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!

@doyoumind
Well, worldometer has a pretty thorough breakdown of stats, including tests per million, deaths per million. But I don’t need stats to know that government ministers attending mass sporting events as recently as March 7th and shaking hands in hospitals was massively irresponsible and sent a very confused message to the population about the level of threat.

*ate

@itwasalovelydreamwhileitlasted

@Cam77

I don't think the Chinese have much freedom to complain about their government. And I certainly don't think the rest of the world are happy with how they handled (cover ups, lying about figures) or it wouldn't have become a global pandemic...?

Saying to someone 'just leave' is not helpful.

Well done, your family can afford to be ex pats.

People have family in the UK, can't just up and leave, either financially or for other reasons.

Comments like this help no one.

@inlawsimnotsure
What makes you think this person isn’t trying to improve her country? Most people are in their own small ways.

Obviously a public inquiry can't take place now as the country's in crisis. But when the times comes, there must be accountability. Misconduct in a public office is a criminal offence. Although, keep an eye on whatever legislative changes sneak in next.

As for Dominic Cummings, he'll no doubt avoid any consequences for his 'advice'.

I truly hope the projections are an overestimate. But, given they were expecting 45 million people to be infected in the UK, it's not looking good.

I don't think you can reasonably conclude there is no case to answer if you read the Reuters article or at the very least compare the statistical evidence of how poorly we are doing compared to, well any country at all.

Scrutiny might actually be a life safer in all of this.

@Stellaris22

calling the country a 'pathetic shambles' helps no one either.

Public inquiries are a non starter for the forseeable future so you're looking at it taking place in 5+ years time. The only outcome will be the government of the day (which ever party it is) smugly saying "we wouldn't have done it like that and of course lessons have been learned" at a cost of £millions.

Then the next pandemic will hit and that government will be caught with its trousers down as well - repeat for ever....

Maybe not, but it's understandable to be angry and upset right now. You can't deny that the government failed to act quickly enough and even now are failing at supplying PPE for healthcare workers.

compare the statistical evidence of how poorly we are doing compared to, well any country at all

And if you look at comparable statistics, we are actually doing much better than was originally predicted, and much better than many others in Europe, excluding Germany. Depends what statistics you look at, and how they are interpreted.

@inlawsimnotsure
You are absolutely right they must be careful how they express their displeasure. But they do and approx two months ago many people were very angry. (My wife and I are on WeChat and have nearly two thousand contacts in China). Now, the mood has totally changed as they see how other countries have struggled with it more than their own. Schools and malls are reopening across the country. People wish the rest of the world well, but they do not care all that much what the rest of the world thinks of them or their government.

PPE stockpiling was recommended some years ago. There were two problems firstly the cost of visors was going to increase the cost 4-5 fold so a minion in government decided they weren’t necessary. Secondly all PPE has a use by date so every 2-3yrs the complete stockpile was replaced. I have no idea of the cost but again government depts obviously were complacent and did not maintain stockpile (probably cost) and instead just put new use by stickers on the PPE.
Procurement by NHS is another big problem area. NHS has preferred companies for procurement who can basically name their price. Procurement depts have no access to competitive supply chain and a great deal of money is wasted paying highly inflated prices.
For example a box of 50 fluid resistant masks may cost around £3 on the open market. Preferred suppliers may charge £10 for the same box of masks. It’s a joke, procurement buyers find it incredibly frustrating when they know these firms are ripping off the NHS.
I work in dentistry where as subcontractors under the NHS we are not confined by NHS procurement. We do have access to the price lists that procurement use to encourage end users to be more responsible about their use of stock. The price differences are incredible.

@Cam77

that's good to know - is there a feeling that they themselves believe the figures by the government?

the firm I work for as several offices in China and although they have to be careful, there have been implied messages that employees there think the death roll is much higher than reported and that it was downplayed so much and that is why the rest of the world are appearing to be suffering more now.

Interestingly, the numbers in the report quoted by the Op projects 1258 deaths on 6th April and 1233 deaths on 7th April. The actual figures were 439 and 786. This is within the range shaded in the report, but very much at the lower end.

Also, some hospitals have plenty of PPE. My brother is an ICU doctor in a hospital in the SE and they have plenty of PPE and plenty of capacity, so it seems to be a regional thing.

vera99 With full spacesuit type PPE which has been shown to fully protect healthcare workers in Italy. If that is true, then not all healthcare workers can have been provided with that PPE.

Sky

No.

@vera99 because I was interested in what other posters had to say in reply

I think a public investigation will be throwing money away. Nothing is ever done because of these. At most its a slap on the wrist, a mealy mouthed non apology and a promise not to let it happen again.

I hate public enquiries.

I hate historical public enquiries most of all.
Their main purpose seems to be identifying public hate figures.
At best, they conclude things that were obviously true years before, and make recommendations to do actions that were implemented and became standard practice many years earlier already.

Gosh what a huge waste of money they are.

I think there will be criminal charges in the future but not to our government. I think our leaders were absolute idiots to believe the information coming out of China, that's why they thought the immunity angle was a good idea. The death rate is far higher than we were lead to believe and we will only know the real scope of the lies many years down the line.

The people responsible for covering all this up will hopefully be exposed in time.

Sadly I think our country will open it's borders far too soon and we will be in exactly the same situation all over again in a couple of months. The world needs to bide it's time until we have a vaccine, but it sadly won't.

Unti we can a vaccine herd immunity is what is going to save lives. The purpose of lockdown is that the population acquires it at a rate that the NHS can cope with. Excess deaths are caused by people not getting the right treatment when they need it. If there is no herd immunity then as soon as lockdown stops, figures will shoot back up.

Sadly I think our country will open it's borders far too soon and we will be in exactly the same situation all over again in a couple of months. The world needs to bide it's time until we have a vaccine, but it sadly won't.

This is my fear too. As much as the government wants to protect the economy though, the last thing they want is to be forced into doing lockdown all over again, so I'm hoping that will incentive them to do more to keep it under control.

Unti we can a vaccine herd immunity is what is going to save lives. The purpose of lockdown is that the population acquires it at a rate that the NHS can cope with. Excess deaths are caused by people not getting the right treatment when they need it. If there is no herd immunity then as soon as lockdown stops, figures will shoot back up.

But the NHS is supposedly coping now - lack of treatment is not what's causing excess deaths. Just look at the young and healthy nurses who got ventilators and still died! There are plenty of people who will die from this no matter what treatment they get - and as above, not just those who were going to die soon anyway.

We've currently got 6,000 deaths, with an estimated 5% of the population infected. By the time the early-stage cases reach that point, we're going to be looking at 10,000 minimum. With just five percent of the population infected. We need 60% for herd immunity, so that's 200,000 deaths. We need to be trying to minimise the spread as much as possible - not just to the point the NHS can cope!

936 deaths announced today for the UK.

Oh for gods sake. Here we go!