UK Government knew the risks and did nothing

[Cam77]

Between July 2016 and January 2020 the British government spent three and a half years talking about and furiously negotiating Brexit - three and half years trying to solve a crisis completely of its own making.

In December 2020 in the weeks before the election, Boris Johnson, a chief architect of Brexit, did speak a couple of times about the NHS, a few vague promises about future nurses (who they had just months before gleefully blocked a pay rise for) and future hospitals.

In October 2016, three months after the Brexit vote, the UK government ran a national pandemic flu exercise, codenamed Exercise Cygnus. The report of its findings was not made publicly available, but the then chief medical officer Sally Davies commented on what she had learnt from it in December 2016.

“We’ve just had in the UK a three-day exercise on flu, on a pandemic that killed a lot of people,” she told the World Innovation Summit for Health at the time. “It became clear that we could not cope with the excess bodies,” Davies said. One conclusion was that Britain, as Davies put it, faced the threat of “inadequate ventilation” in a future pandemic.

Despite the severe failings exposed by Exercise Cygnus, the government’s planning for a future pandemic did not change after December 2016 – at least not formally. The government’s roadmap for how to respond to a coronavirus-like pandemic has long been available online, and the three key documents – the 70-page “Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy”, 78-page “Health and Social Care Influenza Pandemic Preparedness and Response” and 88-page “Pandemic Influenza Response Plan” – were published in 2011, 2012 and 2014 respectively. These plans were tested and failed, yet these documents were not rewritten or revised.

They share a glaring shortcoming: not one of them mentions ventilators, which are now in such high demand that Matthew Hancock, the Health Secretary, told British manufacturers on 14 March, “If you produce a ventilator, we will buy it. No number [you produce] is too high.”
www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2020/03/government-documents-show-no-planning-ventilators-event-pandemic

OP, I agree with you in principletoo much time obsessed with Brexit, in itself an unnecessary crisis. However, the answer to COVID19 is clearly NOT ventilators, which some front-line doctors are now saying are actually killing people unnecessarily (www.medscape.com/viewarticle/928156). They, and many Chinese docs, say just oxygen is the way to go and not ventilators for the vast majority of cases. Plus the Chinese used intravenous vitamin C on some COVID19 patientsno deaths at all in that group. Will IV vitamin C be rolled out now for all COVID19 cases? Don't hold your breath: there's no patents and no money in vitamin C.

I so agree with the OP.

I am gobsmacked the this report exposes that the government was warned a couple of years before that the NHS would not be able to cope with a pandemic. Johnson and Gove at least would have been involved in exercise Cygnus.

I can just about understand why they did nothing at the time, as the ideology was all about austerity (I don't agree with but that was the political climate then).

But, those at the heart of government should have remembered this exercise when they heard about the virus in China with a transmission rate of 2.5! The UK is lagging behind other countries in terms of time. They had the luxury of a bit more time in comparison to others. But they wasted it even knowing what the consequences would be. (And of course Hunt has been critical of the government - laying blame on others to hide his role in this.)

Yes, it is fucking political. The decisions made by the top affect the lives of everyone in UK. The death rate is much higher than it should be. The government absolutely should be held to account and then some people turn around saying: it's boring, give it a rest. Some even manage to bring up fucking Corbyn?! What the hell is that about?

People should be really angry about how this has been managed. 8000 deaths = 8000 people who have died - it is not just some meaningless statistic. Add at least another 1000 a day for the next week or so? At which point will some people look at the government and think well, maybe they could have made better decisions? In fact there is still time to introduce new measures.

Can you explain what you mean by gleefully? Thanks awfully,

I imagine that poster was referring to the cheering and clapping on the Tory benches when they won a vote in the Commons - they had voted down awarding nurses a pay rise.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/exercise-cygnus-uncovered-pandemic-warnings-buried-government/

Again. It really is disturbing to read. Note that it was reported in the telegraph.

Look how New Zealand have handled this if you want an example of how to handle a pandemic.

New Zealand has a similar sized land mass to us and a population about the same as Manchester. It’s also not a global transport hub. Literally no comparison.

Don’t you think that the Government would have acted differently if it had been children who were most likely to die from Coronavirus?

They have had one death. Yes their population is smaller but they shut down airports, did testing and locked down properly to start with.

Britain is not locked down properly judging by the amount of totally selfish arses off in their cars for a nice bank holiday day out round here.

There has been a study, from Seattle, which suggests the UK will have more deaths for Covid-19, proportionally, than any other European country:

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/07/uk-will-be-europes-worst-hit-by-coronavirus-study-predicts.

The study has been criticised, but, as death rates rise (and I believe these are only deaths which occur in hospital), it looks like the model suggested in the study may be too close for comfort.

Someone mentioned Brexit. I think that when this is over, this nation is going to need all the help it can get - whether this can be from the EU or not remains to be seen.

Look how New Zealand have handled this if you want an example of how to handle a pandemic

They have little infection.

It’ll come back later.

What depresses me most is that Boris will be most likely be canonised as some sort of fucking saint after this (like Maggie after the Falklands). And the NHS will continue to be underfunded and run into the ground. All gratitude and appreciation of its staff will be swiftly forgotten.

Yes, Green Tulips, it will come back later for everyone and no doubt New Zealand will be on it yet again.

What depresses me most is that Boris will be most likely be canonised as some sort of fucking saint after this (like Maggie after the Falklands). And the NHS will continue to be underfunded and run into the ground. All gratitude and appreciation of its staff will be swiftly forgotten.

He's just had his election. When he through with this it's brexit again. Then are at least a couple more years to the next election. This saintly glow he's got from contracting the disease he was supposed to be protecting the public from will wane in the time.

Your probably right about the NHS though.

I get fed up with all the political scoring. No Government could have been ready for this, it doesn't matter which party is in.

No government can be ready for everything. There's limited money to go around. I'd be the first to admit there's mismanagement in most areas of the public sector but come on, NO government at the moment can afford to fully fund schools, fully fund education, fully fund disability and support services, fully fund the police and the fire service - and these are the daily essential services - as well as providing full funding all the recommendations for potential emergencies just in case. Flooding, terrorist attacks, pandemics, extreme droughts... In an ideal world we'd be ready for this all but they can't be.

Yes a government can be prepared by keeping a functioning welfare and state services like the NHS, social care and police for examples. Then a country won't be so fucked when things go wrong.

Why are people so ready to make excuses for them?

YANBU. I can’t help thinking if he’d have taken Covid 19 seriously from the very start instead or trying to be a smart arse clown things mayhave been very different.
I just can’t understand the love for this man. Clearly I’m missing something. I didn’t like him before he got this virus that he blatantly took the piss out of. I don’t like him now he has got it.

I think the government is doing the best they can in a very difficult situation. However I just wish they would stop treating us all as children and be honest with us.

One person upthread tells us that they were in hospital recently and everyone had sufficient ppe - I'll breath a sigh of relief and tell one of my nursing friends on the wards that all the masks, visors and gowns are there, she's just too blind to see them

"I think no government would have been ready. The only one that was ready really was S.Korea because they had had SARs."

But western governments could see what was happening in Korea and China and did nothing. Nothing! It was sheer arrogance on their parts.

Of course they can't magic up thousands of ventilators from nowhere but they could have shut down big events and started buying PPE way before they did.

And stopped shaking hands with infected people ffs.

'another London based human rights lawyer'. Oh yeah, the last one was Blair, 25 years ago. And look how badly that went for them......

never thought id be pining for the blair days but fucking nora im pining for the blair days. What do Tories have to actually do? get your heads out your arses and your hands off your forelocks. They paid them friends billions, let billions more avoid tax and cut services to the bone to lead us to this crises. Doesn't fucking matter what other countries are doing, I'd quite like to be doing better, thanks.

Marriedtoapenguin, every line of your post is ridiculous.

@JustinMyJustin

The tories could come round and shoot everyone’s nearest and dearest in the face and people would still vote for them.
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It is unutterably depressing

Isn't that a reflection more on how utterly terrible the Labour Party is. Hopefully over time Starmer will improve them but it will take years to come back from the disaster they have been...FGS losing 4 elections as seeing at least one of m as a success!

dear god how low are everybody's expectations. Yes you can fully fund everything AnnSmiley. Its neo-lib ideology to constantly underfund it along with austerity. Underfund public services, claim its fallen to pieces, sell it off to their rich mates. Why do you think everybody managed before the bloody 70s? You can fund a lot more as well, don't just repeat rubbish because it feels about right.