how would you have handled covid if you were pm ?

[warmandtoasty2day]

so many boris slaggers on here and arm chair scientists, but i'm curious to know how would you have done from the start in dealing with this?
i'm an ordinary person in the street, good education, up to now, life time of common sense and have had a large family but i wouldn't begin to know where to begin on this one .

1. Early lockdown

1. Track and trace system developed using existing technology offered for free by Google & Apple, NOT given a lucrative contract to a crony to make it from scratch unnecessarily (and unsuccessfully, ultimately)

1. Track and trace system run by partnership of NHS and local councils, properly funded for it, NOT a crony/private company with a terrible reputation for crewing things up.

1. Asked the NHS to do testing, and properly funded them for it, NOT given the contract to a crony. Make testing freely available to everyone who wants it.

1. Been transparent about who was on their advisory committes. Included people expert at logistics and public communication. Many more women.

1. This is crucial - built partnerships with relevant representatives of stakeholders eg education, medicine, business and developed policy WITH them, so we don't end up in these stupid positions where the government are asking schools to do the impossible

1. Included people from a wider range of scientific disciplines on SAGE.

1. Put someone who can communicate clearly, honestly, skilfully and with genuine humanity in charge of public messaging

1. Not underfunded the NHS and public services for a decade running up to the pandemic

10. Sacked Cummings.

For a start...

As to the idea closing UK borders completely to everything but freight - no people..at all - just dump "stuff" and turn vehicles and vessels around at the border

Multiple posters have stated that accompanied frieght would be exempt. A lone truckie, in a cab, on a freight turnaround, is really low risk compared with holiday makers coming home, and returning to work, school and visits to grandparents at the care home.

Yes you’re right! Totally forgot get an app working via Apple/Google when the public was actively clamouring to download one!

My DH knows someone who's travelled in and out of the country constantly. The guy says he's never even been told to isolate, let alone been checked up on. He works in an industry where they are constantly in different countries, everywhere else is much stricter

I think a decision was made early on to follow the psychology of the people - what was it they employed at the beginning- behavioural scientists - they haven't been mentioned for a while, have they?

But I think the advice back then was to let 'the people' realise what needed to be done before actually doing it - so that must've involved waiting until things were desperate whilst also leaking stuff to the media and getting the media to foreworn us of things to come.

I can see the logic behind this strategy because it perhaps (initially at least) helped people want to follow rules and be more compliant.

It's not working now though and they should ditch this technique. They should've ditched it a long time ago.

@independent98

The virus was reported to WHO in December19 but the UK govt did not act until late March. Borders should have been closed from feb to contain the virus.

By way of comparison it's worth looking at when countries much closer to the centre of all this than the UK (e.g. Hong Kong, New Zealand) actually imposed significant entry restrictions or closed borders....

@PicsinRed

Our nationals have had plenty of notice and shouldn't be holidaying abroad right now anyway

Of course not everybody is on holidays, there are plenty of Brits and other nationals in the very long essential workers category who will need to continue to cross the borders inbound and out to make sure Britain keeps running and is fed and watered.

Government has also never bothered to do anything proactively.

I think they are incredibly lazy as well as dishonest.

The laziness leads to them hoping that the problem will go away if they just wait. That's what's occurred with schools.

If I was PM I'd be proactive and honest.

I am no supporter of the PM and his cabinet but it’s very easy to sit back and judge when you’re not the one making decisions that will impact millions of people. Plus, closing borders/ quarantining people in hotels is easier said than done at short notice.

I think a leadership team/ cabinet should have been set up early on with the right people. Hancock, Williamson etc are so clearly out of their depth is awful to watch. Michael Gove (who I used to despise) and Sunak have come across well during this pandemic. As barmy as it sounds, a cross party leadership team could have been established to make sure the best brains were working as a team to make the least worst decisions.

@notimagain

Given what we know about this disease now, yes, the UK and everybody should have locked down in January..but before we go into full Monday AM quarterback mode yet again maybe it's worth a reminder of the timeline.

www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/apr/09/how-coronavirus-spread-across-the-globe-visualised

I was working "in" logistics/travel at the start of the year and the feeling end of January was that what we were starting to hear about was was roughly equivalent and would probably have the same effect as the SARS outbreak we had seen in 2002/2003..i.e. clobber air travel in the Far East but no major major effect in Europe....So no, IMHO I don't think given what anybody knew at the end of Jan would have justified shutting the UKs Border's.

Even in early February It was possible to enter/leave very SARS/virus "aware" countries such as Singapore with minimal checks, though there were some restrictions in country..so even the locals in the Far East didn't perceive the full threat...I do therefore think it's unrealistic to expect a UK PM to have ordered closure of the borders of a country sat 6000 miles further west at that time.

Now.... fast forward to end Feb, or early March : That's when the opportunity got missed. It was obvious that the situation was unravelling quickly in Europe and it was then that the penny should have dropped in Westminster...but as we know it didn't, instead we had the infamous football match at Liverpool and of course Cheltenham....

As to the idea closing UK borders completely to everything but freight - no people..at all - just dump "stuff" and turn vehicles and vessels around at the border ......

A lot of the individuals who have worked as crew on ships, aircraft, (plus HGV drivers etc) have been hard at work over the last few months bringing in to the UK not just food, but massive amounts of PPE, meds, and heavens knows what else. Many are Brits/British residents who, believe it or not, would quite like to go home (possibly into isolation) after their often multi-day block of work is finished, and not be consigned to travelling the world forever more.

Thank you for posting the timeline. Its easy for us to look back now and say of course we should have closed borders in January and February when in January it was mostly contained to China . The WHO declared a pandemic on 11th March, even SAGE were only looking at lockdown a week or so earlier. I remember listening to the radio the first week of March and Italy had just gone into a lockdown and thats when I thought there was a possibility of that happening here...not a month earlier

Although when you read here, it seems most of MN should have been on the Governments scientific advisory commitee, back in the New Year of 2020...maybe some of them are..? (but I don't think all)

As barmy as it sounds, a cross party leadership team could have been established to make sure the best brains were working as a team to make the least worst decisions.

Why on earth does this sound barmy? I've thought it and I'm not barmy or particularly clever. This is what should have happened.

I wouldnt have willy waved a load of bollocks about world beating this and that, stated schools are safe and failed to levied the evidence when requested via FOI to back it up, I wouldn't claim to be following the science when the scientists are standing next or me giving a completely different picture to me with a completely different tone and I wouldn't have organised the biggest waste of a press conference ever to defend a Spad who blatantly broke the rules.

With regards actual decisions what I'd do I can't say in all honesty because I've not had all the info or been in all meetings - but I do know I would have made an actual effort to gain the public's trust and therefore compliance.

I would have ensured that the guidance on when people should get a Covid test was updated in the light of emerging evidence. A system which generally only advises people to get tested for a cough/fever/ loss of or change to sense of smell or taste is not fit for purpose, particularly in the context of children who are much less likely to develop a cough with Covid and who are often asymptomatic.

I would have shut the borders, allowed anyone with symptoms to get a test not just those who had been abroad, tracked contacts of positive cases and told them to isolate, locked down earlier and harsher and made sure the numbers were lower before starting to reopen things, reopened things slower so we could see the impact. Sorted out track and trace and testing capacity and allowed anyone unwell to get a test. Planned ahead for reopening schools by securing sports halls etc, recruiting trainee teachers etc to allow for adequate social distancing, compulsory masks age 6 plus and regular testing to enable schools to operate in a safer and more sustainable way. I would have ensured that the rules remained that anyone who could work from home continued to do so and would have made it compulsory that they did when things began to get worse again. Made masks compulsory earlier and had a more robust system re exemptions which would help those who are exempt not to get grief as a result of people abusing exemptions. Been much clearer about the rules and the reasons for them. I also would have listened to the scientists knowing that if you put health first the economy will follow. These are all things I said at the relevant times. I’m not just saying this with hindsight. If you followed the science and what was happening in other countries too all these things were obvious. I also would have attended the cobra meetings!

Quarantine arrivals, in the beginning it would have been from China, then Italy and Spain, evolving as the virus grew.

Large scale events( Cheltenham, football matches, concerts) cancelled or postponed. Boris didn’t take this action until the FA( I think) cancelled matches.

Close schools; don’t just wait for schools to have to close because they do not have enough staff available.

Test, test, test! Testing was actively discouraged in the beginning.

Get a test and trace system that actually worked.( not just flinging money at your mates).

Getting decent people in to do the test and trace. Pay teachers additional salary to do this rather than them having to do it on top of their jobs

@LilyPond2 yes absolutely and recognise that the symptoms displayed by children are often different to those displayed by adults.

The criteria for when people are advised to get tested for Covid need to take more account of the bigger picture, eg it may not be feasible to test everyone who has a sore throat, but if someone has a sore throat and knows that lots of people at their workplace have been off with Covid recently, common sense says that a test would be sensible rather than advising them that no test is necessary because they don't have any of the three "official" symptoms.

I dont know because I'm not someone who thinks they have what it takes to lead a country

Of course not everybody is on holidays, there are plenty of Brits and other nationals in the very long essential workers category who will need to continue to cross the borders inbound and out to make sure Britain keeps running and is fed and watered.

Right, but that isn't CASUAL TRAVEL so wouldn't be affected by a closure of the border on CASUAL travel.

So let's press on and close that border. Only 9 mos late now.

And that essential workers list for international travel can be cut right back to the bone. The lottery was on it ffs.

For me, there are two things
1- efficient track and trace which works with councils and local NHS trust/ microbiology team
2- Ask Simon Stevens to recall the email sent to all nhs trusts at the peak of the pandemic, asking to discharge care home patients to free up hospital beds. This lead to the biggest surge in care home as patient’s results weren’t back till 48 to 72 hours and by that time it was too late.

Also please don’t mess up the vaccination program ( and don’t listen to Tony Blair)

All the time travel isn't actually banned, people will do whatever is technically "allowed". I know some people on holiday now. Apparently they went the day before we went into tier 4.

I have absolutely no idea. I wouldn’t want to be PM for any amount of money. Closing the borders in January would have caused absolute uproar, can you imagine! First case wasn’t until end of January!

Its easy for us to look back now and say of course we should have closed borders in January and February when in January it was mostly contained to China .

We live in a globalised world. Flights were leaving China and landing in London and elsewhere the entire time! The single thing the Government could have done to contain it was to stop international flights and/ or quarantine and test everyone who arrived. Yes, in January. What was happening in China became clear in December and it was obvious it wasn't going to stay there.

@Yohoheaveho

I dont know because I'm not someone who thinks they have what it takes to lead a country

Sadly our PM doesn't have what it takes either, yet is certain that he does, which is the worst possible combination.

complete lockdown, no one goes in or out of the country, and people don't leave their homes for 3 weeks. if they leave, they get arrested.

then we go back to normal but still no leaving or entering england.