Westminstenders: A test of logistic planning

[RedToothBrush]

We are witnessing a demonstration in Government crisis management.

For the past week journalists have asked the same questions and politicians have said they've already done it / are doing it in the near future. But as time wears on, the inability to produce the answers or demonstrate results is proving illusive.

This will have consequences.

It is a demonstration in how planning has proved to be lacking in certain areas.

With Brexit in mind, the lack of vision, coordination with business and wider capability and capacity this does not bode well.

I hope he gets better for his own sake and for family and friends.

I can't go along with the guff "Get better, the country needs you." It doesn't, it needs people who are fit and well and capable of making sound decisions.

Whoever was in govt would have been presented with contingency plans that were not fit for purpose

The govt dithered and didn't realise this, kept ignoring WHO SOP
and "herd immunity" fir too well into the IDS Social Darwinism tendency

However, tbf I think any govt would have struggled badly at first, before accepting that those plans
- which made us #2 behind the USA in ranking for being prepared for pandemics ! -
had to be junked

The pandemic plans were written by govt boffins many years ago (in fact under Labour)
but for a bad flu and didn't apply well to CV

Big differences are the spread of CV before any symptoms and the much greater fatality rate, both of which change everything

The plans for disposal of bodies had nearly as many pages as the plans for handling the epidemic

• the "bad flu" plan was pure herd immunity, little to save lives, hardly any testing, so the facilities were never there

It was never feasible to create a completely new plan with the same "density" of actions to take
So the boffins have been trying to adapt on the fly - and first had to accept that previous plans wouldn't work

That "pandemic ranking" is something that led to a false feeling of superiority & complacency

The #1 and #2 countries, US and UK, were both prepped and rated for the wrong kind of pandemic,
puffed up at how high they were rated

The US had the additional disadvantage of a raving narcissist who had in an earlier "revenge" action, dismantled the pandemic planning organisation without replacement

I think we have dismantled pandemic planning too, although not as overtly as Trump. We have or had Local Authority Public Health Inspectors, and I gather we are not using their expertise.

That Reuters headline is confusing.
It implies that it was the scientific advisers who were slow to act, whereas the report itself says that it was the Government, despite the warnings, who were slow to change their complacent message.

This does all make me think that Cummings did believe that only the old and sick would suffer, despite him denying it, and that they would be collateral damage as far as he was concerned.

We haven't heard much about him, has he got it or not? I don't wish ill on him, but I would like to see him no longer influencing government.

When it’s settled down, hopefully there’ll be some sort of inquiry into why things happened and what should be done differently if there is another pandemic.
The government (with whom the buck stops) will surely have to take responsibility for most of this:

-Did not stop flights arriving from e.g. China/ Italy.
-Did not quarantine patients arriving from such places with possible CV.
-Did not order adequate PPE for all NHS staff and carers in good time.
-Did not put in place a mass programme of testing, tracking and tracing, like other countries.
-Did not have a programme of testing NHS staff until very late on.
-Failed to take up EU offer on joint procurement of ventilators.
-Ordered closure of big events, pubs etc too late and with confused messaging.
-Wasting weeks with late lockdown/closure of schools.
-Wasting time with discredited herd immunity plan.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, not only does Uncle Donald have space force, he now has a job for them: garrisoning the moon ...

Trump order encourages US to mine the moon

Executive order says US will oppose any international effort to bar it from removing chunks of moon, Mars or elsewhere in space

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/07/trump-mining-moon-executive-order

FWIW, my accumulator for the 2020s is China 1st, India 2nd, US - not in the 2020s.

This does all make me think that Cummings did believe that only the old and sick would suffer

You know when you believe something so hard, than you see evidence of it everywhere and view every single new event through that prism ?

Yes, it could be religion. But there are other forms of delusion ...

When it’s settled down, hopefully there’ll be some sort of inquiry into why things happened

Because that's always worked so well in the past ? McPherson ? Levitt ? Chilcot ?

Here's a radical idea. Why don't we do something useful instead ? Maybe paint all kerbs pink. It would have the same outcome as an inquiry. Only be more honest.

..... DG you forgot Leveson....

What we absolutely need is a govt. that realises going "back" to normal can only do harm. We need to move forward to the new normal. Business air travel is over. It is not an allowable expense. It will be heavily taxed. The longterm plan for Heathrow is to grass it over by the end of the century.

Commuting to offices is madness and needs to stop. We need fewer office blocks and other edifice complex phallic expressions of power.

People with money in offshore tax havens can fuck right off to live with their money. The boss of Ocado can have his £60m salary only if he takes it anally in small change.

....if only.

When it’s settled down, hopefully there’ll be some sort of inquiry into why things happened and what should be done differently if there is another pandemic.
I hope not.

What SHOULD happen is that after five years all of the Government papers are made public under FOI rules (every last one)
and then the historians and academics are allowed to research and publish to their hearts content

• lots of interpretations to be weighed up over time
• no wodges of fees for government barristers
• no ridiculous delays
• minimal cost to the taxpayer spaffing £400m up the wall on the Saville Inquiry achieved what exactly?

Daylight in large doses is the best way to reach the truth quickly
the 5 year delay is to allow families a mental recovery.

"It implies that it was the scientific advisers who were slow to act, whereas the report itself says that it was the Government, despite the warnings, who were slow to change their complacent message."

tanith The main problem was indeed the govt advisers still using the "bad flu" playbook

• and no govt has the knowledge to go against the scientific and medical experts / establishment that have advised all govts for years -

BUT the govt also made some terrible decisions which were nothing to do with that, but mainly because of Brexit ideology:

What certainly WAS the govt fault, in addition to running down the NHS
and causing some EU staff to leave,
were these TERRIBLE decisions, caused by putting Brexit ideology before the country:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-path-speci-idUSKBN21P1VF

Between February 13 and March 30,
Britain missed a total of eight conference calls or meetings about the coronavirus between EU heads of state or health ministers
- meetings that Britain was still entitled to join.

Although Britain did later make an arrangement to attend lower-level meetings of officials,
it had missed a deadline to participate in a common purchase scheme for ventilators, to which it was invited.

Ventilators, vitally important to treating the direst cases of COVID-19, have fallen into short supply globally.
Johnson’s spokesman blamed an administrative error

< no, it was a massive error caused by putting ideology before the emergency >

Nor was there an effective effort to expand the supply of ventilators.
The Department of Health told Reuters in a statement that the government started talking to manufacturers of ventilators about procuring extra supplies in February.
But it was not until March 16,* after it was clear supplies could run out,* that Johnson launched an appeal to industry to help ramp up production.

Charles Bell, managing director of Intersurgical, a global supplier of medical ventilation products based outside London,
said he has been contacted by more than a dozen governments around the world, including France, New Zealand and Indonesia.

But there had been no contact from the British government.
“I find it somewhat surprising, I have spoken to a lot of other governments,”

From what we have seen of these threads - it won't be Saints Boris and Cummings at fault, it will entirely be the Govt advisers, and then the general public.

There is blame on both, but that of the advisers was because they made the wrong assumptions - which does happen more than would wish in science

whereas govt failures were ideological & deliberate - putting Brexit before the country in an emergncy

• hence something they should by hammered for in any enquiry

First though, we have to get through the crisis
Then the inquest on how thing were so fucked up

• and also praise for what went right, e.g. the outstanding performance of NHS staff, the v rapid build of "COVID hospitals"

Some things have been overlooked in all planning so far:

Food:

Supermarkets have JIT systems for supply
and their business model for deliveries was never designed to be an emergency system for the whole country

• which is how the country is trying to use them atm

There is too much reliance on private businesses, but their reason for existence is to make profits.
Government needs to have far more comprehensive systems in place which can be ramped up v quickly in an emergency

Food supplies aren't in normal times the responsibility of a government,
but in an emergency, even a few people in one area not being able to get food

• or indeed having the money to do so - would be disastous and also a possible cause of civil disorder, which may spread

Jay Rayner's comment during the Brexit negotiations:
"if you can't feed a country, you haven't got a country"

Also, MN "search" seems to have removed the ability to include poster name
If so, that could be to stop people searching a poster's history,
but this morning I wanted to find a link I had posted myself and it took several attempts at keywords

I noticed that it had disappeared earlier this morning, but it seems to be back again now? (At least on the mobile site).

Oh, back again on Safari too
Thanks, Barrique - sounds like an update bug which was promptly fixed

Also, MN "search" seems to have removed the ability to include poster name

MN is the apex of 1990s technology.

I have just received my propaganda letter.

"For a start, we have sought to put in the right measures at the right time."

See BigChoc's post of 11:19 in answer to that one.

This was of course, written before his health took a turn for the worse.

Others are trying to get their excuses in too.

This time blaming Boris Johnson for going to the rugby.

BJ even criticised the Scottish Government for advising against sports events and gatherings of >500, which resulted in the Old Firm game being cancelled He actually tried to make political capital out of it, by blaming it on the SNP for having "run down public services so that they weren't resilient enough to cope".

....this was while WM was still not just allowing but encouraging events such as Crufts, Cheltenham, the Liverpool-Atletico Madrid game, the Stereophonics to go ahead

We haven't heard much about him, has he got it or not? I don't wish ill on him, but I would like to see him no longer influencing government

Ditto on that sentiment. Not pinning this all on one person but he does seem to have been the centre of the worst outcomes in the last 4 or 5 years... changes to GCSE's, Leave campaign, Boris's leadership campaign, Tory election campaign, firing SPADs, hiring misfits and weirdo's resulting in the likes of his friend Andrew, pushing out Saj?, briefing against civil servants?, gunning for the BBC?... herd immunity?? What have is missed? If this character in a tv series, his character would be the fixer for a mafia family.

I am interested in the fact that a few weeks ago the BBC was reporting on Italy as if it was apocalyptic there and now they report on here with journos outside Downing St and hospitals with distinct traffic noise and jolly us along with instagram feeds of people muddling through/ Bulldog spirit.
Is this reporting fatigue? Or are they under some sort of mediated control?

Likewise, my DM says NYC is strange but fine but the BBC reports again as if Armageddon came.

How is the Italian press reporting on the UK, does anyone know?