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!

Almost a thousand people dead in one day and people still think that the government is doing a great job. I really wish I could understand it.

I wish I could understand how people blame the government for everything, including finding it a challenge to have zero deaths during a global pandemic.

Hindsight will be a wonderful thing

Well spend millions in an inquiry. It’ll go on for years. The Govt. will have the very best lawyers “on it”. It’ll be a whitewash. Top bods will end up in the House of Lords.

Waste of time, all of it.

We’ll

@TheLadyAnneNeville I don't know, because there's learning to inform actions for future pandemics I think it will be thorough and impartial, but whether anyone is brought to task for anything is another matter all together!

If we look at Singapore and South Korea, I think we should know what we did wrong.

As for people who believe that our leader has been misleading by Chinese figure, well, I don't know, a strict lock down on a city of 10 million people back on 23rd Jan, if this is not a serious enough warning, then what warning do we need?

While South Korea quickly developed testing kits based on the DNA sequence released by China at the beginning of January, Singapore quickly put on measure to trick and tracing. I am not sure what did we do.

Did our leader dare to publish what we have been done to prepare for this since 23rd January? I have read the news NHS is ready since the end of January from BBC, and then only found out recently that we don't have enough testing kit, not enough PPE, not enough ventilator. Did we increased any of these supply when we heard the big news on 23rd January or 20th Feb after the Italy situation?

@Marieo, yes of course.

This Govt. under Theresa May, ran a “how would our NHS cope with a national crisis” exercise in 2016. The results were ignored. Nothing learned or planning commenced that would have left us in a better position to cope with this actual pandemic crisis. It seems we only pay lip service to these exercises, to me.

The Govt. then went on to make further NHS and social care cuts, in the name of penny pinching. Bunch of fuckwits.

I think the biggest mistake we made was we did nothing after Italy's sudden case increase.

We should have asked people back from Italy to stay at home for 14 days, we should have stopped school trips to Europe, advised people to cancel the holiday trips abroad. And test as much as possible. Then stop the big gathering. We did everything in a delayed manner. Of course, this matches the herd immunity plan.

The study may be flawed, but I’m not sure the total ICU beds even matter. 65% of ventilated patients die here anyway, and evidence is mounting that ventilation may be doing more harm than good.

The only thing that makes a definite difference to mortality stats is early and decisive social distancing.

@flowerpeaceful, yet we’re still doing this, even now. Flight landing bringing back Brits from abroad who are leaving the airport and disappearing into the ether. No quarantine enforced. No checks. “In you come”.

We. Just. Don’t. Learn.

flowerpeaceful you’re completely right about the flights in from Italy - when people were being told to self isolate after coming in from China. Lots of workplaces insisted on this for Italy 2 weeks or so before the government did anything.

A lot of the data is just not there yet so policy is informed by what’s available with a lot of caveats and assumptions right now. I think the severity of the disease was underestimated based on data coming out of China. Hindsight will be a wonderful thing when more answers are known.

I think the government should have been quicker to act on the offers from private industry to manufacture ppe or open their labs for testing, nimble companies that can turn on a sixpence rather than the giant tortoise of centralised government (on an extra go-slow because half of Westminster are also isolating)

My biggest concern is how much social care is being treated as the poor relation to the nhs and how many people will die at home/in care homes without adequate support or ppe for patients/staff.

I keep repeating this in various guises on various platforms.

How is this helping us right now? There will be time for questions. In the grip of a national emergency isn't the time to stop and look at the flowers.

It's just unbelievably shocking how incompetent the UK have been, I keep getting so worked up about it as I just don't understand why. We had enough warning!

Not enough PPE
Not enough ventilators
Not enough testing
Not enough information
Keeping airports open (and not quarantining passengers on arrival!)
Keeping the channel tunnel/Eurostar open
Going ahead with major events such as Cheltenham (I mean, wtf?!)
Slow to lockdown
Not enforcing the lockdown

They've caused thousands of unnecessary deaths and have probably damaged the UK economy for years to come. FFS, it's so bloody frustrating.

65% of ventilated patients die here anyway, and evidence is mounting that ventilation may be doing more harm than good.

I believe it's because we're ventilating too late.

There is not enough support out there. I have it (well I'm pretty certain but there's no bloody testing!) and although I'm doing better today, I had severe chest pains and literally couldn't catch my breath at the weekend. I began hallucinating and was almost hysterical. My DH called 111 who were asking if my lips had turned blue and if not, could I manage at home?!

They then passed me to a Covid team who took 3 hours to call back! Luckily I was ok (well in pain but breathing, just about!) I still have chest pains and I'm breathless still, god knows if it's pneumonia now or what?! But nobody wants to know.

I think other countries are intervening sooner, hence a better recovery rate.

I feel abandoned and let down. I want to be in this together and support our government but I don't feel enough is being done, by a long long way.

How much military/health industry/crisis management experience do people have in this thread? Do you know how difficult some of the things people are moaning about on this thread are to solve quickly?
I'm no huge fan of boris but by all accounts he's done pretty well. From the people I speak to working with him in the MOD and NHS.
Look at how badly New York is fairing, compared to london for example.
Building a field hospital in 5 days is just unheard of in peace time.
Weve also had some of the brightest minds in the world to advise the g ment (looking at chris witty).
This thread is bat shit!

It’s important because what we do now will affect the outcome over the next few weeks. Tens of thousands of people could die as a result of bad policy now. Tens of thousands of lives could be saved. There is a huge variation in the way different countries have handled this crisis and a huge variation in the outcome too.

I think there probably will be a public enquiry. I don't see how criminal charges will be brought? I don't think criminal charges have been brought over the 'blood scandal' were there?

I'm not sure what the point is to be honest - we all know the score

The party started and the UK was found to have no knickers on never mind a fancy party frock.

I would agree a public enquiry should take place after this is over but I would seriously advise against criminal charges. The enquiry should be a lessons learned that can be implemented in future not a witch hunt for political purposes. I know the government have come under criticism for some actions but have any of you considered the actual problems of responding to this crisis in real time. The response is not amenable to magic wand politics you cannot just decide to do something then wave a magic wand and it happens. There are logistic issues to deal with and when everyone in the world is competing with you for the emergency resources this is going to slow down the response capability. Or are you suggesting we should have sent a gunboat and seen off "Jonny Foreigner" then nicked all the supplies for ourselves. A bit 19th century colonial but not really suited to the modern age. With regard to learning lessons for the future I would point out that a large section of the population appears to be substantially unaffected by this virus with people under the age of 40 suffering less than 0.4% fatality rates, will this assist in the next pandemic response if this section of the community are also as prone as the older generation currently is to COVID19. the lessons we learn this time might be totally ineffectual next time.
I have heard that the issue of testing could have been resolved by sourcing the reagents from alternative suppliers however that may not actually be the case. When trying to procure the reagents the first port of call is the approved suppliers, these the medical personnel involved in testing will have confidence will perform the tests as required but when moving to alternative sources a full investigation is required to prove such alternatives are actually suitable. Is the reagent purity at the same level as the approved version and are the impurity components of the same type. If not will such deviations affect the testing accuracy. These would have to be clinically investigated before procurement can be approved, a process that could take a couple of weeks.
Also on testing I have noticed that about 80% of the testing has proven negative this means this section of the population will require further testing in the future 3 weeks from now, 3 months from now a year from now etc. With a population in the UK of 67Million and testing individuals 2 or 3 times before they show a positive result we could be talking of 150 to 200million tests. At 100,000 tests per day this would take between 4 to 5 years to complete, long after a vaccine should be ready to distribute.
I know its easy to criticise the government but in this case they are following the scientific advice they are being given and any politician who did not follow such a advice would be stupid. Any form of public enquiry that was determined to apportion blame could only fall on the expert scientific community who, while not having the sure knowledge because this is a new virus, are in a position to make educated estimates of the behavior of the pandemic based on similar virus outbreaks. If they are lumbered with blame then at the next pandemic they could quite simply step back and say sort it out yourselves I am not getting the blame if you do not like the results.
This is a difficult time for everyone and I was impressed by the response of Kier Starmer supporting the government and providing criticism where applicable not just for oppositions sake. We need a government that is attempting to apply the policies as dictated by the scientific experts and the opposition to jostle them along when for various reasons the application does not go according to plan

@simplekindoflife

I’m sorry you’ve been put through that. I 100% agree that we should be treating people earlier — to avoid the need for eventual Iand likely nit helpful) ventilator use. Experience from China and South Korea clearly shows that early supportive therapy for moderate cases can make a big difference.

*for eventual and likely unhelpful ventilator use.

The vast majority of Chinese people are very satisfied overall with how their government handled it after a tough first couple of weeks

Do you really think that any Chinese citizen is going to criticise the actions of their government?

Haplap with you in charge as you know so much better?

Requirements:
1 Armchair
1 internet connection.

Thing is, it won't even be hindsight.
It's all going to be there on record, at the press conferences. The lies. And then backtracking and saying "when we said A, we didn't mean A, we meant B"
The special science.
Even now, lockdown lite.
Even now, people still thinking that because the numbers are high, the UK has reached a peak. These numbers aren't even all the last 24 hours. There are backlogs.

There will be an inquiry, of course there will. But the govt and their advisers seem to be made of teflon so...

@girlsingreen no criminal charges have been brought over the infected blood scandal. It's also taken 25 years to hold the public inquiry, it has 2+ years to go and most of the decision makers at the time are dead or long retired.