@Dustyboots
I don't fully understand - RTB - who does?
I understand your post though and it is very clear. I don't expect the government to be infaliable.
There current actions still seems reckless though. Maybe that's just because there is no transparency or honesty. We are never given the true story - are we?
I desperately want to have a government that we can trust.
Reckless?
Possibly.
Or the only option we ever really had?
The problem is we are now in a situation where we have to decide either to make a leap of faith that vaccines work OR we are forced into a situation where we get caught in a cycle where if cases go up we lockdown again, just because of the fear that greater case load puts us at risk of more variants - at which point you ask what was the point of the vaccine programme at all.
The very point here is that the vaccine programme was all about ending the lockdown cycle.
We are nearing the end of this - well our first cycle of vaccinations at least, based on incomplete understanding of our need for boosters and variant specific new vaccines.
The decision has been made that we now have a choice between making the leap of faith in the face of Delta or delaying because of Delta.
Sage has basically said that delaying carries its own risks and if we are going to take the leap of faith - that was planned all along but the public apparently haven't cottoned on it - we are better doing it in the Summer than in the Winter because the Delta Wave is already here and the most we can do is manage it by timing rather than contain it.
I think part of the issue here is we almost have a section of the public who have 'got comfortable' with restrictions whether it be because it protects them (over others who may still be vulnerable but have no choice due to economic reasons) or because they were lulled into a false sense of security that they were 'safe' under restrictions. They have not accepted that this isn't sustainable for health reasons as much as economic reasons (and the two are very much linked).
In terms of trust in government, the erosion of this has been a long term trend. It doesn't start with Boris Johnson and I doubt it will end anytime soon. That hasn't helped matters. But it also doesn't mean that an other government - even one with intrigrity and following due process would have done better in this crisis situation given the starting point we were at.
We were ill prepared and didn't have adequate capacity or infrustrate to act quickly enough back in Jan and Feb last year. On this Germany had better testing infrusture and many places in Asia (and Canada) had better experience with tracing due to their experience of SARS. These are two things we could have done better.
Then we have an older population - something we can't change. And poorer health inequality than much of Europe which is a chronic long term issue over many decades. Indeed the areas with the highest number of deaths correlate extremely closely with the highest levels of Victorian infant mortality.
On top of this we have poorer lifestyle habits which mean we are fatter and more unfit. That partly down to economics and partly down to personal responsibility. Again that spans various political governance.
Then we were in the midst of a political earthwave and change due to Brexit, which further complicated matters and made us have to make decisions in ways we perhaps wouldn't even the previous year. Political instability and uncertainty always adds the background of chaos and confusion any crisis brings
All these things were problems BEFORE we even got to actually making ANY decisions.
As it stands the government were getting scientific advice that there was little risk to the public until far later than they should. Members of the public - aware of foreign governments not necessarily being transparent, trustworthy and infalliable started to stock up on certain things at the end of January. This didn't happen at a governmental level. The lack of action at this point is pretty shocking. But it was January 2020 and there were preoccupations with Brexit which was takiing up significant amounts of time and effort for ministers at the exclusion of numerous other issues (which encompass much more than the possible threat of covid).
It wasn't until mid to late Feb that scientists started to get more nervous and make stronger warnings. Johnson himself delayed further after they actually decided there was a credible threat, but the advice he was getting doesn't seem to be as good as perhaps it should have been. The risk wasn't taken seriously enough.
After that point I'm sure any public inquiry will look at whether deals done were lawful / ethnical or whatever. However there is the possibility that just going 'fuck it get whatever you can from whereever you can' was also the right approach and doing it by the book may have cost lives. The issue that left us in that situation in the first place was a pre existing pre pandemic neglect of strategic planning and purchasing though.
That might actually not fit with the narrative that some want to create of Tory's lining their pockets rather than a desparate scrabble to do the right thing (with profit being more of a side benefit and opportunistic rather than a deliberate concerted strategy).
The way we did the contracts over vaccinations has also been shown to be ruthless but perhaps the right approach given tensions with the EU and competition to get the first supplies.
My suspicion is that any public inquiry will find failings and make recommendations for the future but will also stress that under the circumstances alternatives may not have been as easy as hindsight leads us to believe. I think we will probably find most problems caught up in the pre-pandemic stage rather than in the crisis stage itself. And that once in the crisis we've possibly done better than credit has been given for (tracing being the one major exception to the rule). The speed at which we scaled up testing has to be admired for example. And the centralisation of the NHS has been a major benefit to how we were able to cope.
I'm VERY much in the camp of having no time for Johnson. But I also think the problem is not party specific and that we'd have been screwed regardless of who was in charge.
I'm not sure management of the situation in Scotland and Wales has been considerably better (although I understand they are limited significantly by decisions made in Westminister too).
I remain pretty philosophical about it all to be honest. I am in despair at the sheer uselessness of all the political parties in this country to identify problems and propose viable solutions on just about any issue because they are all too obsessed with political theory and ideology rather than practical management for the benefit of all.
We were already fucked by covid by at least mid 2019 when pandemic planning and procurement which was due to be reviewed wasn't signed off. And thats without talking about our long term inequality issues.
If we really want to be honest about this, Johnson was fighting at uphill battle based on things that were set in place prior to him even becoming PM. The mistakes he made (which always look worse in hindsight but may have been much harder to make in the moment based on limited information) made it worse, but we have to acknowledge this part of things because it meant he was doing more firefighting and this made difficult decisions even harder because he didn't have resources in place in the way they should have been.
In this sense its easy to blame Johnson personally. It doesn't necessarily put blame where it should be though.
shrug
No one wants to be honest about this. You are right. But not necessarily in the way that people who say it, mean it.