It's important to remember that locking the population in their houses for 23 hours a day was an absolutely crackers thing for any modern government to be doing. Isn't it?
But don't forget it was hugely beneficial for the environment.
On sports coverage, I reckon it's one of the many reasons that so many non-affluent folk are totally fed up with the cost of living. If you're a real fan, especially of football, you now have to cough up for Sky, TNT and Amazon to get full coverage; it's not cheap. Presumably Paramount will now be added to the list. It's all pretty parasitical in my view.
Enshittification in action.
"Once upon a time, dearest Best Beloved, there were only four television channels. And every last one of them was free, once one had paid one's licence into the Post Office."
I suppose for a younger generation, top sport just is as it is now, commodified, monetised, toomuchitised, given to ludicrous celebrations of things. It was not always.
My own response to how much football there is, is to watch a great deal less and do something else. Ditto cricket, which in a way has prostituted itself even more than football. Even the Ashes are a shadow of what they were. They are not a pinnacle, because the pinnacle is money.
Glad you said that, Kirk.
We're on the eve of the Ashes and for the first time ever I find myself less than totally thrilled at the prospect. Why is that? It's because the cricket calendar has been so totally buggered up and the game so thoroughly dumbed down that I no longer care much.
No matter. I have plenty else to do.
That's a shame. However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if, once the action gets under way, you relent and find yourself glued to the radio (or TV) for days on end. Much proper test cricket has been remarkably exciting in recent years.
It's important to remember that locking the population in their houses for 23 hours a day was an absolutely crackers thing for any modern government to be doing. Isn't it?
It is. But at the time plenty (a majority?) of the population and certainly a large majority on PB were all for it.
Then again as PB skews comfortably off with agreeable houses and often a few acres also, that is hardly a surprise.
I think furlough helped. It seemed to me to be very generous.
If it didn't it's more depressing to me as certainly in Edinburgh people were scarily obedient. I was working throughout, and I used to get an essentially private bus ride at odd times of the day or night into an abandoned city, where maybe I'd see two people on the streets. With posters everywhere for cultural events that had never happened and never would, and some boarded up bars still projecting their adverts for bad bottled beer onto the streets. An deserted city during the golden hour. God, I love a curfew.
It's important to remember that locking the population in their houses for 23 hours a day was an absolutely crackers thing for any modern government to be doing. Isn't it?
It is. But at the time plenty (a majority?) of the population and certainly a large majority on PB were all for it.
Then again as PB skews comfortably off with agreeable houses and often a few acres also, that is hardly a surprise.
I think furlough helped. It seemed to me to be very generous.
If it didn't it's more depressing to me as certainly in Edinburgh people were scarily obedient. I was working throughout, and I used to get an essentially private bus ride at odd times of the day or night into an abandoned city, where maybe I'd see two people on the streets. With posters everywhere for cultural events that had never happened and never would, and some boarded up bars still projecting their adverts for bad bottled beer onto the streets. An deserted city during the golden hour. God, I love a curfew.
On the day before the first lockdown I caught a train (possibly the last one!) from a Major Metropolitan Train Terminus. The station was nearly deserted, with the shutters down and the doors locked, and about three or four people on the concourse. I was the only person in the train carriage as the train departed. Proper spooky apocalypse stuff...
On sports coverage, I reckon it's one of the many reasons that so many non-affluent folk are totally fed up with the cost of living. If you're a real fan, especially of football, you now have to cough up for Sky, TNT and Amazon to get full coverage; it's not cheap. Presumably Paramount will now be added to the list. It's all pretty parasitical in my view.
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
There's going to be a lot of noise and very little light from the reporting on this, which was utterly predictable.
At the time nobody thought the vaccine would be available so soon, so the only choice was in how fast people caught it.
The 20k or so saved by an earlier lockdown would have been caught by a later wave (which would have been bigger as a consequence).
Of course the last thing anyone is going to point at in all the noise is the massive debt pile - which will cause its own excess deaths for many years to come.
It was a no-win situation. Does anyone think the current government would have done any better?
Everyone loves the feeling of superiority that hindsight gives us.
And nobody knew, those who in hindsight made better decisions were shooting from the hip and getting the target, pure unadulterated luck now presented as insightful wisdom.
This is the main subject on my Whatsapp right now. Big news for any 50-something Mancunians. Turns out some friends of mine vaguely knew him. He has kids 12-14 ish. Apparently their mum died a few years back too.
Take it you’re backing DeSantis as a candidate, not as President. The way things are going, no Republican is going to win.
How often does an insurgent candidate from within the ruling party win in America? Normally, IF the VP doesn't follow the President, the White House goes to the other party. I'm struggling to think of a recent example.
It's rare you don't have either the incumbent President or Vice President on one of the tickets - it happened in 2008 and 2016 but it's a rarity so you'd expect Vance to be the GOP candidate.
We have seen Vice Presidents face strong primary challenges - would Humphrey have beaten RFK in 1968 if the latter hadn't been murdered while Reagan ran Ford close in 1976 (though of course Ford hadn't been on the 1972 ticket and only became VP after the resignation of Agnew).
History tells me therefore Vance will likely win the GOP nomination if he runs but De Santis might be the candidate if he doesn't.
I think the situation in the US is too (literally) unprecedented. Past patterns may not apply.
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
There's going to be a lot of noise and very little light from the reporting on this, which was utterly predictable.
At the time nobody thought the vaccine would be available so soon, so the only choice was in how fast people caught it.
The 20k or so saved by an earlier lockdown would have been caught by a later wave (which would have been bigger as a consequence).
Of course the last thing anyone is going to point at in all the noise is the massive debt pile - which will cause its own excess deaths for many years to come.
It was a no-win situation. Does anyone think the current government would have done any better?
I’m in the (minority, or silent majority?) view that thinks the government probably got it about right overall, in the grander scheme of things. If we ignore the lockdown parties.
The problems in our approach were largely in a few details:
- probably being a little slow early on in April 2020, but to me that’s perfectly understandable - Allowing some jobsworths in the constabulary to get the idea that fun spreads COVID and do frankly silly things during lockdowns, like apprehending people sitting alone on beaches or going for walks on the moors - Getting overly complicated with tiering in autumn 2020, but again I can understand why they tried it - Flunking and then panic-buying PPE
Closing schools was, in hindsight, probably the most damaging mistake. One that most developed countries made. But the fear at the time was so great, it’s not remotely surprising the decision was made. I’d hope if we have another pandemic that largely affects adults that we’ll not do the same thing again.
I think the phasing of the lifting of restrictions towards the end was pretty well judged. The vaccine rollout was good. Furlough was expensive, but what’s really done in our finances is the (unexpected back in 2020) one-two of Covid spending followed by Ukraine war energy price subsidies.
I think we were too slow to respond to new information - as is all too common with large and beauracratic institutions.
The reality is that there were three approaches that had the best outcomes from a cost benefit analysis:
(1) Australia/New Zealand. If there's even a single case, then you have total lockdowns until the diesese is eliminated (and by eliminated, I mean zero cases). Foreign travel is essentiall frozen, even if it means leaving your citizens stuck on the wrong side of the world and unable to pay for hotels, etc. On the other hand, 90% of the time, you are able to live without restrictions.
(2) The 80/20 approach. You recognise you will never be able to get cases down to zero, so you look at which measures have the least impact on peroples' lives, and which have the greatest impact on R. The goal is simply to avoid the disease spiralling out of control, by slowing the speed of the infection. So, you'd have nightclubs and karaoke clubs closed, and you'd require masks on public transport. But you wouldn't (say) prevent people from socialising.
(3) The risk segmentation approach. This is what Denmark did. You have everyone regularly tested, and depending on how often you interact with vulnerable populations, the more often you need to be tested. Their system of phone based passes kept their economy effectively more open than Sweden's, with smaller economic impact and negative excess deaths. But this does require a degree of organisation that we lacked.
I think we would have been best off - given where we started - with option 2.
The most annoying saying in the entire of Covid was "follow The Science". There was no such thing as The Science in this context. Anyone in any doubt that those involved in science are just as venal, corrupt, lying, self serving, politically opportunist and career grabbing as anyone else, needs only to have viewed the 100% shittery that was Independent Sage.
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
The deaths are postponed, but if you postpone them enough, you’ve postponed them until there was a vaccine, and then they don’t die. The epidemiology is right here.
I am reading the full report. I’m only up to about Feb 2020. The thing that jumps out is how everyone is getting steadily more and more concerned… except Johnson is in the middle brushing the whole thing off as not-gonna-happen.
On sports coverage, I reckon it's one of the many reasons that so many non-affluent folk are totally fed up with the cost of living. If you're a real fan, especially of football, you now have to cough up for Sky, TNT and Amazon to get full coverage; it's not cheap. Presumably Paramount will now be added to the list. It's all pretty parasitical in my view.
Enshittification in action.
"Once upon a time, dearest Best Beloved, there were only four television channels. And every last one of them was free, once one had paid one's licence into the Post Office."
I suppose for a younger generation, top sport just is as it is now, commodified, monetised, toomuchitised, given to ludicrous celebrations of things. It was not always.
My own response to how much football there is, is to watch a great deal less and do something else. Ditto cricket, which in a way has prostituted itself even more than football. Even the Ashes are a shadow of what they were. They are not a pinnacle, because the pinnacle is money.
Glad you said that, Kirk.
We're on the eve of the Ashes and for the first time ever I find myself less than totally thrilled at the prospect. Why is that? It's because the cricket calendar has been so totally buggered up and the game so thoroughly dumbed down that I no longer care much.
No matter. I have plenty else to do.
That's a shame. However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if, once the action gets under way, you relent and find yourself glued to the radio (or TV) for days on end. Much proper test cricket has been remarkably exciting in recent years.
The India series was brilliant but it was over by mid-summer and there was no proper cricket to follow it.
Yes, I'll probably get absorbed once it starts but right this minute it feels terribly flat,
The most annoying saying in the entire of Covid was "follow The Science". There was no such thing as The Science in this context. Anyone in any doubt that those involved in science are just as venal, corrupt, lying, self serving, politically opportunist and career grabbing as anyone else, needs only to have viewed the 100% shittery that was Independent Sage.
Well, there was certainly evidence that you could follow.
For example, it was clear pretty quickly that the risk of infection when outside was very low. Likewise, we figured out pretty quickly that formites were not a major transmission vector.
It was also possible to look at other countries, and copy what worked and didn't work, remembering -of course- that what works in a place with low population density and where a high proportion of people live on their own, is different to one with high population density and where people don't often live on their own.
The most annoying saying in the entire of Covid was "follow The Science". There was no such thing as The Science in this context. Anyone in any doubt that those involved in science are just as venal, corrupt, lying, self serving, politically opportunist and career grabbing as anyone else, needs only to have viewed the 100% shittery that was Independent Sage.
The people behind Independent Sage are a bit of a disgrace, because even assuming their advice and views were good, the name they chose was purely to cause confusion with Sage, and that is not really acceptable in my view. They could have picked any number of alternatives and avoided that, had they wanted.
On following the science, there was some deliberate misunderstanding that there would always be judgement calls to be made, which is what politicians are for, since even where the facts are indisputable there will be multiple approaches that could be taken, factors to balance and so on.
It's important to remember that locking the population in their houses for 23 hours a day was an absolutely crackers thing for any modern government to be doing. Isn't it?
It is. But at the time plenty (a majority?) of the population and certainly a large majority on PB were all for it.
Then again as PB skews comfortably off with agreeable houses and often a few acres also, that is hardly a surprise.
I think furlough helped. It seemed to me to be very generous.
If it didn't it's more depressing to me as certainly in Edinburgh people were scarily obedient. I was working throughout, and I used to get an essentially private bus ride at odd times of the day or night into an abandoned city, where maybe I'd see two people on the streets. With posters everywhere for cultural events that had never happened and never would, and some boarded up bars still projecting their adverts for bad bottled beer onto the streets. An deserted city during the golden hour. God, I love a curfew.
On the day before the first lockdown I caught a train (possibly the last one!) from a Major Metropolitan Train Terminus. The station was nearly deserted, with the shutters down and the doors locked, and about three or four people on the concourse. I was the only person in the train carriage as the train departed. Proper spooky apocalypse stuff...
It's important to remember that locking the population in their houses for 23 hours a day was an absolutely crackers thing for any modern government to be doing. Isn't it?
It is. But at the time plenty (a majority?) of the population and certainly a large majority on PB were all for it.
Then again as PB skews comfortably off with agreeable houses and often a few acres also, that is hardly a surprise.
I think furlough helped. It seemed to me to be very generous. .
I would love to understand from the people who settled at 80% of salary how that figure was reached.
80% when you can’t actually do anything always seemed excessive and helped fuel some very negative economic behaviours IMHO.
I was never on furlough, but my outgoings plummeted during lockdown.
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
There's going to be a lot of noise and very little light from the reporting on this, which was utterly predictable.
At the time nobody thought the vaccine would be available so soon, so the only choice was in how fast people caught it.
The 20k or so saved by an earlier lockdown would have been caught by a later wave (which would have been bigger as a consequence).
Of course the last thing anyone is going to point at in all the noise is the massive debt pile - which will cause its own excess deaths for many years to come.
It was a no-win situation. Does anyone think the current government would have done any better?
I’m in the (minority, or silent majority?) view that thinks the government probably got it about right overall, in the grander scheme of things. If we ignore the lockdown parties.
The problems in our approach were largely in a few details:
- probably being a little slow early on in April 2020, but to me that’s perfectly understandable - Allowing some jobsworths in the constabulary to get the idea that fun spreads COVID and do frankly silly things during lockdowns, like apprehending people sitting alone on beaches or going for walks on the moors - Getting overly complicated with tiering in autumn 2020, but again I can understand why they tried it - Flunking and then panic-buying PPE
Closing schools was, in hindsight, probably the most damaging mistake. One that most developed countries made. But the fear at the time was so great, it’s not remotely surprising the decision was made. I’d hope if we have another pandemic that largely affects adults that we’ll not do the same thing again.
I think the phasing of the lifting of restrictions towards the end was pretty well judged. The vaccine rollout was good. Furlough was expensive, but what’s really done in our finances is the (unexpected back in 2020) one-two of Covid spending followed by Ukraine war energy price subsidies.
There are two small paragraphs on Sweden. Just incredible. Breathtaking.
Maybe the country's response will be in other modules?
And one of the paragraphs is used to quote a single study that found that rates of contact reduction were similar using the non-mandatory route than the massive society-wide lockdown approach.
I despair. How many £millions on this?
In Sweden, their parliamentary inquiry concluded they'd made a mistake, and they should have taken the Danish approach.
In the UK, we conclude that we made a mistake and that we should have taken the Swedish one.
Elections might be many moons away yet, but Reform, at least, is wasting no time cherry-picking their future candidates.
Among the rogues gallery of potential Reform MPs? Who else but GB News presenter - Matt Goodwin!
Given that he just became, at the sprightly age of 43, head of the party’s new student organisation, Goodwin is a fairly obvious choice.
But perhaps Nigel & co should be a bit more cautious. The honorary prez of Students4Reform was overheard at a pub moaning that Reform were likely to completely fuck it during their first run at governing, but that whatever movement comes after will be much more interesting.
Which is either very pessimistic, or very optimistic, depending on how you look at it.
When I saw the words “Popbitch”, “Goodwin” and “student” together, I was expecting something else.
It's important to remember that locking the population in their houses for 23 hours a day was an absolutely crackers thing for any modern government to be doing. Isn't it?
It is. But at the time plenty (a majority?) of the population and certainly a large majority on PB were all for it.
Then again as PB skews comfortably off with agreeable houses and often a few acres also, that is hardly a surprise.
I think furlough helped. It seemed to me to be very generous.
If it didn't it's more depressing to me as certainly in Edinburgh people were scarily obedient. I was working throughout, and I used to get an essentially private bus ride at odd times of the day or night into an abandoned city, where maybe I'd see two people on the streets. With posters everywhere for cultural events that had never happened and never would, and some boarded up bars still projecting their adverts for bad bottled beer onto the streets. An deserted city during the golden hour. God, I love a curfew.
On the day before the first lockdown I caught a train (possibly the last one!) from a Major Metropolitan Train Terminus. The station was nearly deserted, with the shutters down and the doors locked, and about three or four people on the concourse. I was the only person in the train carriage as the train departed. Proper spooky apocalypse stuff...
I hope you wore a mask.
In lockdown essential workers were absolutely stuffed into central line trains. I walked the 4-5 miles rather than boarded the 8am 'to the city' train.
It's important to remember that locking the population in their houses for 23 hours a day was an absolutely crackers thing for any modern government to be doing. Isn't it?
It is. But at the time plenty (a majority?) of the population and certainly a large majority on PB were all for it.
Then again as PB skews comfortably off with agreeable houses and often a few acres also, that is hardly a surprise.
I think furlough helped. It seemed to me to be very generous.
If it didn't it's more depressing to me as certainly in Edinburgh people were scarily obedient. I was working throughout, and I used to get an essentially private bus ride at odd times of the day or night into an abandoned city, where maybe I'd see two people on the streets. With posters everywhere for cultural events that had never happened and never would, and some boarded up bars still projecting their adverts for bad bottled beer onto the streets. An deserted city during the golden hour. God, I love a curfew.
On the day before the first lockdown I caught a train (possibly the last one!) from a Major Metropolitan Train Terminus. The station was nearly deserted, with the shutters down and the doors locked, and about three or four people on the concourse. I was the only person in the train carriage as the train departed. Proper spooky apocalypse stuff...
By hook or by crook a lot of those who could self locked down. I know we did.
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
There's going to be a lot of noise and very little light from the reporting on this, which was utterly predictable.
At the time nobody thought the vaccine would be available so soon, so the only choice was in how fast people caught it.
The 20k or so saved by an earlier lockdown would have been caught by a later wave (which would have been bigger as a consequence).
Of course the last thing anyone is going to point at in all the noise is the massive debt pile - which will cause its own excess deaths for many years to come.
It was a no-win situation. Does anyone think the current government would have done any better?
I’m in the (minority, or silent majority?) view that thinks the government probably got it about right overall, in the grander scheme of things. If we ignore the lockdown parties.
The problems in our approach were largely in a few details:
- probably being a little slow early on in April 2020, but to me that’s perfectly understandable - Allowing some jobsworths in the constabulary to get the idea that fun spreads COVID and do frankly silly things during lockdowns, like apprehending people sitting alone on beaches or going for walks on the moors - Getting overly complicated with tiering in autumn 2020, but again I can understand why they tried it - Flunking and then panic-buying PPE
Closing schools was, in hindsight, probably the most damaging mistake. One that most developed countries made. But the fear at the time was so great, it’s not remotely surprising the decision was made. I’d hope if we have another pandemic that largely affects adults that we’ll not do the same thing again.
I think the phasing of the lifting of restrictions towards the end was pretty well judged. The vaccine rollout was good. Furlough was expensive, but what’s really done in our finances is the (unexpected back in 2020) one-two of Covid spending followed by Ukraine war energy price subsidies.
There are two small paragraphs on Sweden. Just incredible. Breathtaking.
Maybe the country's response will be in other modules?
And one of the paragraphs is used to quote a single study that found that rates of contact reduction were similar using the non-mandatory route than the massive society-wide lockdown approach.
I despair. How many £millions on this?
In Sweden, their parliamentary inquiry concluded they'd made a mistake, and they should have taken the Danish approach.
In the UK, we conclude that we made a mistake and that we should have taken the Swedish one.
The grass is always greener.
With the overarching mistake, for us, being that we locked down for as long as we did. Cataclysmic.
I'm sure you have the age-related mortality stats to hand so we can now see (actually we could see it some time ago) where the actual risk was.
The most annoying saying in the entire of Covid was "follow The Science". There was no such thing as The Science in this context. Anyone in any doubt that those involved in science are just as venal, corrupt, lying, self serving, politically opportunist and career grabbing as anyone else, needs only to have viewed the 100% shittery that was Independent Sage.
The people behind Independent Sage are a bit of a disgrace, because even assuming their advice and views were good, the name they chose was purely to cause confusion with Sage, and that is not really acceptable in my view. They could have picked any number of alternatives and avoided that, had they wanted.
On following the science, there was some deliberate misunderstanding that there would always be judgement calls to be made, which is what politicians are for, since even where the facts are indisputable there will be multiple approaches that could be taken, factors to balance and so on.
Why was the name sage chosen at all btw - conjures up thoughts of a herb, or the ubiquitous accounting software giant..
It's important to remember that locking the population in their houses for 23 hours a day was an absolutely crackers thing for any modern government to be doing. Isn't it?
It is. But at the time plenty (a majority?) of the population and certainly a large majority on PB were all for it.
Then again as PB skews comfortably off with agreeable houses and often a few acres also, that is hardly a surprise.
I think furlough helped. It seemed to me to be very generous.
If it didn't it's more depressing to me as certainly in Edinburgh people were scarily obedient. I was working throughout, and I used to get an essentially private bus ride at odd times of the day or night into an abandoned city, where maybe I'd see two people on the streets. With posters everywhere for cultural events that had never happened and never would, and some boarded up bars still projecting their adverts for bad bottled beer onto the streets. An deserted city during the golden hour. God, I love a curfew.
On the day before the first lockdown I caught a train (possibly the last one!) from a Major Metropolitan Train Terminus. The station was nearly deserted, with the shutters down and the doors locked, and about three or four people on the concourse. I was the only person in the train carriage as the train departed. Proper spooky apocalypse stuff...
I hope you wore a mask.
On the day before the first lockdown, I took the kids swimming. We had the pool to ourselves.
The most annoying saying in the entire of Covid was "follow The Science". There was no such thing as The Science in this context. Anyone in any doubt that those involved in science are just as venal, corrupt, lying, self serving, politically opportunist and career grabbing as anyone else, needs only to have viewed the 100% shittery that was Independent Sage.
The people behind Independent Sage are a bit of a disgrace, because even assuming their advice and views were good, the name they chose was purely to cause confusion with Sage, and that is not really acceptable in my view. They could have picked any number of alternatives and avoided that, had they wanted.
On following the science, there was some deliberate misunderstanding that there would always be judgement calls to be made, which is what politicians are for, since even where the facts are indisputable there will be multiple approaches that could be taken, factors to balance and so on.
Why was the name sage chosen at all btw - conjures up thoughts of a herb, or the ubiquitous accounting software giant..
It's just an acronym: Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies
Anyway, the Scottish government does not come out this report well, e.g.:
2.137. On 24 February 2020, Scottish Government Resilience Room (Officials) met.335 Derek Grieve, Deputy Director to the Health Protection Division, recorded that the Chief Medical Officer gave “everyone both barrels on the impact of COVID19. Felt like a few were starting to appear interested.”336 This was one of many examples of Mr Grieve’s growing frustration at the slow pace of the Scottish Government’s response to the virus during this period. On 26 February 2020, he recorded in his notebook that he had attended a COBR meeting with Ms Freeman and that it was “clear all [departments] in UK Govt are fully engaged [and] mobilised in a way that the [Scottish Government] simply isn’t”.337 On 27 February 2020, he recorded that he had attended a meeting of senior officials within the Scottish Government and there was “still no real engagement. They then spent 20 mins talking about internal SG [Scottish Government] comms. Completely amazed!”338
I recall very clearly the week before lockdown, At 5.00pm on a Monday it took me 55 minutes to drive from Uxbridge to my home in the Hampshire coast. My local cafe was open but deserted - it struck me at the time that we are already in Lockdown so I think to state that 23,000 deaths would be avoided if we were at Lockdown one week earlier is highly spurious.
I am not sure if the report also looked into the role of the media in the outbreak but they were clearly key and at times unhelpful.
I am not sure spending £200million on an enquiry that stated that had you had perfect information that things would have been done differently.
It seems to have slipped the reports grasp that had Boris Johnson not been prime minister during the outbreak. it is likely that it would have been Jeremy Corbyn would have been PM , I am entirely confident that he would not have made better decisions during the Pandemic.
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
The most annoying saying in the entire of Covid was "follow The Science". There was no such thing as The Science in this context. Anyone in any doubt that those involved in science are just as venal, corrupt, lying, self serving, politically opportunist and career grabbing as anyone else, needs only to have viewed the 100% shittery that was Independent Sage.
The people behind Independent Sage are a bit of a disgrace, because even assuming their advice and views were good, the name they chose was purely to cause confusion with Sage, and that is not really acceptable in my view. They could have picked any number of alternatives and avoided that, had they wanted.
On following the science, there was some deliberate misunderstanding that there would always be judgement calls to be made, which is what politicians are for, since even where the facts are indisputable there will be multiple approaches that could be taken, factors to balance and so on.
Why was the name sage chosen at all btw - conjures up thoughts of a herb, or the ubiquitous accounting software giant..
It's just an acronym: Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies
Anyway, the Scottish government does not come out this report well, e.g.:
2.137. On 24 February 2020, Scottish Government Resilience Room (Officials) met.335 Derek Grieve, Deputy Director to the Health Protection Division, recorded that the Chief Medical Officer gave “everyone both barrels on the impact of COVID19. Felt like a few were starting to appear interested.”336 This was one of many examples of Mr Grieve’s growing frustration at the slow pace of the Scottish Government’s response to the virus during this period. On 26 February 2020, he recorded in his notebook that he had attended a COBR meeting with Ms Freeman and that it was “clear all [departments] in UK Govt are fully engaged [and] mobilised in a way that the [Scottish Government] simply isn’t”.337 On 27 February 2020, he recorded that he had attended a meeting of senior officials within the Scottish Government and there was “still no real engagement. They then spent 20 mins talking about internal SG [Scottish Government] comms. Completely amazed!”338
Covid-19 was not included on the formal agenda for the UK government Cabinet meeting on 25 February 2020.
Ouch. That is after Italy has introduced regional lockdowns.
The most annoying saying in the entire of Covid was "follow The Science". There was no such thing as The Science in this context. Anyone in any doubt that those involved in science are just as venal, corrupt, lying, self serving, politically opportunist and career grabbing as anyone else, needs only to have viewed the 100% shittery that was Independent Sage.
The people behind Independent Sage are a bit of a disgrace, because even assuming their advice and views were good, the name they chose was purely to cause confusion with Sage, and that is not really acceptable in my view. They could have picked any number of alternatives and avoided that, had they wanted.
On following the science, there was some deliberate misunderstanding that there would always be judgement calls to be made, which is what politicians are for, since even where the facts are indisputable there will be multiple approaches that could be taken, factors to balance and so on.
Why was the name sage chosen at all btw - conjures up thoughts of a herb, or the ubiquitous accounting software giant..
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
There's going to be a lot of noise and very little light from the reporting on this, which was utterly predictable.
At the time nobody thought the vaccine would be available so soon, so the only choice was in how fast people caught it.
The 20k or so saved by an earlier lockdown would have been caught by a later wave (which would have been bigger as a consequence).
Of course the last thing anyone is going to point at in all the noise is the massive debt pile - which will cause its own excess deaths for many years to come.
It was a no-win situation. Does anyone think the current government would have done any better?
I’m in the (minority, or silent majority?) view that thinks the government probably got it about right overall, in the grander scheme of things. If we ignore the lockdown parties.
The problems in our approach were largely in a few details:
- probably being a little slow early on in April 2020, but to me that’s perfectly understandable - Allowing some jobsworths in the constabulary to get the idea that fun spreads COVID and do frankly silly things during lockdowns, like apprehending people sitting alone on beaches or going for walks on the moors - Getting overly complicated with tiering in autumn 2020, but again I can understand why they tried it - Flunking and then panic-buying PPE
Closing schools was, in hindsight, probably the most damaging mistake. One that most developed countries made. But the fear at the time was so great, it’s not remotely surprising the decision was made. I’d hope if we have another pandemic that largely affects adults that we’ll not do the same thing again.
I think the phasing of the lifting of restrictions towards the end was pretty well judged. The vaccine rollout was good. Furlough was expensive, but what’s really done in our finances is the (unexpected back in 2020) one-two of Covid spending followed by Ukraine war energy price subsidies.
There are two small paragraphs on Sweden. Just incredible. Breathtaking.
Maybe the country's response will be in other modules?
And one of the paragraphs is used to quote a single study that found that rates of contact reduction were similar using the non-mandatory route than the massive society-wide lockdown approach.
I despair. How many £millions on this?
In Sweden, their parliamentary inquiry concluded they'd made a mistake, and they should have taken the Danish approach.
In the UK, we conclude that we made a mistake and that we should have taken the Swedish one.
The grass is always greener.
With the overarching mistake, for us, being that we locked down for as long as we did. Cataclysmic.
I'm sure you have the age-related mortality stats to hand so we can now see (actually we could see it some time ago) where the actual risk was.
Trouble is that the duration of the lockdowns was directly related to how hot you were prepared to run the phases between the lockdowns.
The more you are prepared to tolerate lesser restrictions during the cool phases, the easier it is to avoid really drastic restrictions.
It's a brilliant irony. The desperation to avoid lockdowns of Boris and his fans was a large part of why such long lockdowns because inevitable.
For anyone who might be interested in such things, a nice 30 min video on the regeneration of Manchester. I don't think even I'd appreciated the scale of growth since the pandemic - more growth in the past 6 years than the preceding 20. https://youtu.be/VPkLUOfugjo?si=zi4WBfzmPIVx3pId
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
How we forget all those discussions on here about R !
I don't need an inquiry to tell me Johnson is "toxic and chaotic", but a good three word summary of the man nevertheless.
On the actual conclusions, I now cut Johnson more slack than I did at the time. Clearly a lot of decision making could have been better, but no-one got this completely right. In the end the UK was middle ranking amongst peers. Some countries did better but some did worse.
Sky's coverage indicates in the report criticism of Johnson was his optimistic nature but Sir Christopher Wormaid is criticised for lack of 'action' during the pandemic and raised concerns about his leadership as Baroness Hallett comments it was his responsibility to rectify the overenthusiastic impression Hancock had given to no 10 and the cabinet office about the ability of his department to cope with the response
Professors Whitty and Vallance advice on delaying lockdown 'had no grounding in science'
The report also critices all the devolved administrations
My concern is the suggestion 23,000 lives could have been saved if we had lockdowned a week before is pure hindsight and unrealistical in the circumstances to have known that
Apparently this is costing 200 million pounds and no doubt Johnson will be undermined but it seems Wormaid and Vallance are in government and no doubt question will be raised about their role
A question from Kemi at next week's PMQs asking why Vallance hasn't been sacked?
If you want to score some party political points BBC Wales Today are confirming that pet capita deaths under Welsh Labour in the first wave were worse than under Sir Boris.
For anyone who might be interested in such things, a nice 30 min video on the regeneration of Manchester. I don't think even I'd appreciated the scale of growth since the pandemic - more growth in the past 6 years than the preceding 20. https://youtu.be/VPkLUOfugjo?si=zi4WBfzmPIVx3pId
It's important to remember that locking the population in their houses for 23 hours a day was an absolutely crackers thing for any modern government to be doing. Isn't it?
It is. But at the time plenty (a majority?) of the population and certainly a large majority on PB were all for it.
Then again as PB skews comfortably off with agreeable houses and often a few acres also, that is hardly a surprise.
I think furlough helped. It seemed to me to be very generous.
If it didn't it's more depressing to me as certainly in Edinburgh people were scarily obedient. I was working throughout, and I used to get an essentially private bus ride at odd times of the day or night into an abandoned city, where maybe I'd see two people on the streets. With posters everywhere for cultural events that had never happened and never would, and some boarded up bars still projecting their adverts for bad bottled beer onto the streets. An deserted city during the golden hour. God, I love a curfew.
On the day before the first lockdown I caught a train (possibly the last one!) from a Major Metropolitan Train Terminus. The station was nearly deserted, with the shutters down and the doors locked, and about three or four people on the concourse. I was the only person in the train carriage as the train departed. Proper spooky apocalypse stuff...
I hope you wore a mask.
Doubtful. This was in the very beginning, before masks, the toilet paper shortage, social distancing, all of it. Just a panicked phone call from my boss to work from home (too late: I was on the train). I stayed in my weekend digs (not the one I'm in now and not the same job) with laptop and borrowed screens, then when that became untenable trained back as usual with just my laptop. It went from everything normal to zombie movie in less than a week.
The most annoying saying in the entire of Covid was "follow The Science". There was no such thing as The Science in this context. Anyone in any doubt that those involved in science are just as venal, corrupt, lying, self serving, politically opportunist and career grabbing as anyone else, needs only to have viewed the 100% shittery that was Independent Sage.
The people behind Independent Sage are a bit of a disgrace, because even assuming their advice and views were good, the name they chose was purely to cause confusion with Sage, and that is not really acceptable in my view. They could have picked any number of alternatives and avoided that, had they wanted.
On following the science, there was some deliberate misunderstanding that there would always be judgement calls to be made, which is what politicians are for, since even where the facts are indisputable there will be multiple approaches that could be taken, factors to balance and so on.
Why was the name sage chosen at all btw - conjures up thoughts of a herb, or the ubiquitous accounting software giant..
It's just an acronym: Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies
Anyway, the Scottish government does not come out this report well, e.g.:
2.137. On 24 February 2020, Scottish Government Resilience Room (Officials) met.335 Derek Grieve, Deputy Director to the Health Protection Division, recorded that the Chief Medical Officer gave “everyone both barrels on the impact of COVID19. Felt like a few were starting to appear interested.”336 This was one of many examples of Mr Grieve’s growing frustration at the slow pace of the Scottish Government’s response to the virus during this period. On 26 February 2020, he recorded in his notebook that he had attended a COBR meeting with Ms Freeman and that it was “clear all [departments] in UK Govt are fully engaged [and] mobilised in a way that the [Scottish Government] simply isn’t”.337 On 27 February 2020, he recorded that he had attended a meeting of senior officials within the Scottish Government and there was “still no real engagement. They then spent 20 mins talking about internal SG [Scottish Government] comms. Completely amazed!”338
Covid-19 was not included on the formal agenda for the UK government Cabinet meeting on 25 February 2020.
Ouch. That is after Italy has introduced regional lockdowns.
Can't blame Boris for that one. He was at Chequers writing his book on Shakespeare.
Surely the correct analysis of the COVID report is next time theres a pandemic we should hand everything over to a judge who in their faultless wisdom will ensure nobody dies and we all get richer.
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
How we forget all those discussions on here about R !
I don't need an inquiry to tell me Johnson is "toxic and chaotic", but a good three word summary of the man nevertheless.
On the actual conclusions, I now cut Johnson more slack than I did at the time. Clearly a lot of decision making could have been better, but no-one got this completely right. In the end the UK was middle ranking amongst peers. Some countries did better but some did worse.
Sky's coverage indicates in the report criticism of Johnson was his optimistic nature but Sir Christopher Wormaid is criticised for lack of 'action' during the pandemic and raised concerns about his leadership as Baroness Hallett comments it was his responsibility to rectify the overenthusiastic impression Hancock had given to no 10 and the cabinet office about the ability of his department to cope with the response
Professors Whitty and Vallance advice on delaying lockdown 'had no grounding in science'
The report also critices all the devolved administrations
My concern is the suggestion 23,000 lives could have been saved if we had lockdowned a week before is pure hindsight and unrealistical in the circumstances to have known that
Apparently this is costing 200 million pounds and no doubt Johnson will be undermined but it seems Wormaid and Vallance are in government and no doubt question will be raised about their role
A question from Kemi at next week's PMQs asking why Vallance hasn't been sacked?
If you want to score some party political points BBC Wales Today are confirming that pet capita deaths under Welsh Labour in the first wave were worse than under Sir Boris.
I dont want to score any political points other than to say a report written in hindsight costing 200 million can only be useful if measures are taken to ameliorate any future pandemic
Yes Johnson was far too optimistic and it went against his instinct to lockdown, Hancock and Wormaid were out of their depth, as were many others including the first ministers of the devolved nations
I defy anyone to say Starmer, Davey, Corbyn or indeed any of our politicians would have done anything better
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
How we forget all those discussions on here about R !
I don't need an inquiry to tell me Johnson is "toxic and chaotic", but a good three word summary of the man nevertheless.
On the actual conclusions, I now cut Johnson more slack than I did at the time. Clearly a lot of decision making could have been better, but no-one got this completely right. In the end the UK was middle ranking amongst peers. Some countries did better but some did worse.
Sky's coverage indicates in the report criticism of Johnson was his optimistic nature but Sir Christopher Wormaid is criticised for lack of 'action' during the pandemic and raised concerns about his leadership as Baroness Hallett comments it was his responsibility to rectify the overenthusiastic impression Hancock had given to no 10 and the cabinet office about the ability of his department to cope with the response
Professors Whitty and Vallance advice on delaying lockdown 'had no grounding in science'
The report also critices all the devolved administrations
My concern is the suggestion 23,000 lives could have been saved if we had lockdowned a week before is pure hindsight and unrealistical in the circumstances to have known that
Apparently this is costing 200 million pounds and no doubt Johnson will be undermined but it seems Wormaid and Vallance are in government and no doubt question will be raised about their role
A question from Kemi at next week's PMQs asking why Vallance hasn't been sacked?
If you want to score some party political points BBC Wales Today are confirming that pet capita deaths under Welsh Labour in the first wave were worse than under Sir Boris.
I dont want to score any political points other than to say a report written in hindsight costing 200 million can only be useful if measures are taken to ameliorate any future pandemic
Yes Johnson was far too optimistic and it went against his instinct to lockdown, Hancock and Wormaid were out of their depth, as were many others including the first ministers of the devolved nations
I defy anyone to say Starmer, Davey, Corbyn or indeed any of our politicians would have done anything better
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
So is there any mention of international travel in the covid report ?
Or were all these extra and longer lockdowns to have an exemption for those who wanted a holiday in a covid hotspot ?
International travel per se wasn’t inherently risky. Being in a passenger aircraft was.
That's not quite true.
If we'd restricted international travel before the disease was widely seeded, then we would have benefited from having a smaller number of cases at the start, and therefore the level of restrictions required to keep total caseload below [x] would have been less.
However, once the disease is out there and common, then (other than the greater than average risk of catching it on the plane) it made very little difference. Even the people coming back from plague ridden Spain in the Summer of 2020 probably made little difference.
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
How we forget all those discussions on here about R !
I don't need an inquiry to tell me Johnson is "toxic and chaotic", but a good three word summary of the man nevertheless.
On the actual conclusions, I now cut Johnson more slack than I did at the time. Clearly a lot of decision making could have been better, but no-one got this completely right. In the end the UK was middle ranking amongst peers. Some countries did better but some did worse.
Sky's coverage indicates in the report criticism of Johnson was his optimistic nature but Sir Christopher Wormaid is criticised for lack of 'action' during the pandemic and raised concerns about his leadership as Baroness Hallett comments it was his responsibility to rectify the overenthusiastic impression Hancock had given to no 10 and the cabinet office about the ability of his department to cope with the response
Professors Whitty and Vallance advice on delaying lockdown 'had no grounding in science'
The report also critices all the devolved administrations
My concern is the suggestion 23,000 lives could have been saved if we had lockdowned a week before is pure hindsight and unrealistical in the circumstances to have known that
Apparently this is costing 200 million pounds and no doubt Johnson will be undermined but it seems Wormaid and Vallance are in government and no doubt question will be raised about their role
A question from Kemi at next week's PMQs asking why Vallance hasn't been sacked?
If you want to score some party political points BBC Wales Today are confirming that pet capita deaths under Welsh Labour in the first wave were worse than under Sir Boris.
I dont want to score any political points other than to say a report written in hindsight costing 200 million can only be useful if measures are taken to ameliorate any future pandemic
Yes Johnson was far too optimistic and it went against his instinct to lockdown, Hancock and Wormaid were out of their depth, as were many others including the first ministers of the devolved nations
I defy anyone to say Starmer, Davey, Corbyn or indeed any of our politicians would have done anything better
Wasn't it more 200 billion rather than million?
200 million is the cost of the covid report not covid
Surely the correct analysis of the COVID report is next time theres a pandemic we should hand everything over to a judge who in their faultless wisdom will ensure nobody dies and we all get richer.
The correct analysis is "why did we spend all this money on the covid report"?
The most annoying saying in the entire of Covid was "follow The Science". There was no such thing as The Science in this context. Anyone in any doubt that those involved in science are just as venal, corrupt, lying, self serving, politically opportunist and career grabbing as anyone else, needs only to have viewed the 100% shittery that was Independent Sage.
The people behind Independent Sage are a bit of a disgrace, because even assuming their advice and views were good, the name they chose was purely to cause confusion with Sage, and that is not really acceptable in my view. They could have picked any number of alternatives and avoided that, had they wanted.
On following the science, there was some deliberate misunderstanding that there would always be judgement calls to be made, which is what politicians are for, since even where the facts are indisputable there will be multiple approaches that could be taken, factors to balance and so on.
Why was the name sage chosen at all btw - conjures up thoughts of a herb, or the ubiquitous accounting software giant..
It's just an acronym: Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies
Anyway, the Scottish government does not come out this report well, e.g.:
2.137. On 24 February 2020, Scottish Government Resilience Room (Officials) met.335 Derek Grieve, Deputy Director to the Health Protection Division, recorded that the Chief Medical Officer gave “everyone both barrels on the impact of COVID19. Felt like a few were starting to appear interested.”336 This was one of many examples of Mr Grieve’s growing frustration at the slow pace of the Scottish Government’s response to the virus during this period. On 26 February 2020, he recorded in his notebook that he had attended a COBR meeting with Ms Freeman and that it was “clear all [departments] in UK Govt are fully engaged [and] mobilised in a way that the [Scottish Government] simply isn’t”.337 On 27 February 2020, he recorded that he had attended a meeting of senior officials within the Scottish Government and there was “still no real engagement. They then spent 20 mins talking about internal SG [Scottish Government] comms. Completely amazed!”338
Covid-19 was not included on the formal agenda for the UK government Cabinet meeting on 25 February 2020.
Ouch. That is after Italy has introduced regional lockdowns.
I wonder if we didn't take Italy seriously because we were stereotyping all Italians as backward southern italians when in reality it was happening in rich Northern Italy.
The overall problem with the Covid lockdowns was that there was too much of it rather than not enough. I don't expect the official inquiry to say this.
Surely the correct analysis of the COVID report is next time theres a pandemic we should hand everything over to a judge who in their faultless wisdom will ensure nobody dies and we all get richer.
The correct analysis is "why did we spend all this money on the covid report"?
Perhaps somebody should write a report on the report. After a judge-led inquiry first, of course.
On sports coverage, I reckon it's one of the many reasons that so many non-affluent folk are totally fed up with the cost of living. If you're a real fan, especially of football, you now have to cough up for Sky, TNT and Amazon to get full coverage; it's not cheap. Presumably Paramount will now be added to the list. It's all pretty parasitical in my view.
Enshittification in action.
"Once upon a time, dearest Best Beloved, there were only four television channels. And every last one of them was free, once one had paid one's licence into the Post Office."
I suppose for a younger generation, top sport just is as it is now, commodified, monetised, toomuchitised, given to ludicrous celebrations of things. It was not always.
My own response to how much football there is, is to watch a great deal less and do something else. Ditto cricket, which in a way has prostituted itself even more than football. Even the Ashes are a shadow of what they were. They are not a pinnacle, because the pinnacle is money.
Glad you said that, Kirk.
We're on the eve of the Ashes and for the first time ever I find myself less than totally thrilled at the prospect. Why is that? It's because the cricket calendar has been so totally buggered up and the game so thoroughly dumbed down that I no longer care much.
No matter. I have plenty else to do.
Also they used to play 6 or 7 test matches in an Ashes series. Probably because they didn't have to play so much limited overs cricket.
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
Not true, remember the news from Italy at the beginning.
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
The only thing I'm 100% sure that they got wrong was allowing Cheltenham to go ahead. That was the UK super-spreader, and certainly how I got covid the first time - from colleagues that went there.
There were x million workers using the Tube at that time. Cheltenham was a minor blip.
Sure, but X million from London. Cheltenham brought together people from all around the UK.
I worked then in an office of 300 or so. The first to fall were all the Cheltenham attendees, and then those that sat next to them etc. I find it hard to imagine that a similar effect wasn't at work elsewhere. So I think I can reasonably conclude that it was a significant factor in the spread.
The first hit local to me was before restrictions, a colleague hosted a get-together and about 2 or 3 weeks later two of the guests were dead. That was before we read about the choir in USA who had one last rehearsal together before their restrictions came into force, with a very similar outcome. Frightening times.
On those stats 25 million Brits would have died.
That was one of the curious things about it - that under apparently the same conditions one got it badly but another didn't get it at all.
Or so it seemed. Many cases were asymptomatic, which made it that much more difficult to control the spread.
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
There's going to be a lot of noise and very little light from the reporting on this, which was utterly predictable.
At the time nobody thought the vaccine would be available so soon, so the only choice was in how fast people caught it.
The 20k or so saved by an earlier lockdown would have been caught by a later wave (which would have been bigger as a consequence).
Of course the last thing anyone is going to point at in all the noise is the massive debt pile - which will cause its own excess deaths for many years to come.
It was a no-win situation. Does anyone think the current government would have done any better?
I’m in the (minority, or silent majority?) view that thinks the government probably got it about right overall, in the grander scheme of things. If we ignore the lockdown parties.
The problems in our approach were largely in a few details:
- probably being a little slow early on in April 2020, but to me that’s perfectly understandable - Allowing some jobsworths in the constabulary to get the idea that fun spreads COVID and do frankly silly things during lockdowns, like apprehending people sitting alone on beaches or going for walks on the moors - Getting overly complicated with tiering in autumn 2020, but again I can understand why they tried it - Flunking and then panic-buying PPE
Closing schools was, in hindsight, probably the most damaging mistake. One that most developed countries made. But the fear at the time was so great, it’s not remotely surprising the decision was made. I’d hope if we have another pandemic that largely affects adults that we’ll not do the same thing again.
I think the phasing of the lifting of restrictions towards the end was pretty well judged. The vaccine rollout was good. Furlough was expensive, but what’s really done in our finances is the (unexpected back in 2020) one-two of Covid spending followed by Ukraine war energy price subsidies.
There are two small paragraphs on Sweden. Just incredible. Breathtaking.
Maybe the country's response will be in other modules?
And one of the paragraphs is used to quote a single study that found that rates of contact reduction were similar using the non-mandatory route than the massive society-wide lockdown approach.
I despair. How many £millions on this?
In Sweden, their parliamentary inquiry concluded they'd made a mistake, and they should have taken the Danish approach.
In the UK, we conclude that we made a mistake and that we should have taken the Swedish one.
The grass is always greener.
With the overarching mistake, for us, being that we locked down for as long as we did. Cataclysmic.
I'm sure you have the age-related mortality stats to hand so we can now see (actually we could see it some time ago) where the actual risk was.
I don't, but I broadly agree.
I think there should have been less coercian, and more guidance.
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
Surely it was the news and images coming out of China, Italy, New York...
Surely the correct analysis of the COVID report is next time theres a pandemic we should hand everything over to a judge who in their faultless wisdom will ensure nobody dies and we all get richer.
Next time there's a pandemic the last thing government will do is to dust off the Covid report to see if there are any lessons there.
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul · 2h Nothing I have read so far changes my view that the £200m spent on the inquiry so far could have been better deployed elsewhere
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
The only thing I'm 100% sure that they got wrong was allowing Cheltenham to go ahead. That was the UK super-spreader, and certainly how I got covid the first time - from colleagues that went there.
Bollocks. At the same time as Cheltenham there were 2m people using the tube daily (or whatever the figure was). Arguably Cheltenham was a safe event as it is conducted mainly outside (unless you, were, ahem, ensconced in a tent and only ventured out occasionally to the pre-parade and to see some small part of the actual racing).
The only reason Cheltenham even made the front pages was as a dead cat to hide Boris being at the rugby a couple of days earlier.
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
It seemed that way because we were seeing on our screens despairing and exhausted medics in places like Italy saying things like whatever we do people just keep dying.
"- The lawyers for the Inquiry allowed many senior scientists to claim under oath that ‘I thought X on date Y’ when on YouTube there is video/audio of them saying the exact opposite on date Y. Not once have I seen the Inquiry challenge scientists over this. The Inquiry has therefore enabled a vast rewriting of history — some dishonest, some simply the normal process of people wanting to believe they were right at the time."
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
There's a lot of hindsight.
A friend of mine lives in downtown Manhattan, overlooking the convention center they turned into a makeshift hospital at the beginning of the pandemic. She told me that in the first week, there was the constant sound of sirens, and out her window there were men in hazmat suits taking people in. And the bodies were piling up becase you don't need much a spike in death rates to overwhelm the crematoria that are used to only a certain number of people dying.
At that point in time (and from her vantage point), it looked very fucking scary.
Of course, we (a) got better at treating it, (b) people took sensible precautions, and (c) many of us got microdoses that helped prepare our immune systems. The combination of these meant that - even before vaccines - we were in a hell of a lot better positon than we'd been in at the beginning of the pandemic.
200 million pounds for an inquiry . Good grief what a waste of money . I won’t criticize any of the 4 nations response as it was an unprecedented time . Hindsight is a wonderful thing .
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
Surely it was the news and images coming out of China, Italy, New York...
I think too many people had watched the film “Contagion” and thought that was what was going to happen and acted accordingly.
"- The lawyers for the Inquiry allowed many senior scientists to claim under oath that ‘I thought X on date Y’ when on YouTube there is video/audio of them saying the exact opposite on date Y. Not once have I seen the Inquiry challenge scientists over this. The Inquiry has therefore enabled a vast rewriting of history — some dishonest, some simply the normal process of people wanting to believe they were right at the time."
To be fair, rewriting history is something that Cummings knows a lot about.
Surely the correct analysis of the COVID report is next time theres a pandemic we should hand everything over to a judge who in their faultless wisdom will ensure nobody dies and we all get richer.
Next time there's a pandemic the last thing government will do is to dust off the Covid report to see if there are any lessons there.
Next time is likely to be different, with the key message being to get the MRNA labs making billions of doses ASAP.
As for the broader lessons-
1 Don't elect a nitwit as PM, even if they are amusing.
2 Don't have a sociopath as Chief of Staff
3 Don't try to beat nature with politics, because nature isn't fooled like that-
perhaps they are lessons that are learned, then forgotten so that the need to be relearned in every generation. Indeed, we never really learned 3 properly, and our grip on 2 doesn't seem strong. As for 1...
Surely the correct analysis of the COVID report is next time theres a pandemic we should hand everything over to a judge who in their faultless wisdom will ensure nobody dies and we all get richer.
Next time there's a pandemic the last thing government will do is to dust off the Covid report to see if there are any lessons there.
Next time is likely to be different, with the key message being to get the MRNA labs making billions of doses ASAP.
As for the broader lessons-
1 Don't elect a nitwit as PM, even if they are amusing.
2 Don't have a sociopath as Chief of Staff
3 Don't try to beat nature with politics, because nature isn't fooled like that-
perhaps they are lessons that are learned, then forgotten so that the need to be relearned in every generation. Indeed, we never really learned 3 properly, and our grip on 2 doesn't seem strong. As for 1...
4. Don't close down the mRNA vaccine centre you've opened with great fanfare.
The overall problem with the Covid lockdowns was that there was too much of it rather than not enough. I don't expect the official inquiry to say this.
I think the first one probably should have started a few days earlier, and should have ended a lot earlier.
There probably shouldn't have been any subsequent lockdowns - just periods with slightly more onerous restrictioms.
I recall very clearly the week before lockdown, At 5.00pm on a Monday it took me 55 minutes to drive from Uxbridge to my home in the Hampshire coast. My local cafe was open but deserted - it struck me at the time that we are already in Lockdown so I think to state that 23,000 deaths would be avoided if we were at Lockdown one week earlier is highly spurious.
I am not sure if the report also looked into the role of the media in the outbreak but they were clearly key and at times unhelpful.
I am not sure spending £200million on an enquiry that stated that had you had perfect information that things would have been done differently.
It seems to have slipped the reports grasp that had Boris Johnson not been prime minister during the outbreak. it is likely that it would have been Jeremy Corbyn would have been PM , I am entirely confident that he would not have made better decisions during the Pandemic.
Was Jeremy Corbyn opposed to state intervention? Was he a secret Thatcherite?
And on furlough, it is possible Corbyn might have directed financial support to laid off workers rather than their capitalist employers, although that is perhaps a secondary consideration.
I think DeSantis is a busted flush, even if he emerges from the Trump debacle relatively untouched. The Republicans' only hope is total repudiation of Trump and the denazification programme will take time. The next Republican president may not even be in an elected position right now.
200 million pounds for an inquiry . Good grief what a waste of money . I won’t criticize any of the 4 nations response as it was an unprecedented time . Hindsight is a wonderful thing .
It does seem the report is attracted considerable attention across parties for the outrageous cost of 200 million
I think DeSantis is a busted flush, even if he emerges from the Trump debacle relatively untouched. The Republicans' only hope is total repudiation of Trump and the denazification programme will take time. The next Republican president may not even be in an elected position right now.
Yup.
The first question asked of the next candidate will be "What did you do during the trump years?"
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
That was always the problem. Once you open up, you are going to get infections. And unless you somehow keep the R below 1 there will be exponential growth. And we’ve since realised the costs of lockdown, both financial and social, so much so that some think there should have been no lockdowns at all.
I think you could have avoided deaths in the first wave, but probably overall it’s harder to say.
The overall problem with the Covid lockdowns was that there was too much of it rather than not enough. I don't expect the official inquiry to say this.
I think the first one probably should have started a few days earlier, and should have ended a lot earlier.
There probably shouldn't have been any subsequent lockdowns - just periods with slightly more onerous restrictioms.
Suspect that the intolerance of measures short of lockdown is a symptom of a wider thing- an intolerance of grey areas. Lockdown made sense, Freedom made sense, anything in the middle was either too ambiguous or too complicated.
There was some quibble about selling scotch eggs, which I only half remember and am happier that way.
I remember on the day Boris announced lockdown, having just come back from the supermarket which was already looking a bit bare, there was a power cut in my area almost immediately after the announcement. I did wonder then and there if that was where the whole of civilisation ended, like the moment the TV channels go off air in an apocalypse drama and the supermarket looting is already kicking in.
Obviously it came back on reasonably quickly, but that period in the house felt angsty...
The overall problem with the Covid lockdowns was that there was too much of it rather than not enough. I don't expect the official inquiry to say this.
I think the first one probably should have started a few days earlier, and should have ended a lot earlier.
There probably shouldn't have been any subsequent lockdowns - just periods with slightly more onerous restrictioms.
Suspect that the intolerance of measures short of lockdown is a symptom of a wider thing- an intolerance of grey areas. Lockdown made sense, Freedom made sense, anything in the middle was either too ambiguous or too complicated.
There was some quibble about selling scotch eggs, which I only half remember and am happier that way.
It was at least in considerable part the media trying to catch out the government by trying to dream up (the more farfetched the better) edge cases and pretending it was all stupid on the basis of the edge cases, when the government was tdrying (not very successfully) to guide people with simple instructions.
The scotch eggs stuff was - but I won't spoil it for you.
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
Not true, remember the news from Italy at the beginning.
But it was true. There was a government team specifically to frighten people.
Cummings is on about "pox parties" where people came together to deliberately get it.
Claims this was official advice at one point. Says it was all Wormald's idea.
I have no recollection of this?
An idea being considered, don't recall that it was actual advice still less publicised. (It was very much in the public realm in USA amongst antivaxxers IIRC).
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
That was always the problem. Once you open up, you are going to get infections. And unless you somehow keep the R below 1 there will be exponential growth. And we’ve since realised the costs of lockdown, both financial and social, so much so that some think there should have been no lockdowns at all.
I think you could have avoided deaths in the first wave, but probably overall it’s harder to say.
Wasn't the aim to slow, rather than prevent, infections so as not to overwhelm the NHS and have people dying from lack of treatment?
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
Seriously?
Five and a bit years on and we're still hearing this nonsense.
My recollection was people were happy to withdraw into isolation and very many were frightened, if not for their own health then for the health of older relatives or relatives with health issues.
I don't think anyone thought it would last three months - three weeks at most.
No Government would undertake such a form of deliberate psychological and economic warfare on a whim - we are still feeling the economic consequences of the Covid response to this day in terms of the £300 billion or so borrowed by Sunak to keep the economy on life support.
Outside the conspiracy rabbit hole, the truth looks very different. Experts and politicians struggling to deal with an experience outside their normal world - perhaps the first time, however, we put health before wealth. Civilisation would not have ended had we refused to lock down which was an option but we'd have had a very difficult few weeks as the virus went through the population but we'd have been fine and while there would no doubt have been some short to medium term economic impact, we'd have been all right and possibly (who knows) be in a better position now.
Were mistakes made? Clearly, both at the time and subsequently. The important thing is to learn some lessons but perhaps next time the virus will be more lethal and less contagious, who knows?
Were some good things done? Yes, as well including the vaccine roll out which was excellent.
Cummings is on about "pox parties" where people came together to deliberately get it.
Claims this was official advice at one point. Says it was all Wormald's idea.
I have no recollection of this?
I don't think it happened, because I don't think it had time to happen.
But in the very early days, my recollection was that the plan was to ensure that as many people (especially youngsters) caught COVID as possible over Summer 2020 in order to develop herd immunity by infection. The sombrero was to be squashed, not eliminated.
The proportion of cases needing to go to hospital and thence to a cemetery stopped that plan being viable, but it it hung around in folk memory for a while.
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
Not true, remember the news from Italy at the beginning.
But it was true. There was a government team specifically to frighten people.
Sure, though I'd saY more 'steer' people. But the unit was activated significantly later IIRC than the foreign news and its impact.
Or perhaps it was a matter of the bringing in of the general government nudge team which was preexisting as a general purpose policy tool brought in by Mr Cummings IIRC.
Easy to telescope them in memory (as with so much else with those ghastly years).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
"The European Commission has slashed its €6.7bn demand for the UK to join its multibillion-euro rearmament programme by more than two-thirds, amid growing internal divisions in the EU over the terms of British participation.
Two diplomats briefed on the discussion said the commission had now put a €2bn price tag on the UK taking part in the €140bn Security Action for Europe (Safe) loan guarantee scheme designed to help boost European defence spending.
The reduced figure is still far above the €75mn the UK has offered to join the programme, with pressure mounting on both sides to cut a deal by the November 30 deadline.
The commission’s pared back offer comes amid heightened divisions among EU member states about the handling of the negotiations that followed the agreement of an EU-UK “reset” at a joint summit in Windsor last May.
One EU diplomat described the commission’s original demand of up to €6.7bn as “completely and utterly ridiculous”, warning that failure of the EU to reach an agreement with a key Nato ally would be a serious embarrassment."
I remember on the day Boris announced lockdown, having just come back from the supermarket which was already looking a bit bare, there was a power cut in my area almost immediately after the announcement. I did wonder then and there if that was where the whole of civilisation ended, like the moment the TV channels go off air in an apocalypse drama and the supermarket looting is already kicking in.
Obviously it came back on reasonably quickly, but that period in the house felt angsty...
Absolutely. The supermarket shelves were looking pretty bare. I remember thinking if this doesn't turn around things are going to get pretty dicey. Luckily the next week the shelves were stocked.
I remember when there were 80 confirmed cases in the country, and knowing three of them, and therefore doubting the official statistics. It turned out that unbeknownst to me, those two of those three people knew each otger independently of me and had been on a skiing holiday together in Italy: the third knew neither but had been on the same flight back. Sometimes coincidences are just that.
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
Seriously?
Five and a bit years on and we're still hearing this nonsense.
My recollection was people were happy to withdraw into isolation and very many were frightened, if not for their own health then for the health of older relatives or relatives with health issues.
I don't think anyone thought it would last three months - three weeks at most.
No Government would undertake such a form of deliberate psychological and economic warfare on a whim - we are still feeling the economic consequences of the Covid response to this day in terms of the £300 billion or so borrowed by Sunak to keep the economy on life support.
Outside the conspiracy rabbit hole, the truth looks very different. Experts and politicians struggling to deal with an experience outside their normal world - perhaps the first time, however, we put health before wealth. Civilisation would not have ended had we refused to lock down which was an option but we'd have had a very difficult few weeks as the virus went through the population but we'd have been fine and while there would no doubt have been some short to medium term economic impact, we'd have been all right and possibly (who knows) be in a better position now.
Were mistakes made? Clearly, both at the time and subsequently. The important thing is to learn some lessons but perhaps next time the virus will be more lethal and less contagious, who knows?
Were some good things done? Yes, as well including the vaccine roll out which was excellent.
There was no reason to be frightened. We should have carried on with normal life, with vulnerable people staying at home based on their own judgement/assessment.
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
That was always the problem. Once you open up, you are going to get infections. And unless you somehow keep the R below 1 there will be exponential growth. And we’ve since realised the costs of lockdown, both financial and social, so much so that some think there should have been no lockdowns at all.
I think you could have avoided deaths in the first wave, but probably overall it’s harder to say.
Wasn't the aim to slow, rather than prevent, infections so as not to overwhelm the NHS and have people dying from lack of treatment?
Yes, at the start that was the plan. But then the numbers were coming in and they realised that it was gonna be a huge first wave. Now it would have been shit, lots more dead, huge pressure on the health services, but in the longer run the later waves would have been smaller.
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
Not true, remember the news from Italy at the beginning.
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
The only thing I'm 100% sure that they got wrong was allowing Cheltenham to go ahead. That was the UK super-spreader, and certainly how I got covid the first time - from colleagues that went there.
There were x million workers using the Tube at that time. Cheltenham was a minor blip.
Sure, but X million from London. Cheltenham brought together people from all around the UK.
I worked then in an office of 300 or so. The first to fall were all the Cheltenham attendees, and then those that sat next to them etc. I find it hard to imagine that a similar effect wasn't at work elsewhere. So I think I can reasonably conclude that it was a significant factor in the spread.
The first hit local to me was before restrictions, a colleague hosted a get-together and about 2 or 3 weeks later two of the guests were dead. That was before we read about the choir in USA who had one last rehearsal together before their restrictions came into force, with a very similar outcome. Frightening times.
On those stats 25 million Brits would have died.
That was one of the curious things about it - that under apparently the same conditions one got it badly but another didn't get it at all.
Or so it seemed. Many cases were asymptomatic, which made it that much more difficult to control the spread.
Those darned asymptomatic cases..where healthy people are told they're ill..🧐💩
The most annoying saying in the entire of Covid was "follow The Science". There was no such thing as The Science in this context. Anyone in any doubt that those involved in science are just as venal, corrupt, lying, self serving, politically opportunist and career grabbing as anyone else, needs only to have viewed the 100% shittery that was Independent Sage.
The people behind Independent Sage are a bit of a disgrace, because even assuming their advice and views were good, the name they chose was purely to cause confusion with Sage, and that is not really acceptable in my view. They could have picked any number of alternatives and avoided that, had they wanted.
On following the science, there was some deliberate misunderstanding that there would always be judgement calls to be made, which is what politicians are for, since even where the facts are indisputable there will be multiple approaches that could be taken, factors to balance and so on.
Why was the name sage chosen at all btw - conjures up thoughts of a herb, or the ubiquitous accounting software giant..
It's just an acronym: Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies
Anyway, the Scottish government does not come out this report well, e.g.:
2.137. On 24 February 2020, Scottish Government Resilience Room (Officials) met.335 Derek Grieve, Deputy Director to the Health Protection Division, recorded that the Chief Medical Officer gave “everyone both barrels on the impact of COVID19. Felt like a few were starting to appear interested.”336 This was one of many examples of Mr Grieve’s growing frustration at the slow pace of the Scottish Government’s response to the virus during this period. On 26 February 2020, he recorded in his notebook that he had attended a COBR meeting with Ms Freeman and that it was “clear all [departments] in UK Govt are fully engaged [and] mobilised in a way that the [Scottish Government] simply isn’t”.337 On 27 February 2020, he recorded that he had attended a meeting of senior officials within the Scottish Government and there was “still no real engagement. They then spent 20 mins talking about internal SG [Scottish Government] comms. Completely amazed!”338
Covid-19 was not included on the formal agenda for the UK government Cabinet meeting on 25 February 2020.
Ouch. That is after Italy has introduced regional lockdowns.
I wonder if we didn't take Italy seriously because we were stereotyping all Italians as backward southern italians when in reality it was happening in rich Northern Italy.
Paragraph 3.9:
Helen MacNamara (Deputy Cabinet Secretary from January 2019 to February 2021) described the tone of meetings in early March 2020 with Boris Johnson MP (Prime Minister from July 2019 to September 2022) as “jovial” and told the Inquiry there was a general view that “in implementing containment measures and suspending work and schooling, the Italians were overreacting”.22 Edward Udny-Lister, Lord Udny-Lister (Chief Strategic Adviser to the Prime Minister from July 2019 to November 2020 and Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister from November 2020 to February 2021), said that there was a sense that the UK would not be as badly impacted by Covid-19 as Italy:
“[T]here was a feeling that we are going to do better than this, it’s not going to be as bad as that.”23
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
But why did coronavirus seem like such a destructive malevolence? It was because the government created a unit to frighten us into submission.
Not true, remember the news from Italy at the beginning.
I'll wait to read the detail from covid but have to say I'm going to take a hell of a lot of convincing that locking down a week or two earlier would have reduced the overall deaths by 10ks they are claiming. Surely the deaths are simply postponed at that stage as there was no vaccine?
The only thing I'm 100% sure that they got wrong was allowing Cheltenham to go ahead. That was the UK super-spreader, and certainly how I got covid the first time - from colleagues that went there.
There were x million workers using the Tube at that time. Cheltenham was a minor blip.
Sure, but X million from London. Cheltenham brought together people from all around the UK.
I worked then in an office of 300 or so. The first to fall were all the Cheltenham attendees, and then those that sat next to them etc. I find it hard to imagine that a similar effect wasn't at work elsewhere. So I think I can reasonably conclude that it was a significant factor in the spread.
The first hit local to me was before restrictions, a colleague hosted a get-together and about 2 or 3 weeks later two of the guests were dead. That was before we read about the choir in USA who had one last rehearsal together before their restrictions came into force, with a very similar outcome. Frightening times.
On those stats 25 million Brits would have died.
That was one of the curious things about it - that under apparently the same conditions one got it badly but another didn't get it at all.
Or so it seemed. Many cases were asymptomatic, which made it that much more difficult to control the spread.
Those darned asymptomatic cases..where healthy people are told they're ill..🧐💩
They were infectious, that was the problem (and a particular issue with covid). They weren't healthy. Just seemed to be, unless one tested.
Edit: I particularly say that because asymptomatic covid has a real risk of long term effects, like symptomatic does. Not so much, but it's definitely there.
200 million pounds for an inquiry . Good grief what a waste of money . I won’t criticize any of the 4 nations response as it was an unprecedented time . Hindsight is a wonderful thing .
It does seem the report is attracted considerable attention across parties for the outrageous cost of 200 million
I suppose the question is- what would a reasonable cost be? How many lawyers at how much a head for a couple of years? I doubt you need that crazy a set of assumptions to say that this costs what it costs.
Comments
Much proper test cricket has been remarkably exciting in recent years.
If it didn't it's more depressing to me as certainly in Edinburgh people were scarily obedient. I was working throughout, and I used to get an essentially private bus ride at odd times of the day or night into an abandoned city, where maybe I'd see two people on the streets. With posters everywhere for cultural events that had never happened and never would, and some boarded up bars still projecting their adverts for bad bottled beer onto the streets. An deserted city during the golden hour. God, I love a curfew.
Turns out some friends of mine vaguely knew him. He has kids 12-14 ish. Apparently their mum died a few years back too.
https://stocks.apple.com/A1ocHpB62S7664M53Ulvs-w
(Couldn't get a direct URL, sorry)
The reality is that there were three approaches that had the best outcomes from a cost benefit analysis:
(1) Australia/New Zealand. If there's even a single case, then you have total lockdowns until the diesese is eliminated (and by eliminated, I mean zero cases). Foreign travel is essentiall frozen, even if it means leaving your citizens stuck on the wrong side of the world and unable to pay for hotels, etc. On the other hand, 90% of the time, you are able to live without restrictions.
(2) The 80/20 approach. You recognise you will never be able to get cases down to zero, so you look at which measures have the least impact on peroples' lives, and which have the greatest impact on R. The goal is simply to avoid the disease spiralling out of control, by slowing the speed of the infection. So, you'd have nightclubs and karaoke clubs closed, and you'd require masks on public transport. But you wouldn't (say) prevent people from socialising.
(3) The risk segmentation approach. This is what Denmark did. You have everyone regularly tested, and depending on how often you interact with vulnerable populations, the more often you need to be tested. Their system of phone based passes kept their economy effectively more open than Sweden's, with smaller economic impact and negative excess deaths. But this does require a degree of organisation that we lacked.
I think we would have been best off - given where we started - with option 2.
I am reading the full report. I’m only up to about Feb 2020. The thing that jumps out is how everyone is getting steadily more and more concerned… except Johnson is in the middle brushing the whole thing off as not-gonna-happen.
Yes, I'll probably get absorbed once it starts but right this minute it feels terribly flat,
For example, it was clear pretty quickly that the risk of infection when outside was very low. Likewise, we figured out pretty quickly that formites were not a major transmission vector.
It was also possible to look at other countries, and copy what worked and didn't work, remembering -of course- that what works in a place with low population density and where a high proportion of people live on their own, is different to one with high population density and where people don't often live on their own.
On following the science, there was some deliberate misunderstanding that there would always be judgement calls to be made, which is what politicians are for, since even where the facts are indisputable there will be multiple approaches that could be taken, factors to balance and so on.
Nice to be proved correct.
80% when you can’t actually do anything always seemed excessive and helped fuel some very negative economic behaviours IMHO.
I was never on furlough, but my outgoings plummeted during lockdown.
In the UK, we conclude that we made a mistake and that we should have taken the Swedish one.
The grass is always greener.
I'm sure you have the age-related mortality stats to hand so we can now see (actually we could see it some time ago) where the actual risk was.
Anyway, the Scottish government does not come out this report well, e.g.:
2.137. On 24 February 2020, Scottish Government Resilience Room (Officials) met.335 Derek Grieve, Deputy Director to the Health Protection Division, recorded that the Chief Medical Officer gave “everyone both barrels on the impact of COVID19. Felt like a few were starting to appear interested.”336 This was one of many examples of Mr Grieve’s growing frustration at the slow pace of the Scottish Government’s response to the virus during this period. On 26 February 2020, he recorded in his notebook that he had attended a COBR meeting with Ms Freeman and that it was “clear all [departments] in UK Govt are fully engaged [and] mobilised in a way that the [Scottish Government] simply isn’t”.337 On 27 February 2020, he recorded that he had attended a meeting of senior officials within the Scottish Government and there was “still no real engagement. They then spent 20 mins talking about internal SG [Scottish Government] comms. Completely amazed!”338
I am not sure if the report also looked into the role of the media in the outbreak but they were clearly key and at times unhelpful.
I am not sure spending £200million on an enquiry that stated that had you had perfect information that things would have been done differently.
It seems to have slipped the reports grasp that had Boris Johnson not been prime minister during the outbreak. it is likely that it would have been Jeremy Corbyn would have been PM , I am entirely confident that he would not have made better decisions during the Pandemic.
At the time, the coronavirus seemed a destructive malevolence almost outside control yet it wasn't quite like the apocolyptic tales of science fiction or even the cultural resonance of the Black Death - it was clear while there was death, there wasn't wholesale mortality. Cities weren't emptying, going silent but health facilities were being overwhelmed by the nature of the virus which required more oxygen and respirator capacity than was available.
It's worth mentioning the death toll was mitigated by modern technology - had this happened even 30 years ago, there would have been more deaths.
The decision to "lock down" was primarily to reduce that pressure on the health facilities until more could be made available. I suspect those in charge knew from an early stage mortality rates were not going to be unmanageable and it was also clear from an early stage external transmission of the virus in normal circumstances was rare - the problem was large numbers of people in confined spaces (history could have told you that).
It's also now likely the virus was in the country in February and probably anything we tried in March was too little and too late - whether it came back with the half term holidaymakers or whether it was in even earlier I don't know.
One of the aspects which exacerbated the situation was the prevalence of elderly people who didn't need to be in hospital to receive care but for whom no alternative care regimen had been put in place - this remains one of the ongoing aspects of the care debate, getting those who no longer need hospital care to more appropriate places of care.
I also suspect economic, psychological and cultural considerations around lockdowns had differing elements of priority at different times but it's also worth noting many agencies performed admirably - long standarding protocols based on resilience forums at local Government level enabled, I think, a decent response from councils, the NHS, Police and other groups.
Ouch. That is after Italy has introduced regional lockdowns.
And OMFG. Mani 63?
Time gentlemen, please.
The more you are prepared to tolerate lesser restrictions during the cool phases, the easier it is to avoid really drastic restrictions.
It's a brilliant irony. The desperation to avoid lockdowns of Boris and his fans was a large part of why such long lockdowns because inevitable.
https://youtu.be/VPkLUOfugjo?si=zi4WBfzmPIVx3pId
If you want to score some party political points BBC Wales Today are confirming that pet capita deaths under Welsh Labour in the first wave were worse than under Sir Boris.
2.176 onwards is pretty damning for all the leaders
Yes Johnson was far too optimistic and it went against his instinct to lockdown, Hancock and Wormaid were out of their depth, as were many others including the first ministers of the devolved nations
I defy anyone to say Starmer, Davey, Corbyn or indeed any of our politicians would have done anything better
- viewcode article "The Blob", part 8. 2019-2024, see https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/09/28/the-blob/
If we'd restricted international travel before the disease was widely seeded, then we would have benefited from having a smaller number of cases at the start, and therefore the level of restrictions required to keep total caseload below [x] would have been less.
However, once the disease is out there and common, then (other than the greater than average risk of catching it on the plane) it made very little difference. Even the people coming back from plague ridden Spain in the Summer of 2020 probably made little difference.
I think there should have been less coercian, and more guidance.
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
·
1h
I honestly think there should be a national public inquiry into the Covid inquiry. Utter farce from day one.
https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1991559526802420136
edit: and this:
John Rentoul
@JohnRentoul
·
2h
Nothing I have read so far changes my view that the £200m spent on the inquiry so far could have been better deployed elsewhere
https://x.com/Dominic2306/status/1991527964836499672
[long thread]
"- The lawyers for the Inquiry allowed many senior scientists to claim under oath that ‘I thought X on date Y’ when on YouTube there is video/audio of them saying the exact opposite on date Y. Not once have I seen the Inquiry challenge scientists over this. The Inquiry has therefore enabled a vast rewriting of history — some dishonest, some simply the normal process of people wanting to believe they were right at the time."
A friend of mine lives in downtown Manhattan, overlooking the convention center they turned into a makeshift hospital at the beginning of the pandemic. She told me that in the first week, there was the constant sound of sirens, and out her window there were men in hazmat suits taking people in. And the bodies were piling up becase you don't need much a spike in death rates to overwhelm the crematoria that are used to only a certain number of people dying.
At that point in time (and from her vantage point), it looked very fucking scary.
Of course, we (a) got better at treating it, (b) people took sensible precautions, and (c) many of us got microdoses that helped prepare our immune systems. The combination of these meant that - even before vaccines - we were in a hell of a lot better positon than we'd been in at the beginning of the pandemic.
As for the broader lessons-
1 Don't elect a nitwit as PM, even if they are amusing.
2 Don't have a sociopath as Chief of Staff
3 Don't try to beat nature with politics, because nature isn't fooled like that-
perhaps they are lessons that are learned, then forgotten so that the need to be relearned in every generation. Indeed, we never really learned 3 properly, and our grip on 2 doesn't seem strong. As for 1...
There probably shouldn't have been any subsequent lockdowns - just periods with slightly more onerous restrictioms.
And on furlough, it is possible Corbyn might have directed financial support to laid off workers rather than their capitalist employers, although that is perhaps a secondary consideration.
The first question asked of the next candidate will be "What did you do during the trump years?"
I think you could have avoided deaths in the first wave, but probably overall it’s harder to say.
Exclusive: The U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify the swastika, nooses and the Confederate flag as hate symbols.
The military service drafted a new policy that classifies them as “potentially divisive.”
https://bsky.app/profile/washingtonpost.com/post/3m63fyw4j232r
Claims this was official advice at one point. Says it was all Wormald's idea.
I have no recollection of this?
There was some quibble about selling scotch eggs, which I only half remember and am happier that way.
Obviously it came back on reasonably quickly, but that period in the house felt angsty...
The scotch eggs stuff was - but I won't spoil it for you.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-67301894
But I guess a lot of what happened may be hazy for all or some of us as it was all such a weird time.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-67301894?page=2 (but this is not Mr Wormald)
Five and a bit years on and we're still hearing this nonsense.
My recollection was people were happy to withdraw into isolation and very many were frightened, if not for their own health then for the health of older relatives or relatives with health issues.
I don't think anyone thought it would last three months - three weeks at most.
No Government would undertake such a form of deliberate psychological and economic warfare on a whim - we are still feeling the economic consequences of the Covid response to this day in terms of the £300 billion or so borrowed by Sunak to keep the economy on life support.
Outside the conspiracy rabbit hole, the truth looks very different. Experts and politicians struggling to deal with an experience outside their normal world - perhaps the first time, however, we put health before wealth. Civilisation would not have ended had we refused to lock down which was an option but we'd have had a very difficult few weeks as the virus went through the population but we'd have been fine and while there would no doubt have been some short to medium term economic impact, we'd have been all right and possibly (who knows) be in a better position now.
Were mistakes made? Clearly, both at the time and subsequently. The important thing is to learn some lessons but perhaps next time the virus will be more lethal and less contagious, who knows?
Were some good things done? Yes, as well including the vaccine roll out which was excellent.
But in the very early days, my recollection was that the plan was to ensure that as many people (especially youngsters) caught COVID as possible over Summer 2020 in order to develop herd immunity by infection. The sombrero was to be squashed, not eliminated.
The proportion of cases needing to go to hospital and thence to a cemetery stopped that plan being viable, but it it hung around in folk memory for a while.
Then you could wander round with impunity whilst everyone was locked away quivering in fear.
It wouldn't have worked, of course, given you could catch it more than once (as I was reminded all too clearly last month).
Or perhaps it was a matter of the bringing in of the general government nudge team which was preexisting as a general purpose policy tool brought in by Mr Cummings IIRC.
Easy to telescope them in memory (as with so much else with those ghastly years).
Two diplomats briefed on the discussion said the commission had now put a €2bn price tag on the UK taking part in the €140bn Security Action for Europe (Safe) loan guarantee scheme designed to help boost European defence spending.
The reduced figure is still far above the €75mn the UK has offered to join the programme, with pressure mounting on both sides to cut a deal by the November 30 deadline.
The commission’s pared back offer comes amid heightened divisions among EU member states about the handling of the negotiations that followed the agreement of an EU-UK “reset” at a joint summit in Windsor last May.
One EU diplomat described the commission’s original demand of up to €6.7bn as “completely and utterly ridiculous”, warning that failure of the EU to reach an agreement with a key Nato ally would be a serious embarrassment."
https://www.ft.com/content/ba8875e3-1119-4472-b0ba-0dbc302f3370
It turned out that unbeknownst to me, those two of those three people knew each otger independently of me and had been on a skiing holiday together in Italy: the third knew neither but had been on the same flight back. Sometimes coincidences are just that.
Helen MacNamara (Deputy Cabinet Secretary from January 2019 to February 2021) described the tone of meetings in early March 2020 with Boris Johnson MP (Prime Minister from July 2019 to September 2022) as “jovial” and told the Inquiry there was a general view that “in implementing containment measures and suspending work and schooling, the Italians were overreacting”.22 Edward Udny-Lister, Lord Udny-Lister (Chief Strategic Adviser to the Prime Minister from July 2019 to November 2020 and Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister from November 2020 to February 2021), said that there was a sense that the UK would not be as badly impacted by Covid-19 as Italy:
“[T]here was a feeling that we are going to do better than this, it’s not going to be as bad as that.”23
Edit: I particularly say that because asymptomatic covid has a real risk of long term effects, like symptomatic does. Not so much, but it's definitely there.