That Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock should be prosecuted for the avoidable Covid deaths

[LlynTegid]

The part 2 report of the Covid inquiry finds that at least 20,000 deaths were avoidable, had restrictions come in a week earlier.

Various other findings confirming the failures of Mr Johnson and Mr Hancock.

I think they should face criminal charges, such as corporate manslaughter given government is an employer. AIBU

If they were locked up for this, where do you draw the line? People who die in poverty due to government austerity? Children who die at the hands of others due to a stretched social care system and stretched school staff?

The government has blood on their hands about many things. I think if we were about to lock up individuals at preventable deaths, Whitehall would be a very quiet place indeed.

Michael Gove?? If I remember correctly wasn't he having affair with one of his staff and definitely not social distancing

The thing that should have happened early on is to stop the bloody flights coming in . Especially from China

We were far to late in closing/restricting our borders.
They literally watched it play out accross the world and did far too little too late.

This is from April 2020.
Coronavirus Travel Restrictions | Border Shutdowns by Country https://share.google/Ic6uptRmKLjV48sJQ

I do think hindsight is a wonderful thing and all that and I do think it must have been a horrendous place to be in.

But I still think they were ill prepared, incompetent and cavalier. I distinctly remember Boris giving a press conference about two weeks before lockdown in 2020 when he was being asked if cruises should be stopped and he was so revoltingly gung ho and adamant that it was nonsense. I remember watching the conference on TV in a crowded office where people were starting to feel very jumpy and uncomfortable and being struck by his inability to read the public mood.

A more diligent and able leader would have had the humility to realise that he couldn’t bluster his way through it and would have taken the concerns more seriously, much earlier.

Prosecuted for what? Their opinions? Sure, let’s prosecute opposition parties for their opinions on political issues, I can’t see any issue with that

I don’t think it was as easy as other island countries as lorries arrive daily bringing goods. It would have got in that way.

I think Whitty confirmed it wasn’t possible.

Yes, the lockdowns were damaging to a lot of people’s MH, and this is acknowledged in the report. But they are saying that there may have been no need for locking down if they’d brought in social distancing measures in earlier.

Who knows? I have doubts that any such social distancing measures would have been followed. We’ll never know either way.

They should, but they won’t.

They should be in prison for locking down the country beyond 15th April. 1 year for every day they stole from us.

Fgs no one had been through a pandemic before, they did the best they could with the information they had at the time

some countries didn’t lock down

and MN would and exploded a week earlier with all the comments from thise who were against restrictions and were not following them, should they also be prosecuted? After all they could have passed iton

What about the people who weren't getting medical treatment for other stuff and died as everyone was so COVID obsessed

Yeah, this is just silly. It was the Tories who were in power at the time. Labour were politically irrelevant in March 2020.

Didn't take long did it?

Johnson, Cummings and Hancock should be in prison. Nothing will be done though.

How many people have died or had their lives derailed due to the unnecessary lockdowns. The first one- ok I can agree we didn’t know what was happening and people were scared - but to carry on for a year! Not to mention the amount of money spent furloughing people because the government shut their workplaces, kids not able to go to school, people scared to see their loved ones. It’s criminal.

I don’t believe the number of deaths. My uncle had a MI and on his death certificate it said ‘ reason for death covid’. That was just not true.

I assume you'll also want Nicola Sturgeon to be charged, OP?

My mum died during the second lockdown . Untreated heart failure as doc just kept sending antibiotics rather than see her in person to examine her and a stroke. Even in the last 48 hours of her life during end of life care they kept swabbing her for COVID. If she had tested positive they would've also put that on her death certificate. But it wouldn't have killed her, she was dying anyway

Like I said, by air and sea. The lorries come by sea. They could have arrived into a restricted area at the ports, cargo offloaded and the drivers sent back whence they came - or quarantined if they were British-based.

I totally agree with a pp who mentioned all the flights coming in. I like to watch Flightradar and honestly, there was umpteen aircraft arriving, from China and Hong Kong in particular, every single day. Repatriating British holidaymakers stuck overseas was one thing, but that was ridiculous.

Johnson was a complete idiot, we all know he was. He didn’t attend COBRA meetings, he told us all there was nothing to worry about and he was shaking hands with COVID patients while at the same time we were watching the havoc COVID was bringing in Italy, We all knew what was on the way, he just didn’t care. I mean his behaviour throughout lockdown proved that.

It’s all well and good people saying “hindsight is a wonderful thing..” and “what would 2 tier Keir 🙄 do?” But that’s not the point, and I bet Keir Starmer would have at least pitched up to COBRA meetings, the point is, Johnson was arrogant and ignorant just like he alway is. If someone had explicitly told him to lock down he would probably still have argued against it.

Just looking at the section on key lessons for future emergencies, it's interesting they don't consider the issue of restrictions fatigue.

There are some sensible recommendations about communication and strategy, and I like that they acknowledge people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are likely to be disproportionately impacted by restrictions as well as the pandemic itself, so I'm not slagging the report off for the sake of slagging it off. But this seems a significant omission.

Emergency planners up and down the country should face charges to. They take the paychecks but when the emergency came they were absolutely hopeless. Maybe they need to set up a COVID prision for all the Hospital bosses that failed to look after their staff.

Its worth remembering that hindsight is great and also "covid" was listed as cause of death on an awful lot of death certificates that should have had something else on. A lot of people died with covid but not from it and the figures are not accurate.

Quarantining the UK based drivers would've had a significant impact on the workforce available to us. That matters a lot for a supply chain like ours, so you really need to explain how you'd have ensured we had enough of them to keep things going.

I think they should have closed the borders a lot, lot earlier. Everything else was ridiculous and closing stable door long after the horse had bolted. Whole thing was a complete shit show

I appreciate that hindsight is a wonderful thing, but the government knew for many years that we were entirely overdue for a pandemic - modelling had shown that.