There must be a public inquiry

[Haplap]

And criminal charges. This government will have been responsible for so many avoidable deaths:

UK is projected to have over 3 times as many deaths as Italy by August (66 000 V 20 000):

covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom

They took all the wrong decisions despite the scientific advice:

www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-path-speci-idUSKBN21P1VF

Stop clapping, start scrutinising!

[Davincitoad]

Could you do it better? No one knows what’s right or wrong. If they had shutdown people would have ignored it because they didn’t have the wages confirmed.

[MilkTwoSugarsThanks]

I doubt the country will be able to afford one when all this is over.

[esjee]

Uh huh.

[iVampire]

There’s bound to be many reviews at various levels after the event, including judicial review.

Decision makers know this already, including the possibility that criminal charges could be brought if their actions were not necessary and proportionate. Or OTOH were so lacking it was criminally negligent.

It does not need to be called for now, because those calls can’t really lead to action at the moment. And I’m not sure how much these calls would add to the reviews which will happen anyhow

[esjee]

We will only really know who's come out of it the best in a year or so's time. There's still no way to stop it is there, so these countrues with low numbers of deaths could change. How about you save the dramatic calls for a public enquiry until then, since it would be utterly useless right now.

[SabineSchmetterling]

I agree that there needs to be a public enquiry. I also think it’s pretty much certain that there will be one. The idea of criminal charges is ridiculous though. What crime do you think has been committed?

I think the mistakes made were due to systemic problems. It shouldn’t be about pushing blame onto individuals. Any enquiry should be an opportunity to learn lessons, not to find a scapegoat to take out our anger on.

[BlackCatSleeping]

I agree. The UKreally messed this up with the stupid herd immunity plan. The US also ballsed the whole thing up. Compare rates between the US and Canada and it’s shocking the difference.

[Gin96]

People are to worried about feeding their families, keeping a roof over their heads and not getting sick from the virus to worry about a public inquiry. Maybe next year when this is all over.

[BlackCatSleeping]

I disagree about the criminal charges though, but there should be an inquiry.

[PoppliosBubble]

There needs to be a public enquiry. The government is still refusing to share infected blood samples with private labs, refusing offers to make ventilators from UK companies ready to build them now, stating the PPE has been delivered when all frontline services are saying that it simply hasn’t. They are outright lying and need to be held accountable for it.

[Frompcat]

That study is flawed as it does not take into account the additional critical care beds we now have.

[goshdarnitjanet]

I would be wary about the data linked - this shows the UK as only having 799 ICU beds which as far as I am aware is incorrect. If that is a basis for their calculations the projections will be flawed.

[SquishySquirmy]

Yes over the actions in February and March.
Would not have been possible to do a full lockdown too early, but even after we saw what was happening in Italy we barely tried to contain it!

Weeks ago we were still being told large gatherings posed "no risk" (Crufts, Cheltenham, big football games in England and Scotland...) Many of these involved people converging from far afield, a far greater risk to spread it than locals gathering in a pub.
No temperature checks at airports, even for those travelling from very infected areas. This would not have caught all cases of course but it could have identified some.
Very little attempt to isolate those returning from Italy after half term.
When other countries with fewer cases were introducing light forms of social distancing, our PM was still downplaying the risks and even boasting about "shaking hands with everyone I met in the hospital".
The announcement that individuals should not go to work, school etc if they had symptoms should have been made weeks earlier (much less disruptive than completely closing schools and a pretty sensible attitude even without a pandemic).
Then the time wasted before they U-turned on the awful "herd immunity".

Remember that many of those dying today became infected 4 weeks ago (or longer if they've been on a ventilator for a while).
What were we doing then?

And all these weeks (months) they were downplaying the risks, what is truly unforgivable is that they were not preparing for the worst at all.
It was not until our cases had escalated that they started scrabbling around to purchase more PPE and ventilators. And even then, we fucked up and missed out on contracts due to inexplicable delays.

So yes there is a lot more they could have done sooner. It was not a choice between "do nothing" and "complete lockdown" back then. The "contain phase" was a joke.

[DianaT1969]

Or the government's lockdown at that time could be responsible for saving thousands of lives. We already see posts on MN from people claiming their MH can't cope with 2 weeks of lockdown, even though we are allowed exercise outside. We see on MN people switching households for the other parent and demanding their husband attends births and can visit the ward. We saw people head to pubs on the last day, even though the government had been urging social isolation and had already warned how serious this is. We saw MN posters shout down people who posted about the unfolding situation in Italy.
I think they should have cancelled Cheltenham and football matches much, much earlier. No passengers should have flown in unless returning British residents - and then to a 2-week quarantine.
Who are these people who went to Cheltenham, to pubs on the last night, football matches and out today for some DIY shopping?? Have a public enquiry about them.

[hiddenmnetter]

I disagree- I think that establishing that the scientific advice that you thought they should have listened to was of an obviously and clearly better grade and therefore there is a direct link to negligently causing the deaths of these people is an extremely long bow to draw, and secondly projections mean nothing. We will see what the final toll is in Italy; social unrest is growing there now- people who can no longer afford to buy food are starting to steal. See how many people die if full on riots begin.

I think that overall the government has handled this well- not that there aren't things that could be improved upon, and I think that an inquiry into a lessons learned might well be worthwhile, but partisan attacks critiquing how they've made strategic decisions without knowing the detailed nature of the advice being given is absurd.

[PowerslidePanda]

The criminal side of things - I'd hope that the families of the NHS workers who've died due to lack of appropriate PPE would have a case for wrongful death due to negligence. I'm no lawyer though.

[Marieo]

No one knows the best course of action, do people really think that those releasing from lockdown soon will have no more deaths? No. Lockdown is also not sustainable for long periods, you have to balance the benefits with the negatives. The WHO also gave what turned out to be dangerous advice at the start, are you going to push for them to be investigated? Let's get through this thing first before we start assuming projections are gospel and we would have faired better another way. There will be in depth inquiries after to inform future action anyway.

[NoMorePoliticsPlease]

For Gods sake we are fire fighting. Stop with the someone must pay. In a few years time all the studies and inquiries will be done to better inform us for the next time ( because anyone in health will tell you, pandemic planning as part of the scenery). Stop with all the criticism unless you have sat in on all the meetings of all the people who are influencing the decisions, the evidence they are using and the reasons they have not always done the same as other countries. We dont know the half of it and are in no position to make judgements

[NoMorePoliticsPlease]

@PowerslidePanda
and thats the culture we live in.!

[oralengineer]

Better to spend the money that would be wasted on years of useless scrutiny on more robust forward planning. The world has been caught on the hop and we all know it.
Be careful what you wish for. It is likely if there is a major public inquiry the first recommendation would be privatisation of the health service. We keep seeing how Germany is getting it right, maybe we need to model our health service on theirs.( It is actually very good by the way)

[NoMorePoliticsPlease]

@BlackCatSleeping
and your evidence is?

[SquishySquirmy]

We have lost a huge amount of freedoms and rights in the fight against this virus.
This (temporary) loss is necessary.

However there is one freedom we should NOT give up: the right to criticise and scrutinize our leaders. That would be a step too far.

[Holdingmybreath]

Can we do this at the end of we really need to spend even more money.Were only really at the beginning of this

[rosiethehen]

Slow to act.

Lack of PPE for healthcare workers.

No testing.

This country is a pathetic shambles as per usual.

[Gin96]

I agree we should know why they made the decisions they did but now is not the time, now we really need to pull together and not fight among ourselves and try and help each other, there are going to be some very difficult months ahead, where we will need to support each other.