UKH

If anyone wants to see the ST article on Boris' role in preparing the nation for the coming pandemic here's a link; https://archive.is/20200418182037/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/c... 

Obviously, I'm not a fan but I do find it interesting that the Times seems to have it in for him.

It is time we were rid of this Alboriss round our necks.  Tory members chose him despite other people looking far more able iand in possession of more gravitas in the leadership competition.

Albatross Johnson

I suspect there have been enough deaths and infections that actual or potential personal consequences of the Tories gross incompetence is outweighing political loyalty.   Journalists are people and when somebody's granny dies, or a friend needs ICU treatment or they realise that Michael Gove's 'run it hot' strategy could involve a significant chance of death for an overweight, 60 something male like themselves they are likely to turn on their masters.

my initial reaction when they started the massinve splurge of spending help for some people was that they as a party were trying to buy their way out of blame either in an inquiry or in an election campaign

There was talk on R4 which seemed not to be taken up very much for a while about 80% infection 1% mortality as a worst case analysis a long time before things were really taken seriously.

The end of January was still a time when BREXIT BREXIT F*CKING BREXIT was still the main priority for a monomania government responding to the will, not the interest or welfare, of the UK population.

sorry, alleged will.

Comeon Pan Ron, fists up

I kind of thought that the Govester was on the news demonstrating he's got Boris's back whilst acknowledging he hadn't bothered to show up to listen to the 'gloomsters' at the Cobra meeting might be an indication that whilst the boss is away the plotting has started.

They chose him because he was seen to have a common touch and be able to connect with those who felt disenfranchised. This won him an election but many people knew he was big on ideas and poor on details and implementation, whether Garden Bridges or Brexit. Remember how shell shocked he looked when he realised that the Brexit vote had gone his way . If ever there were a time for someone to be really on top of details and strategic planning it was in January. Boris was skipping vital meetings.

PS .. rereading the article I was reminded how Bojo was criticized for his personal response to the January floods. ( I feel for those whose  homes and businesses were  affected by the floods in January and almost immediately had to go into lockdown.)

I'll bite.

I find it hard to engage with articles written by journalists using 20:20 hindsight (what were their positions at the time and how much skin did they have in the game?), speaking with absolute certainty, with zero responsibility for the £33 billion of immediate (and multiples in resulting) costs another two weeks lockdown would incur, quiet on there being conflicting scientific viewpoints, no regard given to the balance of medical capacity and herd immunity, nor the possibility covid19 might have fizzled out (like SARS, MERS, etc).  Add to that the varying approaches by differing countries giving little clear link of the best course of action, the fact that a Prime Minister will normally not attend all COBRA meetings, and was quite right to be working on Brexit at the time, and I think the journalists miss a much bigger story.

That being the propensity of newspapers, in search of dwindling revenues, to seek a scoop by painting any action by government as being a dramatic disaster and ignoring any nuance which will detract from that.

Whether it was Corbyn or Boris who were in charge at the point when these decisions were being made, I would give either of them a huge degree of slack.  Either would still be given the benefit of the doubt by me and probably so for another 6 months to a year.  The accusations of wrongdoing and murder can wait until the point when journalists have given up their selective sourcing of quotes and might actually have accumulated some credibility (which is not now).  Until then, they're only guessing and their sh1t-stirring, clearly strongly politically motivated in the case of some other papers, is both revealing and probably doing more harm than good.

The Conservative Party will blame China and the WHO. They will blame them and blame them and blame them. Until it sticks. Like 'The Mess that Labour left' repeated ad nauseum in 2010-11 until it became accepted wisdom.

They will use media firepower to get across their key messages. 

They will be selective in their use of graphs and statistics. 

They will probably succeed. They are not the most succesful democratic party in history for nothing. 

If people want to see progressive change and a more equal and socially just party lead the UK, they are going to have to fight damn hard to get it. The media, demographics and the ability of power to retain power point to politics going the other way. 

Ah, its all about the evil Conservative party.  And people being duped by their lies?

Democracy is working quite well.  The Tories didn't win because of any failings there, or any lack of fight from the "progressive" cause.  The reason you don't have the change you want is because the progressive cause is wrapped up in far too many inconsistencies and contradictions and spits out so much venom that people are running a mile.

If you ignore the journalists completely, is it not already abundantly clear that we are going to be one of the worst affected countries, and that we have failed to take actions (such as tightening down air travel) that could have made significant reduction in the severity of the first wave?

Look at the curve for China and the curve for the UK.

https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-GB&gl=GB&ceid=GB:en

China got it first, they had a city the size of London as a hotspot.  They controlled it and are now at near zero except for cross border cases which they are managing.

The UK had about 3 months advance notice compared with China.  It has a population of 60 million where China is 1 billion.  It's an island.  It is supposed to be a richer country.  And yet it already has 3 x as many deaths as China and it is only just reaching the peak of the epidemic with considerable deaths still to come on the downward slope.

The only explanation is that the Tories totally and utterly f*cked it up.   They purged all the halfway sensible people from their party leaving a crew of obsessed Brexiteers.  There is a very high correlation between being a Brexiteer and being an innumerate, egotistical tosspot who ignores expert advice.  When they got a real world problem they were completely out their depth.   

Even now when their own economic models are saying there is a chance of 35% fall in GDP the prats are still talking about Brexit happening as scheduled.   Not even considering that business has no chance of finding new customers outside the EU during a f*cking global lockdown and depression and government has no ability to negotiate new trade treaties to replace the ones we get through EU membership when everyone's attention is on coronavirus.   It is verging on insanity.

Evil is too strong a word. No political party is virtuous. People are not particularly duped by lies either. 

It is just that the truth is a slippery concept. People are able to believe most things. The history of the world is littered with examples of normal people doing things of which they are later ashamed.

I don't believe democracy works particularly well in the UK. I never stated I wanted change. Neither did I state I supported a progressive cause. 

If you listened to the journalists had we restricted travel or locked down the country earlier, they would instead be telling us how racist our conservative government are, decrying the economic cost of their overly-aggressive tactics, and stridently making the case that this was all a ploy to distract us from Brexit.

Give it 6 months, then come back and tell me if we are indeed the worst affected country and that the govt should have acted differently.  By that time we'll have a better idea of what the economic cost is and will have a much better insight in to what information was available at the time.  It simply is not at all clear that this is the case at the moment, and all I see are people fighting to control the narrative (much of it because it appears to fit their political stripes).

Here we have journalists saying "the experts think" as though there is absolute certainty in the correct approach.  Yet here (https://unherd.com/thepost/coming-up-epidemiologist-prof-johan-giesecke-sha...) we have an entirely different approach.  There is little agreement and little commonality.  Making political points because you claim to know what should have happened a month ago is ridiculous.

A lot of time and research went into preparation for exactly this scenario. We ignored our own planning, and the advice of the WHO. I don't think it's ridiculous in the slightest to suggest it would have been a good idea to stick with the protocols we had developed, absent of any clear need to do otherwise.

The fact that we have now fallen back to those measures, suggests they're was no such clear need.

The fact that the government have provided no evidence of such a need, during their party political broadcasts masquerading as daily updates would also suggest no such need existed - had there been one to excuse their tardy response we would be hearing all about it.

To quote from the article:

In the Far East the threat was being treated more seriously in the early weeks of February. Martin Hibberd, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was in a unique position to compare the UK’s response with Singapore, where he had advised in the past.

“Singapore realised, as soon as Wuhan reported it, that cases were going to turn up in Singapore. And so they prepared for that. I looked at the UK and I can see a different strategy and approach.

“The interesting thing for me is, I’ve worked with Singapore in 2003 and 2009 and basically they copied the UK pandemic preparedness plan. But the difference is they actually implemented it.”

I would say, it is ridiculous to claim there was any ambiguity about what we should have been doing a month ago.

Your level of self delusion is quite fascinating.

The moment you criticize the press for publishing the truth you’ve lost the argument. The Times is hardly a lefty rag. And can you imagine what would be going on in the Sun and Telegraph if Corbyn were in charge?

The Tories aren’t evil, they’re incompetent, as ideologues of both the left and right often are in government. 

I recall in the Swine Flu era, after that petered out, that the newspapers ran articles criticising the government for having "wasted" hundreds of millions on Swine Flu vaccines that then weren't used and went to waste. 

So they'll criticise either way, but yes, that's their job.

Obviously, with the benefit of hindsight, government and other bodies in charge have got this wrong and made lots of mistakes.  People are never very good at anything unless  they've done it before.

I do think that the main reason some Asian countries have done much better is simply that they learned from SARS-1. In contrast, SARS-1 taught Europeans to think "it'll peter out".

If we compare the UK response to the European average, we may be doing a bit worse, but not majorly worse than some other European countries. 

And one reason why the UK might be doing worse is the English language.  Because of our English language, our universities are more attractive to Chinese students than many others in Europe (many UK universities are now about 10% Chinese students). And that means tens of thousands of students flying from China to the UK in late January for the resumption of university terms after the Christmas break. 

One figure in that Sunday Times report is that 200,000 people flew from the Wuhan region to the UK in Jan to March, of which perhaps 2000 were infectious. 

Up until now I have found it difficult to come to an opinion of whether the criticism levelled at the government was perhaps unfair or not, was it more of the the usual "evil Tories" trope or did they really **** this up? Perhaps I was being naive but there is so much partisan politics stuff in all media these days, eveything spun for outrage and click bait that it is so hard to see the wood for the trees.

However, I read the article linked to above this morning and another that was in the Observer.

Boris did not attend five Cobra meetings during February where Covid-19 was discussed. I find this utterly unfathomable.

Regardless of what they ended up doing, what advice was followed, which is the best way to handle the crisis, where the hell was he? How can his absence possibly be excused? 

That doesn't explain the UK having had fewer cases than other western European countries until they took it seriously and started lockdowns. The UK could and should have learned from the examples of its neighbours and locked down then too, but that path apparently was politically unacceptable to the current government, it preferring more widespread disease and death instead, until such disease and death itself became politically unacceptable.

So much for expert medical advice.

I was thinking of releasing a “Where’s Wally” covid edition starring Dominic Cummings.  What’s he up to lately?

He was probably busy visiting hospitals, shaking people's hands...

Though "fewer cases" could just mean "much less testing".

Let’s be clear on two things, 1) the reason Johnson won the election was because Corbyn was unelectable 2) Johnson’s history is as a lazy incompetent minister ... as well as being a lying second rate hack.  Not a great choice for PM and I’m afraid the chickens are starting to fly home

Back at work apparently. I would guess shredding any evidence of his involvement in SAGE and the Herd Immunity strategy.

<cruel thought experiment warning>

Can you imagine if Boris had been PM in 1940 rather than his alleged hero Churchill?

I couldn't have written the above sentence. It would almost certainly have been:

Können Sie sich vorstellen, dass Boris 1940 Premierminister gewesen wäre und nicht sein angeblicher Held Churchill?

Or perhaps:

Можете ли вы представить, что Борис был премьер-министром в 1940 году, а не его предполагаемым героем Черчиллем?

Though Churchill has hardly infallible, wasn't the Gallipoli disaster basically his fault?

I’m not a Tory sympathiser or a Boris apologist, but his current approval ratings have never been higher. It would appear that he’s doing ok, I have no idea why.

No, I think that's very far-fetched. In fact, I think Hitler would probably have had better chance of conquering Russia if he'd got us out of the way. A massive imponderable.

The tribal instinct is to rally behind the tribe's leaders, whoever they are, if the tribe is under threat.

Thatcher's ratings were boosted by The Falklands, for a similar reason.

Absolutely. But that was later a huge benefit, in that Churchill learned the lesson and was very concerned never to make such a mistake again. It is well documented that it was one reason why he was so cautious about D-Day, despite huge pressure from Roosevelt. He kept on saying we're not ready, and he would not go until he was sure it would succeed. It just had to succeed at all costs. 

No prime minister is better than a bad prime minister

We shall see won't we, we've technically had no PM for the last couple of weeks. When Boris gets back we can see whether a bad PM is actually worse.

We haven't had a PM all year. What the ST article makes clear is that for much of Jan/Feb when this was first kicking off Johnson was basically sh*gging.

I think more to the point it is now abundantly clear to most that this government will not be able to do what it was bought for in the time they have left. The brexit shock craved by this government's early sponsors has become largely superfluous, an order of magnitude or two smaller than the best we can hope from out of CV, the agenda changed to preserving and entrenching trickledown economics as public opinion is jolted by the new circumstances we find ourselves in.

Jk

I did hear a rumour that the reason behind the 2 week sojourn at Chequers was that he was trying to hide the fact that he had a shiner (one assumes from Carrie given the tumultuous nature of their relationship). It might be the case that getting back to face the music in Downing St is the least worst option for the guy.

Alternatively, it was half term and so if he wanted to spend some time with his children that would have taken a while. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/anger-in-sweden-as-elderly-pa...

seems the Swedish approach is running into choppy water

this is the least unexpected global crisis in my lifetime. We’ve had several shots across the bow, and substantial planning, and testing of the planning, for just this eventuality. Human to human transmission was reported in The Lancet on 24th January. Three days later:

Gabriel Leung, Dean of the University of Hong Kong medical school and one of the foremost world experts on SARS and viruses, gave a three-hour presentation published on YouTube wherein he made nowcasts and forecasts of the coronavirus. Using traditional scientific modeling techniques that predict the spread of viruses, Leung projected the true number of coronavirus infections was likely 10 time more than the official reported numbers.[238] Leung estimated that there were between 44,000–100,000 infections in China as of 24 January 2020. He stated that draconian measures were needed to slow the progress of the virus but that these measures would have no effect in stopping the coronavirus pandemic. He projected that the number of infections would continue exponentially peaking out in late April or May 2020. Leung predicted that at the peak of the pandemic, there could be up to 100,000 new infections per day. Leung subsequently published an article in The Lancet nowcasting and forecasting the likely progression of the Wuhan coronavirus taking into consideration numerous variables.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus...

The consequences of a highly transmissible significantly lethal respiratory virus have long been recognised by governments. The alarm that this could be one was being raised by the end of January. Just because other countries botched their response doesn’t excuse our government for botching it’s response.

There are any number of perspectives on Gallipoli, not least that it was a complete SNAFU by the top brass; the Navy were uncooperative, the planning was dire and the intelligence woeful. It could have been made to work.

I do not know whether this is an accidental or deliberate misrepresentation, but SARS and later MERS did not "fizzle out".

Both were actively stamped out, with a big and essential part of the response* coordinated by a WHO that, at the time, had a proactive and heavyweight leadership (the former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who would not take no for an answer from the Chinese and who could, due to her prior contacts, pull the right levers internationally).

The facts from these outbreaks are still known, the difference in response is due to the current leadership (even if it almost makes me physically sick to admit it, Trump does have a point here).

One lesson from the current pandemic must certainly be that key positions must be occupied by proper heavyweight officials from well organized countries, as their function is too critical to leave them to political lightweight losers from de facto failed states or tinpot dictatorships just for the sake of equal representation.

CB

* both SARS and MERS also seem to become infectious mainly after symptoms develop, which also helped with screening and containment

Any crisis will help the approval ratings of the incumbents. You can see this in Germany, where approval rating for state governments goes up regardless of which party runs them, and whether they are leading or lagging with the lockdown measures or lately exit proposals.

CB

I'm quite drawn to the expression "innumerate, egotistical tosspot who ignores expert advice".

If you've not trademarked it, I'd appreciate using it in other contexts...

Agreed

Are you referring to Tedros Adhanom (who I know nothing about)?

You think Gove would stab Boris in the back? Inconceivable!

Isn't it reporting the facts rather than "having it in for him"?

They "had it in " for Corbyn, but Boris hasn't been subjected to anything like what they did to Corbyn.

This is bollocks, the PM WOULD normally attend COBRA meeting, though they don't NOT have COBRA meetings when the PM isn't available.

Google Cobra and pick an explanation from 6+ months ago to remove the hindsight glasses, if you think that's a problem.

Fine he might have missed one or two, but FIVE, come on, there's no excuse, if he was taking the warning signs seriously, and we had plenty of them, he should have been there. The problem as we all know he wasn't taking the signs seriously, "we could take it on the chin"

Yes exactly. I do not doubt his personal integrity, but having a non-medic from Ethiopia (even if he has a public health degree from the UK) in such a critical role has proved lethal. Even if he was for a while health minister there, Ethiopia just pulls no weight internationally. You need someone who is credible in standing up to both China and the US (I know that was easier 20 years ago during SARS classic, when Brundtland could count on the US to support a rational approach and put pressure on the Chinese government.

The fact that the WHO and other UN organizations today have to fight on two fronts (or three if you count Russia, but for once that does not seem to be an issue with SARS2), the independence of the leadership becomes even more critical. You simply cannot have someone in such a critical position whose home country is susceptible to the slightest of financial or economic pressures. I see the point of having Africa and the poorer parts of Asia and South America represented, but not for that job.

Adhanom Gehbrejesus just acted like a Chinese sock puppet and e.g. abused his position in criticizing the Australian travel ban against Chinese citizens. This not only weakened the international response, but now offers Trump a stick to whack the WHO.

Compare this to Brundtland's role with SARS classic, who used her office to call out Chinese disinformation and her international standing to get other countries to act on the WHOs modelling rather than official Chinese numbers.

The man is simply miles out of his depth (and never stood a chance. As I said, I do not blame him personally).

CB

I was also thinking about the story they ran a while back about Cumming's reported description of the herd immunity.

There were also a few asides/insinuations about his personal life and also the role of Cummings again which seem to suggest that his easy ride (I agree in comparison to the monstering meted out to any left wing politician) might be coming to an end.

I wonder what he's done to piss of Murdoch. But then again I don't think Rupert is known for his sentimental attachment to people so he's happy to put the boot in if he sniffs a shift in public opinion. 

As I understand it the original idea wasnt too bad. Use some obsolete battleships which were therefore expendable to sail through the Dardanelles and blow the crap out of anything in sight with a very limited ground force to tidy up after it.

However they gave too many hints so the Turks had the time to reinforce their minefields which would then need clearing before the battleships could go to work. However minesweepers were vulnerable to attack from the shore batteries and so therefore those batteries needed destroying but the battleships couldnt get close due to the mines.

Therefore ground troops were needed enmass and then it spiralled from there.

So one of those situations where should have cut the losses when circumstances changed. Although there was the strategic need to demonstrate to the Russians that something was being done to help them out on that front.

He is aware of the need for social distancing so might shoot him in the back instead.

have a like for biting!

as I've linked in pictures before, the image of Churchill in the poster for the film "Jackboots on Whitehall" looks horribly like a beseiged Boris in a tin hat.   "Our Fate in their tiny plastic hands" just about sums up the image your thought experiment puts in my head ...

Without being personal I think this response is a symptom of Britain shooting itself in the foot by electing a SIGO  (Single-Issue Government) instead of one composed of people with general competence for looking after the country and its population.

We got what we voted for.  Of course, even looking at the Tory party, the SIGO means we lost many able and experienced MPs in the purge, to be replaced with more issue-sympathetic and obedient lessers.

Wasn't he the one that appointed Robert Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador to the WHO?

Hardly speaks volumes for him (or whoever it was if it wasn't him). The WHO hasn't covered itself in glory over its handling of Covid. When it has this kind of decision making at its heart you can see why.

Yes. Who knew that was a bad idea.

Except we didn't. If we got what we voted for we'd probably have a wobbly coalition of left leaning separatists and greens propping up a Labour party of rapidly diminishing appeal.

jk

That's the man!

CB

And here is the government reply to that article.

https://healthmedia.blog.gov.uk/2020/04/19/response-to-sunday-times-insight...

It includes this, for those of you who know better who should be attending cobra meetings.

Claim -  It was unusual for the Prime Minister to be absent from COBR and is normally chaired by the Prime Minister.

Response - This is wrong. It is entirely normal and proper for COBR to be chaired by the relevant Secretary of State. Then Health Secretary Alan Johnson chaired COBR in 2009 during H1N1. Michael Gove chaired COBR as part of No Deal planning. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps chaired COBR during the collapse of Thomas Cook. Mr Hancock was in constant communication with the PM throughout this period.

At this point the World Health Organisation had not declared COVID19 a ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern’, and only did so only 30 January. Indeed, they chose not to declare a PHEIC the day after the COBR meeting.

Ah well, you know best. But although it pains me to quote anything from the DM, this is of interest:

'Former chief government science adviser David King told Sky News today that he could not recall a Cobra meeting during his time in Whitehall that was not chaired by Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. '

My understanding that Cobra isn't a routine meeting; it's specifically for when the sh*t is hitting the fan.

We had cases in the UK before the 30th.  This was not a usual situation when assessing procedures/attenders of COBR

arrival in the UK was reported with some alarm

The response from the government has effectively been "as part of this government it has been established that the PM can't be arsed to attend all the important meetings, and therefore this is entirely normal. The fact that every PM prior to 2010 made every effort to attend (if not chair) Cobra is irrelevent"

The Guardian suggests its a bit more confused than that.

Under Blair/Brown it was fan interface moments only but over the tory governments the press started noticing the significance of Cobra meetings and hence it started being devalued since it was a quick way for the government to show it was taking things seriously. At which point more and more junior people started holding them since no point the PM turning up for a PR job.

This isn't exactly like for like.

A holiday company collapses - I don't really care who chairs COBRA.  I wouldn't even care if they didn't have a COBRA meeting and handled inside the transport department.

A pandemic disease with potential for hundreds of thousands of casualties - I expect the Prime Minister to show up.   Don't care if he chairs it if there's another guy who knows more about the subject.  But he should be there and it should have his full attention.

I've amended it to what I think you meant, but that's exactly what I thought on the government's response.

So - we need 'Cobra Lite' and then 'Cobra Full Fat' - 'For those crises it's worth the PM getting out of bed for.'

Maybe Grass snake or slow worm for the more minor ones?

Exactly.

While criticism of strategy is open to debate there is a serious charge that we were dreadfully unprepared for the pandemic despite plenty of warning. We could and should have been buying in stocks of PPE and ventilators in February but did not do so. The cost would not have been great and a lack of PPE has cost lives of dozens of doctors, nurses and other frontline workers.

Whether or not BJ should have been at the COBRA meetings is to my mind not the point. He should have read the minutes and should have talked to whoever was chairing them although if I had been PM I would have at least attended some of them. It seems to me that for some reason every politician involved in the run up to the crisis behaved complacently with the honourable exception perhaps of Rory Stewart. I include the First Ministers of Wales, NI and Scotland as well of course.

Sadly thanks to the Conservative party we have a Prime Minister talents are more of an after dinner speaker than a decisive leader.

Further, the cabinet is now resigned to a No Deal Brexit. I guess they're rich enough not to be that bothered personally and a lot of people who voted  for them want that anyway.

How much damage can this party wreak on our country?

'How much damage can this party wreak on our country?'

Well I thought Brexit had set a pretty high bar but this pandemic has given them the opportunity to surpass themselves. 

This has me thinking about what led to pursuing the "herd immunity" strategy to begin with. Was 'test and trace' abandoned and more tests/ventilators/PPE not sought because we were pursuing herd immunity, or did we realise that we didn't have enough tests/ventilators/PPE and therefore sought herd immunity?

We're also told that we've "followed the science", but under what constraints was the science working? Were scientists asked "What's the best way to confront CV?" or were they asked "What's the best way to confront CV without shutting down the economy?" or even "How do we make herd immunity work?". I've not seen that answered comprehensively and any project, even Project: Survive CV, will work within constraints, whatever they may be.

I mean, he should have been there, but even more so when your cabinet have all been chosen for their unblinking compliance to whatever the project in question is, no matter their personal thoughts. Ask Sajiv Javid.

They may as well have had this as motivational poster at CCHQ (or FactCheck UK, dependent on the day).

So now we know where Dom's been since he was last seen running away from Downing Street a few weeks ago! Perhaps the government should devote more time to the crisis than to writing rapid rebuttals to press articles. 

We could and should have been buying in stocks of PPE and ventilators in February but did not do so. The cost would not have been great and a lack of PPE has cost lives of dozens of doctors, nurses and other frontline workers.

Response - The Department for Health began work on boosting PPE stocks in January, before the first confirmed UK case.

Discussions on PPE supply for COVID-19 began w/c 27 January (as part of Medical Devices and Clinical Consumables), with the first supply chain kick-off meeting on 31 January. The first additional orders of PPE was placed on 30 January via NHS Supply Chain’s ‘just-in-time contracts’. BAU orders of PPE were ramped up around the same date.

Friday, 7 February, the department held a webinar for suppliers trading from or via China and the European Union. Over 700 delegates joined and heard the Department’s requests to carry out full supply chain risk assessments and hold onto EU exit stockpiles where they had been retained.

Monday, 10 February, the department spoke with the major patient groups and charities to update them on the situation regarding the outbreak and to update them on the steps it was taking to protect supplies.

Tuesday, 11 February, the department wrote to all suppliers in scope of the Covid 19 supply response work – those trading from or via China or the EU – repeating the messages from the webinar and updating suppliers on the current situation relating to novel coronavirus.

The NHS has spare ventilator capacity and we are investing in further capacity.

Professor Sir David King, who was chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, was asked about The Sunday Times investigation in which a Whitehall source claimed the government “missed the boat on testing and PPE” (personal protective equipment) and “just watched” as the death toll mounted in Wuhan, China.

Sir David told Sky News: “What really is emphasised in that piece is the fact that the government ministers had their eye off the ball.

“They were totally focused on other issues such as Brexit, and the celebration of us emerging from Europe.

“The prime minister had other things on his mind, and we’re fully aware of this, but apparently he didn’t attend five Cobra meetings on this issue.

“And when Michael Gove says ‘but prime ministers don’t attend all Cobra meetings’, I cannot recall a Cobra meeting when it was called with Blair or Brown as prime minister when the prime minister wasn’t in the chair.”

The chief scientific adviser served both under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The Lancet editor isnt too impressed by their interpretation of what he said either.

"Just for the record: the UK government is deliberately rewriting history in its ongoing COVID-19 disinformation campaign."

https://twitter.com/richardhorton1/status/1252183975893884933

Can I emigrate to New Zealand please? Or can somebody reassure me that this is all propaganda, they're just as incompetent as everyone else?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-52344299?intlink_from_url=https://www...

Yes but if by herd immunity you mean just letting the virus rip through the country then we would have had more hospital admissions and therefore a greater need for PPE. 

It has been suggested elsewhere that the rebuttal Moley refers to was written by a a politician rather than a civil servant, based on the type of language used. That aside, if the government were ordering PPE in January, how much were they ordering? If sufficient quantities were ordered then why have we seen shortages? 

No doubt something was done but what exactly?