government buried a 2016 report showing NHS woefully unprepared for pandemic

[extrastrongmints]

Exercise cygnus predicted - four years ago - that in the event of a flu-like viral pandemic the NHS would be overwhelmed and there would be not enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for NHS workers.
The findings were so "terrifying" that the report was suppressed / never published.

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

a second link with no paywall:

www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/03/28/cygn-m28.html

So this was not only predictable, it was predicted. Can't actually say I'm that surprised.

exactly - they cannot claim it wasn't foreseeable, - it was foreseen, including the lack of equipment / PPE and the possibility of hundreds of thousands of deaths.

flu-like pandemics are a matter of when, not if - in the long run they occur every couple of decades. The country and NHS was known to be woefully unprepared, and rather than doing something about it, the government continued to cut let NHS funding decline

Which government in the world was prepared though?

Germany have a well designed health care system i.e. 2:1 ventilator ratio.

That is not an excuse. the salient issue is that the government knew four years ago that a pandemic would have catastrophic consequences for the NHS, and that lack of PPE would be a major issue, and instead of acting they suppressed the report.

In any case
(a) the UK's resourcing is poor when measured against other developed countries.
(b) the government's fumbled initial response wasted critical time

and this is, of course, the same government that only weeks ago failed to take up an offer to supply 25,000 ventilators with the result that they have now gone elsewhere