What would you have done had you been in charge?

[Hellishcrusade]

Let's say from January, you were in Boris Johnson's position. What would you have done when and how do you think the public would have reacted to it/ how would you have enforced it? I'd be really interested to know what people think because there's so much criticism and wildly different opinions being floated on here.
To be clear, I'm not in support of Boris particularly one way or the other and I'm definitely not smart enough to have made any good decisions! I'm just curious as to what others think as there seem to be strong opinions.

I am absolutely sure I would have introduced airport/travel measures and masks early on.

I might have been hated but hey ho.

I was screaming at the TV for weeks, I'd already basically cancelled everything by Feb half term.

I still get the absolute about them scrapping testing.

Banned larger indoor mass gatherings immediately after Feb half term. However, I think anything smacks too much of hindsight.

I wouldn't have made any changes to our lockdown, as I never thought it needed to be stricter other than maybe saying exercise was for one hour (just to stop people going on the stupidly long bike rides which promoted 5 mile restrictions in Wales and Scotland, which in turn were stupid).

I wouldn't have bothered with quarantine because barely anyone was flying anyway and those who were, were coming from lockdown areas.

I wore a face covering from the outset so I might have recommended them, but they weren't available at the time, I used a runners' snood.

I would have set up a one way system - left hand pavement,stay on left, single file, to stop all the conflict between runners/cyclists/walkers/family groups on scooters etc.

I would not have allowed the parks to be closed, it was clear from the outset that it wasn't going to spread outside.

I would only have allowed furlough to the sectors that were closed down, to stop employers abusing it who did have work to do like airlines needing to refund people.

I would have allowed garden centres to keep their outdoor garden bits open throughout.

I would have allowed outdoor pools to open more quickly.

And I wouldn't restrict groups to 6 outdoors now. 6 inside, 12 outside.

Oh and I would have insisted toilets were kept open, too.

@ChanceChanceChance

I am absolutely sure I would have introduced airport/travel measures and masks early on.

I might have been hated but hey ho.

I was screaming at the TV for weeks, I'd already basically cancelled everything by Feb half term.

I still get the absolute about them scrapping testing.

Seems like the obvious thing, but in the early days how many people would have been happy to wear masks? A lot of people weren't taking it seriously at all and the hospitals didn't even have enough masks, never mind asking the public to buy them! (I say that as someone who was redeployed to a hospital and they were massively short staffed at one point due to the numbers off with symptoms because of their lack of PPE.)

Resigned.

I could not have coped with the stress and pressure they must have been under. And I consider myself fairly resilient!

Introduced masks from day 1, made all schools produce lockdown work to the same standards. Keep up with all cancer screening & in cities who had more than one hospital, make one be used for covid & the other non covid.

Hindsight is going to skewer the answers somewhat here I know. I watched the last series of Gogglebox in one go towards the end of lockdown as I prefer to record and watch in one go and it was so odd to see how the information given and their opinions changed over the weeks. It went from 'blowing this out of proportion' to 'oh shit' and it was only on watching it that I remembered how quickly everything changed.

@Nat6999

Introduced masks from day 1, made all schools produce lockdown work to the same standards. Keep up with all cancer screening & in cities who had more than one hospital, make one be used for covid & the other non covid.

But in the early days when the majority weren't taking it seriously how would you have enforced masks? Or do you mean from day 1 of lockdown? (By which point we were peaking and lots had died/ were dying.)

Track and trace using mobile phones. Sod privacy, it's the first rule of any disaster movie: find patient zero and everyone they've been in contact with. Quarantine all of them and everyone they have been in contact with.

Obviously needs to be done in conjunction with banning flights (or supervised quarantining of incoming passengers).

I would’ve allowed poor old knackered people like me to sit on a park bench or the grass while their kids ran around. I never believed the virus was being absorbed through my arse, and even now the evidence for touch based transmission just isn’t there.

With hindsight, there’s a lot that I’m sure we would have all done differently. However, one thing I remember discussing with husband in early March is why they weren’t bringing in stricter travel restrictions.

Closed the borders/implemented quarantine in February

Maybe 'What would you be doing now?' Would be a better question, with what you would have done previously being in addition

I’d have built the nightingale hospitals sooner used them for every single Covid patient that needed care, so there would have been no patients with it discharged to hospices and care homes, and actual hospitals would have carried on normally as much as possible.

Closed the borders, compulsory masks from the start, on the spot fines for not SD and larger ones for any business not enforcing it. Remote learning and left schools closed. Furlough to be repaid if businesses don’t take staff back.

Maybe enforced quarantine for 21 days for all bar truly essential people and cut transmission routes right down. Then non Covid healthcare may not have fallen so far behind.

Used the army more to enforce measures as not enough police resources.

In reality, ran a mile. I wouldn’t want the responsibility for any of it. It must be a huge weight to bear and under public scrutiny as well.

*I am absolutely sure I would have introduced airport/travel measures and masks early on.

I might have been hated but hey ho.

I was screaming at the TV for weeks, I'd already basically cancelled everything by Feb half term.

I still get the absolute angry about them scrapping testing.* @ChanceChanceChance

This. I can barely read this board sometimes at the moment because of the comments on here.

Christ another thread this has been done to death already. Seriously do people have nothing better to do than keep have circular discussions over and over again

It’s all about the early travel restrictions for me.
Extremely rigorous tracking and Quarantine for everyone in Feb returning from abroad esp China and Italy / Spain

We didn’t lock down effectively. Stricter, earlier lockdown and mask wearing.

Closed the borders at the start of January when it became clear that there was a new virus in China that they weren't prepared to be open about.
What a certainly don't understand is those people who would have closed the borders before the virus was in the UK and also placed draconian restrictions on everyday life because of a virus that wasn't about in the country and wouldn't have gotten in.

I would have made more use of the information coming from China about age stratified risk and locked the over 60s down two weeks before the actual lockdown happened. I would not have cleared out the hospital for covid patients by sending elderly people back into care homes. I would have kept schools open, though not mandatory, for families who needed them for whatever (evidenced) reason and not only for keyworkers' children. I wouldn't have assumed that covid was primarily or entirely a respiratory illness, with serious cases requiring ventilation. Most of all, I'd have wanted us to monitor and treat mild cases in patients flagged as likely to be vulnerable much more aggressively in the first week. The coronavirus taxi thing in Germany seemed like a great idea in allowing people to be monitored and treated, maybe hospitalised, before they were already seriously ill.

If I had contracted covid myself, and was in my fifties, male, and fat, I wouldn't have tried to work through it and shake it off. And I definitely wouldn't have held out in my flat until I had to be taken into ICU. Also, I would have fired Matt Hancock at an early stage in the testing fiasco and let Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance run that role.

Most of all, I wouldn't have gone in for trying to manipulate the public's mood and emotions with bullish talk of herd immunity or, just as bad, hard-hitting messaging that scared people witless. I would have avoided pronouncing on a vaccine being the only exit strategy without knowing if one was possible or on what time line it might be found. I would have tried to treat adults as adults.

Oh, and I would have told GPs to get back into their surgeries (with appropriate protective measures) months ago to see patients face to face. Same thing with most hospital specialisms.

I would have bailed out universities so that they didn't continue to charge the full student fee to students who were receiving almost no education, and weren't allowed to use university facilities.

I would have kept all GCSE and A-level students at school.

@cyclingmad Christ do you have nothing better to do than click on the link to piss and moan. Has it crossed your tiny mind that some people haven’t seen previous similar posts. Get a grip and scroll on

I would be bloody more honest that the virus arrived.
It was here the beginning of the year without a doubt .
Also yes the lockdown , furloughed etc agree to a extent but I think it went on too long .
Also Dominic Cummings would of been sacked .
And the track and trace is a farce .
The relaxing of rules was silly in England , I personally think you should of been only to mix with 2-3 households max as it was you could see someone every day .
I'm in Greater Manchester and its been local lockdown for weeks and cases have increased not gone down .
The system and rules are flaky no one knows what is what .

Lol why do I have be pissed and angry maybe i find it quite entertaining, mumsnet is a great entertainment to fill some time waiting for bus etc. Thank god the real world outside of this social media platform is more sane

Yes I do think I would have done a better job.
This is based on my own actions back in February. This is quite possibly the worse indictment of the PM anyone could make, to genuinely believe I would have done better. I wouldn't have gone on holiday for two weeks in February either.
I think one issue might have been the way Dominic Cummings has purged the Tory party and civil service of anyone who dares speak truth to power and filled them with Yes men.

I heard some bloke on the radio a while ago comparing covid to the millennium bug. His job was to make some country in the middle east millennium safe. He said that the public will never thank them for this. If they are successful and nothing happens the public will complain that Gov wasted time and money on nothing happening. Likewise you will be slaughtered if the millennium bug caused problems. He said viruses are the same. If governments spend huge amounts of money and effort successfully extinguishing a virus, the public will say it was money wasted because the virus did nothing.