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

Our NHS was never designed to cope with the demands on it that it has now

No, but nor is that a good reason to rush to privatise it in the American fashion.

Clavinova I said try NOT to look outside of the UK so you quote the WHO advice which we chose to follow but you omit the WHO advice which said, "test, test,test" which we ignored.

They didn't quote that in the article - although I did indeed misread your post.

My belief (not proven as I cannot read the mind of ministers) is that we did not ban flights because of WHO advice but because of the potential negative impact on the economy

That's an important consideration for every country. Certainly one of the reasons why the SNP were so quick to go along with the Government's strategy.

The article goes on to say:

“There’s not only the financial toll on a country that is dealing with this outbreak, but this can discourage transparency, both in this outbreak and in the future,”

"Travel and trade restrictions can lead to dire economic consequences for countries involved, creating a disincentive for them to quickly disclose potential outbreaks to the WHO or other nations. They can hinder the sharing of information, make it harder to track cases and their contacts, and disrupt the medical supply chain, potentially fueling shortages of drugs and medical supplies in the areas hit hardest by the outbreak.They also send a punitive message, which could contribute to discrimination and stigmatization against Chinese nationals, experts warned."

"Any effort and money spent crafting and enforcing travel and trade restrictions also take away already-stretched resources from public health measures that have been proven to be far more effective, experts said.Those measures include providing assistance to countries with weaker health systems, accelerating the development of a vaccine or rapid diagnostic test, and clearly communicating with the public about when and how to seek care."

How could anyone be prepared? It started in China and they claimed it caused about 3,000 deaths in total at that time. They have a population of 1.4 billion. The UK was looking at approx 100 deaths or so if we were to believe China and their death/population ratio.

The fact is, they lied. They lied big time. No one seems to be bothered with pointing the blame at the actual people that caused it (people eating inedible live animals) and their government for concealing a lot of crutial information and instead want to cause more upset and political uproar by claiming the government here.

People can't even stick to the lockdown with 1000 deaths per day. They sure as hell would not have struck to it when it was 30 deaths a day. There's no point in looking back and saying this could have been done, that could have been done. People just need to follow the bloody rules that are in place now and get on with it. I feel very sorry for every single person that has died due to this but a lockdown a couple of weeks earlier would not have been followed and would probably not have saved their lives given that we're living in a country of self entitled idiots

Brexit has been hugely costly and diverted government, public sector and private sector resources away from everything else. The economic hit from that wasn’t yet fully apparent or anywhere near over, even before all this.

Due to levels of investment/demand NHS capacity was already v overstretched so our system is less able than better resourced ones (eg Germany, Scandinavia) to cope with sudden and sustained additional demand.

Social care too: addressing the rising cost/demand is a short term vote loser.

People can't even stick to the lockdown with 1000 deaths per day. They sure as hell would not have struck to it when it was 30 deaths a day. There's no point in looking back and saying this could have been done, that could have been done

The vast majority of people are obeying the rules, the roads around Cornwall are dead and we 've followed the lockdown even though we have had hardly any deaths or infections, had Johnson led and ordered a lockdown far earlier, the death rate would have been lower.

Of course we should look back and examine the mistakes made, that's how you avoid doing the same things again, its how we all learn or should do.

This isn't going away, they'll be plenty of decisions to be made and we need the best people in place to make them, Hancock clearly isn't up to the job and neither is Johnson but at least he is out of it for the time being.

This isn't going away, they'll be plenty of decisions to be made and we need the best people in place to make them, Hancock clearly isn't up to the job and neither is Johnson but at least he is out of it for the time being.

Why don’t we put you in? I’m sure you’ll have the global pandemic over and done with in a jiffy!

Due to levels of investment/demand NHS capacity was already v overstretched so our system is less able than better resourced ones (eg Germany, Scandinavia) to cope with sudden and sustained additional demand.

Although a quick Google reveals that Denmark has obviously put out a request for more PPE equipment:

Team Finland -
Denmark is in need of personal protective equipment (PPE) due to the outbreak of Covid-19.
•Surgical face masks type IIR that has to comply with the standard EN 14683 to ensure filtration efficiency.
•FFP2/FFP3 masks.
•Face shields.
•Permeable isolation gowns and impermeable isolation gowns.
•Other equipment needs possible as well.

www.marketopportunities.fi/home/2020/denmark-is-in-need-of-personal-protective-equipment-ppe-due-to-the-outbreak-of-covid-19/

Demand (requirement) for healthcare, not just PPE! Staff, beds, services, facilities and equipment. The countries you mention spend a far higher proportion of their GDP per head on healthcare.

Dozer

At the moment I think we have met hospital demand for most aspects of the pandemic apart from PPE equipment.

Many other services/treatments have stopped, and we don’t have quality measures.

Covid testing also minimal.

The NHS was on its knees before this pandemic (thanks to years of underfunding), I dread to think what it’s going to be like when the crisis is over.

From the latest link to the Guardian on the other thread;

"Many wealthy nations have not only pursued their own national strategies for public health, but have also withdrawn from the globalised world of diplomacy and trade that they themselves set up. Earlier this year, for instance, the NHS ordered millions of masks from a French company named Valmy SAS. But in early March, the French government requisitioned all masks produced within the country, so the masks never reached Britain."

@CendrillonSings I agree. Its amazing how many people think they could have done a better job and yet never stood for parliament

I blame the Chinese they knew last year and didn't say anything until it was on top of us. It is unprecedented situation that nobody was ready for. We were all lambs to the slaughter because the Chinese didn't want to give the world the heads up.
I do not blame the UK government at all and I just hope people that can stay home do so.
A lot of people can't even follow simple instructions like social distancing let alone run the country.
Dianne Abbot will be deputy prime minister right now. Chilling thought.

I think one of the biggest mistakes this epidemic has highlighted is that we should preserve not only R&D but also manufacturing.

@ChazsBrilliantAttitude, agree. It’s a lesson we’d have learned via Brexit when we’ll be at the mercy of the US and China. But hey, we’re learning it early.

Yeah if only China had been more honest and alerted us sooner it would have made all the difference... We could have started doing nothing in December instead of waiting until January and February to do nothing.

You are viewing this with hindsight which, as we know, is always perfect.
YABU.

Sick of the same old posts and comparing figures saying we are worse than all other European countries yet when people show we aren't it's ignored . New Zealand have done well but how long can they keep there borders shut for as this isn't going away ? Guess we aren't quarantining people arriving at airports at the moment as it's here anyway and they would be expected to follow same rules /guidelines on social distancing , self isolating etc . And everyone was up in arms about not repatriating Britain's abroad , how were they going to get here if not t
Flying , can't see too many tourists coming over now with everything shut .Time to close borders would be when numbers were very low but if I remember rightly who were not advising that a few months ago. Nobody knows what was being planned or ordered in January /feb as we aren't privy to that information, newspapers have all been awful through this ,headlines that don't actually match the story etc , citing one thing one day and something else the next . Political point scoring . This is a time to come together and try to get through this . Plenty of time ffor questions to be answered after, for now we should be concentrating on what can be done going forward not what could of or should of been done . With hindsight I wouldn't done a lot of things In life .

They knew the risks and didn’t have the resources to mitigate against them. What were they supposed to do? Stop offering chemo to pay for ventilators. Maybe they should have shut down nursing home to hire more nurses? Reduce school funding to increase ICU capacity? Britain isn’t a particularly wealth country relative to the quality of life the population expects to enjoy.

"Britain isn’t a particularly wealth country"

Are you joking? It's the 6th richest in the world.

There is plenty of money. It just doesn't go to the right places.

@CendrillonSings

...oh our leaders are above criticism now are they? as we head for europe's highest death toll, despite having a 2 or 3 week lead and a PM, who uniquely among world leaders, caught CV...... doubtless by shaking the hands of CV patients and then probably passed it on to his pregnant GF, his chief advisor and his health sec, BJ is an irresponsible idiot

But tbh if all you can say is "why don't you .... blah bla blah" then you really don't have an argument agianst any of the above.

as we head for europe's highest death toll

Oh, we’re “heading for” it, are we? We have to catch up to overtake Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, all of whom are ahead of us. No doubt Boris is running those countries too, right?

And you don’t have the slightest clue who passed the disease to whom, so it’s best not to make shit up to suit your prejudices.

Listening to Bill Gatescon BBC breakfast now. He and others had been warning for years about the threat of a pandemic, and how it was the biggest danger the world faced, and Countries needed to be preparing for it. He himself funds a company working on viruses and now in a vaccine for Covid. They showed a clip of a brilliant Ted talk he gave on the threat of a pandemic.