Dido Harding

[Cpl654321]

What is the actual point of her. She's in the news again today saying there was no way to know these new variants are coming. What?? Plenty of scientists were saying just that before it happened.

Why has she not been sacked yet. It's infuriating.

Maybe you could post something intelligent ?

@threecee

Maybe you could post something intelligent ?

Dido is that you?

I think it's her husband who normally comes out to bat for her on social media

The testing side of the UK Test and Trace program is actually very good. I do not know how much credit goes to Dido but back in March-April we were starting from ground zero. Our testing capabilities were non existent and shambolic. Since then we have come a long way.

Some scientists were indeed saying the virus could evolve but the vast majority of the scientific community thought coronaviruses mutate very slowly. The new variants appearing everywhere at the same time did indeed take most epidemiologists by surprise.

Can you imagine the reaction in the press if Diane Abbott had this track record?

@threecee

Maybe you could post something intelligent ?

If only Dido the dildo had ability to do something intelligent 🤭

Given that it's science 101 that viruses mutate, and that even armchair scientists have been chuntering on about it from the off, and that there has been genomic research throughout; it is utterly astonishing that she claims not to have known anything about it.

Fair enough, it's not at the core of her role, but I would have expected everyone in senior positions to have kept abreast of the major issues, and rate of mutation is so very clearly one of them.

I think the only reason she's not been sacked is that Boris wants to keep people in situ during the pandemic - even a flawed team being better than an ever-changing one. There's no other explanation for Gav.

And it took forever to deal with the tangential Cummings

I do not know how much credit goes to Dido but back in March-April we were starting from ground zero

For March/April that's zero. She didn't take over until May, by which time the initiation work had been done

@meditrina I think you could be on to something re: keeping a consistent team in place. That could explain a lot!

Also she has stated today that approx £2.75 million is being spent PER DAY on private consultants

How do you think government contracts are fulfilled? There aren't enough public service workers or indeed enough with the right skills to expedite these massive and complex contracts. The vaccination programme is using a lot of consultants, they don't all do shit jobs.

@Wankerchief

Absolutely nothing to add but i read the title as dildo hoarding and gleefully clicked and got politics instead

🤣🤣

I actually laughed out loud. My neighbours must be wondering if I've lost the plot.

Thank you. I needed this.

For March/April that's zero. She didn't take over until May, by which time the initiation work had been done

The work started in April. It continued throughout 2020.

On May 1 we performed 74,142 PCR tests. The number went up to 82,243 on May 31, 112,164 on June 30, 255,915 on September 30 and 482,473 on December 31. This is a very impressive build up.

I had to take DD for testing a few weeks ago and I was pleasantly surprised with efficiency and turnaround time. Testing does seem to work and it is by far the most expensive / complicated part of the system. When we hear about billions spend on T&T, it is worth remembering that most of this money goes to laboratories and testing site operations.

Precisely @wintertravel1980

The increase from 0 to about 80,000 was nothing to do with her

The increases after that were the easier task, because of the groundwork that pre-dated her tenure

The increases after that were the easier task, because of the groundwork that pre-dated her tenure.

They might have been easier but they were still extremely difficult and entailed opening up new laboratories and completely revamping the reporting system.

This is where we were in mid-May with handwritten tables and, in the best case scenario, excel spreadsheets:

news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-the-inside-story-of-how-uks-chaotic-testing-regime-broke-all-the-rules-12022566

@BigWoollyJumpers

Also she has stated today that approx £2.75 million is being spent PER DAY on private consultants

How do you think government contracts are fulfilled? There aren't enough public service workers or indeed enough with the right skills to expedite these massive and complex contracts. The vaccination programme is using a lot of consultants, they don't all do shit jobs.

On the contrary. There are plenty of public service workers with exactly the right skills (public health/sexual health/TB contact tracers). Lots of whom volunteered and expected to be called on to help with setting up the system because they know how to do these things, and know how to train and support those doing the calls. I work in sexual health and our staff offered themselves up via our National body but were never called

We are now many months into the pandemic and into T&T being set up, so what are these consultants doing to justify that much public money being spent on them?

wintertravel The testing side of the UK Test and Trace program is actually very good. I do not know how much credit goes to Dido but back in March-April we were starting from ground zero. Our testing capabilities were non existent and shambolic. Since then we have come a long way.

Are you joking? Just as with public health there were experienced and expert private labs in every university, hospital and research Institute around the country just desperate to step up to the testing challenge. The government turned its back on all that expertise, and left the scientists to be furloughed. It requisitioned the most advanced equipment and put it in superlabs in places like Milton Keynes. No offence to Milton Keynes but not exactly the academic centre of England. Nevertheless lots of scientists did volunteer for a stint in a Milton Keynes travelodge, along with people used to managing similar scientific processes in industry. By the end of the first lockdown they were only too glad to return to academia and industry. They had been treated as commodities, their expertise ignored. The shortcomings on data in spite of the warnings the scientists had raised received a lot of publicity but there were also safety concerns confirmed by the Health and Safety executive. Like Dido herself managers had tried to run the labs like an ordinary industry process without taking on board the expertise of people who already ran successful labs and scientific processes in industry. It took a long time to get the machines running effectively as a result. They also ran into problems sourcing scare chemicals needed. As a result staffing problems persist and they are known to be taking on inexperienced untrained staff and giving them inadequate training, staff turnover is high.

Meanwhile Cancer Research UK seeing that hospital staff needed adequate testing to stay on the wards safely and that Scientists were going to be furloughed funded a testing initiative for North London hospitals which attracted 300 volunteers and from the start of March was testing UCLH, the Royal Marsden, GOSH etc and quickly built up to 5000 tests a day. They also back engineered the chemical brew that was proving difficult to procure so that they could flexibly source the chemicals needed. A protocol was produced so that teh initiative could spread to other labs and the Cambridge superlab started from that base

Yet the government only recently turned to these, so called small labs, and whilst they could with staff in place rapidly expand they can't source the equipment because it has been directed to the superlabs. Nor as the government had the sense to install someone in a position of power in charge of the superlabs who actually know how to run a safe lab operation where people want to work.

Local testing that was quick, effective and safe and integrated with the NHS could have been swung into action from the start. Minister have even conceded that they simply did not realise the potential in the public centre, perhaps teh result of which cronies they give an ear too.

The BMJ aren't keen

www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3332

@Emilyontmoor exactly so. So much existing experience and expertise was just dismissed by the govt and they’ve made very expensive mistakes along the way

I am getting the rage reading these posts from people who know how it should be done.

I can only cope with this government's sickening incompetence and lethal cronyism in the face of a national emergency by not thinking about it for more than a few minutes a month.

I think it was George Osborne who described restructuring the NHS as "an opportunity for profit" when talking to US medical and insurance companies. I see the above, and know he meant it.

So much existing experience and expertise was just dismissed by the govt and they’ve made very expensive mistakes along the way.

Real mistakes were made prior to March when our testing capabilities were completely inadequate. I do not know who is to take the blame for the mess but I do not see how PHE can get away with accepting zero responsibility for testing shambles during the start of the pandemic.

In April-May the whole country was in the fire fighting mode. Of course, mistakes were made and, of course, lots of money got wasted. Perhaps, we could have done things better, cheaper, faster but we do not know that. It is much easier to speculate how we could have acted differently with the benefit of hindsight.

The end product (testing system as it is operating now) appears pretty good and efficient from the user’s perspective. I am not at all familiar with internal politics of the healthcare sector - I can only speak as someone who needed a test and who found the whole process to be an easy and efficient experience.

She's there to soak up government money.

winter You don't know if your test was processed in the public or private sector, Pillar 1 tests (NHS and other public health tests ) are running at 200000 per day currently versus 500,000 Pillar 2 tests per day, and all that is holding pillar 1 expansion back is the lack of equipment. Pilar 1 tests are performing measurably better on performance indicators of reliability, speed, wastage (Pillar 2 processes lose / destroy more tests) and integration into NHS data systems. if you got a result within hours (as we did two weeks ago) it was probably processed in a public lab.

And they don't have Consultants in at a cost of £2m trying to sort their problems out.....

winter Perhaps, we could have done things better, cheaper, faster but we do not know that

We do, it was done. The Science faculty at Oxford have gone on record as saying they could have and wish they had replicated the North London hospitals initiative. Cambridge, Glasgow, Edinburgh, KCL, Dundee did. (The Scottish universities benefitted by being enabled rather than ignored by their government) Every university and public health lab in the country could have been mobilised in the same way. The UK was the only country in the world that ignored its public health resources and entirely privatised their response.

Or rather England was the only government in the world that ignored it's public health resources....

Real mistakes were made prior to March when our testing capabilities were completely inadequate well true, we didn’t have a system ready and set up for pandemic level testing, similar to the rest of Europe who have not had SARS outbreaks before

Perhaps, we could have done things better, cheaper, faster but we do not know that

It’s hard to see how a system built entirely from scratch run by people who didn’t know what they were doing could be better or cheaper than scaling up existing capacity by giving those labs sufficient funding. The money was there, as was the willing and expertise (@Emilyontmoor post has more details) but outsourcing to the private sector with no tendering or scrutiny appeared to be more in their interests. Is that firefighting?