow is the best time to close them.
These new variants are going very quickly around the world, severe travel restrictions are needed, before we end up with something resistant to the vaccines and we are back to square one.
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
I'm always in favour of learning lessons to improve future decision making. In a highly blame-oriented 'gotcha' political environment like ours that's difficult, to say the least.
But even so, ISTR that a very good plan was produced after one dreadful outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which just gathered dust on the shelf. Next time no-one bothered with it at all, except those who remembered and implored the new lot to read it.
Corporate memory isn't good. But we can set up bodies to look for alien life, just in case that ever becomes a threat.
PB Tories whataboutery re vaccines does not absolve this Government from its disgraceful performance.
I'm not a tory and 'disgraceful performance' are words best reserved for the EU on vaccines. You can't absolve the British public from blame, although lefties are trying. I STILL see loads of people in shops, on public transport and indoor spaces without face masks. In some parts face mask wearing seems under 50%. Parties and meet-ups are still taking place and people are still socialising and travelling for pleasure. That is NOT Boris' fault.
How is it not Boris's fault? How does the Prime Minister of the UK get magically absolved of leadership responsibilities?
There would always have been a minority of people not complying. And the system should have warned them that they would be dealt with harshly. Had the government issued the kind of clear, unambiguous warnings that pretty much every other western country managed then our death toll would have been a lot lower.
Its frankly shameful - to you - that you are working so hard this morning to wave your team's scarf and insist that they have no responsibility.
I thought you called yourself a Liberal now?
Governments wherever possible should give advice and let people decide for themselves - and the public needs to take responsibility for their own actions too which can have consequences for others, it isn't on the PM of the day to make all our decisions for us.
Indeed - we are not automatons. But we do not exist entirely independently of each other. My liberty to make my own choices does not allow me to take a dump in next door's garden - there are laws and societal norms that bind us.
Responsibility for one person's action is with that person. But when there are millions all doing the same irresponsible dangerous thing that has been at least tacitly encouraged by the government?
Its like debt. If the bank loans me a load of money I can't repay, that's my problem. If the bank loans a million people a load of money that we can't repay, that's the bank's problem. Every individual needs to consider their own actions. But when they are openly encouraged to do something bad, whether that be take out a homeowner loan with Ocean Finance or take a jolly to Barnard Castle, you have to broaden the responsibility.
Indeed and in general the advice has followed the science. Why the scientists were saying not to use facemasks early on for instance, when they are such a relatively low-effort option to assist in preventing viral spread, is definitely a lesson we should learn.
Going into a review wanting to learn lessons so we can do better next time - or going into it wanting someone's scalp - which of those is more productive?
The only plausible reason for not recommending everyone wear facemasks back in February and March last year, would be the fear that there would be a run on them, leading to a shortage in healthcare situations where they are more effective.
But yes, it would be useful for someone to stand up now and say that was the judgement at the time.
In March no one was wearing masks and we ended up with 20,000 people in hospital. In December 99% of poeple were wearing masks and we ended up with 60,000+ cases per day and 38,000 people in hospital.
Take a step back from the "masks must work" idea and look at the actual real world results
In 1921 there were no antiretroviral drugs and no one died of HIV. In 2021 we have lots of antiretroviral drugs and 1 million deaths a year of HIV. Can you tell us what conclusions you draw from these real world results?
Wearing a mask puts you at risk of HIV as well? It just goes from bad to worse.
The normally nimble Zahawi having a mare on R4 on Border Controls and Quarantine Hotels.
Yep. Bit of a car crash this morning for him.
Because we still haven't got a grip of this, even now.
Don't think anyone is saying we have yet (except Ivor Cummings and co) but we should have some kind of answer as to what the criteria are for accepting this is another endemic virus that we live with and get back to our lives. Protecting the NHS was the goal just after xmas (which implies vaccinated the vulnerable and then move on), now Sunak seems to be warning that behind the scenes the goal is being moved.
People I know are finding that the range of available coffins is narrower than it was previously. Multiple causes - demand, but also reduced ranges to make it easier to run the business; like supermarkets, it is a retail market.
I'm agreeing with you on the need to memorialise, and provide spaces for reflection on lost friends and family. Which is why I raised remembrance yesterday in the comments, and now I'm wondering about another National Forest somewhere else in the country (that is England - we do these things quite differently by nation; I can't imagine England doing something called a "National Shrine" as there is in Edinburgh, for example). And for Captain Tom I would suggest renaming one of the jewels of small parks in the City, amongst others.
But in the words of Yogi: "it ain't over till it's over".
And I'm agreeing with you on the need for accountability. But not on the international comparisons - these have been problematic throughout. And we don't know how it will turn out yet. The one thing in your favour imo is the relative success of studies for after WW2 started during WW2.
I'd be interested in how you suggest such an enquiry should be run? I have no idea. Given that at Grenfell we had "he can't do it, his skin is the wrong colour" concerns - how do we find a neutral figure or committee?
My current concern wrt UK before Christmas, is EU from Easter to Autumn.
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
Most of those comments could apply to Vietnam. And they have a large land border with China. But their ruthlessness in closing borders and enforcing quarantine mean they’ve been practically unaffected.
Whether a democratic government could have got away with locking travellers up in army camps with no WiFi for two weeks is another question, but it worked for them.
A year ago was probably the time to close borders. Whether there would have been any appetite for it on 4 February 2020 I don't know.
If the choice had been close pubs, tourist attractions and schools or close borders, I think people would have taken it.
And that was the choice, and it’s a choice that’s only become starker with hindsight.
There were many choices made in the pandemic, some good some bad. One issue I have though is people are trying to lay all the bad ones, or all the good ones on politicians depending on their tribal affiliation.
I think if an enquiry is to be any use we need to find out who made the bad decisions, look at the information at the time and then judge if it was reasonable.
For example
Not closing the border.....bad....definitely Tory fault
A Normal christmas.....bad....definitely Tory fault
Initial poor test.....well I am not so convinced as we have heard that was due to PHE wanting to keep all testing in house.
Shipping covid positive people from hospitals to care homes...again I want to know who made that decision. I can well imagine it might be at a trust level, nhs level. It may well be the first thing politicians knew about that being done was when care home patients started dying.
In short there will be mistakes being made all the way up and down organisations. If we are to do better we have to identify all the bad decisions and work out where we could have done better.
I don't think trying to lay it all on politicians actually necessarily helps
Yep, that pretty much seemed to be what he was about to say until he realised he shouldn't.
Right mess of an interview to be honest.
Meanwhile:
Sir Iain Duncan Smith: "We have to be careful we don't hand over the Government to the scientists. When we say we're following the science, sometimes it has been a case of following the scientists."
(Telegraph)
That’s the issue.
Incidentally as far as I can tell I’ve been entirely consistent in blaming politicians, scientists, civil servants and many ordinary people for too many stupid mistakes in this pandemic.
Equally, it hasn’t been easy and mistakes were inevitable.
What frustrates the hell out of me is not that mistakes were made, or even that obvious mistakes were made, but that the government (including the Civil Service) is making *the same mistakes over and over again* because that implies they are not examining their performance to see how it could be improved.
And that really is an issue, and an unforgivable one.
The human response to COVID was for me symbolised by two things I saw early on in the pandemic on a trip to Sainsbury’s. Outside a man smoking through a hole cut in his mask. Inside a family shopping in the fruit aisle in full biohazard gear. Matching gloves, wellies and white boiler suits. At once both cute and disturbing.
I do not exaggerate, I watched and thought the world truly mad. Whilst Boris is accountable for the decisions he took, it’s far from tThe whole story.
Dithers rather than decides; goes into hiding when things get difficult; hides from overly challenging media scrutiny; over-relies on advisers; appoints the team for loyalty rather than merit; lacks gravitas; goes into denial when things go wrong.
The article is surely right to warn of the dangers of having such a person in leadership.
PB Tories whataboutery re vaccines does not absolve this Government from its disgraceful performance.
I'm not a tory and 'disgraceful performance' are words best reserved for the EU on vaccines. You can't absolve the British public from blame, although lefties are trying. I STILL see loads of people in shops, on public transport and indoor spaces without face masks. In some parts face mask wearing seems under 50%. Parties and meet-ups are still taking place and people are still socialising and travelling for pleasure. That is NOT Boris' fault.
How is it not Boris's fault? How does the Prime Minister of the UK get magically absolved of leadership responsibilities?
There would always have been a minority of people not complying. And the system should have warned them that they would be dealt with harshly. Had the government issued the kind of clear, unambiguous warnings that pretty much every other western country managed then our death toll would have been a lot lower.
Its frankly shameful - to you - that you are working so hard this morning to wave your team's scarf and insist that they have no responsibility.
I thought you called yourself a Liberal now?
Governments wherever possible should give advice and let people decide for themselves - and the public needs to take responsibility for their own actions too which can have consequences for others, it isn't on the PM of the day to make all our decisions for us.
Indeed - we are not automatons. But we do not exist entirely independently of each other. My liberty to make my own choices does not allow me to take a dump in next door's garden - there are laws and societal norms that bind us.
Responsibility for one person's action is with that person. But when there are millions all doing the same irresponsible dangerous thing that has been at least tacitly encouraged by the government?
Its like debt. If the bank loans me a load of money I can't repay, that's my problem. If the bank loans a million people a load of money that we can't repay, that's the bank's problem. Every individual needs to consider their own actions. But when they are openly encouraged to do something bad, whether that be take out a homeowner loan with Ocean Finance or take a jolly to Barnard Castle, you have to broaden the responsibility.
Indeed and in general the advice has followed the science. Why the scientists were saying not to use facemasks early on for instance, when they are such a relatively low-effort option to assist in preventing viral spread, is definitely a lesson we should learn.
Going into a review wanting to learn lessons so we can do better next time - or going into it wanting someone's scalp - which of those is more productive?
A fair question, but it rather ignore the fact that it will be the government which determines the timing and terms of reference of any enquiry. Going into it wanting to avoid taking someone's scalp is rather more likely than your second alternative.
PB Tories whataboutery re vaccines does not absolve this Government from its disgraceful performance.
I'm not a tory and 'disgraceful performance' are words best reserved for the EU on vaccines. You can't absolve the British public from blame, although lefties are trying. I STILL see loads of people in shops, on public transport and indoor spaces without face masks. In some parts face mask wearing seems under 50%. Parties and meet-ups are still taking place and people are still socialising and travelling for pleasure. That is NOT Boris' fault.
How is it not Boris's fault? How does the Prime Minister of the UK get magically absolved of leadership responsibilities?
There would always have been a minority of people not complying. And the system should have warned them that they would be dealt with harshly. Had the government issued the kind of clear, unambiguous warnings that pretty much every other western country managed then our death toll would have been a lot lower.
Its frankly shameful - to you - that you are working so hard this morning to wave your team's scarf and insist that they have no responsibility.
I thought you called yourself a Liberal now?
Governments wherever possible should give advice and let people decide for themselves - and the public needs to take responsibility for their own actions too which can have consequences for others, it isn't on the PM of the day to make all our decisions for us.
Indeed - we are not automatons. But we do not exist entirely independently of each other. My liberty to make my own choices does not allow me to take a dump in next door's garden - there are laws and societal norms that bind us.
Responsibility for one person's action is with that person. But when there are millions all doing the same irresponsible dangerous thing that has been at least tacitly encouraged by the government?
Its like debt. If the bank loans me a load of money I can't repay, that's my problem. If the bank loans a million people a load of money that we can't repay, that's the bank's problem. Every individual needs to consider their own actions. But when they are openly encouraged to do something bad, whether that be take out a homeowner loan with Ocean Finance or take a jolly to Barnard Castle, you have to broaden the responsibility.
Indeed and in general the advice has followed the science. Why the scientists were saying not to use facemasks early on for instance, when they are such a relatively low-effort option to assist in preventing viral spread, is definitely a lesson we should learn.
Going into a review wanting to learn lessons so we can do better next time - or going into it wanting someone's scalp - which of those is more productive?
The only plausible reason for not recommending everyone wear facemasks back in February and March last year, would be the fear that there would be a run on them, leading to a shortage in healthcare situations where they are more effective.
But yes, it would be useful for someone to stand up now and say that was the judgement at the time.
In March no one was wearing masks and we ended up with 20,000 people in hospital. In December 99% of poeple were wearing masks and we ended up with 60,000+ cases per day and 38,000 people in hospital.
Take a step back from the "masks must work" idea and look at the actual real world results
That's one of the things I like about this site. Everyone's got their mini obsessions. When you've been on here a while and you get to know them and they pop up it always make you smile
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
Most of those comments could apply to Vietnam. And they have a large land border with China. But their ruthlessness in closing borders and enforcing quarantine mean they’ve been practically unaffected.
Whether a democratic government could have got away with locking travellers up in army camps with no WiFi for two weeks is another question, but it worked for them.
New Zealand and Australia are better comparators albeit they have a considerable advantage in distance over us.
I cannot help feeling that class had a lot to do with this. Rules may be appropriate for the little people going to Spain for their drunken breaks but a professional and important man needs to ski, needs to go on oh so important business trips, rules are not for the likes of us. The result was a liberal scattering of Covid into our communities in an almost random fashion that proved extremely hard to control plus some new variants on top. And death, lots of death.
As I understand it, Australians have been prevented from leaving their country. Most people entering the UK are British people who went abroad a few days ago. Yet there is no attempt to stop people travelling for inessential reasons.
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
I'm always in favour of learning lessons to improve future decision making. In a highly blame-oriented 'gotcha' political environment like ours that's difficult, to say the least.
But even so, ISTR that a very good plan was produced after one dreadful outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which just gathered dust on the shelf. Next time no-one bothered with it at all, except those who remembered and implored the new lot to read it.
Corporate memory isn't good. But we can set up bodies to look for alien life, just in case that ever becomes a threat.
If there is a pandemic in the next 30 years we will deal with it much better because of the memories of this one. If there is a pandemic in the next 30-60 years we will deal with a bit better because of the faded memories of this one. If the next pandemic is more than 60 years from now we will make similar mistakes as it will all seem so alien at the start.
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
Most of those comments could apply to Vietnam. And they have a large land border with China. But their ruthlessness in closing borders and enforcing quarantine mean they’ve been practically unaffected.
Whether a democratic government could have got away with locking travellers up in army camps with no WiFi for two weeks is another question, but it worked for them.
A year ago was probably the time to close borders. Whether there would have been any appetite for it on 4 February 2020 I don't know.
If the choice had been close pubs, tourist attractions and schools or close borders, I think people would have taken it.
And that was the choice, and it’s a choice that’s only become starker with hindsight.
There were many choices made in the pandemic, some good some bad. One issue I have though is people are trying to lay all the bad ones, or all the good ones on politicians depending on their tribal affiliation.
I think if an enquiry is to be any use we need to find out who made the bad decisions, look at the information at the time and then judge if it was reasonable.
For example
Not closing the border.....bad....definitely Tory fault
A Normal christmas.....bad....definitely Tory fault
Initial poor test.....well I am not so convinced as we have heard that was due to PHE wanting to keep all testing in house.
Shipping covid positive people from hospitals to care homes...again I want to know who made that decision. I can well imagine it might be at a trust level, nhs level. It may well be the first thing politicians knew about that being done was when care home patients started dying.
In short there will be mistakes being made all the way up and down organisations. If we are to do better we have to identify all the bad decisions and work out where we could have done better.
I don't think trying to lay it all on politicians actually necessarily helps
Yep, that pretty much seemed to be what he was about to say until he realised he shouldn't.
Right mess of an interview to be honest.
Meanwhile:
Sir Iain Duncan Smith: "We have to be careful we don't hand over the Government to the scientists. When we say we're following the science, sometimes it has been a case of following the scientists."
(Telegraph)
That’s the issue.
Incidentally as far as I can tell I’ve been entirely consistent in blaming politicians, scientists, civil servants and many ordinary people for too many stupid mistakes in this pandemic.
Equally, it hasn’t been easy and mistakes were inevitable.
What frustrates the hell out of me is not that mistakes were made, or even that obvious mistakes were made, but that the government (including the Civil Service) is making *the same mistakes over and over again* because that implies they are not examining their performance to see how it could be improved.
And that really is an issue, and an unforgivable one.
Anyway, time for work.
And that some of the mistakes were obvious ones that a random sample of PB'ers could see coming, well before the event. Like we all expected the November lockdown to continue through to mid December, unlocking just in time to at least give us Christmas, yet the government opened up in early December and wrecked Christmas.
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
Most of those comments could apply to Vietnam. And they have a large land border with China. But their ruthlessness in closing borders and enforcing quarantine mean they’ve been practically unaffected.
Whether a democratic government could have got away with locking travellers up in army camps with no WiFi for two weeks is another question, but it worked for them.
A year ago was probably the time to close borders. Whether there would have been any appetite for it on 4 February 2020 I don't know.
If the choice had been close pubs, tourist attractions and schools or close borders, I think people would have taken it.
And that was the choice, and it’s a choice that’s only become starker with hindsight.
There were many choices made in the pandemic, some good some bad. One issue I have though is people are trying to lay all the bad ones, or all the good ones on politicians depending on their tribal affiliation.
I think if an enquiry is to be any use we need to find out who made the bad decisions, look at the information at the time and then judge if it was reasonable.
For example
Not closing the border.....bad....definitely Tory fault
A Normal christmas.....bad....definitely Tory fault
Initial poor test.....well I am not so convinced as we have heard that was due to PHE wanting to keep all testing in house.
Shipping covid positive people from hospitals to care homes...again I want to know who made that decision. I can well imagine it might be at a trust level, nhs level. It may well be the first thing politicians knew about that being done was when care home patients started dying.
In short there will be mistakes being made all the way up and down organisations. If we are to do better we have to identify all the bad decisions and work out where we could have done better.
I don't think trying to lay it all on politicians actually necessarily helps
Yep, that pretty much seemed to be what he was about to say until he realised he shouldn't.
Right mess of an interview to be honest.
Meanwhile:
Sir Iain Duncan Smith: "We have to be careful we don't hand over the Government to the scientists. When we say we're following the science, sometimes it has been a case of following the scientists."
(Telegraph)
That’s the issue.
Incidentally as far as I can tell I’ve been entirely consistent in blaming politicians, scientists, civil servants and many ordinary people for too many stupid mistakes in this pandemic.
Equally, it hasn’t been easy and mistakes were inevitable.
What frustrates the hell out of me is not that mistakes were made, or even that obvious mistakes were made, but that the government (including the Civil Service) is making *the same mistakes over and over again* because that implies they are not examining their performance to see how it could be improved.
And that really is an issue, and an unforgivable one.
Anyway, time for work.
I wasn't saying everyone, just that some seem more intent to use it as a baseball bat against politicians only. There have some truly irresponsible decision making throughout. The first test and trace app for example when both google and apple are telling you your app won't work properly because of technical issues and you plough on because you know better....unbelievable
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
Most of those comments could apply to Vietnam. And they have a large land border with China. But their ruthlessness in closing borders and enforcing quarantine mean they’ve been practically unaffected.
Whether a democratic government could have got away with locking travellers up in army camps with no WiFi for two weeks is another question, but it worked for them.
New Zealand and Australia are better comparators albeit they have a considerable advantage in distance over us.
I cannot help feeling that class had a lot to do with this. Rules may be appropriate for the little people going to Spain for their drunken breaks but a professional and important man needs to ski, needs to go on oh so important business trips, rules are not for the likes of us. The result was a liberal scattering of Covid into our communities in an almost random fashion that proved extremely hard to control plus some new variants on top. And death, lots of death.
Well, there’s a further irony to that. The last two winters have seen the best skiing conditions in Scotland for 20 years.
So nobody would have needed to go to Schladming to ski...
But they would because that way you avoid the riff raff. We have had yet more snow overnight and the highlands are expecting the best part of a metre. I very much hope that the Scottish resorts can be opened for some end of season skiing in April. They are quite marginal operators at the best of times and these last 2 years must have hit them very hard.
Putting this out there for bragging rights - I guess we will see Sunak briefed against as having made the wrong calls on COVID, he'll get ditched as CoE, and be replaced by Priti Patel.
...but we've vaccinated over 10,000,000 people, no other metric matters anymore. Although perhaps it should!
Alastair is consumed with his hatred of Boris and in this unbalanced piece it all flows out
I think it an excellent piece. 109,000 deaths on Johnson and Drakeford,'s watch.
Can we absolve Johnson because he got the vaccine right and yet still hang Drakeford for his hand in the death of 109,000 people? Possibly.
I am not absolving anyone and a public enquiry will follow.
However, this piece has no balance and indeed on this week, of all weeks, he makes no reference to his beloved Europe and the objectionable behaviour of their leaders which are likely to have a devastating effect on the peoples of Europe.
I do not see him calling for their resignations
Your comment has no balance, apparently skewed by your hatred of Alastair. Or perhaps idolisation of Boris.
I do not hate but Alastair has long lost all balance on Boris
And if you follow my posts you will have seen me critise Boris and I have said he is not the person for covid
You do say that some days. Other days you say anyone else criticising the PM should not be allowed to say it. Hard to keep up.
Alastair can say what he likes, as can everyone on here, but it is right to put his anti brexit anti Boris mantra into context and the unbalanced nature of his piece.
Remember, here in Wales Boris was not the First Minister and Drakeford who is has had a far worse covid crisis than Boris but no mention in the piece of the role of the devolved administrations who, whether he likes it or not, are just as involved in the outcomes as Boris
Something about splinters, planks and eyes comes to mind when I read your blind defence of Johnson and vitriolic attacks on Drakeford.
There is no blind defence of Boris if you read my posts, but you have not suffered the health and education issues in Wales, as have my family, and then witnessed Drakeford's actions on covid
Is your impression that Drakeford has improved in the last few months? The rollout seems to be reasonable there. Is he being a bit Boris-ey, and either learning from experience or someone is sitting on his head?
PB Tories whataboutery re vaccines does not absolve this Government from its disgraceful performance.
I'm not a tory and 'disgraceful performance' are words best reserved for the EU on vaccines. You can't absolve the British public from blame, although lefties are trying. I STILL see loads of people in shops, on public transport and indoor spaces without face masks. In some parts face mask wearing seems under 50%. Parties and meet-ups are still taking place and people are still socialising and travelling for pleasure. That is NOT Boris' fault.
How is it not Boris's fault? How does the Prime Minister of the UK get magically absolved of leadership responsibilities?
There would always have been a minority of people not complying. And the system should have warned them that they would be dealt with harshly. Had the government issued the kind of clear, unambiguous warnings that pretty much every other western country managed then our death toll would have been a lot lower.
Its frankly shameful - to you - that you are working so hard this morning to wave your team's scarf and insist that they have no responsibility.
I thought you called yourself a Liberal now?
Governments wherever possible should give advice and let people decide for themselves - and the public needs to take responsibility for their own actions too which can have consequences for others, it isn't on the PM of the day to make all our decisions for us.
Indeed - we are not automatons. But we do not exist entirely independently of each other. My liberty to make my own choices does not allow me to take a dump in next door's garden - there are laws and societal norms that bind us.
Responsibility for one person's action is with that person. But when there are millions all doing the same irresponsible dangerous thing that has been at least tacitly encouraged by the government?
Its like debt. If the bank loans me a load of money I can't repay, that's my problem. If the bank loans a million people a load of money that we can't repay, that's the bank's problem. Every individual needs to consider their own actions. But when they are openly encouraged to do something bad, whether that be take out a homeowner loan with Ocean Finance or take a jolly to Barnard Castle, you have to broaden the responsibility.
Indeed and in general the advice has followed the science. Why the scientists were saying not to use facemasks early on for instance, when they are such a relatively low-effort option to assist in preventing viral spread, is definitely a lesson we should learn.
Going into a review wanting to learn lessons so we can do better next time - or going into it wanting someone's scalp - which of those is more productive?
The only plausible reason for not recommending everyone wear facemasks back in February and March last year, would be the fear that there would be a run on them, leading to a shortage in healthcare situations where they are more effective.
But yes, it would be useful for someone to stand up now and say that was the judgement at the time.
In March no one was wearing masks and we ended up with 20,000 people in hospital. In December 99% of poeple were wearing masks and we ended up with 60,000+ cases per day and 38,000 people in hospital.
Take a step back from the "masks must work" idea and look at the actual real world results
In 1921 there were no antiretroviral drugs and no one died of HIV. In 2021 we have lots of antiretroviral drugs and 1 million deaths a year of HIV. Can you tell us what conclusions you draw from these real world results?
No one on here ever address the actual facts regarding masks.
I warned in July that enforced mask wearing would have a detrimental effect as people would stop socially distancing as they would be "protected" by the mask.
Unfortunately the facts have completely vindicated my warnings and with near 100% mask wearing in enclosed public spaces we have nearly double the number of people in hospital compared to April when there was no mask wearing.
How is that possible if masks work so well?
Its like a football team adopting a defensive system that increases goals conceded by double and the Manager then telling Gary Liniker that of course the new system works brilliantly, are you stupid or something..
As Spock would say the case for masks is illogical.
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
Most of those comments could apply to Vietnam. And they have a large land border with China. But their ruthlessness in closing borders and enforcing quarantine mean they’ve been practically unaffected.
Whether a democratic government could have got away with locking travellers up in army camps with no WiFi for two weeks is another question, but it worked for them.
A year ago was probably the time to close borders. Whether there would have been any appetite for it on 4 February 2020 I don't know.
If the choice had been close pubs, tourist attractions and schools or close borders, I think people would have taken it.
And that was the choice, and it’s a choice that’s only become starker with hindsight.
There were many choices made in the pandemic, some good some bad. One issue I have though is people are trying to lay all the bad ones, or all the good ones on politicians depending on their tribal affiliation.
I think if an enquiry is to be any use we need to find out who made the bad decisions, look at the information at the time and then judge if it was reasonable.
For example
Not closing the border.....bad....definitely Tory fault
A Normal christmas.....bad....definitely Tory fault
Initial poor test.....well I am not so convinced as we have heard that was due to PHE wanting to keep all testing in house.
Shipping covid positive people from hospitals to care homes...again I want to know who made that decision. I can well imagine it might be at a trust level, nhs level. It may well be the first thing politicians knew about that being done was when care home patients started dying.
In short there will be mistakes being made all the way up and down organisations. If we are to do better we have to identify all the bad decisions and work out where we could have done better.
I don't think trying to lay it all on politicians actually necessarily helps
Yep, that pretty much seemed to be what he was about to say until he realised he shouldn't.
Right mess of an interview to be honest.
Meanwhile:
Sir Iain Duncan Smith: "We have to be careful we don't hand over the Government to the scientists. When we say we're following the science, sometimes it has been a case of following the scientists."
(Telegraph)
That’s the issue.
Incidentally as far as I can tell I’ve been entirely consistent in blaming politicians, scientists, civil servants and many ordinary people for too many stupid mistakes in this pandemic.
Equally, it hasn’t been easy and mistakes were inevitable.
What frustrates the hell out of me is not that mistakes were made, or even that obvious mistakes were made, but that the government (including the Civil Service) is making *the same mistakes over and over again* because that implies they are not examining their performance to see how it could be improved.
And that really is an issue, and an unforgivable one.
Anyway, time for work.
And that some of the mistakes were obvious ones that a random sample of PB'ers could see coming, well before the event. Like we all expected the November lockdown to continue through to mid December, unlocking just in time to at least give us Christmas, yet the government opened up in early December and wrecked Christmas.
Ultimately the government cared more about Christmas shopping than Christmas itself. That's probably their second biggest error after keeping the airports open.
Perhaps it's time we stepped back and asked what is wrong with our system that it produces such bad governance? What are the problems with the current incentives and penalties in our system that elevates sub-optimal people into positions of power? Daniel Hannan to the Lords, as Alistair pointed out, being a prime example. Many years ago as an engineering grad I read Peter Senge "The fifth discipline" and I think it has a lot of insights that we could use in politics today.
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
I'm always in favour of learning lessons to improve future decision making. In a highly blame-oriented 'gotcha' political environment like ours that's difficult, to say the least.
But even so, ISTR that a very good plan was produced after one dreadful outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which just gathered dust on the shelf. Next time no-one bothered with it at all, except those who remembered and implored the new lot to read it.
Corporate memory isn't good. But we can set up bodies to look for alien life, just in case that ever becomes a threat.
If there is a pandemic in the next 30 years we will deal with it much better because of the memories of this one. If there is a pandemic in the next 30-60 years we will deal with a bit better because of the faded memories of this one. If the next pandemic is more than 60 years from now we will make similar mistakes as it will all seem so alien at the start.
Will we though? One of the things the public inquiry must look at is that any preparation that was done was for a massive influenza-type viral outbreak. Indeed, as I understand it, SAGE continued to react as if it was a flu-type weeks into the crisis. Rather than more like a SARS viral outbreak.
PB Tories whataboutery re vaccines does not absolve this Government from its disgraceful performance.
I'm not a tory and 'disgraceful performance' are words best reserved for the EU on vaccines. You can't absolve the British public from blame, although lefties are trying. I STILL see loads of people in shops, on public transport and indoor spaces without face masks. In some parts face mask wearing seems under 50%. Parties and meet-ups are still taking place and people are still socialising and travelling for pleasure. That is NOT Boris' fault.
How is it not Boris's fault? How does the Prime Minister of the UK get magically absolved of leadership responsibilities?
There would always have been a minority of people not complying. And the system should have warned them that they would be dealt with harshly. Had the government issued the kind of clear, unambiguous warnings that pretty much every other western country managed then our death toll would have been a lot lower.
Its frankly shameful - to you - that you are working so hard this morning to wave your team's scarf and insist that they have no responsibility.
I thought you called yourself a Liberal now?
Governments wherever possible should give advice and let people decide for themselves - and the public needs to take responsibility for their own actions too which can have consequences for others, it isn't on the PM of the day to make all our decisions for us.
Indeed - we are not automatons. But we do not exist entirely independently of each other. My liberty to make my own choices does not allow me to take a dump in next door's garden - there are laws and societal norms that bind us.
Responsibility for one person's action is with that person. But when there are millions all doing the same irresponsible dangerous thing that has been at least tacitly encouraged by the government?
Its like debt. If the bank loans me a load of money I can't repay, that's my problem. If the bank loans a million people a load of money that we can't repay, that's the bank's problem. Every individual needs to consider their own actions. But when they are openly encouraged to do something bad, whether that be take out a homeowner loan with Ocean Finance or take a jolly to Barnard Castle, you have to broaden the responsibility.
Indeed and in general the advice has followed the science. Why the scientists were saying not to use facemasks early on for instance, when they are such a relatively low-effort option to assist in preventing viral spread, is definitely a lesson we should learn.
Going into a review wanting to learn lessons so we can do better next time - or going into it wanting someone's scalp - which of those is more productive?
The only plausible reason for not recommending everyone wear facemasks back in February and March last year, would be the fear that there would be a run on them, leading to a shortage in healthcare situations where they are more effective.
But yes, it would be useful for someone to stand up now and say that was the judgement at the time.
In March no one was wearing masks and we ended up with 20,000 people in hospital. In December 99% of poeple were wearing masks and we ended up with 60,000+ cases per day and 38,000 people in hospital.
Take a step back from the "masks must work" idea and look at the actual real world results
In 1921 there were no antiretroviral drugs and no one died of HIV. In 2021 we have lots of antiretroviral drugs and 1 million deaths a year of HIV. Can you tell us what conclusions you draw from these real world results?
No one on here ever address the actual facts regarding masks.
I warned in July that enforced mask wearing would have a detrimental effect as people would stop socially distancing as they would be "protected" by the mask.
Unfortunately the facts have completely vindicated my warnings and with near 100% mask wearing in enclosed public spaces we have nearly double the number of people in hospital compared to April when there was no mask wearing.
How is that possible if masks work so well?
Its like a football team adopting a defensive system that increases goals conceded by double and the Manager then telling Gary Liniker that of course the new system works brilliantly, are you stupid or something..
As Spock would say the case for masks is illogical.
This is a poor piece of Meeksiana, late in the cycle after his bitter realisation that he was not being received in triumph as pb.com's Messiah.
The UK has not done well (more specifically, England and the devolved administrations have not done well). Happy to see Boris, Mark, Nicola & Arlene sharing the same cell, if you want.
Western Europe has not done well. Happy to see Emmanuel, Angela, Pedro Sanchez, Guiseppe, Antonio join them in the cells.
Of course, there is a special cell reserved for the rulers of Belgium, who are top of the Europe death league (normalized to population).
Eastern Europe has not done well, the PMs of Czechia and Slovenia at least need to be trooping down to join the other politicians in the cells as well. The US, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru have not done well. The cells are filling up.
So, ... Boris would be in real trouble if England had done demonstrably poorer than other countries in Western Europe or the Americas.
As it is, England is not even the poorest performer in the British Isles in the death table. That is Wales (or was, the last time I computed, it is close though).
The practical time to make use of a public enquiry was in the summer. Understand what went wrong so that we could do it better next time. Having missed that opportunity for the second spike and then openly encouraged a third spike, the public enquiry has to have two aims: 1. What went wrong. How did the UK get it so badly wrong compared to so many others 2. What we do differently in the next pandemic. As well as "don't do that" from point 1 there will also be a deconstruction of the successful clinical trials and vaccination programme so that we can go even faster in future.
We can't avoid this. You can't have 150k dead and expect the people in charge to not answer questions. Forget the politics and look at the death toll - its basic level responsibility to understand what happened as it would be after a train or plane crash, a disaster like Grenfell etc etc. We don't skip this critical stage because its politicians in the frame.
The difference is between an inquiry that learns and one that blames. The former is useful, the latter not so much
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
I'm always in favour of learning lessons to improve future decision making. In a highly blame-oriented 'gotcha' political environment like ours that's difficult, to say the least.
But even so, ISTR that a very good plan was produced after one dreadful outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which just gathered dust on the shelf. Next time no-one bothered with it at all, except those who remembered and implored the new lot to read it.
Corporate memory isn't good. But we can set up bodies to look for alien life, just in case that ever becomes a threat.
If there is a pandemic in the next 30 years we will deal with it much better because of the memories of this one. If there is a pandemic in the next 30-60 years we will deal with a bit better because of the faded memories of this one. If the next pandemic is more than 60 years from now we will make similar mistakes as it will all seem so alien at the start.
Will we though? One of the things the public inquiry must look at is that any preparation that was done was for a massive influenza-type viral outbreak. Indeed, as I understand it, SAGE continued to react as if it was a flu-type weeks into the crisis. Rather than more like a SARS viral outbreak.
I've heard this mentioned a few times, but I've never worked out what the difference is.
Can you briefly explain the key difference and how that should affect the response?
It is so easy to rant and spray hyperbolic biased views from the comfort of a keyboard.
Of course the government made mistakes. More lives could have been saved. In doing so more may be destroyed in other ways.
Obsession with international comparisons is still lacking much useful practical or intellectual validity. Until you take away all the variables from population type, density, adherence, mental health, average BMI, co morbidity health service capaity and many other factors influencing the outcome, you know little of use. In effect you are pissing in the wind, probably being stupid doing it into the wind and howling at the moon.
We all know the risks we face in life, assess them and select an action. Some actions kill us, some kill others and some don't kill.
In all probability the worst action is care homes early on.
I'd tend to agree.
I'm really not convinced the better performance of other countries can be wholly attributed to policy decisions.
At any rate, these involve a set of trade-offs around health, the economy, personal freedoms. Effectively suspending the functioning of civil society and the economy isn't without its costs either, the relevant metric can't just be body bags (not to minimise the pain of anyone who's lost those close to them).
For me, Covid comes pretty close to qualifying as a death from natural cause (even accounting for any revelations coming from the WHO visit to China). Is it reasonable to expect the government to legislate against that?
I guess it's easy to look back in retrospect, and pinpoint errors. Xmas must be one of thoses. Given the inadequacy of the public health's establishments initial response, I think blame, if it is to be attributed, can't just be levelled on elected officials.
It’s not about blame, it’s about learning and remembering the lessons of this catastrophe so future generations do not experience it again.
It absolutely is about blame for some people and always will be. It is very very obvious when that is the case and thrres little point in us pretending otherwise anymore than pretending some will always seek to exculpate the government.
My general position is that given the current statistics it is very probable that the UK ends up with one of the worst death tallies in the world at the conclusion, such as it is, of all this.
I can well believe that a combination of factors beyond government control contributed to make a very high death tally inevitable.
However, it also seems improbable that there has not been an impact from things within government control which have made an already bad situation worse. Thank goodness they've got vaccination right but there's been plenty of errors along the way pushing a bad outcome to very bad.
Heat and animus will need taking out of this, which I doubt we will get , but perhaps we will as even that Corbynista blogger linked yesterday in a rant about Starmer was able to distinguish the total death toll from the 'many thousand' avoidable ones.
It would seem that there are many on pb.com who would prefer to forget the Covid dead in favour of bashing Meeks over Brexit again.
For shame.
Choices have consequences and never has this been more obvious than with the choices made by various governments in response to Covid.
It is painful to admit that the choices of our government have lead to many tens of thousands of deaths that might otherwise have been avoided. It is easier to pretend that it was inevitable.
This approach leads only to repeating the same mistakes, as the government has done, by refusing to learn from past failures. Criticism of government is a patriotic duty to ensure high standards, but the only criticism some on pb want to see is of the Opposition.
I think we need a two-stage enquiry. The first part should be scientist-led and immediate, with the task not of assigning blame but of assessing what mistakes should not be repeated in the coming months. The second part, which could be held as long away as a year from now, should look at the overall process and who was to blame.
We all make mistakes and trying to recognise and avoid them should not be especially controversial. I think Johnson made repeated errors last year in facile over-optimism, culminating in the disastrous flirtation with a lockdown-free Christmas. However, that was reversed (more or less) at the last moment and he has largely avoided repeating it since; I'd give him credit for that when inquiry stage two comes round. But it is absolutely essential, and not partisan, to demand that we don't make decisions such as loosening travel (in and out) and other restrictions before there is reasonable confidence that the pandemic will not surge back. Or, if you are really anti-lockdown, that such decisions are made explicitly with recognition of the risks - "Yes, there is an X% chance that this decision will allow resurgence, but we think it essential because Y".
Why? The object of the vaccine is to trigger an immune response. It isn't illogical that having two slightly different vaccines might actually provoke a stronger response overall.
Perhaps it's time we stepped back and asked what is wrong with our system that it produces such bad governance? What are the problems with the current incentives and penalties in our system that elevates sub-optimal people into positions of power? Daniel Hannan to the Lords, as Alistair pointed out, being a prime example. Many years ago as an engineering grad I read Peter Senge "The fifth discipline" and I think it has a lot of insights that we could use in politics today.
It is simple and not a thing reserved either to politics or even this country you see it in business and the civil service too.
Above a certain level
1) People are put in charge of things they don't understand 2) People get to move on before the ordure hits the fan 3) The reward for failure is a promotion
Why? The object of the vaccine is to trigger an immune response. It isn't illogical that having two slightly different vaccines might actually provoke a stronger response overall.
Its a joke based on Macron comments. Of course I don't think it is, it is how a number of other established vaccinations already work.
Its great the UK is continuing to do outstanding research, like the REACT study for drugs, we are now doing similar for vaccines.
Putting this out there for bragging rights - I guess we will see Sunak briefed against as having made the wrong calls on COVID, he'll get ditched as CoE, and be replaced by Priti Patel.
I really don't want any of what you're drinking if it occasions dreams ;like that!
The practical time to make use of a public enquiry was in the summer. Understand what went wrong so that we could do it better next time. Having missed that opportunity for the second spike and then openly encouraged a third spike, the public enquiry has to have two aims: 1. What went wrong. How did the UK get it so badly wrong compared to so many others 2. What we do differently in the next pandemic. As well as "don't do that" from point 1 there will also be a deconstruction of the successful clinical trials and vaccination programme so that we can go even faster in future.
We can't avoid this. You can't have 150k dead and expect the people in charge to not answer questions. Forget the politics and look at the death toll - its basic level responsibility to understand what happened as it would be after a train or plane crash, a disaster like Grenfell etc etc. We don't skip this critical stage because its politicians in the frame.
The difference is between an inquiry that learns and one that blames. The former is useful, the latter not so much
Quite. So often there is such a focus on victims and what they want, and who understandably want blood but are also completely predetermined in their conclusions and demanding specific culpability, means its that much harder to actually learn anything.
We need an inquiry, but people will be so set about who to blame we will miss a lot in it.
Interesting topic, but a more useful comparator would be, perhaps, with the number that lose their lives annually in road accidents; or even with the number of potential people that are aborted.
Good morning, everyone.
I mentioned the first of these:
“They number more than all the road deaths in Britain since 1988.”
And yes, I took the trouble to tot this up, but you can add 1987 to that too now, and we’ll probably pass 1986 today.
This is a poor piece of Meeksiana, late in the cycle after his bitter realisation that he was not being received in triumph as pb.com's Messiah.
The UK has not done well (more specifically, England and the devolved administrations have not done well). Happy to see Boris, Mark, Nicola & Arlene sharing the same cell, if you want.
Western Europe has not done well. Happy to see Emmanuel, Angela, Pedro Sanchez, Guiseppe, Antonio join them in the cells.
Of course, there is a special cell reserved for the rulers of Belgium, who are top of the Europe death league (normalized to population).
Eastern Europe has not done well, the PMs of Czechia and Slovenia at least need to be trooping down to join the other politicians in the cells as well. The US, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru have not done well. The cells are filling up.
So, ... Boris would be in real trouble if England had done demonstrably poorer than other countries in Western Europe or the Americas.
As it is, England is not even the poorest performer in the British Isles in the death table. That is Wales (or was, the last time I computed, it is close though).
There appear to be statistical models to suit every prejudice.
According to Google, deaths per million to date are:
...but we've vaccinated over 10,000,000 people, no other metric matters anymore. Although perhaps it should!
Alastair is consumed with his hatred of Boris and in this unbalanced piece it all flows out
I think it an excellent piece. 109,000 deaths on Johnson and Drakeford,'s watch.
Can we absolve Johnson because he got the vaccine right and yet still hang Drakeford for his hand in the death of 109,000 people? Possibly.
I am not absolving anyone and a public enquiry will follow.
However, this piece has no balance and indeed on this week, of all weeks, he makes no reference to his beloved Europe and the objectionable behaviour of their leaders which are likely to have a devastating effect on the peoples of Europe.
I do not see him calling for their resignations
Your comment has no balance, apparently skewed by your hatred of Alastair. Or perhaps idolisation of Boris.
I do not hate but Alastair has long lost all balance on Boris
And if you follow my posts you will have seen me critise Boris and I have said he is not the person for covid
You do say that some days. Other days you say anyone else criticising the PM should not be allowed to say it. Hard to keep up.
Alastair can say what he likes, as can everyone on here, but it is right to put his anti brexit anti Boris mantra into context and the unbalanced nature of his piece.
Remember, here in Wales Boris was not the First Minister and Drakeford who is has had a far worse covid crisis than Boris but no mention in the piece of the role of the devolved administrations who, whether he likes it or not, are just as involved in the outcomes as Boris
Something about splinters, planks and eyes comes to mind when I read your blind defence of Johnson and vitriolic attacks on Drakeford.
There is no blind defence of Boris if you read my posts, but you have not suffered the health and education issues in Wales, as have my family, and then witnessed Drakeford's actions on covid
Is your impression that Drakeford has improved in the last few months? The rollout seems to be reasonable there. Is he being a bit Boris-ey, and either learning from experience or someone is sitting on his head?
Drakeford has certainly realised the dangers of a slow vaccine rollout, and so things have begun to move a lot more quickly.
It looks as though Wales won't be bottom of the 'Vaccine Four Nations', that is looking like Scotland.
Other than that, Drakeford is Drakeford.
He is a shaggy, giant sloth kinda person. Large, lumbering and with poor posture, but not without a certain pathos.
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
Most of those comments could apply to Vietnam. And they have a large land border with China. But their ruthlessness in closing borders and enforcing quarantine mean they’ve been practically unaffected.
Whether a democratic government could have got away with locking travellers up in army camps with no WiFi for two weeks is another question, but it worked for them.
A year ago was probably the time to close borders. Whether there would have been any appetite for it on 4 February 2020 I don't know.
If the choice had been close pubs, tourist attractions and schools or close borders, I think people would have taken it.
And that was the choice, and it’s a choice that’s only become starker with hindsight.
There were many choices made in the pandemic, some good some bad. One issue I have though is people are trying to lay all the bad ones, or all the good ones on politicians depending on their tribal affiliation.
I think if an enquiry is to be any use we need to find out who made the bad decisions, look at the information at the time and then judge if it was reasonable.
For example
Not closing the border.....bad....definitely Tory fault
A Normal christmas.....bad....definitely Tory fault
Initial poor test.....well I am not so convinced as we have heard that was due to PHE wanting to keep all testing in house.
Shipping covid positive people from hospitals to care homes...again I want to know who made that decision. I can well imagine it might be at a trust level, nhs level. It may well be the first thing politicians knew about that being done was when care home patients started dying.
In short there will be mistakes being made all the way up and down organisations. If we are to do better we have to identify all the bad decisions and work out where we could have done better.
I don't think trying to lay it all on politicians actually necessarily helps
Yep, that pretty much seemed to be what he was about to say until he realised he shouldn't.
Right mess of an interview to be honest.
Meanwhile:
Sir Iain Duncan Smith: "We have to be careful we don't hand over the Government to the scientists. When we say we're following the science, sometimes it has been a case of following the scientists."
(Telegraph)
That’s the issue.
Incidentally as far as I can tell I’ve been entirely consistent in blaming politicians, scientists, civil servants and many ordinary people for too many stupid mistakes in this pandemic.
Equally, it hasn’t been easy and mistakes were inevitable.
What frustrates the hell out of me is not that mistakes were made, or even that obvious mistakes were made, but that the government (including the Civil Service) is making *the same mistakes over and over again* because that implies they are not examining their performance to see how it could be improved.
And that really is an issue, and an unforgivable one.
Anyway, time for work.
Problem there is that "opening up" is not a clear definition.
I would expect a progressive opening up over a period. Personally my "sensible" criteria for the economy would be Groups 1-9 having two jabs plus three weeks; everybody else having had one jab plus three weeks.
Perhaps it's time we stepped back and asked what is wrong with our system that it produces such bad governance?
I think the question should be reframed. Perhaps it's time we stepped back and asked what is wrong with our system that it produces such a bad electorate.
I yield to no one in my estimation of Boris as an ineffective, solipsistic, doltish twat. But we are a long way from blaming 100k deaths on him just yet.
He amongst other things had to deal with the British Public. The party-going, who are you looking at, fuck authority, illegal rave, because I can, don't you know who I am, chianti-swigging, Caribbean holiday taking, Central line commuting, Cheltenham going British public.
In February we all watched, horrified, the welders in China. And there has been no shortage of vitriol directed against the PRC since then. Yet not for its Covid handling.
The strategy has been perfectly intelligible and he literally told us in March what it was. It has been whack-a-mole. The virus emerges, it is suppressed. It then re-emerges, and then is suppressed again. In the meantime a trickle of economic and educational activity has been allowed.
So we are back in lockdown, albeit with a vaccine. As are many other places. Of course we would like to be out of it.
"If only he'd gone hard and early..."
Except that's a classic can't get to there from here problem. We would have had to go through the hard and early and although I am neither a viral immunologist nor a behavioural psychologist, I know that would have come with problems also.
As usual, an eloquent piece by Mr Meeks. However, it makes the usual mistakes of blaming Boris/The Tories without actually answering (or even asking) why so many deaths?
I've seen lots of opinion:
We should have locked down sooner/longer (yes, but arguing for that, one must consider the economic and mental health wellbeing. This is very well encapsulated with Cyclefree's family experience)
We should have closed the airports (yes, but aren't there statistics showing only a small percentage of cases attributable to open airports)
How can Australia and New Zealand deal with it effectively but we can't (yes, but what are the differences in population density, BAME communities, obesity levels etc.)
OK, what about Germany, they did well last year, we should have done what they did (yes, but what exactly was that. As far as I can see it is summarised as 'Did lots of testing'. OK, so why didn't we? Did we not have the kit or infrastructure? Was our testing regime too centralised and if so, why is that?)
We should have introduced a circuit breaker in September (yes, but where is the evidence that a two week circuit breaker works)
We should never have relaxed the rules at Christmas (yes but government advice was to 'only meet your Christmas bubble in private homes or in your garden, places of worship, or public outdoor spaces. only see your bubble on Christmas Day'. From what I have seen on PB, I don't think that I saw any comments that suggested anyone was going to ignore that advice and many were cancelling Christmas - I admit I may have missed any comments to the contrary. If the population in general followed government advice, why did we see such a post Christmas spike in cases).
I could go on, but hopefully, you get my drift. Lazily invoking Royal Wootton Bassett and war deaths makes for articulate commentary in a novel (have we seen SeanT and Mr Meeks at the same time in the same room?), but does it actually add to what we should be doing and, more importantly why are our numbers so high and what could we have done to prevent or mitigate this tragedy. If all we can say is "The government has benefited from this human failing." (and the observant will notice the full stop) then we can see what the real reason behind this piece is. Blame is easy if you never have to take responsibility, just look at the TikTok video of the young gentleman having a go at Chris Whitty. Did anyone think that it was remotely helpful? As the vaccines help to drag us out of this awful mess, let's have a real look at what we could do better, and learn from our mistakes. Put in place procedures, structures and organisations that will make us better prepared. I suspect this is not the last Covid or similar disaster. Whatever stripe of party is in power will thank us if we take a proper look at what we can do better rather than engage in a tribal blame game.
Putting this out there for bragging rights - I guess we will see Sunak briefed against as having made the wrong calls on COVID, he'll get ditched as CoE, and be replaced by Priti Patel.
Mentions of Brexit above the line: none (because it was irrelevant). Mentions of Brexit below the line by government acolytes desperate to deflect from catastrophic failure: too numerous to count.
There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse in the pursuit of Brexit.
Putting this out there for bragging rights - I guess we will see Sunak briefed against as having made the wrong calls on COVID, he'll get ditched as CoE, and be replaced by Priti Patel.
Perhaps it's time we stepped back and asked what is wrong with our system that it produces such bad governance? What are the problems with the current incentives and penalties in our system that elevates sub-optimal people into positions of power? Daniel Hannan to the Lords, as Alistair pointed out, being a prime example. Many years ago as an engineering grad I read Peter Senge "The fifth discipline" and I think it has a lot of insights that we could use in politics today.
Dominic Cummings asked that very valid question but concluded the answer was for Dominic Cummings to run everything. Inevitably, that proved beyond him.
I never realised we had so many Boris lovers on here. It's almost Trumpesque. If there's one thing the Trump phenomenon taught us it's that criticism is useless. They'll answer with a slogan.
All I'll say is I've little doubt that Johnson put personal popularity above his responsibility as Prime Minister and if we'd had-dare I say it -Theresa May as PM I've little doubt the death toll would have been less. Probably considerably less.
Thr notion that Cockney Covid came from no where is an absolute cop out.
Cases were rising from the end of Summer. People on here were wittering about it all looking linear not exponential. All the while deaths were progressing at a perfect exponential rise, doubling every 2 weeks, from the start of September
And the decision to increase restrictions was kicked down road again and again.
Even without the variant the country was perfectly setup to be fucked over winter because of the state of denial over autumn.
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
Most of those comments could apply to Vietnam. And they have a large land border with China. But their ruthlessness in closing borders and enforcing quarantine mean they’ve been practically unaffected.
Whether a democratic government could have got away with locking travellers up in army camps with no WiFi for two weeks is another question, but it worked for them.
New Zealand and Australia are better comparators albeit they have a considerable advantage in distance over us.
I cannot help feeling that class had a lot to do with this. Rules may be appropriate for the little people going to Spain for their drunken breaks but a professional and important man needs to ski, needs to go on oh so important business trips, rules are not for the likes of us. The result was a liberal scattering of Covid into our communities in an almost random fashion that proved extremely hard to control plus some new variants on top. And death, lots of death.
As I understand it, Australians have been prevented from leaving their country. Most people entering the UK are British people who went abroad a few days ago. Yet there is no attempt to stop people travelling for inessential reasons.
The gov are now asking people to state the nature of their trip, but there doesn't seem to be much evidence of them refusing to let people into airports.
The biggest problem with travel is behavioral. Those traveling now are the sort of people who think it's okay to travel during a global pandemic. They're also the sort of people who think they don't need to quarantine if they're not sick, or that going back to work is more important. Sadly, imposing proper quarantine in hotels, with no exceptions, is the only way to stop new variants being imported.
This is a poor piece of Meeksiana, late in the cycle after his bitter realisation that he was not being received in triumph as pb.com's Messiah.
The UK has not done well (more specifically, England and the devolved administrations have not done well). Happy to see Boris, Mark, Nicola & Arlene sharing the same cell, if you want.
Western Europe has not done well. Happy to see Emmanuel, Angela, Pedro Sanchez, Guiseppe, Antonio join them in the cells.
Of course, there is a special cell reserved for the rulers of Belgium, who are top of the Europe death league (normalized to population).
Eastern Europe has not done well, the PMs of Czechia and Slovenia at least need to be trooping down to join the other politicians in the cells as well. The US, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru have not done well. The cells are filling up.
So, ... Boris would be in real trouble if England had done demonstrably poorer than other countries in Western Europe or the Americas.
As it is, England is not even the poorest performer in the British Isles in the death table. That is Wales (or was, the last time I computed, it is close though).
There appear to be statistical models to suit every prejudice.
According to Google, deaths per million to date are:
Why? The object of the vaccine is to trigger an immune response. It isn't illogical that having two slightly different vaccines might actually provoke a stronger response overall.
He was being ironic - wrt something Macron said about AZN.
The public think the government has continued to do too little too late
Approval of the government’s Covid handling is up very slightly on last week, now at a net approval of -18% (51% disapprove, 33% approve) compared to -20% a fortnight ago (50% disapprove, vs 30% approve).
This is in the context of two thirds (68%) agreeing that government should have done more to stop the spread of Coronavirus (25% believe they did ‘all they reasonably could’) and 61% believing the government had the information available to make better decisions (28% believe they made “the best decisions based on the information available to them at the time”). On the other side, 56% think the government generally did follow the scientific advice, 34% believe they generally did not.
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
Most of those comments could apply to Vietnam. And they have a large land border with China. But their ruthlessness in closing borders and enforcing quarantine mean they’ve been practically unaffected.
Whether a democratic government could have got away with locking travellers up in army camps with no WiFi for two weeks is another question, but it worked for them.
New Zealand and Australia are better comparators albeit they have a considerable advantage in distance over us.
I cannot help feeling that class had a lot to do with this. Rules may be appropriate for the little people going to Spain for their drunken breaks but a professional and important man needs to ski, needs to go on oh so important business trips, rules are not for the likes of us. The result was a liberal scattering of Covid into our communities in an almost random fashion that proved extremely hard to control plus some new variants on top. And death, lots of death.
As I understand it, Australians have been prevented from leaving their country. Most people entering the UK are British people who went abroad a few days ago. Yet there is no attempt to stop people travelling for inessential reasons.
The gov are now asking people to state the nature of their trip, but there doesn't seem to be much evidence of them refusing to let people into airports.
The biggest problem with travel is behavioral. Those traveling now are the sort of people who think it's okay to travel during a global pandemic. They're also the sort of people who think they don't need to quarantine if they're not sick, or that going back to work is more important. Sadly, imposing proper quarantine in hotels, with no exceptions, is the only way to stop new variants being imported.
The new one is claiming you are travelling because one is moving house (to another country)....
As usual, an eloquent piece by Mr Meeks. However, it makes the usual mistakes of blaming Boris/The Tories without actually answering (or even asking) why so many deaths?
I've seen lots of opinion:
[snip].
The piece was already quite long. I agree the causes need to be looked at and those are matters that a full public inquiry needs to review in detail.
I had considered a separate piece on possible causes but since the pb consensus is that it is shockingly provocative even to mention Britain’s exceptionally poor performance, I’m not going to waste my energy on that.
To confirm, SeanT and I have never been seen at the same time in the same room. Which is no doubt a relief for the room.
The practical time to make use of a public enquiry was in the summer. Understand what went wrong so that we could do it better next time. Having missed that opportunity for the second spike and then openly encouraged a third spike, the public enquiry has to have two aims: 1. What went wrong. How did the UK get it so badly wrong compared to so many others 2. What we do differently in the next pandemic. As well as "don't do that" from point 1 there will also be a deconstruction of the successful clinical trials and vaccination programme so that we can go even faster in future.
We can't avoid this. You can't have 150k dead and expect the people in charge to not answer questions. Forget the politics and look at the death toll - its basic level responsibility to understand what happened as it would be after a train or plane crash, a disaster like Grenfell etc etc. We don't skip this critical stage because its politicians in the frame.
The difference is between an inquiry that learns and one that blames. The former is useful, the latter not so much
Quite. So often there is such a focus on victims and what they want, and who understandably want blood but are also completely predetermined in their conclusions and demanding specific culpability, means its that much harder to actually learn anything.
We need an inquiry, but people will be so set about who to blame we will miss a lot in it.
Any inquiry should also definitely examine the role of the media in all this as personally I feel that some of the blame lies with them and their idiocy
This is a poor piece of Meeksiana, late in the cycle after his bitter realisation that he was not being received in triumph as pb.com's Messiah.
The UK has not done well (more specifically, England and the devolved administrations have not done well). Happy to see Boris, Mark, Nicola & Arlene sharing the same cell, if you want.
Western Europe has not done well. Happy to see Emmanuel, Angela, Pedro Sanchez, Guiseppe, Antonio join them in the cells.
Of course, there is a special cell reserved for the rulers of Belgium, who are top of the Europe death league (normalized to population).
Eastern Europe has not done well, the PMs of Czechia and Slovenia at least need to be trooping down to join the other politicians in the cells as well. The US, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru have not done well. The cells are filling up.
So, ... Boris would be in real trouble if England had done demonstrably poorer than other countries in Western Europe or the Americas.
As it is, England is not even the poorest performer in the British Isles in the death table. That is Wales (or was, the last time I computed, it is close though).
There appear to be statistical models to suit every prejudice.
According to Google, deaths per million to date are:
That was my point earlier. - and that is before you consider all the factors impacting death rates in different places or the definitions being used to classify cases or deaths or the reliability of reporting methods or the rile of governments in manipulating and just plain lying about the data. It is a minefield but very easy for those with a political axe to grind.
Interesting topic, but a more useful comparator would be, perhaps, with the number that lose their lives annually in road accidents; or even with the number of potential people that are aborted.
Good morning, everyone.
I mentioned the first of these:
“They number more than all the road deaths in Britain since 1988.”
And yes, I took the trouble to tot this up, but you can add 1987 to that too now, and we’ll probably pass 1986 today.
Equally, the UK has had as near as dammit the safest roads in Europe for at least half a century.
So that metric is skewed against UK on an international comparison, and we get very hysterical about road deaths .
As usual, an eloquent piece by Mr Meeks. However, it makes the usual mistakes of blaming Boris/The Tories without actually answering (or even asking) why so many deaths?
I've seen lots of opinion:
We should have locked down sooner/longer (yes, but arguing for that, one must consider the economic and mental health wellbeing. This is very well encapsulated with Cyclefree's family experience)
We should have closed the airports (yes, but aren't there statistics showing only a small percentage of cases attributable to open airports)
How can Australia and New Zealand deal with it effectively but we can't (yes, but what are the differences in population density, BAME communities, obesity levels etc.)
OK, what about Germany, they did well last year, we should have done what they did (yes, but what exactly was that. As far as I can see it is summarised as 'Did lots of testing'. OK, so why didn't we? Did we not have the kit or infrastructure? Was our testing regime too centralised and if so, why is that?)
We should have introduced a circuit breaker in September (yes, but where is the evidence that a two week circuit breaker works)
We should never have relaxed the rules at Christmas (yes but government advice was to 'only meet your Christmas bubble in private homes or in your garden, places of worship, or public outdoor spaces. only see your bubble on Christmas Day'. From what I have seen on PB, I don't think that I saw any comments that suggested anyone was going to ignore that advice and many were cancelling Christmas - I admit I may have missed any comments to the contrary. If the population in general followed government advice, why did we see such a post Christmas spike in cases).
I could go on, but hopefully, you get my drift. Lazily invoking Royal Wootton Bassett and war deaths makes for articulate commentary in a novel (have we seen SeanT and Mr Meeks at the same time in the same room?), but does it actually add to what we should be doing and, more importantly why are our numbers so high and what could we have done to prevent or mitigate this tragedy. If all we can say is "The government has benefited from this human failing." (and the observant will notice the full stop) then we can see what the real reason behind this piece is. Blame is easy if you never have to take responsibility, just look at the TikTok video of the young gentleman having a go at Chris Whitty. Did anyone think that it was remotely helpful? As the vaccines help to drag us out of this awful mess, let's have a real look at what we could do better, and learn from our mistakes. Put in place procedures, structures and organisations that will make us better prepared. I suspect this is not the last Covid or similar disaster. Whatever stripe of party is in power will thank us if we take a proper look at what we can do better rather than engage in a tribal blame game.
I think you are making the mistake of treating these as independent variables. It is, in fact, the cumulative and interactive effect of all of these poor decisions (and others) that is the trouble.
To take but one example - the impact on Cyclefree's family would have been far less had there been more and better work done on business support, with better planning, notice, and criteria for entering and leaving lockdown. (For context, I am also in the "small hospitality business" in a small way, and we got keys to new premises *during* lockdown I, so I appreciate the issues; clearly the same applies to e.g. home schooling, identifying keyworkers.)
All of this was somewhat forgivable during Lockdown I (notwithstanding the disbanding/failure of pandemic planning pre-Covid) but to repeat the same errors the second time can surely be attributed to "now is not the time to learn". Now is *exactly* the time to learn, given we clearly haven't learned yet.
Well I guess that's what happens when you lose your first three choice centre backs to season ending injuries, which required two midfielders to play centre back. We lose so much when Henderson doesn't play midfield, I think since October 2017 Liverpool have only lost 4 PL matches in which Henderson started in midfield.
Our most creative player is still suffering from the effects of Covid-19.
Our two main summer signings have had long injuries, Thiago, like VVD was the victim of the thugs of Dirty Everton, whilst Jota is still out.
When Man City win the title they should give Jordan Pickford a medal.
This is a poor piece of Meeksiana, late in the cycle after his bitter realisation that he was not being received in triumph as pb.com's Messiah.
The UK has not done well (more specifically, England and the devolved administrations have not done well). Happy to see Boris, Mark, Nicola & Arlene sharing the same cell, if you want.
Western Europe has not done well. Happy to see Emmanuel, Angela, Pedro Sanchez, Guiseppe, Antonio join them in the cells.
Of course, there is a special cell reserved for the rulers of Belgium, who are top of the Europe death league (normalized to population).
Eastern Europe has not done well, the PMs of Czechia and Slovenia at least need to be trooping down to join the other politicians in the cells as well. The US, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru have not done well. The cells are filling up.
So, ... Boris would be in real trouble if England had done demonstrably poorer than other countries in Western Europe or the Americas.
As it is, England is not even the poorest performer in the British Isles in the death table. That is Wales (or was, the last time I computed, it is close though).
There appear to be statistical models to suit every prejudice.
According to Google, deaths per million to date are:
As usual, an eloquent piece by Mr Meeks. However, it makes the usual mistakes of blaming Boris/The Tories without actually answering (or even asking) why so many deaths?
I've seen lots of opinion:
[snip].
The piece was already quite long. I agree the causes need to be looked at and those are matters that a full public inquiry needs to review in detail.
I had considered a separate piece on possible causes but since the pb consensus is that it is shockingly provocative even to mention Britain’s exceptionally poor performance, I’m not going to waste my energy on that.
To confirm, SeanT and I have never been seen at the same time in the same room. Which is no doubt a relief for the room.
A really thought provoking piece, for anyone who isn't a Government loyalist. Thank you. It is a question.that needs an answer, however the answer you will get here is...but we've vaccinated 10,000,000 people.
Alastair is right to point out that the death toll from this pernicious disease has been dreadful and the preliminary evidence is that it is slightly more dreadful here than elsewhere. That may not ultimately prove to be the case, the uncertainty with international comparisons is large, but the preliminary evidence is against us.
Why is an important question and it is not one that this piece tries to address. If we hypothesise that things went wrong what was it that went wrong?
For me, the most obvious and egregious errors relate to border control or the lack of them. Yesterday at his press conference Boris was claiming that we now had some of the toughest border controls in the world. If that had been the case a year ago tens of thousands would not have died of Covid (many of the them may well have died of other things of course).
Even yesterday Boris was explaining that this was a difficult balancing act given the need for the UK to trade, the need to import nearly half our food, the very open nature of our economy. This is undoubtedly true and these judgments are not easy but the first duty of the government is to protect its people and the likes of Grant Shapps and the airline lobby have a major responsibility. We must learn from this mistake.
Of course the government has done a lot of things well too, notably some of the economic measures and the vaccines. But I personally have no problem in recognising that serious mistakes that cost lives were made.
Most of those comments could apply to Vietnam. And they have a large land border with China. But their ruthlessness in closing borders and enforcing quarantine mean they’ve been practically unaffected.
Whether a democratic government could have got away with locking travellers up in army camps with no WiFi for two weeks is another question, but it worked for them.
A year ago was probably the time to close borders. Whether there would have been any appetite for it on 4 February 2020 I don't know.
None at all, given how heavily Trump was criticised when he did so (partially and ineffectively, as it turned out).
But we should have implemented testing and tracing at the border far earlier than we did.
Interesting topic, but a more useful comparator would be, perhaps, with the number that lose their lives annually in road accidents; or even with the number of potential people that are aborted.
Good morning, everyone.
I mentioned the first of these:
“They number more than all the road deaths in Britain since 1988.”
And yes, I took the trouble to tot this up, but you can add 1987 to that too now, and we’ll probably pass 1986 today.
Equally, the UK has had as near as dammit the safest roads in Europe for at least half a century.
So that metric is skewed against UK on an international comparison, and we get very hysterical about road deaths .
That’s a fair point. I included that statistic because, like war deaths, road deaths are very salient. I agree that we should not make international comparisons on that metric.
This is a poor piece of Meeksiana, late in the cycle after his bitter realisation that he was not being received in triumph as pb.com's Messiah.
The UK has not done well (more specifically, England and the devolved administrations have not done well). Happy to see Boris, Mark, Nicola & Arlene sharing the same cell, if you want.
Western Europe has not done well. Happy to see Emmanuel, Angela, Pedro Sanchez, Guiseppe, Antonio join them in the cells.
Of course, there is a special cell reserved for the rulers of Belgium, who are top of the Europe death league (normalized to population).
Eastern Europe has not done well, the PMs of Czechia and Slovenia at least need to be trooping down to join the other politicians in the cells as well. The US, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru have not done well. The cells are filling up.
So, ... Boris would be in real trouble if England had done demonstrably poorer than other countries in Western Europe or the Americas.
As it is, England is not even the poorest performer in the British Isles in the death table. That is Wales (or was, the last time I computed, it is close though).
There appear to be statistical models to suit every prejudice.
According to Google, deaths per million to date are:
That was my point earlier. - and that is before you consider all the factors impacting death rates in different places or the definitions being used to classify cases or deaths or the reliability of reporting methods or the rile of governments in manipulating and just plain lying about the data. It is a minefield but very easy for those with a political axe to grind.
Dunno what axe, political or otherwise, Google has to grind...
The public think the government has continued to do too little too late
Approval of the government’s Covid handling is up very slightly on last week, now at a net approval of -18% (51% disapprove, 33% approve) compared to -20% a fortnight ago (50% disapprove, vs 30% approve).
This is in the context of two thirds (68%) agreeing that government should have done more to stop the spread of Coronavirus (25% believe they did ‘all they reasonably could’) and 61% believing the government had the information available to make better decisions (28% believe they made “the best decisions based on the information available to them at the time”). On the other side, 56% think the government generally did follow the scientific advice, 34% believe they generally did not.
Worth pointing out that while yes the government could have done more. Often the more that people think it could have done are different.
For example 1) dont reopen schools and universities 2) don't reopen pubs and restaurants 3) close the borders
I suspect many people will say 1 or 2 of those should have been done, few would subscribe to all 3
For all their whining, Alastair’s milkshake sure brings all the BJ apologists and fawners to his yard.
Trolling has a tendency to get a response all over the internet.
Asking the people responsible for deaths to take responsibility for their actions is not "trolling". The corpses are not some piece of political theatre. They are people.
There is no single person responsible. We are all responsible for our own actions.
Is the PM responsible for the actions of Piers Corbyn and Toby Young and everyone they've influenced?
I hope we never live in a country where one person is responsible for everyone.
I want the PM - like everyone else - to take personal responsibility for his actions. Are you saying he is blameless?
No. I think he is human, I think some mistakes have been made, some things have gone very well. Lessons should be learnt and he's accepted responsibility. Responsibility doesn't mean resigning and passing the buck for dealing with your actions onto somebody else.
Quite frankly the most important thing of the pandemic is not the death toll, it is how to end this dystopian nightmare. The answer to that is surely vaccines and the government has done a good job on that, the most important issue of all.
On average over 50,000 people die every single month in the UK normal circumstances. Over 600,000 people normally die per year in the UK in normal circumstances. For every month this pandemic drags on past the point it could be over that is an average of 50,000 people who have lost their last month of their life without seeing their family - time they will never get back.
This pandemic hasn't just cost 100,000 lives - this pandemic and the restrictions imposed will have seen about 700,000 people die in the past year who were unable to see their families, unable to live the end of their lives as normal.
Quibbling over a few thousand excess death variance is silly pointscoring nonsense. End the pandemic, give everyone their lives back and learn lessons.
100,000 excess deaths is a big deal and we need to learn the lessons. Boris is responsible and accountable for the government. The buck stops with him for better or worse.
Is it 100,000 excess deaths? I thought it was 100,000 deaths within 28 days of a positive test
The government and its supporters loves to make international comparisons right up until the moment that they are unfavourable. At that point they somehow become inappropriate and impossible to make.
For all their whining, Alastair’s milkshake sure brings all the BJ apologists and fawners to his yard.
Trolling has a tendency to get a response all over the internet.
Asking the people responsible for deaths to take responsibility for their actions is not "trolling". The corpses are not some piece of political theatre. They are people.
There is no single person responsible. We are all responsible for our own actions.
Is the PM responsible for the actions of Piers Corbyn and Toby Young and everyone they've influenced?
I hope we never live in a country where one person is responsible for everyone.
I want the PM - like everyone else - to take personal responsibility for his actions. Are you saying he is blameless?
No. I think he is human, I think some mistakes have been made, some things have gone very well. Lessons should be learnt and he's accepted responsibility. Responsibility doesn't mean resigning and passing the buck for dealing with your actions onto somebody else.
Quite frankly the most important thing of the pandemic is not the death toll, it is how to end this dystopian nightmare. The answer to that is surely vaccines and the government has done a good job on that, the most important issue of all.
On average over 50,000 people die every single month in the UK normal circumstances. Over 600,000 people normally die per year in the UK in normal circumstances. For every month this pandemic drags on past the point it could be over that is an average of 50,000 people who have lost their last month of their life without seeing their family - time they will never get back.
This pandemic hasn't just cost 100,000 lives - this pandemic and the restrictions imposed will have seen about 700,000 people die in the past year who were unable to see their families, unable to live the end of their lives as normal.
Quibbling over a few thousand excess death variance is silly pointscoring nonsense. End the pandemic, give everyone their lives back and learn lessons.
100,000 excess deaths is a big deal and we need to learn the lessons. Boris is responsible and accountable for the government. The buck stops with him for better or worse.
Is it 100,000 excess deaths? I thought it was 100,000 deaths within 28 days of a positive test
Mr. Eagles, there's going to be a natural tendency for people to opt for too little/too late.
If we'd only done more is an appealing sentiment. But more doesn't mean better. More lockdown could've created more damage. Standard medical procedures are being delayed. And COVID-19 isn't the only deadly disease in the world.
The Government does deserve significant criticism in various areas (lack of quarantine for arrivals, care homes etc). And praise for the excellent vaccine situation.
Said it many times, but it'd help if our media weren't idiots. The political media can't even cover politics adequately so it's little surprise their innumeracy and failure to understand medicine has led to some very poor reporting (and occasions of rampant hypocrisy) when a healthcare crisis is filtered through a political lens.
Mr F makes a good point. There's a question in my mind about definition, too. When we compare deaths from Covid among the four nations (If N Ireland is a nation) then we are comparing like with like. Everyone defines them as 'deaths which have occurred within 28 days of a positive test'. Whether or not, incidentally Covid WAS the cause of death. Is that a WHO standard definition? Is it even (whisper it) an EU definition.? Or a Russian or Brazilian one?
The public think the government has continued to do too little too late
Approval of the government’s Covid handling is up very slightly on last week, now at a net approval of -18% (51% disapprove, 33% approve) compared to -20% a fortnight ago (50% disapprove, vs 30% approve).
This is in the context of two thirds (68%) agreeing that government should have done more to stop the spread of Coronavirus (25% believe they did ‘all they reasonably could’) and 61% believing the government had the information available to make better decisions (28% believe they made “the best decisions based on the information available to them at the time”). On the other side, 56% think the government generally did follow the scientific advice, 34% believe they generally did not.
Worth pointing out that while yes the government could have done more. Often the more that people think it could have done are different.
For example 1) dont reopen schools and universities 2) don't reopen pubs and restaurants 3) close the borders
I suspect many people will say 1 or 2 of those should have been done, few would subscribe to all 3
Right now, schools and restaurants are closed, and borders are open.
The quickest way to get schools, and then restaurants, open, is to close borders.
Why? The object of the vaccine is to trigger an immune response. It isn't illogical that having two slightly different vaccines might actually provoke a stronger response overall.
He was being ironic - wrt something Macron said about AZN.
I believe that there was some lab experiments that seem to suggest mixing vaccines is actually more effective. Which is what led to this trial.
As usual, an eloquent piece by Mr Meeks. However, it makes the usual mistakes of blaming Boris/The Tories without actually answering (or even asking) why so many deaths?
I've seen lots of opinion:
We should have locked down sooner/longer (yes, but arguing for that, one must consider the economic and mental health wellbeing. This is very well encapsulated with Cyclefree's family experience)
We should have closed the airports (yes, but aren't there statistics showing only a small percentage of cases attributable to open airports)
How can Australia and New Zealand deal with it effectively but we can't (yes, but what are the differences in population density, BAME communities, obesity levels etc.)
OK, what about Germany, they did well last year, we should have done what they did (yes, but what exactly was that. As far as I can see it is summarised as 'Did lots of testing'. OK, so why didn't we? Did we not have the kit or infrastructure? Was our testing regime too centralised and if so, why is that?)
We should have introduced a circuit breaker in September (yes, but where is the evidence that a two week circuit breaker works)
We should never have relaxed the rules at Christmas (yes but government advice was to 'only meet your Christmas bubble in private homes or in your garden, places of worship, or public outdoor spaces. only see your bubble on Christmas Day'. From what I have seen on PB, I don't think that I saw any comments that suggested anyone was going to ignore that advice and many were cancelling Christmas - I admit I may have missed any comments to the contrary. If the population in general followed government advice, why did we see such a post Christmas spike in cases).
I could go on, but hopefully, you get my drift. Lazily invoking Royal Wootton Bassett and war deaths makes for articulate commentary in a novel (have we seen SeanT and Mr Meeks at the same time in the same room?), but does it actually add to what we should be doing and, more importantly why are our numbers so high and what could we have done to prevent or mitigate this tragedy. If all we can say is "The government has benefited from this human failing." (and the observant will notice the full stop) then we can see what the real reason behind this piece is. Blame is easy if you never have to take responsibility, just look at the TikTok video of the young gentleman having a go at Chris Whitty. Did anyone think that it was remotely helpful? As the vaccines help to drag us out of this awful mess, let's have a real look at what we could do better, and learn from our mistakes. Put in place procedures, structures and organisations that will make us better prepared. I suspect this is not the last Covid or similar disaster. Whatever stripe of party is in power will thank us if we take a proper look at what we can do better rather than engage in a tribal blame game.
I am sure any inquiry will identify a range of factors, and things that went well and went badly.
The vaccine development and (so far) rollout clearly went well, but I would add having roughly the right balance (for our society) between compulsion and discretion, and involving scientists in communication from the beginning (giving Brits a higher level of education about the virus, which is showing now in low vaccine hesitancy) as other factors that went well. As well, broadly, the package of economic support.
Against that, there is a shopping list of things that went badly, leading to what is to date a very poor relative performance.
Some of this will be due to factors beyond our immediate control - the age distribution and underlying health of the population, the proportion of BAME, prevalence of care homes, our shorter summer and indoor lifestyle, bad luck with mutations, and the natural resistance of Brits to being told what not to do.
Some will be due to underlying factors that we could only have mitigated at cost of severe disruption, most notably our (and particularly London's) global interconnectedness, which meant it would have been difficult to prevent any virus seeding itself here.
Some will be down to the government, most notably being slow to respond at the outset and with confused early messages on masks, initial shortage of PPE, sending patients untested back to care homes, the forever chopping and changing of rules, the pack of lies from Cummings, the fiasco with schools, the mess over Christmas, and all the promises of world beating test and trace that came to nothing.
Some of the good things are of course also due to factors beyond the government's immediate control, such as a centralised health service with a good single database for managing the vaccine programme, our world class medical research and domestic pharma industry, an intelligent and generally non-partisan national broadcaster from which a majority still gets its information, and a 'keep calm and carry on culture'.
I don't think we will be back to normal for a very long time. I've noticed that some of the people working on vaccines are now explicitly talking about the next round of vaccination in the UK this coming autumn/winter. At best we will be looking at the "new normal" with extensive vaccination on a regular basis and the use of NPIs when cases surge.
Perhaps it's time we stepped back and asked what is wrong with our system that it produces such bad governance? What are the problems with the current incentives and penalties in our system that elevates sub-optimal people into positions of power? Daniel Hannan to the Lords, as Alistair pointed out, being a prime example. Many years ago as an engineering grad I read Peter Senge "The fifth discipline" and I think it has a lot of insights that we could use in politics today.
It is simple and not a thing reserved either to politics or even this country you see it in business and the civil service too.
Above a certain level
1) People are put in charge of things they don't understand 2) People get to move on before the ordure hits the fan 3) The reward for failure is a promotion
A good post, but how do you improve it. Here are a few suggestions (and I know we can all point out situations elsewhere where this has worked equally badly):
a) Change our system from confrontational to consensus politics b) One way of achieving a) is to dump the 2 party system c) Separate the Government more from the law making and scrutiny role (currently it is a conflict of interest and appointments are made from a pool of just over 325 with limited qualifications for dozens of roles d) Beef up the scrutiny to actually be effective
Our MPs are far too partisan and very few have any expertise in running a Govt or any knowledge on the Depts they run (and as you say they get shuffled along anyway if they do). How many for instance actually have knowledge of health care, the military, science, foreign affairs, etc. if you are going to appoint from outside (eg senior diplomat as For Sec) then the scrutiny has to be top notch and not what we have now.
I never realised we had so many Boris lovers on here. It's almost Trumpesque. If there's one thing the Trump phenomenon taught us it's that criticism is useless. They'll answer with a slogan.
All I'll say is I've little doubt that Johnson put personal popularity above his responsibility as Prime Minister and if we'd had-dare I say it -Theresa May as PM I've little doubt the death toll would have been less. Probably considerably less.
That might be true to date, but May would have likely gone with the EU for vaccines, and that would have been a big mistake, both right now and in the future.
The practical time to make use of a public enquiry was in the summer. Understand what went wrong so that we could do it better next time. Having missed that opportunity for the second spike and then openly encouraged a third spike, the public enquiry has to have two aims: 1. What went wrong. How did the UK get it so badly wrong compared to so many others 2. What we do differently in the next pandemic. As well as "don't do that" from point 1 there will also be a deconstruction of the successful clinical trials and vaccination programme so that we can go even faster in future.
We can't avoid this. You can't have 150k dead and expect the people in charge to not answer questions. Forget the politics and look at the death toll - its basic level responsibility to understand what happened as it would be after a train or plane crash, a disaster like Grenfell etc etc. We don't skip this critical stage because its politicians in the frame.
The difference is between an inquiry that learns and one that blames...
I don't think we will be back to normal for a very long time. I've noticed that some of the people working on vaccines are now explicitly talking about the next round of vaccination in the UK this coming autumn/winter. At best we will be looking at the "new normal" with extensive vaccination on a regular basis and the use of NPIs when cases surge.
It depends on whether 'back to normal' includes international travel or not.
It will take a few months to get 'back to normal' in the UK if we restrict international travel.
But if we allow international travel then we are continually at risk until worldwide vaccination has taken place.
Comments
I think if an enquiry is to be any use we need to find out who made the bad decisions, look at the information at the time and then judge if it was reasonable.
For example
Not closing the border.....bad....definitely Tory fault
A Normal christmas.....bad....definitely Tory fault
Initial poor test.....well I am not so convinced as we have heard that was due to PHE wanting to keep all testing in house.
Shipping covid positive people from hospitals to care homes...again I want to know who made that decision. I can well imagine it might be at a trust level, nhs level. It may well be the first thing politicians knew about that being done was when care home patients started dying.
In short there will be mistakes being made all the way up and down organisations. If we are to do better we have to identify all the bad decisions and work out where we could have done better.
I don't think trying to lay it all on politicians actually necessarily helps
Right mess of an interview to be honest.
Meanwhile:
Sir Iain Duncan Smith: "We have to be careful we don't hand over the Government to the scientists. When we say we're following the science, sometimes it has been a case of following the scientists."
(Telegraph)
https://www.politico.eu/article/blame-ursula-von-der-leyen-eu-vaccine-debacle/
These new variants are going very quickly around the world, severe travel restrictions are needed, before we end up with something resistant to the vaccines and we are back to square one.
But even so, ISTR that a very good plan was produced after one dreadful outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which just gathered dust on the shelf. Next time no-one bothered with it at all, except those who remembered and implored the new lot to read it.
Corporate memory isn't good. But we can set up bodies to look for alien life, just in case that ever becomes a threat.
People I know are finding that the range of available coffins is narrower than it was previously. Multiple causes - demand, but also reduced ranges to make it easier to run the business; like supermarkets, it is a retail market.
I'm agreeing with you on the need to memorialise, and provide spaces for reflection on lost friends and family. Which is why I raised remembrance yesterday in the comments, and now I'm wondering about another National Forest somewhere else in the country (that is England - we do these things quite differently by nation; I can't imagine England doing something called a "National Shrine" as there is in Edinburgh, for example). And for Captain Tom I would suggest renaming one of the jewels of small parks in the City, amongst others.
But in the words of Yogi: "it ain't over till it's over".
And I'm agreeing with you on the need for accountability. But not on the international comparisons - these have been problematic throughout. And we don't know how it will turn out yet. The one thing in your favour imo is the relative success of studies for after WW2 started during WW2.
I'd be interested in how you suggest such an enquiry should be run? I have no idea. Given that at Grenfell we had "he can't do it, his skin is the wrong colour" concerns - how do we find a neutral figure or committee?
My current concern wrt UK before Christmas, is EU from Easter to Autumn.
https://twitter.com/citiz_zen/status/1356878764949573632
https://twitter.com/mattwardman/status/1356891678548889601
Some may disagree on "from nowhere". It was Twitter
Incidentally as far as I can tell I’ve been entirely consistent in blaming politicians, scientists, civil servants and many ordinary people for too many stupid mistakes in this pandemic.
Equally, it hasn’t been easy and mistakes were inevitable.
What frustrates the hell out of me is not that mistakes were made, or even that obvious mistakes were made, but that the government (including the Civil Service) is making *the same mistakes over and over again* because that implies they are not examining their performance to see how it could be improved.
And that really is an issue, and an unforgivable one.
Anyway, time for work.
I do not exaggerate, I watched and thought the world truly mad. Whilst Boris is accountable for the decisions he took, it’s far from tThe whole story.
The article is surely right to warn of the dangers of having such a person in leadership.
Going into it wanting to avoid taking someone's scalp is rather more likely than your second alternative.
If there is a pandemic in the next 30-60 years we will deal with a bit better because of the faded memories of this one.
If the next pandemic is more than 60 years from now we will make similar mistakes as it will all seem so alien at the start.
I warned in July that enforced mask wearing would have a detrimental effect as people would stop socially distancing as they would be "protected" by the mask.
Unfortunately the facts have completely vindicated my warnings and with near 100% mask wearing in enclosed public spaces we have nearly double the number of people in hospital compared to April when there was no mask wearing.
How is that possible if masks work so well?
Its like a football team adopting a defensive system that increases goals conceded by double and the Manager then telling Gary Liniker that of course the new system works brilliantly, are you stupid or something..
As Spock would say the case for masks is illogical.
This is a poor piece of Meeksiana, late in the cycle after his bitter realisation that he was not being received in triumph as pb.com's Messiah.
The UK has not done well (more specifically, England and the devolved administrations have not done well). Happy to see Boris, Mark, Nicola & Arlene sharing the same cell, if you want.
Western Europe has not done well. Happy to see Emmanuel, Angela, Pedro Sanchez, Guiseppe, Antonio join them in the cells.
Of course, there is a special cell reserved for the rulers of Belgium, who are top of the Europe death league (normalized to population).
Eastern Europe has not done well, the PMs of Czechia and Slovenia at least need to be trooping down to join the other politicians in the cells as well. The US, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru have not done well. The cells are filling up.
So, ... Boris would be in real trouble if England had done demonstrably poorer than other countries in Western Europe or the Americas.
As it is, England is not even the poorest performer in the British Isles in the death table. That is Wales (or was, the last time I computed, it is close though).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55924433
Pseudo-science....
Can you briefly explain the key difference and how that should affect the response?
My general position is that given the current statistics it is very probable that the UK ends up with one of the worst death tallies in the world at the conclusion, such as it is, of all this.
I can well believe that a combination of factors beyond government control contributed to make a very high death tally inevitable.
However, it also seems improbable that there has not been an impact from things within government control which have made an already bad situation worse. Thank goodness they've got vaccination right but there's been plenty of errors along the way pushing a bad outcome to very bad.
Heat and animus will need taking out of this, which I doubt we will get , but perhaps we will as even that Corbynista blogger linked yesterday in a rant about Starmer was able to distinguish the total death toll from the 'many thousand' avoidable ones.
We all make mistakes and trying to recognise and avoid them should not be especially controversial. I think Johnson made repeated errors last year in facile over-optimism, culminating in the disastrous flirtation with a lockdown-free Christmas. However, that was reversed (more or less) at the last moment and he has largely avoided repeating it since; I'd give him credit for that when inquiry stage two comes round. But it is absolutely essential, and not partisan, to demand that we don't make decisions such as loosening travel (in and out) and other restrictions before there is reasonable confidence that the pandemic will not surge back. Or, if you are really anti-lockdown, that such decisions are made explicitly with recognition of the risks - "Yes, there is an X% chance that this decision will allow resurgence, but we think it essential because Y".
https://twitter.com/simon_telegraph/status/1357245190810009604?s=20
Above a certain level
1) People are put in charge of things they don't understand
2) People get to move on before the ordure hits the fan
3) The reward for failure is a promotion
Its great the UK is continuing to do outstanding research, like the REACT study for drugs, we are now doing similar for vaccines.
We need an inquiry, but people will be so set about who to blame we will miss a lot in it.
“They number more than all the road deaths in Britain since 1988.”
And yes, I took the trouble to tot this up, but you can add 1987 to that too now, and we’ll probably pass 1986 today.
According to Google, deaths per million to date are:
England 1817
Wales 1577
Scotland 1184
NI 1043
https://www.google.com/search?q=english covid deaths&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-m
It looks as though Wales won't be bottom of the 'Vaccine Four Nations', that is looking like Scotland.
Other than that, Drakeford is Drakeford.
He is a shaggy, giant sloth kinda person. Large, lumbering and with poor posture, but not without a certain pathos.
I would expect a progressive opening up over a period. Personally my "sensible" criteria for the economy would be Groups 1-9 having two jabs plus three weeks; everybody else having had one jab plus three weeks.
I yield to no one in my estimation of Boris as an ineffective, solipsistic, doltish twat. But we are a long way from blaming 100k deaths on him just yet.
He amongst other things had to deal with the British Public. The party-going, who are you looking at, fuck authority, illegal rave, because I can, don't you know who I am, chianti-swigging, Caribbean holiday taking, Central line commuting, Cheltenham going British public.
In February we all watched, horrified, the welders in China. And there has been no shortage of vitriol directed against the PRC since then. Yet not for its Covid handling.
The strategy has been perfectly intelligible and he literally told us in March what it was. It has been whack-a-mole. The virus emerges, it is suppressed. It then re-emerges, and then is suppressed again. In the meantime a trickle of economic and educational activity has been allowed.
So we are back in lockdown, albeit with a vaccine. As are many other places. Of course we would like to be out of it.
"If only he'd gone hard and early..."
Except that's a classic can't get to there from here problem. We would have had to go through the hard and early and although I am neither a viral immunologist nor a behavioural psychologist, I know that would have come with problems also.
I've seen lots of opinion:
We should have locked down sooner/longer (yes, but arguing for that, one must consider the economic and mental health wellbeing. This is very well encapsulated with Cyclefree's family experience)
We should have closed the airports (yes, but aren't there statistics showing only a small percentage of cases attributable to open airports)
How can Australia and New Zealand deal with it effectively but we can't (yes, but what are the differences in population density, BAME communities, obesity levels etc.)
OK, what about Germany, they did well last year, we should have done what they did (yes, but what exactly was that. As far as I can see it is summarised as 'Did lots of testing'. OK, so why didn't we? Did we not have the kit or infrastructure? Was our testing regime too centralised and if so, why is that?)
We should have introduced a circuit breaker in September (yes, but where is the evidence that a two week circuit breaker works)
We should never have relaxed the rules at Christmas (yes but government advice was to 'only meet your Christmas bubble in private homes or in your garden, places of worship, or public outdoor spaces. only see your bubble on Christmas Day'. From what I have seen on PB, I don't think that I saw any comments that suggested anyone was going to ignore that advice and many were cancelling Christmas - I admit I may have missed any comments to the contrary. If the population in general followed government advice, why did we see such a post Christmas spike in cases).
I could go on, but hopefully, you get my drift. Lazily invoking Royal Wootton Bassett and war deaths makes for articulate commentary in a novel (have we seen SeanT and Mr Meeks at the same time in the same room?), but does it actually add to what we should be doing and, more importantly why are our numbers so high and what could we have done to prevent or mitigate this tragedy.
If all we can say is "The government has benefited from this human failing." (and the observant will notice the full stop) then we can see what the real reason behind this piece is.
Blame is easy if you never have to take responsibility, just look at the TikTok video of the young gentleman having a go at Chris Whitty. Did anyone think that it was remotely helpful?
As the vaccines help to drag us out of this awful mess, let's have a real look at what we could do better, and learn from our mistakes. Put in place procedures, structures and organisations that will make us better prepared. I suspect this is not the last Covid or similar disaster. Whatever stripe of party is in power will thank us if we take a proper look at what we can do better rather than engage in a tribal blame game.
There is literally nothing Leavers will not excuse in the pursuit of Brexit.
All I'll say is I've little doubt that Johnson put personal popularity above his responsibility as Prime Minister and if we'd had-dare I say it -Theresa May as PM I've little doubt the death toll would have been less. Probably considerably less.
Cases were rising from the end of Summer. People on here were wittering about it all looking linear not exponential. All the while deaths were progressing at a perfect exponential rise, doubling every 2 weeks, from the start of September
And the decision to increase restrictions was kicked down road again and again.
Even without the variant the country was perfectly setup to be fucked over winter because of the state of denial over autumn.
The biggest problem with travel is behavioral. Those traveling now are the sort of people who think it's okay to travel during a global pandemic. They're also the sort of people who think they don't need to quarantine if they're not sick, or that going back to work is more important. Sadly, imposing proper quarantine in hotels, with no exceptions, is the only way to stop new variants being imported.
And I think Wales was worst then, by a whisker.
My own feeling is that we need to work out the excess deaths, so googling or even malcolmg-ing is not enough.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1354472440643125249
and
Opinium
The public think the government has continued to do too little too late
Approval of the government’s Covid handling is up very slightly on last week, now at a net approval of -18% (51% disapprove, 33% approve) compared to -20% a fortnight ago (50% disapprove, vs 30% approve).
This is in the context of two thirds (68%) agreeing that government should have done more to stop the spread of Coronavirus (25% believe they did ‘all they reasonably could’) and 61% believing the government had the information available to make better decisions (28% believe they made “the best decisions based on the information available to them at the time”). On the other side, 56% think the government generally did follow the scientific advice, 34% believe they generally did not.
I had considered a separate piece on possible causes but since the pb consensus is that it is shockingly provocative even to mention Britain’s exceptionally poor performance, I’m not going to waste my energy on that.
To confirm, SeanT and I have never been seen at the same time in the same room. Which is no doubt a relief for the room.
https://twitter.com/johnharris1969/status/1357244496640151552?s=21
So that metric is skewed against UK on an international comparison, and we get very hysterical about road deaths
To take but one example - the impact on Cyclefree's family would have been far less had there been more and better work done on business support, with better planning, notice, and criteria for entering and leaving lockdown. (For context, I am also in the "small hospitality business" in a small way, and we got keys to new premises *during* lockdown I, so I appreciate the issues; clearly the same applies to e.g. home schooling, identifying keyworkers.)
All of this was somewhat forgivable during Lockdown I (notwithstanding the disbanding/failure of pandemic planning pre-Covid) but to repeat the same errors the second time can surely be attributed to "now is not the time to learn". Now is *exactly* the time to learn, given we clearly haven't learned yet.
Well I guess that's what happens when you lose your first three choice centre backs to season ending injuries, which required two midfielders to play centre back. We lose so much when Henderson doesn't play midfield, I think since October 2017 Liverpool have only lost 4 PL matches in which Henderson started in midfield.
Our most creative player is still suffering from the effects of Covid-19.
Our two main summer signings have had long injuries, Thiago, like VVD was the victim of the thugs of Dirty Everton, whilst Jota is still out.
When Man City win the title they should give Jordan Pickford a medal.
But we should have implemented testing and tracing at the border far earlier than we did.
But doesn't mention international travel.
Epic fail.
For example
1) dont reopen schools and universities
2) don't reopen pubs and restaurants
3) close the borders
I suspect many people will say 1 or 2 of those should have been done, few would subscribe to all 3
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-55919040
Mr. Eagles, there's going to be a natural tendency for people to opt for too little/too late.
If we'd only done more is an appealing sentiment. But more doesn't mean better. More lockdown could've created more damage. Standard medical procedures are being delayed. And COVID-19 isn't the only deadly disease in the world.
The Government does deserve significant criticism in various areas (lack of quarantine for arrivals, care homes etc). And praise for the excellent vaccine situation.
Said it many times, but it'd help if our media weren't idiots. The political media can't even cover politics adequately so it's little surprise their innumeracy and failure to understand medicine has led to some very poor reporting (and occasions of rampant hypocrisy) when a healthcare crisis is filtered through a political lens.
Is that a WHO standard definition? Is it even (whisper it) an EU definition.? Or a Russian or Brazilian one?
The quickest way to get schools, and then restaurants, open, is to close borders.
The vaccine development and (so far) rollout clearly went well, but I would add having roughly the right balance (for our society) between compulsion and discretion, and involving scientists in communication from the beginning (giving Brits a higher level of education about the virus, which is showing now in low vaccine hesitancy) as other factors that went well. As well, broadly, the package of economic support.
Against that, there is a shopping list of things that went badly, leading to what is to date a very poor relative performance.
Some of this will be due to factors beyond our immediate control - the age distribution and underlying health of the population, the proportion of BAME, prevalence of care homes, our shorter summer and indoor lifestyle, bad luck with mutations, and the natural resistance of Brits to being told what not to do.
Some will be due to underlying factors that we could only have mitigated at cost of severe disruption, most notably our (and particularly London's) global interconnectedness, which meant it would have been difficult to prevent any virus seeding itself here.
Some will be down to the government, most notably being slow to respond at the outset and with confused early messages on masks, initial shortage of PPE, sending patients untested back to care homes, the forever chopping and changing of rules, the pack of lies from Cummings, the fiasco with schools, the mess over Christmas, and all the promises of world beating test and trace that came to nothing.
Some of the good things are of course also due to factors beyond the government's immediate control, such as a centralised health service with a good single database for managing the vaccine programme, our world class medical research and domestic pharma industry, an intelligent and generally non-partisan national broadcaster from which a majority still gets its information, and a 'keep calm and carry on culture'.
a) Change our system from confrontational to consensus politics
b) One way of achieving a) is to dump the 2 party system
c) Separate the Government more from the law making and scrutiny role (currently it is a conflict of interest and appointments are made from a pool of just over 325 with limited qualifications for dozens of roles
d) Beef up the scrutiny to actually be effective
Our MPs are far too partisan and very few have any expertise in running a Govt or any knowledge on the Depts they run (and as you say they get shuffled along anyway if they do). How many for instance actually have knowledge of health care, the military, science, foreign affairs, etc. if you are going to appoint from outside (eg senior diplomat as For Sec) then the scrutiny has to be top notch and not what we have now.
It will take a few months to get 'back to normal' in the UK if we restrict international travel.
But if we allow international travel then we are continually at risk until worldwide vaccination has taken place.