Sunday Times - 38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster

[CombatClaret]

Boris Johnson skipped five Cobra meetings on the virus, calls to order protective gear were ignored and scientists’ warnings fell on deaf ears. Failings in February may have cost thousands of lives

On the third Friday of January a silent and stealthy killer was creeping across the world. Passing from person to person and borne on ships and planes, the coronavirus was already leaving a trail of bodies.

The virus had spread from China to six countries and was almost certainly in many others. Sensing the coming danger, the British government briefly went into wartime mode that day, holding a meeting of Cobra, its national crisis committee.

But it took just an hour that January 24 lunchtime to brush aside the coronavirus threat. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, bounced out of Whitehall after chairing the meeting and breezily told reporters the risk to the UK public was “low”.

This was despite the publication that day of an alarming study by Chinese doctors in the medical journal, The Lancet. It assessed the lethal potential of the virus, for the first time suggesting it was comparable to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed up to 50 million people.

Unusually, Boris Johnson had been absent from Cobra. The committee — which includes ministers, intelligence chiefs and military generals — gathers at moments of great peril such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters and other threats to the nation and is normally chaired by the prime minister.

Johnson had found time that day, however, to join in a lunar new year dragon eyes ritual as part of Downing Street’s reception for the Chinese community, led by the country’s ambassador.

It was a big day for Johnson and there was a triumphal mood in Downing Street because the withdrawal treaty from the European Union was being signed in the late afternoon. It could have been the defining moment of his premiership — but that was before the world changed.

That afternoon his spokesman played down the looming threat from the east and reassured the nation that we were “well prepared for any new diseases”. The confident, almost nonchalant, attitude displayed that day in January would continue for more than a month.

Johnson went on to miss four further Cobra meetings on the virus. As Britain was hit by unprecedented flooding, he completed the EU withdrawal, reshuffled his cabinet and then went away to the grace-and-favour country retreat at Chevening where he spent most of the two weeks over half-term with his pregnant fiancée, Carrie Symonds.

It would not be until March 2 — another five weeks — that Johnson would attend a Cobra meeting about the coronavirus. But by then it was almost certainly too late. The virus had sneaked into our airports, our trains, our workplaces and our homes. Britain was on course for one of the worst infections of the most deadly virus to have hit the world in more than a century.

Last week, a senior adviser to Downing Street broke ranks and blamed the weeks of complacency on a failure of leadership in cabinet. In particular, the prime minister was singled out.

“There’s no way you’re at war if your PM isn’t there,” the adviser said. “And what you learn about Boris was he didn’t chair any meetings. He liked his country breaks. He didn’t work weekends. It was like working for an old-fashioned chief executive in a local authority 20 years ago. There was a real sense that he didn’t do urgent crisis planning. It was exactly like people feared he would be.”

Inquiry ’inevitable’ One day there will inevitably be an inquiry into the lack of preparations during those “lost” five weeks from January 24. There will be questions about when politicians understood the severity of the threat, what the scientists told them and why so little was done to equip the National Health Service for the coming crisis. It will be the politicians who will face the most intense scrutiny.

Among the key points likely to be explored will be why it took so long to recognise an urgent need for a massive boost in supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers; ventilators to treat acute respiratory symptoms; and tests to detect the infection.

Any inquiry may also ask whether the government’s failure to get to grips with the scale of the crisis in those early days had the knock-on effect of the national lockdown being introduced days or even weeks too late, causing many thousands more unnecessary deaths.

An investigation has talked to scientists, academics, doctors, emergency planners, public officials and politicians about the root of the crisis and whether the government should have known sooner and acted more swiftly to kick-start the Whitehall machine and put the NHS onto a war footing.

They told us that, contrary to the official line, Britain was in a poor state of readiness for a pandemic. Emergency stockpiles of PPE had severely dwindled and gone out of date after becoming a low priority in the years of austerity cuts. The training to prepare key workers for a pandemic had been put on hold for two years while contingency planning was diverted to deal with a possible no-deal Brexit.

This made it doubly important that the government hit the ground running in late January and early February. Scientists said the threat from the coming storm was clear. Indeed, one of the government’s key advisory committees was given a dire warning a month earlier than has previously been admitted about the prospect of having to deal with mass casualties.

It was a message repeated throughout February but the warnings appear to have fallen on deaf ears. The need, for example, to boost emergency supplies of protective masks and gowns for health workers was pressing, but little progress was made in obtaining the items from the manufacturers, mainly in China.

Instead, the government sent supplies the other way — shipping 279,000 items of its depleted stockpile of protective equipment to China during this period, following a request for help from the authorities there.

Impending danger The prime minister had been sunning himself with his girlfriend in the millionaires’ Caribbean resort of Mustique when China first alerted the World Health Organisation (WHO) on December 31 that several cases of an unusual pneumonia had been recorded in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in Hubei province.

In the days that followed China initially claimed the virus could not be transmitted from human to human, which should have been reassuring. But this did not ring true to Britain’s public health academics and epidemiologists who were texting each other, eager for more information, in early January.

Devi Sridhar, professor of global public health at Edinburgh University, had predicted in a talk two years earlier that a virus might jump species from an animal in China and spread quickly to become a human pandemic. So the news from Wuhan set her on high alert.

“In early January a lot of my global health colleagues and I were kind of discussing ‘What’s going on?’” she recalled. “China still hadn’t confirmed the virus was human-to-human. A lot of us were suspecting it was because it was a respiratory pathogen and you wouldn’t see the numbers of cases that we were seeing out of China if it was not human-to-human. So that was disturbing.”

By as early as January 16 the professor was on Twitter calling for swift action to prepare for the virus. “Been asked by journalists how serious #WuhanPneumonia outbreak is,” she wrote. “My answer: take it seriously because of cross-border spread (planes means bugs travel far & fast), likely human-to-human transmission and previous outbreaks have taught overresponding is better than delaying action.”

Events were now moving fast. Four hundred miles away in London, from its campus next to the Royal Albert Hall, a team at Imperial College’s School of Public Health led by Professor Neil Ferguson produced its first modelling assessment of the likely impact of the virus. On Friday, January 17, its report noted the “worrying” news that three cases of the virus had been discovered outside China — two in Thailand and one in Japan. While acknowledging many unknowns, researchers calculated that there could already be as many as 4,000 cases. The report warned: “The magnitude of these numbers suggests substantial human-to-human transmission cannot be ruled out. Heightened surveillance, prompt information-sharing and enhanced preparedness are recommended.”

By now the mystery bug had been identified as a type of coronavirus — a large family of viruses that can cause infections ranging from the common cold to severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars). There had been two reported deaths from the virus and 41 patients had been taken ill.

The following Wednesday, January 22, the government convened its first meeting of its scientific advisory group for emergencies (Sage) to discuss the virus. Its membership is secret but it is usually chaired by the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, and chief medical adviser, Professor Chris Whitty. Downing Street advisers are also present.

There were new findings that day with Chinese scientists warning that the virus had an unusually high infectivity rate of up to 3.0, which meant each person with the virus would typically infect up to three more people.

One of those present was Imperial’s Ferguson, who was already working on his own estimate — putting infectivity at 2.6 and possibly as high as 3.5 — which he sent to ministers and officials in a report on the day of the Cobra meeting on January 24. The Spanish flu had an estimated infectivity rate of between 2.0 and 3.0, so Ferguson’s finding was shocking.

“Cobra met today to discuss the situation in Wuhan, China,” said Whitty. “We have global experts monitoring the situation around the clock and have a strong track record of managing new forms of infectious disease . . . there are no confirmed cases in the UK to date.”

However, by then there had been 1,000 cases worldwide and 41 deaths, mostly in Wuhan. A Lancet report that day presented a study of 41 coronavirus patients admitted to hospital in Wuhan which found that more than half had severe breathing problems, a third required intensive care and six had died.

And there was now little doubt that the UK would be hit by the virus. A study by Southampton University has shown that 190,000 people flew into the UK from Wuhan and other high-risk Chinese cities between January and March. The researchers estimated that up to 1,900 of these passengers would have been infected with the coronavirus — almost guaranteeing the UK would become a centre of the subsequent pandemic.

Sure enough, five days later on Wednesday, January 29, the first coronavirus cases on British soil were found when two Chinese nationals from the same family fell ill at a hotel in York. The next day, the government raised the threat level from low to moderate.

The pandemic plan On January 31 — or Brexit day as it had become known — there was a rousing 11pm speech by the prime minister promising that the withdrawal from the European Union would be the dawn of a new era unleashing the British people who would “grow in confidence” month by month.

By this time, there was good reason for the government’s top scientific advisers to feel creeping unease about the virus. The WHO had declared the coronavirus a global emergency just the day before and scientists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine had confirmed to Whitty in a private meeting of the Nervtag advisory committee on respiratory illness that the virus’s infectivity could be as bad as Ferguson’s worst estimate several days earlier.

The official scientific advisers were willing to concede in public that there might be several cases of the coronavirus in the UK. But they had faith that the country’s plans for a pandemic would prove robust.

This was probably a big mistake. An adviser to Downing Street with extensive knowledge of Britain’s emergency preparations — speaking off the record — says their confidence in “the plan” was misplaced. While a possible pandemic had been listed as the No 1 threat to the nation for many years, the source says that in reality it had long since stopped being treated as such.

Several emergency planners and scientists said that the plans to protect the UK in a pandemic had once been a top priority and had been well-funded for a decade following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. But then austerity cuts struck. “We were the envy of the world,” the source said, “but pandemic planning became a casualty of the austerity years when there were more pressing needs.”

The last rehearsal for a pandemic was a 2016 exercise codenamed Cygnus which predicted the health service would collapse and highlighted a long list of shortcomings — including, presciently, a lack of PPE and intensive care ventilators.

But an equally lengthy list of recommendations to address the deficiencies was never implemented. The source said preparations for a no-deal Brexit “sucked all the blood out of pandemic planning” in the following years.

In the year leading up to the coronavirus outbreak key government committee meetings on pandemic planning were repeatedly “bumped” off the diary to make way for discussions about more pressing issues such as the beds crisis in the NHS. Training for NHS staff with protective equipment and respirators was also neglected, the source alleges.

Members of the government advisory group on pandemics are said to have felt powerless. “They would joke between themselves, ‘Haha let’s hope we don’t get a pandemic,’ because there wasn’t a single area of practice that was being nurtured in order for us to meet basic requirements for pandemic, never mind do it well,” said the source.

“If you were with senior NHS managers at all during the last two years, you were aware that their biggest fear, their sweatiest nightmare, was a pandemic because they weren’t prepared for it.”

It meant that the government had much catching up to do when it was becoming clear that this “nightmare” was becoming a distinct possibility in February. But the source says there was little urgency. “Almost every plan we had was not activated in February. Almost every government department has failed to properly implement their own pandemic plans,” the source said.

One deviation from the plan, for example, was a failure to give an early warning to firms that there might be a lockdown so they could start contingency planning. “There was a duty to get them to start thinking about their cashflow and their business continuity arrangements,” the source said.

Superspreader A central part of any pandemic plan is to identify anyone who becomes ill, vigorously pursue all their recent contacts and put them into quarantine. That involves testing and the UK initially seemed to be ahead of the game. In early February Hancock proudly told the Commons the UK was one of the first countries to develop a new test for the coronavirus. “Testing worldwide is being done on equipment designed in Oxford,” he said.

So when Steve Walsh, a 53-year-old businessman from Hove, East Sussex, was identified as the source of the second UK outbreak on February 6 all his contacts were followed up with tests. Walsh’s case was a warning of the rampant infectivity of the virus as he is believed to have passed it to five people in the UK after returning from a conference in Singapore as well as six overseas.

But Public Health England failed to take advantage of our early breakthroughs with tests and lost early opportunities to step up production to the levels that would later be needed.

This was in part because the government was planning for the virus using its blueprint for fighting the flu. Once a flu pandemic has found its way into the population and there is no vaccine, then the virus is allowed to take its course until “herd immunity” is acquired. Such a plan does not require mass testing.

A senior politician told this newspaper: “I had conversations with Chris Whitty at the end of January and they were absolutely focused on herd immunity. The reason is that with flu, herd immunity is the right response if you haven’t got a vaccine.

“All of our planning was for pandemic flu. There has basically been a divide between scientists in Asia who saw this as a horrible, deadly disease on the lines of Sars, which requires immediate lockdown, and those in the West, particularly in the US and UK, who saw this as flu.”

The prime minister’s special adviser Dominic Cummings is said to have had initial enthusiasm for the herd immunity concept, which may have played a part in the government’s early approach to managing the virus. The Department of Health firmly denies that “herd immunity” was ever its aim and rejects suggestions that Whitty supported it. Cummings also denies backing the concept.

The failure to obtain large amounts of testing equipment was another big error of judgment, according to the Downing Street source. It would later be one of the big scandals of the coronavirus crisis that the considerable capacity of Britain’s private laboratories to mass-produce tests was not harnessed during those crucial weeks of February.

“We should have communicated with every commercial testing laboratory that might volunteer to become part of the government’s testing regime but that didn’t happen,” said the source.

The lack of action was confirmed by Doris-Ann Williams, chief executive of the British In Vitro Diagnostics Association, which represents 110 companies that make up most of the UK’s testing sector. Amazingly, she says her organisation did not receive a meaningful approach from the government asking for help until April 1 — the night before Hancock bowed to pressure and announced a belated and ambitious target of 100,000 tests a day by the end of this month.

There was also a failure to replenish supplies of gowns and masks for health and care workers in the early weeks of February — despite NHS England declaring the virus its first “level four critical incident” at the end of January.

It was a key part of the pandemic plan — the NHS’s Operating Framework for Managing the Response to Pandemic Influenza dated December 2017 — that the NHS would be able to draw on “just in case” stockpiles of PPE.

But many of the “just in case” stockpiles had dwindled, and equipment was out of date. As not enough money was being spent on replenishing stockpiles, this shortfall was supposed to be filled by activating “just in time” contracts which had been arranged with equipment suppliers in recent years to deal with an emergency. The first order for equipment under the “just in time” protocol was made on January 30.

However, the source said that attempts to call in these “just in time” contracts immediately ran into difficulties in February because they were mostly with Chinese manufacturers who were facing unprecedented demand from the country’s own health service and elsewhere.

This was another nail in the coffin for the pandemic plan. “It was a massive spider’s web of failing, every domino has fallen,” said the source.

The NHS could have contacted UK-based suppliers. The British Healthcare Trades Association (BHTA) was ready to help supply PPE in February — and throughout March — but it was only on April 1 that its offer of help was accepted. Dr Simon Festing, the organisation’s chief executive, said: “Orders undoubtedly went overseas instead of to the NHS because of the missed opportunities in the procurement process.”

Downing Street admitted on February 24 — just five days before NHS chiefs warned a lack of PPE left the health service facing a “nightmare” — that the UK government had supplied 1,800 pairs of goggles and 43,000 disposable gloves, 194,000 sanitising wipes, 37,500 medical gowns and 2,500 face masks to China.

A senior department of health insider described the sense of drift witnessed during those crucial weeks in February: “We missed the boat on testing and PPE . . . I remember being called into some of the meetings about this in February and thinking, ‘Well it’s a good thing this isn’t the big one.’

“I had watched Wuhan but I assumed we must have not been worried because we did nothing. We just watched. A pandemic was always at the top of our national risk register — always — but when it came we just slowly watched. We could have been Germany but instead we were doomed by our incompetence, our hubris and our austerity.”

In the Far East the threat was being treated more seriously in the early weeks of February. Martin Hibberd, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was in a unique position to compare the UK’s response with Singapore, where he had advised in the past.

“Singapore realised, as soon as Wuhan reported it, that cases were going to turn up in Singapore. And so they prepared for that. I looked at the UK and I can see a different strategy and approach.

“The interesting thing for me is, I’ve worked with Singapore in 2003 and 2009 and basically they copied the UK pandemic preparedness plan. But the difference is they actually implemented it.”

Working holiday Towards the end of the second week of February, the prime minister was demob happy. After sacking five cabinet ministers and saying everyone “should be confident and calm” about Britain’s response to the virus, Johnson vacated Downing Street after the half-term recess began on February 13.

He headed to the country for a “working” holiday at Chevening with Symonds and would be out of the public eye for 12 days. His aides were thankful for the rest, as they had been working flat out since the summer as the Brexit power struggle had played out.

The Sunday newspapers that weekend would not have made comfortable reading. The Sunday Times reported on a briefing from a risk specialist which said that Public Health England would be overrun during a pandemic as it could test only 1,000 people a day.

Johnson may well have been distracted by matters in his personal life during his stay in the countryside. Aides were told to keep their briefing papers short and cut the number of memos in his red box if they wanted them to be read.

His family needed to be prepared for the announcement that Symonds, who turned 32 in March, was pregnant and that they had been secretly engaged for some time. Relations with his children had been fraught since his separation from his estranged wife Marina Wheeler and the rift deepened when she had been diagnosed with cancer last year.

The divorce also had to be finalised. Midway through the break it was announced in the High Court that the couple had reached a settlement, leaving Wheeler free to apply for divorce.

There were murmurings of frustration from some ministers and their aides at the time that Johnson was not taking more of a lead. But Johnson’s aides are understood to have felt relaxed: he was getting updates and they claim the scientists were saying everything was under control.

400,000 deaths By the time Johnson departed for the countryside, however, there was mounting unease among scientists about the exceptional nature of the threat. Sir Jeremy Farrar, an infectious disease specialist who is a key government adviser, made this clear in a recent BBC interview.

“I think from the early days in February, if not in late January, it was obvious this infection was going to be very serious and it was going to affect more than just the region of Asia ,” he said. “I think it was very clear that this was going to be an unprecedented event.”

By February 21, the virus had already infected 76,000 people, had caused 2,300 deaths in China and was taking a foothold in Europe with Italy recording 51 cases and two deaths the following day. Nonetheless Nervtag, one of the key government advisory committees, decided to keep the threat level at “moderate”.

Its members may well regret that decision with hindsight and it was certainly not unanimous. John Edmunds, one of the country’s top infectious disease modellers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was participating in the meeting by video link but his technology failed him at the crucial moment.

Edmunds wanted the threat level to be increased to high but could not make his view known as the link was glitchy. He sent an email later making his view clear. “JE believes that the risk to the UK population [in the PHE risk assessment] should be high, as there is evidence of ongoing transmission in Korea, Japan and Singapore, as well as in China,” the meeting’s minutes state. But the decision had already been taken.

Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College, was in America at the time of the meeting but would also have recommended increasing the threat to high. Three days earlier he had given an address to a seminar in which he estimated that 60% of the world’s population would probably become infected if no action was taken and 400,000 people would die in the UK.

By February 26, there were 13 known cases in the UK. That day — almost four weeks before a full lockdown would be announced — ministers were warned through another advisory committee that the country was facing a catastrophic loss of life unless drastic action was taken. Having been thwarted from sounding the alarm, Edmunds and his team presented their latest “worst scenario” predictions to the scientific pandemic influenza group on modelling (SPI-M) which directly advises the country’s scientific decision-makers on Sage.

It warned that 27 million people could be infected and 220,000 intensive care beds would be needed if no action were taken to reduce infection rates. The predicted death toll was 380,000. Edmunds’s colleague Nick Davies, who led the research, says the report emphasised the urgent need for a lockdown almost four weeks before it was imposed.

The team modelled the effects of a 12-week lockdown involving school and work closures, shielding the elderly, social distancing and self-isolation. It estimated this would delay the impact of the pandemic but there still might be 280,000 deaths over the year.

Johnson returns The previous night Johnson had returned to London for the Conservatives’ big fundraising ball, the Winter Party, at which one donor pledged £60,000 for the privilege of playing a game of tennis with him.

By this time the prime minister had missed five Cobra meetings on the preparations to combat the looming pandemic, which he left to be chaired by Hancock. Johnson was an easy target for the opposition when he returned to the Commons the following day with the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, labelling him a “part-time” prime minister for his failure to lead on the virus crisis or visit the areas of the UK badly hit by floods.

By Friday, February 28, the virus had taken root in the UK with reported cases rising to 19 and the stock markets were plunging. It was finally time for Johnson to act. He summoned a TV reporter into Downing Street to say he was on top of the coronavirus crisis.

“The issue of coronavirus is something that is now the government’s top priority,” he said. “I have just had a meeting with the chief medical officer and secretary of state for health talking about the preparations that we need to make.”

It was finally announced that he would be attending a meeting of Cobra — after a weekend at Chequers with Symonds where the couple would publicly release news of the engagement and their baby.

On the Sunday, there was a meeting between Sage committee members and officials from the Department of Health and NHS which was a game changer, according to a Whitehall source. The meeting was shown fresh modelling based on figures from Italy suggesting that 8% of infected people might need hospital treatment in a worst-case scenario. The previous estimate had been 4%-5%.

“The risk to the NHS had effectively doubled in an instant. It set alarm bells ringing across government,” said the Whitehall source. “I think that meeting focused minds. You realise it’s time to pull the trigger on the starting gun.”

At the Cobra meeting the next day with Johnson in the chair a full “battle plan” was finally signed off to contain, delay and mitigate the spread of the virus. This was on March 2 — five weeks after the first Cobra meeting on the virus.

The new push would have some positive benefits such as the creation of new Nightingale hospitals, which greatly increased the number of intensive care beds. But there was a further delay that month of nine days in introducing the lockdown as Johnson and his senior advisers debated what measures were required. Later the government would be left rudderless again after Johnson himself contracted the virus.

As the number of infections grew daily, some things were impossible to retrieve. There was a worldwide shortage of PPE and the prime minister would have to personally ring manufacturers of ventilators and testing kits in a desperate effort to boost supplies.

The result was that the NHS and care home workers would be left without proper protection and insufficient numbers of tests to find out whether they had been infected. To date 50 doctors, nurses and NHS workers have died. More than 100,000 people have been confirmed as infected in Britain and 15,000 have died.

A Downing Street spokesman said: “Our response has ensured that the NHS has been given all the support it needs to ensure everyone requiring treatment has received it, as well as providing protection to businesses and reassurance to workers. The prime minister has been at the helm of the response to this, providing leadership during this hugely challenging period for the whole nation.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coro ... -hq3b9tlgh

[Tricky Trevor]

The country had the choice, the loony left or a buffoon. They chose the buffoon. He is so far above his pay grade it is unbelievable.

[chadders]

Thanks Combat. You snooze you lose comes to mind. Inept leadership sadly and its costing many lives and so much more. I'm not point scoring I don't care for that. Lets just get it right and adapt and overcome. We should have been out of the blocks so much quicker. Look at Germany and New Zealand.

Scientific advisors were informing the government early on yet they didn't react. Look at the gov report uk Pandemic Preparedness from 2011. Sadly it seems the gov forgot about it. When I was in the MOD(N) often we would use the phrase; Planning Prevents Pxss Poor Performance. You only had to watch the news and realise with international travel it would be here very soon and we sat and watched it playing out in front of our eyes. That is not hindsight. The warnings were flagged early by experts and a blind man on a galloping horse could see what was coming (Thanks Stan!).

To date our Daughters boyfriend is still fighting for his life after being 3 weeks on ECOM moved from Exeter to London. 5 weeks with COVID 19 and the fabulous team there are absolutely fighting hard to save him. We wait and hope he will pull through but if he does what damage? He's paralysed and in an induced coma. He's 29. Previously fit young man no underlying health issues. His uni pal came down from Bristol to visit and had a 'cold'. Our Daughter has now recovered and so did his pal. My parents neighbour 51 has just passed away leaving two teenage girls.

A close friend of mine is head of a COVID ward. His wife works on the same ward. They have two children. They had insufficient PPE for staff and that was 3 weeks ago. His asked his brother to source whatever he could locally using screwfix etc. It really isn't good enough and we knew this was coming. He said the odds aren't great expecting 1 in 100 staff to die. His words. Time will tell.

If what we are experiencing is strong leadership, well then, I think we might be in a tight spot. History will tell us if we got it right but it isn't looking too rosey thus far.

Please don't take risks and keep safe everyone.
Utc

[SammyBoy]

One of my social media newsfeeds has this weird glitch where it will often throw up posts from several weeks ago when I log on. This happened yesterday and I found myself reading post after post from people around the time lockdown was announced declaring Boris Johnson and co had done a “real job” handling the COVID crisis. With the benefit of hindsight that could probably revised to “really bad job”.

[Grumps]

Is there any reason you have posted this article on two different threads?

[AndrewJB]

It’s a damning report.

[TheFamilyCat]

Lefty loonies

[Buxtonclaret]

......"Singapore realised, as soon as Wuhan reported it, that cases were going to turn up in Singapore. And so they prepared for that. I looked at the UK and I can see a different strategy and approach.

“The interesting thing for me is, I’ve worked with Singapore in 2003 and 2009 and basically they copied the UK pandemic preparedness plan. But the difference is they actually implemented it.”......

This struck me as as a very poignant part of a very disturbing article.

[diamondpocket]

"As the number of infections grew daily, some things were impossible to retrieve. There was a worldwide shortage of PPE and the prime minister would have to personally ring manufacturers of ventilators and testing kits in a desperate effort to boost supplies.

The result was that the NHS and care home workers would be left without proper protection and insufficient numbers of tests to find out whether they had been infected. To date 50 doctors, nurses and NHS workers have died."

This is it for me and makes my blood seriously boil. This buffoon should be sent to trial for manslaughter as head of our country. It is a disgrace that NHS workers should die because they don't have the equipment. Even now, after 4 weeks of lockdown there are still issues with PPE & testing. How do people support this man?

[Grumps]

"As the number of infections grew daily, some things were impossible to retrieve. There was a worldwide shortage of PPE and the prime minister would have to personally ring manufacturers of ventilators and testing kits in a desperate effort to boost supplies.

The result was that the NHS and care home workers would be left without proper protection and insufficient numbers of tests to find out whether they had been infected. To date 50 doctors, nurses and NHS workers have died."

This is it for me and makes my blood seriously boil. This buffoon should be sent to trial for manslaughter as head of our country. It is a disgrace that NHS workers should die because they don't have the equipment. Even now, after 4 weeks of lockdown there are still issues with PPE & testing. How do people support this man?

So we sack him, on the word of an unnamed source, without any right of reply?

[evensteadiereddie]

Bloody left-wing rag, how dare "The Sunday Times" attack Cummings and Co. Outrageous !

[diamondpocket]

no, we vote him out at the next election as the election law is in Britain. In the meantime, an independent investigation should be started to see exactly the government's response. From what I read in the article, there are many sources, not just one unnamed one, who have been involved in the process since the beginning.

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Good article here form Reuters, counters some of the Times.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-healt ... KKBN21P1X8

[Targetman]

no, we vote him out at the next election as the election law is in Britain. In the meantime, an independent investigation should be started to see exactly the government's response. From what I read in the article, there are many sources, not just one unnamed one, who have been involved in the process since the beginning.

He was almost certainly "voted in" at the last election because many MP's chose to ignore the election law after the EU referendum vote.

You can't just pick and choose when to adhere to the wishes of the electorate, or maybe I am mis-understanding the meaning of democracy?

[Sproggy]

"On the third Friday of January a silent and stealthy killer was creeping across the world. Passing from person to person and borne on ships and planes, the coronavirus was already leaving a trail of bodies."

Is this what Agatha Christie does for a living nowadays?

[conyoviejo]

And still people ignore the lockdown and want it lifting..

[Devils_Advocate]

He was almost certainly "voted in" at the last election because many MP's chose to ignore the election law after the EU referendum vote.

You can't just pick and choose when to adhere to the wishes of the electorate, or maybe I am mis-understanding the meaning of democracy?

You mean like Johnson, Raab and Patel who all voted against their govt's Brexit deal twice. Or can you just pick and choose which kind of Brexit deal you allow MPs to vote against and pick and choose which MPs can ignore "election law" (whatever the hell that is)

[fanzone]

Macheal Gove is on BBC now making a mockery of the article. And it shows up how one sided silly articles can be.

[Grumps]

Good article here form Reuters, counters some of the Times.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-healt ... KKBN21P1X8

A well balanced report
I've asked on here, a few times, when would the British public have accepted a full lockdown, after 10 deaths? 50?
Youve got to remember this country is governed by consent, and any lockdown relies solely on the public abiding by it, and to do that they have to believe its worth doing. We don't have armed police, or readily accept the army on the streets to enforce the instructions like other European countries have.

[Blackrod]

Whilst some things do need questioning such as the lack of PPE. the failure to restrict flights and airport checks and the ludicrous decision to allow Cheltenham to go ahead the government has taken scientific and medical advice and have done many things right. This situation is unprecedented and to imply the government ( doesn’t matter if they are right wing or left wing )has done everything wrong and should have done things differently in hindsight is just cheap political finger pointing and point scoring.

[TheFamilyCat]

Macheal Gove is on BBC now making a mockery of the article. And it shows up how one sided silly articles can be.

Found this on the BBC website:

Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove told Sky there were aspects of the newspaper report that were "slightly off", and would not be drawn on accusations that the UK sent 266,000 pieces of protective equipment to China.

Shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, was damning of the senior minister's comments.

Mr Ashworth told Sky: "Michael Gove's line that one or two aspects of this story are off beam is possibly the weakest rebuttal of a detailed expose in British political history."

Was he just warming up on Sky? He was hardly making a mockery of it.

[diamondpocket]

Macheal Gove is on BBC now making a mockery of the article. And it shows up how one sided silly articles can be.

well he isn't gonna defend it, is he? I'm sure he'll be making his own one-sided argument saying it was impossible to stop 50 deaths to frontline workers and more to come. That the numbers of deaths if we hadn't done anything would have been in their hundreds of thousands and we have saved many many lives doing it the way we have. Bravo Michael.

[AndrewJB]

Good article here form Reuters, counters some of the Times.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-healt ... KKBN21P1X8

Did you read the article? It quotes Johnson as saying the country is “fully prepared” - as of the beginning of March. We now now that wasn’t the case.

[Elizabeth]

I get that this is a political issue for many but I want to put any political comments to one side for a second.

The supplied Times and Reuters links show in parts that some scientists were keeping their fears to themselves because they did not want to risk scaring. Also that there was a belief in some quarters that the UK public would not have accepted an earlier lockdown even if these fears had been more openly discussed with the government and others.
I have also read criticism elsewhere that the WHO were too slow in 1) declaring the virus a pandemic and 2) accepting the deadly nature of the virus.

So what is the average person in the street meant to think? I mean the average person who doesn't join up with the lynch mob as soon as they come knocking on the door.

[diamondpocket]

Whilst some things do need questioning such as the lack of PPE. the failure to restrict flights and airport checks and the ludicrous decision to allow Cheltenham to go ahead the government has taken scientific and medical advice and have done many things right. This situation is unprecedented and to imply the government ( doesn’t matter if they are right wing or left wing )has done everything wrong and should have done things differently in hindsight is just cheap political finger pointing and point scoring.

Rubbish. Have you not read the article about the lack of funding and cuts done by the government (albeit a different PM) over the last few years during the Brexit debacle that has made the NHS incapable of responding to a pandemic? Unprecedented it may be but this didn't just creep up on us, there were many many warning signs for weeks first from Asia and then Italy and the government failed or as the article title says sleepwalked into the problem reacting to various situations and changing plans by the week. They knew it was coming through the early meetings, the herd immunity nonsense but then quickly changed to devising the 4 phase plan. It seems that plan has helped the NHS and hospitals in receiving patients and not being bombarded with too many cases at any one time. But the lack of PPE is what stinks for me. Hancock has even said it isn't a question of having sufficient PPE but only a logistical issue.
Don't forget many big concerts and the Liverpool vs Atletico game as well as huge events where big gatherings happened during March.

[Blackrod]

‘Rubbish’ but you agree big events shouldn’t have happened as I do. You’ve stated there is a lack of PPE which there shouldn’t be which I mentioned. You agree the government has done something right as the NHS has not been overwhelmed as a result of their actions.

[diamondpocket]

I get that this is a political issue for many but I want to put any political comments to one side for a second.

The supplied Times and Reuters links show in parts that some scientists were keeping their fears to themselves because they did not want to risk scaring. Also that there was a belief in some quarters that the UK public would not have accepted an earlier lockdown even if these fears had been more openly discussed with the government and others.
I have also read criticism elsewhere that the WHO were too slow in 1) declaring the virus a pandemic and 2) accepting the deadly nature of the virus.

So what is the average person in the street meant to think? I mean the average person who doesn't join up with the lynch mob as soon as they come knocking on the door.

As we are seeing by the public, when decisions are made about public health and saving lives then they will support it. Many would have seen it as an over-reaction, many would have followed. But as the situation had developed, we would have seen from around the world in the US, Italy & Spain that the early lockdown measures would have helped the situation and that would have given more justification for the caution. Instead, we're estimated to be one of the worst affected countries in the world.

[Grumps]

As we are seeing by the public, when decisions are made about public health and saving lives then they will support it. Many would have seen it as an over-reaction, many would have followed. But as the situation had developed, we would have seen from around the world in the US, Italy & Spain that the early lockdown measures would have helped the situation and that would have given more justification for the caution. Instead, we're estimated to be one of the worst affected countries in the world.

Spain, early lockdown? Are you sure?

[diamondpocket]

‘Rubbish’ but you agree big events shouldn’t have happened as I do. You’ve stated there is a lack of PPE which there shouldn’t be which I mentioned. You agree the government has done something right as the NHS has not been overwhelmed as a result of their actions.

Sorry, rubbish about cheap political finger pointing.

[thatdberight]

"On the third Friday of January a silent and stealthy killer was creeping across the world. Passing from person to person and borne on ships and planes, the coronavirus was already leaving a trail of bodies."

Is this what Agatha Christie does for a living nowadays?

The allegations of mismanagement are very serious - no doubt. The fact the article is written in such an overwrought way shouldn't detract from that. But that style does say something about the writers.

[diamondpocket]

Spain, early lockdown? Are you sure?

early lockdown measures in The UK, not in Spain. My punctuation and grammar is probably crap but I was talking in a hypothetical sense what may have happened if we had done an earlier lockdown, as suggested by the OP's question.

[Quickenthetempo]

Have any medical deaths been reported to because they weren't wearing PPE?

[thatdberight]

And still people ignore the lockdown and want it lifting..

Not sure that very simple stance applies to many people but, if it's true, that would be a reason why it's been hard to take action. If the country wants to take its chances and knows that this will result in (say) 400,000 deaths but reduce the social and economic impact, are you saying that they're not allowed to make that choice?

[Spijed]

Have any medical deaths been reported to because they weren't wearing PPE?

Yes, the Doctor who warned Boris Johnson about the lack of PPE sadly died.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/h ... 58796.html

[Spijed]

Not sure that very simple stance applies to many people but, if it's true, that would be a reason why it's been hard to take action. If the country wants to take its chances and knows that this will result in (say) 400,000 deaths but reduce the social and economic impact, are you saying that they're not allowed to make that choice?

Germany doesn't have the same restrictions as us.

[AndrewJB]

I get that this is a political issue for many but I want to put any political comments to one side for a second.

The supplied Times and Reuters links show in parts that some scientists were keeping their fears to themselves because they did not want to risk scaring. Also that there was a belief in some quarters that the UK public would not have accepted an earlier lockdown even if these fears had been more openly discussed with the government and others.
I have also read criticism elsewhere that the WHO were too slow in 1) declaring the virus a pandemic and 2) accepting the deadly nature of the virus.

So what is the average person in the street meant to think? I mean the average person who doesn't join up with the lynch mob as soon as they come knocking on the door.

I think the British public are a lot more docile than to have disobeyed on masse a lockdown rule. When you consider all the misery inflicted on them through austerity then a lockdown is a doddle.

The real problems we face right now are too few tests, not enough PPE, and seemingly no plan. The public and the WHO don’t carry this responsibility.

[bfcjg]

I think we were being used as a medical experiment to see if herd immunity worked as it was cheap. Did we do what the USA and China wanted us to do so we would be looked on more favourably for a trade deal TBH after reading these reports that's what it feels like. Shameful and criminal if after an independent non political investigation shows to be the facts.

[arise_sir_charge]

Yes, the Doctor who warned Boris Johnson about the lack of PPE sadly died.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/h ... 58796.html

Not sure that answers QTT’s question?

[Spijed]

Not sure that answers QTT’s question?

Sounds like he died because he wasn't wearing PPE

[thatdberight]

Germany doesn't have the same restrictions as us.

I know they closed schools, almost all shops, all cultural events. My cousin told me this on 18 March. He, despite being in good health, has been also identified as high risk due to age and was confined to the house at that stage. (I haven't spoken since so don't have a first-hand account of current status). They also have more restrictions on people entering the country.

Is that not very similar to ours?

[Spijed]

I know they closed schools, almost all shops, all cultural events. My cousin told me this on 18 March. He, despite being in good health, has been also identified as high risk due to age and was confined to the house at that stage. (I haven't spoken since so don't have a first-hand account of current status). They also have more restrictions on people entering the country.

Is that not very similar to ours?

A friend of mine who lives in Germany said "In our Bundesland the laws are fairly relaxed. You are free to go out, but should keep your distance from others. Yesterday, we saw people lying in the parks, something you'd get arrested for in the UK probably. Other Bundesländer like Bayern have stricter rules. The general message is that you should stay at home. "

[thatdberight]

A friend of mine who lives in Germany said "In our Bundesland the laws are fairly relaxed. You are free to go out, but should keep your distance from others. Yesterday, we saw people lying in the parks, something you'd get arrested for in the UK probably. Other Bundesländer like Bayern have stricter rules. The general message is that you should stay at home. "

That makes sense - my cousin is in Bavaria. Our government considered was reluctant to introduce regional lockdowns - and rightly in my view. Much of London would simply have decamped to other areas defeating the object.

[duncandisorderly]

A friend of mine who lives in Germany said "In our Bundesland the laws are fairly relaxed. You are free to go out, but should keep your distance from others. Yesterday, we saw people lying in the parks, something you'd get arrested for in the UK probably. Other Bundesländer like Bayern have stricter rules. The general message is that you should stay at home. "

Is that not like here? I'm sure Pendle is different from London but during my 40-60 minutes daily walk I've yet to see any authority telling people to go home, or arresting folk for lying on the grass, or any one who could possibly know whether I've been out five minutes or five hours.
We're free to go to the shops, free to go to work, public transport is still running.

We can't go to the football or the pubs, but the normal 9-5 routine isn't far from being like an everyday Sunday.

[Spijed]

Is that not like here? I'm sure Pendle is different from London but during my 40-60 minutes daily walk I've yet to see any authority telling people to go home, or arresting folk for lying on the grass, or any one who could possibly know whether I've been out five minutes or five hours.
We're free to go to the shops, free to go to work, public transport is still running.

We can't go to the football or the pubs, but the normal 9-5 routine isn't far from being like an everyday Sunday.

Isn't the difference that in Germany it sounds like the police aren't trying to disperse people in public parks whereas in the UK there have been complaints that too many people are going into the parks and the police are trying to stop picnics, for example?

[Elizabeth]

On a political level some of the content does not bear well for the PM's future after all this is over. Maybe sooner if the doubts about his leadership spread throughout a government who may have already started distancing themselves from him. Personally if I was in the PM's shoes I wouldn't like to depend on the current Health Secretary, Matt ' if I had a magic wand' Hancock.

There are some damning events which are factual eg missing so many Cobra meetings, which looks like a dereliction of duty. Sending so much protective equipment to China when we might ( and did) end up needing it.

There are other more questionable events that if I was being kind I would give the benefit of doubt to the PM. But was it wise to be going around shaking hands within an environment high in risk?

That's OK if you get away with a PR promotion exercise, but when you end up getting the virus yourself, and you are your country's government head, what credibility do you really have the next time you stand up in front of the nation and advise about Social Distancing?

[thatdberight]

Isn't the difference that in Germany it sounds like the police aren't trying to disperse people in public parks whereas in the UK there have been complaints that too many people are going into the parks and the police are trying to stop picnics, for example?

Is that about the response of the people rather than the restrictions themselves?

[NewClaret]

I think the British public are a lot more docile than to have disobeyed on masse a lockdown rule. When you consider all the misery inflicted on them through austerity then a lockdown is a doddle.

The real problems we face right now are too few tests, not enough PPE, and seemingly no plan. The public and the WHO don’t carry this responsibility.

Too few tests: read 20k done yesterday. Seems to be getting better.

PPE: still do not buy this. Every doctor I’ve seen interviewed on TV, none have actually said they have not had PPE, just they fear running out. Or the TV reports give vague assertions, completely lacking detail. They use terms like “some NHS trusts are running out of PPE”. Just tell us which ones!! Name them!! Which specific trusts and then hospitals?? Where are the chief execs of these trusts? Why are they not on TV explaining why they are running out & what they are doing about it? And did they actually run out or just low?? Last nights whistleblower on the BBC was just referenced as “Kate” - very informative and impossible to tell if genuine or political point scoring - not that the BBC can be trusted after their shoddy reporting earlier in the week. I also saw an ITV news report when the nurse/dr (forget which) started by raising issues with shortages before being forced to admit she hadn’t actually suffered any, yet, and had all the equipment she needed - was very embarrassing for her, I thought.

As an aside, nor have any of my family or friends on the front line reported shortages (although that’s not to say some don’t exist in some areas like London).

No issues with the media holding the government to account, but I do think in this time of national crisis, accurate reporting with clear facts is critical. I also think it should be balanced with praise for the monumental efforts they have made in building hospitals and equipping tens of thousands of NHS staff with PPE, if they are going to report on isolated shortages elsewhere.

On the point of hospitals, quelle surprise, we haven’t needed them yet so the NHS did have sufficient capacity after all. Yet the media sniping has moved on from moaning about NHS capacity/comparing ventilators per person vs. Germany, and moved on to complaining about the hospitals not being needed!!!

No plan: very much doubt that is the case. Suspect it is being withheld, preferring very clear messaging that all measures should stay in place, because the moment they share the plan on relaxing them, the public will see that as the green light to return to normal life, which would be disastrous. Think the US are going to get pounded on this front in a few months. But again, no credit to the Government for doing what is right and protecting lives.

[Claretmatt4]

Isn't the difference that in Germany it sounds like the police aren't trying to disperse people in public parks whereas in the UK there have been complaints that too many people are going into the parks and the police are trying to stop picnics, for example?

Has that actually happened frequently though or is it just the odd video on social media being shared ad infinitum?

[Grumps]

On a political level some of the content does not bear well for the PM's future after all this is over. Maybe sooner if the doubts about his leadership spread throughout a government who may have already started distancing themselves from him. Personally if I was in the PM's shoes I wouldn't like to depend on the current Health Secretary, Matt ' if I had a magic wand' Hancock.

There are some damning events which are factual eg missing so many Cobra meetings, which looks like a dereliction of duty. Sending so much protective equipment to China when we might ( and did) end up needing it.

There are other more questionable events that if I was being kind I would give the benefit of doubt to the PM. But was it wise to be going around shaking hands within an environment high in risk?

That's OK if you get away with a PR promotion exercise, but when you end up getting the virus yourself, and you are your country's government head, what credibility do you really have the next time you stand up in front of the nation and advise about Social Distancing?

Having done a bit of reading up, it's not unusual for PM to miss cobra meetings as they get briefed separately. Once it was named as a pandemic he chaired then.
History says ALL leaders make mistakes
History tells us the middle of a crisis is not time to change leaders, even Labour support that view.

[Elizabeth]

I should have said I voted Tory in the last GE in case anyone thinks my post was one from many of the Labour supporters on here who have a go at the Conservatives for anything and everything they do.