Cummings evidence today

[Dirtystreetpie]

Anyone listening?

I remember being jumped on in another thread when I posted about the borders - and how as an island we could've used our geographical advantage.

People pulled the NI card.... Except that the Republic of Ireland is currently barring entry to travellers from the UK. Very sensibly, I might add. We repeatedly failed to contain Covid and continue to import new strains. Therefore we then become the country others need to keep out. We've already exported the UK strain around the world. No one wants us to spread another one.

Golden I am not sure you understand the populist playbook. It is about harassing peoples emotions to put you in power. So you find someone to blame, for them to hate, the EU, Immigrants, remainers, rather than put forward sensible thought out policies that require intellectual engagement. That is what the centre got wrong. It has nothing to do with reality. Hence when actual good governance was required Boris had nothing in his armoury except to turn to the right wing ideologies being pumped out from the Us. Hence he was listening to Heneghen (who is in the pay of those think tanks) rather than. Alliance in September. He didn’t close the borders because he was still subscribing to the lockdown sceptics.

@HarrietPierce

Johnson "Get Brexit done"

Populism suggests nationalistic answers to political, economic, and social problems.

Whether you want those answers or not, he's not doing them.

Sorry for all the typos I am in an Uber on my phone!

@Clavinova

I don't remember Keir Starmer suggesting we track credit card transactions, stop protests from taking place with bus walls or use the military to enforce self-isolation.

Here is some news for you Clav, Labour are not in power, so talking what they would have done is bit like me or you rabbiting on about what we would do if we won Euro Millions... pointless.

We have a tory government and its their actions and decisions we should praise (Furlough, vaccines) or criticise.. slow LD's CH's Track n Trace, Flight bans, a run down NHS, lack of testing (Germany went from zero to 1000s per day by March)

People would take you more seriously if you could, just now and then, criticise the Tories, instead of sounding like a press spokesman for No10.

This thread is very funny. A pandemic playbook for the world apparently- no such thing. Blair a shining example- dragged the U.K. into an unnecessary war which killed many young citizens and soldiers and destabilised the region even more and comparing the U.K. with New Zealand !!

The silly scientists who couldn’t wait to write letters calling Trump an idiot for saying it was man made were driven by their hatred of Trump and some actually had links with China. They’re looking like idiots now.

The winter peak argument from Cummings was very interesting

SAGE argued this and it changed my view on why we waited for first lockdown

Golden I am not sure you understand the populist playbook. It is about harassing peoples emotions to put you in power.

I know exactly what populism is and wasn’t talking about it. Did you mean to direct that to another poster?

Boris Johnson is a sociopathic incompetent liar. It doesn’t follow that a better leader could have prevented all the deaths.

It was Vallance he didn’t listen to in September. I remember Vallance practically spitting at Heneghen when they were both on Newsnight in September. I understand his anger now

@GoldenOmber

There is a pandemic playbook, much of it actually written in the U.K. as well as refined by the experience of SARS. It was put into play by lots of countries with different regimes, cultures, geography and populations not just teensy weensy New Zealand

It’s not that simple. There were different plans. UK’s and many other countries was based on mitigating a pandemic flu. Other countries approached it like they had SARS from the start.

The idea of strict local/national lockdowns like in Wuhan and wider areas in China was controversial at the time (didn’t the WHO view it with suspicion?) and it wasn’t a straightforward global plan that obviously you do this if there’s a pandemic.

Teensy weensy New Zealand locked down in late March, the same as the UK.

The UK actually had 2 strategy documents.

One for dealing with a new virus, like SARS etc. Believe it or not, the ONLY strategy they listed was STOP the virus from leaving the origin country... like the UK has the power to force border control on another nation lol..

The other one, which is the one we followed, was a plan designed as you say to cope with a worse than usual influenza epidemic, in which it had been decided that stopping it was out of the question, so it was all about keeping everything running while the virus ran its course.

Lockdowns weren't controversial, they weren't even considered! Neil Ferguson ran a number of scenarios through his models back in 2011?, that fed into the government's planning documents. He considered various limited restrictions such as closing schools, limiting international travel as means to slow a virus down, but nothing like a full lockdown!

Back in early Feb I remember arguing with someone about dealing with covid. We both knew it was coming - at the time my view was that it was unstoppable - I couldn't see a western government doing what China had done. But then Italy imposed a lockdown (local) and that changed everything, because the fact that one of the very best healthcare systems in Europe had been overwhelmed in such a short timeframe meant "letting it rip" was absolutely not an option any more.

The UK SHOULD have learned from Italy, but we didn't. Instead we clung to the herd-immunity plan until well into April.

NZ is irrelevant - they did everything they needed to to keep the virus out. We didn't.

It really is not funny at all that Johnson-Cummings have managed to lower the bar so far that Blair looks good in comparison.

Some of us live here. I ain't laughing.

@GoldenOmber

Yeah, and it’s obvious now in retrospect that we could have saved a lot of lives by locking down earlier in March, but the virus was already here in January. To have locked down early enough on the curve to have avoided almost all the deaths we’d have had to do it before even Wuhan did. Was that ever really plausible? I don’t think so, no matter who was in government.

I do wonder what’s going to happen in the future, next time there’s an outbreak of something worrying somewhere in the world. Will there be a call for a national lockdown here just in case? Or are we all going to watch the news through our fingers dreading it happening again, every single time something a bit worrying gets reported?

Yes. We were no where near what we had to do early enough if you was SAGE minutes

It wasn’t that SAGE were saying close everything and politicians were ignoring it

They are interesting to look back on

Also on the next one it will be interesting to see reactions, probably severe with border and lockdowns although you need to know virus variables first

@Emilyontmoor

It was Vallance he didn’t listen to in September. I remember Vallance practically spitting at Heneghen when they were both on Newsnight in September. I understand his anger now

He had a lot of humble pie to eat did Vallance after telling Boris back at end of January, that covid was unlikely to reach the UK and if it did, it wasn't that serious lol.

Thank god the fraud Heneghan has vanished from the news though. The BBC used to have him and (also discredited) Gupta on all the time with their nonsense claims.

A better leader could have prevented some of the deaths, but not all certainly. A better leader would stop flip flopping all over the place so that people knew what the rules were. There was an appetite for compliance by the public in the early days - this could have been harnessed to good measure. Instead Johnson was AWOL.

Lockdowns weren't controversial, they weren't even considered!

I’m talking about the world’s response to China’s lockdown, which was, yes, controversial.

No, they were not considered as part of any globally-agreed approach to pandemic management before this. That’s exactly what I’m saying.

@Peregrina

A better leader could have prevented some of the deaths, but not all certainly. A better leader would stop flip flopping all over the place so that people knew what the rules were. There was an appetite for compliance by the public in the early days - this could have been harnessed to good measure. Instead Johnson was AWOL.

Well, yes, he’s an absolutely shit leader and a better leader could have done much better and saved many lives throughout this.

I just don’t think it helps anyone to act like this was ever all within the government’s control, and we could have avoided all the deaths if only the government had been less shit. We could maybe have been Germany or Ireland, but realistically, we couldn’t ever have been New Zealand.

@GoldenOmber

Yeah, and it’s obvious now in retrospect that we could have saved a lot of lives by locking down earlier in March, but the virus was already here in January. To have locked down early enough on the curve to have avoided almost all the deaths we’d have had to do it before even Wuhan did. Was that ever really plausible? I don’t think so, no matter who was in government.

I do wonder what’s going to happen in the future, next time there’s an outbreak of something worrying somewhere in the world. Will there be a call for a national lockdown here just in case? Or are we all going to watch the news through our fingers dreading it happening again, every single time something a bit worrying gets reported?

That's nonsense lol. How could the virus be here in greater numbers than in crowded Wuhan where it originated!!!

The virus arrived here in January, but in limited numbers and those were contained. It arrived in numbers during the second half of Feb, due to people returning from ski trips in areas around Europe (esp N Italy).

We didn't need to lockdown in Feb - what we needed to do was start restricting/quarantining/testing international travellers as soon as the virus started to spread globally! This is what the WHO were shouting from the rooftops from the end of Jan!

Instead you had the ludicrous situation where you could have a high fever and persistent cough, but unless you had recently returned from a very short list of places, you couldn't get a test.

But the UK had already taken the decision that there was no point in trying to stop the outbreak. The herd immunity plan was hardwired into our official strategy and we followed the plan religiously until Ferguson's intervention in March.

The WHO are right that lockdowns are a final resort to be avoided if possible. That doesn't mean don't do anything!

Right now Taiwan is dealing with a small outbreak...
The total death toll is rising to nearly...100. That's for the whole country since the start of the pandemic.

When is Keir Starmer going to suggest we copy Taiwan?

Taiwan to add travel history to health ID cards amid coronavirus outbreak. Travel history of people returning from China, Hong Kong, Macau will be made known to physicians. -

www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3870719

That's nonsense lol. How could the virus be here in greater numbers than in crowded Wuhan where it originated!!!

I didn’t say it was here in greater numbers than in Wuhan. I said the virus was already here before the Wuhan lockdown.

We didn't need to lockdown in Feb - what we needed to do was start restricting/quarantining/testing international travellers as soon as the virus started to spread globally!

It was already here in February. It was already here in January. It was in Europe, terrifyingly, before the end of 2019. By the time we knew the scale of what we were dealing with, it was already too late to keep it out by testing and quarantining international travellers.

@GoldenOmber

Lockdowns weren't controversial, they weren't even considered!

I’m talking about the world’s response to China’s lockdown, which was, yes, controversial.

No, they were not considered as part of any globally-agreed approach to pandemic management before this. That’s exactly what I’m saying.

You're being disingenuous.

There has never been any kind of global plan or agreement to combatting a pandemic.

Also, you're confusing the world with your private opinion. I'm fairly certain most of the world watched the Chinese lockdown with horror NOT because of the fact they were implementing it, but because they NEEDED to!

Or perhaps you can point me to ANY national leader, or health authority trying to tell the Chinese that they shouldn't be locking down??

@Peregrina

A better leader could have prevented some of the deaths, but not all certainly. A better leader would stop flip flopping all over the place so that people knew what the rules were. There was an appetite for compliance by the public in the early days - this could have been harnessed to good measure. Instead Johnson was AWOL.

Bojo was a heard immunity fan and didn't and still doesn't, like border controls, its only this W/E that passengers at Heathrow will be separated from red list passengers... it beggars belief & on top of not red listing India.

I tend to agree with Cummings, Bojo not being at the COBR meetings and Raab taking charge was a good thing.

Believe it or not, the ONLY strategy they listed was STOP the virus from leaving the origin country... like the UK has the power to force border control on another nation lol..

Errm, well except that we can... At least we could stop it coming in to our country. Which is what other more sensible countries did do.

NZ is irrelevant - they did everything they needed to to keep the virus out. We didn't.

No NZ, Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, etc not irrelevant. Because we are still failing to learn lessons from them. We continue to import new strains.

@GoldenOmber

That's nonsense lol. How could the virus be here in greater numbers than in crowded Wuhan where it originated!!!

I didn’t say it was here in greater numbers than in Wuhan. I said the virus was already here before the Wuhan lockdown.

We didn't need to lockdown in Feb - what we needed to do was start restricting/quarantining/testing international travellers as soon as the virus started to spread globally!

It was already here in February. It was already here in January. It was in Europe, terrifyingly, before the end of 2019. By the time we knew the scale of what we were dealing with, it was already too late to keep it out by testing and quarantining international travellers.

I said the virus was already here before the Wuhan lockdown.

There's almost no evidence for that. The were a couple of reports claiming early cases, but nothing ever developed from them. Had they been true, MANY more cases would have come to light. As it is you either have the absurd belief that a few isolated cases appeared, went away for a month or two, and then suddenly it was everywhere, or you accept that those few reports were due to contaminated samples.

All of the data fits perfectly with the established timeline of the virus. Had it been here in 2019 as you claim, then our hospitals would have been overrun in December, not March. But conspiracy theorists LOVE to pretend they know stuff that isn't mainstream - perhaps it's some kind of ego boost - hence you find these idiotic claims going around. They've been totally rejected by mainstream science, for very good reasons.

There has never been any kind of global plan or agreement to combatting a pandemic.

Yes! That’s what I was saying!

Perhaps before accusing me of being disingenuous, ‘lol’ing at me you could try to read my actual posts? Just a little bit? It might help the state of conversation.