UKH

Review of this book from two Sunday Times investigative journalists giving "a damning assessment of how the UK government of Boris Johnson mishandled almost every aspect of the coronavirus crisis". 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/11/failures-of-state-review-neve...

Doesn't sound like I'll find anything unexpected in it...

...apart from 'Gove the voice of reason'; I suspect the reviewer's theory might well be accurate, given what a weaselly little grafter he is...

wouldn't it have better been called "Failures of PartyState" as it is purely a party thing handled by the Brexit Gang and some spiv pals they knew?

I would chime in, but the last time I said we locked down two weeks too late last March, as a result of mistakes made years, months and weeks before, I got a good 50 post kicking for it.

Interesting but not a surprising analysis. We need to remember this because all of it will be ignored by the Government come the next election. It will be all about the wonderful the vaccine programme and ignore everything else.

Oddly enough the early news on Radio 4 mentioned the beginnings of the pandemic this morning. At the end of the news they mention news items for the same day in the past. On 12th March 2020 Boris Johnson said that it was no longer possible to contain the spread of COVID19.

The Government then waited until 23rd March before announcing the first lockdown.

This makes interesting reading on how different countries handled the pandemic and how it affected their economies - https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy

Dave

You got a 'kicking' because you could provide nothing from any part of our scientific community calling for a lockdown in the days leading up to the 9th March therefore to criticise the government for not doing this as was unfair......there was nothing more to it than this. 

Waiting for copy to arrive in post. 
 

On the other hand, we have through, the state run NHS, vaccinated a large part of the population and produced some of the best research into treatments. 

Personally I don't think it was as badly handled as people like to say it was.

It wasn't brilliantly done that's for sure but look at what we have achieved in a year. Focus on the positives and all that.

I'm not sure whether just BJ is to blame or an inherent Britishness to just blame the obvious target?

It would be interesting to go back in time with a different government in place and see how they handled it.

Either way the end is in sight.

I provided plenty but you refused to accept any of it.  You set a very specific and limited definition for acceptable evidence - one that I never claimed, and then you continued to hold anything I said against a standard I never claimed.     

Multiple other posters chimed in to agree with my take on various documents, zero other posters chimed in to agree with yours.  You will never get precisely what you asked for, and I do not claim otherwise.

As I said then, and as I maintain now, two different people can reach two different, both reasonable opinions.  

I have plenty of reason to believe mine is reasonable, including other people's views on that thread and my offline experiences at the time, and off-line experiences at the time others shared on that thread.

Yet you  still keep taking my view "as a result of mistakes made years, months and weeks before" as a criticism of the government two weeks before lock down.  Which is unreasonable. IMO.  The failures clearly extend way in to the past before our present government.

We locked down two weeks too late last March, as a result of mistakes made years, months and weeks before.  

Pretty much ever government in Europe did too little, too slowly and too late. Call it western superiority, but when we saw it spreading in Asia we just thought it's on the other side of the world we'll be OK, we wasted a 4-6 week advantage we had. This thinking was reinforced by the WHOs weak guidance. 

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-cheltenham-festival-and-liverpool-v-...

I posted about this on another thread but I heard an extract yesterday of even the commentators at this match (obviously SAGE members! or No 10 advisers) expressing concern about COVID and the crowd.

We need a targeted campaign like the OODA of Vote leave to keep this lot's record in the public memory

You didn't provide anything despite me asking you numerous times.....the fact remains no one in our scientific community was publicly calling for a lockdown in the days leading up to the 9th is telling, if it was obvious to you, why wasn't it to them?.... ..and if you are not criticising the government then why did you even get involved as my whole point was we were out of step with Europe in locking down about a week too late. 

I've clearly touched a nerve here.... 

Four columns:
publication date    
cumulative total UK covid cases to that date
log10(total)    
R**2 for line fit of data available on that date 
29/02/2020    23    1.362    
01/03/2020    35    1.544    
02/03/2020    40    1.602    0.92
03/03/2020    51    1.708    0.953
04/03/2020    85    1.929    0.957
05/03/2020    114    2.057    0.976
06/03/2020    160    2.204    0.985

Plot the graph and see for yourself.
A government that can't spot and understand exponential growth by 6/3/20 is incompetent.
It's 5 minute job in excel so it should not be beyond any cabinet member, but probably is.
 

I was clear from the start I could not and would not provide you with what you asked for.

You continue to insist all communications should be "public".  The normal order of scientific processes is not public communication.  The communication that started erupting was the safety valves blowing after failed private communications.

I made the point that we locked down two weeks too late.  In terms of deaths the is astoundingly unarguably obvious.

No, you've failed to recognise my basic point and turned it in to the mother of all strawmen.  Right from the start you have insisted on taking a comment that we locked down too late as - variously - a criticism of the government and Johnson.  

We locked down two weeks too late last March, as a result of mistakes made years, months and weeks before.  

You can turn that into a criticism of a specific government at a specific moment in time.  It isn't.  If we can't recognise the problems that led us - and much of Europe - here, we can't fix them.

Going round in circles...its just odd you bring this up again weeks after we had that discussion. 

I actually found a paper from Stephen Riley of ICL dated the 9th March calling for a lockdown, I'm not aware of anything before that...... Why not? He never went public but the paper is there for posterity.....where are the others from the week before...they don't exist. 

Funnily enough Roy Lilley, no fan of Bunter or his shambolic government,  doesn't think that T & T has been quite the fiasco that I thought it was, bearing in mind that it was set up from a standing start (why that was the case is a different question,) and is now achieving significant results.

I'm still not sure how they are managing to spend a third of the cost of HS2 on it though. 

I thought that one of the key points of criticism, surely, was that Johnson's dithering, at least from March 12 until locking down on March 23, was crucially disastrous? Resulting in thousands of unnecessary deaths (because of the exponential growth).

Indeed and something I agree entirely with.... a decision was made in principle on the morning of the 14th that all SD measures were needed, the implication being a lockdown was coming and it took Boris 9 days to implement it, scandalous IMO........ But I was never discussing this with wintertree. 

We can’t really know what was obvious to them at the time if they didn’t call publicly for a lockdown. People in SAGE knew what was coming but allowed themselves to consider the political aspects rather than sticking more closely to the science and advise on that basis. Then the Government went with the advice that suited them best. It’s reminiscent of the way Blair’s government were too quick to follow limited evidence and exaggerated claims from intelligence advisors about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because they were more politically acceptable.

We had longer to see it coming and the effect it was having in Italy for example. There was a total disconnect between what you could see on Twitter from Europe and what the government was doing. 

They started screaming loud the w/c 9th with a cresencdo coming by the 13th/14th....so what kept them quiet in the w/c the 2nd?

I think some people forget how fast things escalated across Europe from the 8th/9th March....

I made this point to wintertree which he has failed to acknowledge in that Italy locking down on the 9th changed whole mindsets across Europe according to Neil Ferguson...before that he said it was almost  unthinkable that you could lock down a western democratic nation. 

We locked down two weeks to late as a result of mistakes that happened years, months and weeks before.

That clearly acknowledges your point.  I’ll explain how.  Again.  I expect you’ll refer to my words as waffle and claim not to have read them.  Again.

Burying the “Cygnus report” and dismantling the pandemic planning committee happened before 2020 - these mistakes fall under months and years.  Blustering about shaking hands on a covid ward - totally undermining public impression of the seriousness of the situation - weeks.

As the national security committee report I provided you goes in to some length on, we were highly under prepared for one of the highest ranked threads to national security over the last decade, despite having at government level clearly identified the high threat level.   Perhaps if over the proceeding years and months governments (plural) had taken this threat seriously, the idea of a lockdown for a pandemic would not have been as unthinkable as you claim.

Moving the goalposts from 2 weeks before lockdown to 3?

Especially considering that both sets of advice were 'influenced' by political 'advisors'; The Mekon sitting in on SAGE meetings, for example...

Yes, many scientists I know were deeply concerned over the presence of two individuals on SAGE when that came out last year.  

Operation Cygnus was war gaming a flu pandemic that was 7 weeks old....how did burying that affect our decision to not lockdown? 

None of our previous pandemic plans involved locking down the nation... Why would you expect them to when it had never been done before anywhere on a huge scale before China did it that year. 

Do you know what, I think our collective scientific community was so focused on flu that other threats were not considered....group think in operation and it was clear the flu playbook was being followed up until the 16th March. 

You’re right- I’d forgotten about that. 

I haven't moved any goalposts, you said we should have locked down on the 9th...use some logic. 

Cygnus has run multiple times.  2016:

”The UK’s preparedness and response, in terms of its plans, policies and capability, is currently not sufficient to cope with the extreme demands of a severe pandemic that will have a nationwide impact across all sectors,”

2019, BJ dismantled the Parliament pandemic planning committee.

In 2020 we did not have sufficient plans, policies or capabilities for a pandemic and we had nationwide impact across all sectors.

Maths not logic.  The 9th is not in W/c 2nd (2,3,4,5,6,7,8).

You think Whitty, Vallance and JVT were influenced by Cummings? 

This fortnight as we approach the anniversary of lockdown is the only real moment of reflection we'll have on those dismal early failures and the course they set. The enquiries will be many years out and carefully scoped to find nothing.

jk

Yes not sufficient for a flu pandemic that would spread across the nation... This was the flu playbook. 

Why did none of our previous pandemic plans involved a lockdown?

Can you provide one example of another Western nations pandemic plan that involved a lockdown?

And if you believe lockdown was the obvious solution and should have been in our pandemic plans then surely we should have locked down in February....so why wait until the 9th March? 

If lockdown should have beem implemented on the 9th the voices should have been piping up in the wc the 2nd...

And those voices in the wc 9th were not calling for a full stay at home lockdown but more SD measures....including that letter from the 14th.

Not sure what thread you are talking about but those February and March threads certainly show who had the right ideas. Blunderbuss doesn't come out of it very well at all, but plenty of regulars looked a lot worse. A few examples:

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/novel_coronavirus_--_wuhan_chin...

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/novel_coronavirus_--_wuhan_chin...

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/virus_is__false_news-716597?v=1...

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/stupid_department_of_health_twe...

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/coronavirus_epidemiology-716878...

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/we_are_not_going_to_follow_ital...

You are still taking everything I say and arguing against it applied to some specific moments in time in March 2020.

We locked down two weeks too late last March, as a result of mistakes made years, months and weeks before.  

I don't know how I can say the above sentence any more plainly or clearly.  You'll find an all-party parliamentary committee from December 2020 saying the same sort of thing.

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/111/national-security-strategy-j...

"Government failed to act on its security plans for a pandemic"

You seem incapable of accepting any commentary that suggests that any point in the past years, months and weeks there was any opportunity to learn anything, except from other "Western nations".

Sorry, I missed this before...

Ah, I see.  It's the fault of the scientific community.  Right, that clears up an awful lot for me.  In terms of what the parliamentary committee has to say - my emphasis added:

Regrettably, it finds that this test case exposed profound shortcomings in how the Government safeguards national security. With regards to biological security, the Committee calls on the Government to address long-term gaps in the planning and preparation for biological risks to the UK’s national security. The Committee asserts that the novel features of covid-19, for example its high level of infectiousness compared with flu, do not fully explain the Government’s inadequate response.

So, the national security committee on parliament (with many Tory members) does not agree with you.  You will also note that they hold "the Government" to account for the failings and not "our collective scientific community".  Because "the Government" are in charge and carry the can.

I'm sure it is a damning assessment, but I am depressingly confident that nothing will change as a result of this book. In the same way as Peter Oborne's recent book about our idiot PM laid out his numerous failings, this book will give chapter-and-verse of events that are already known about, already acknowledged and already ignored. We know we have a government which doesn't give a jot for what the little people think. For them, this book will be swept aside with the same contempt as they have swept aside any criticism of Brexit.

Given the way the government has failed so badly and so often, this is hard to escape the conclusion that the loss of over 120000 lives does not weigh heavily on their shoulders, and that somehow, a proportion of the electorate is complicit in that abandonment of accountability and responsibility. 

Why have you not answered any of my questions?

More than willing to admit I didn't have much of a clue back at the start...

Can you find me some posts calling for a full stay at home lockdown before the 9th March...

So you are blaming the government now, make your mind up....who advises the government on pandemics? Scientists!

And if SAGE were well behind the curve where were the other scientists? All keeping quiet in February were they... 

You are just going round in circles... 

There were some tweets. In the common rooms at work the microbiology staff seemed very worried. It was there but not very public. 

I think you'll find he has answered your questions with considerable patience, in my view. It seems you don't like the answers he has given, but that is not the same as not answering your questions. 

Probably another attempt by Cummings to rewrite history, but apparently he thinks they were, but not in the way I assumed??

A senior official who still works for the prime minister says: "In March Dom was storming around Downing Street shouting 'lock down now'".

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-12-31/robert-peston-was-the-worst-covid-19-mi...

We locked down two weeks too late last March, as a result of mistakes made years, months and weeks before

As I have detailed before on the first thread, the "years" component involves the relationship between the wider scientific community, government scientific advisors and government.  As I said before, the failings and some of the fault lines of this can be see in, for example, drugs policy and in the first Iraq war.  They showed again in the lead in to our first lockdown.  

That's the the parliamentary committee, not me, that said "Regrettably, it finds that this test case exposed profound shortcomings in how the Government safeguards national security".

That failure to safeguard our national security against a pandemic extends years, months and weeks before March 2020.  You continue too try and frame my commentary as a simple criticism fo the government in the moment.  As far as I am concerned, your continued attempts to do this are foolish.

SAGE lacked members experienced in fighting outbreaks. For those who were there  in the most crucial meeting there were illnesses and IT failures that led to their more urgent view being missed.

The CSA and CMO are government employees, not Independent scientists, it's their job to support the agreed government line.

No he hasn't.... I'll relist them when I get home from the hospital! 

You would be doing us all a great favour if you didn't bother. I doubt it would be a productive exchange. 

Can you list these meetings, illnesses and IT failures....I am aware of the famous John Edmunds email.... + their impact. 

Don't read the thread then! 

Thank you for the advice, but I'll make my own decisions as what I read. As far as I can see, your exchanges with wintertree have been utterly pointless. I don't see why you think that might change now. 

A reminder of the bigger picture in the early days:

https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/writing-on-the-wall-the-uk-and-the-e...

I don't have the postmortem link to hand that discussed that key SAGE meeting but it's linked somewhere (here and on the other channel).

Surely there are posts on UKC calling for a stay at home lockdown before the 9th March?

Don't tell me they don't exist... 

I should probably let it drop and do everyone a favour.  My points are there, and I'm happy for Blunderbuss to wonder on with the last word, re-listing their questions that try and re-frame my thoughts as a specific criticism of specific actions at a specific point in time.

Regardless of what was or was not clear in March 2021, it is clear now that an earlier lockdown would have saved more lives and critically not taken healthcare to the brink.  That lesson from March 2021 was not learnt by December 2021. 

I think that there are serious structural problems in the relationship between the industrial and academic scientific communities in the UK, the government scientific advisory panels, and the government itself.  I think that drugs policy and the build up to the first Iraq war are two examples where the fault lines start to show, and where negative outcomes arose perhaps partly from the structural problems. It seems clear to me that the same structural issues manifested in the early stages of Covid, and given the escalating nature of the pandemic, this did not work in our favour.

We locked down two weeks too late last March, as a result of mistakes made years, months and weeks before.  

Pre March 8th....quiet a few posts saying its likely. Earliest I found so far about serious concerns:

24th Feb Dr John Cambell link  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C-NpadSNuA&

Interesting perspective, thanks for digging them up.

jk

Missed the edit window by seconds to turn all my 2021s into 2020s....  Spanner.

Historic.

Some more links on the government first wave response; first carehomes

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/28/government-rejected-radical-l...

https://mobile.twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1263219921124720640?prefetc...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/07/revealed-the-secret-report-th...

More general criticism:

https://www.ft.com/content/6b4c784e-c259-4ca4-9a82-648ffde71bf0

https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1932

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1251616775504113664.html (Boris Johnson is toast! A good summary of early UK covid from the Times with early SAGE details and reports of a Prof warning of the risk to the UK on Twitter on January 16th )

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/08/revealed-uk-scientists-fury-o...

What in the recommendations from Operation Cygnus would have altered our flu pandemic plan to include a lockdown to suppress an infectious disease?

Which other European nation had a lockdown as part of its pandemic plans? I think you might find the answer was none because until China did it in Jan 2020 it had never been done before on such a large scale...

Surely if our government was so out of step and made so many 'mistakes' other nations would have been locking down on the 9th and yet Italy was the only one.....

And if lockdown was so obvious in the days leading up until the 9th why not a week earlier or two weeks earlier or even 4.....can you answer this?

So no posts on UKC saying we need to lockdown immediately before the 9th March.....is that what you are saying?

No I'm not saying that, if you're interested, maybe search yourself instead of making a fool out of yourself by attacking those who were most prescient in March on the subject on UKC. There are posts from late Feb warning that a lockdown will be needed if initial track trace and isolate fails. In the 'Boris Johnson is toast link' of the Times article (linked above) it was reported that UK expert tweets with serious concerns  start from Jan 16th.

I'm not attacking anyone....

I am asking for evidence of what he is claiming....you are the one who brought up those threads and made an 'attack on me'.....perhaps you shouldn't have if they don't have evidence of what he is claiming.

Anyway what punters on UKC were saying is irrelevant to the wider debate....

This article references thre groupthink on pandemic flu that had been evident for years and years in our scientific community......something Wintertree dismissed as me blaming sicentists when  I brought it up earlier:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/02/british-exceptionalism-und...

I have no idea what you are on about anymore. Were there warnings from leading scientists prior to March 9th ....many from Jan 16th. Were some leading scientists calling for a lockdown prior to March 9th yes...read the Boris is toast link.

Wintertree implied a lockdown in Feb in one of the threads linked above

"One aspect of “serious” is when it overwhelms the state’s ability to give life saving care to all who need it - then survival rates can change dramatically for the worse.

Also, ask these folks about serious...   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH8gDik0_U4& "

"This article references thre groupthink on pandemic flu that had been evident for years and years in our scientific community......something Wintertree dismissed as me blaming sicentists when  I brought it up earlier:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/02/british-exceptionalism-und... 1 "

Ironic, given Wintertree and I were two of the first to raise that 'flu group think' on UKC when we discussed modelling (based on expert tweets).

I think you know exactly what I am on about.....

So there were calls on twitter (?) for a lockdown before the 9th....ok that's something at least more than I've ever got from Wintertree and the only official paper I can find was from Stephen Riley from ICL on the 9th March...

I was thinking more along the lines of something like 'we need to lockdown the country and issue a stay at home message immediately' before the 9th March....

So why did he dismiss me as trying to blame scientists then when I brought it up earlier as  the fundamental reason for our approach in the weeks up until mid March?!!!....yes I was blaming them to some extent and I could only conclude from his comment that he thought I was being unfair.

I still find it intersting that the UK banking system had a pandemic plan in place and that at a drop of a hat they were able to switch things round.The Bank of England ( at least an independent body from UK Gov) had forced financial instituitions to look at the risk and come up with plans.Considering how importnat a functioning financial system is in these situations we should not underestimate this success. Same goes for the food,power and other critical networks.

At the same time we also ( thank god) had the vaccine team up and running which clearly had done lots of work with databases  and all sorts of research as to how to produce a vaccine quickly.

It illustrates how complex these things are in a modern economy from a crises planning perspective,

Basically some of it worked well ( so well we did not notice any difference- a true measure of success )and clearly some did not.I think we shoud do well to remember that prior to the lockdown the hospitals were all being restructed for Covid. Protocols being reviewed and scrapped etc.Saw that myself as had an operation a couple of days before lockdown. The surgeon told me it was all being swtiched over to Covid Theatres a day later. They needed time to do this.( think it took them about 2 weeks to rejig everything)

I would suggest the £ 9 m being spent on the new Cobra room is part of the response. Having a meeting room with a table and a few chairs did not really cut it.They must have been left swimming blind at times.

Johnson was and is still an awful communicator in these times, he was useless and floundered.

As expected no answers to difficult questions that expose your argument completely.....

I have nothing to add, and stand by everything I have said.

You are replying to yourself.

It's a rather sad state of affairs all around.

Explicit? ....March 8th Watermonkey:

Another 64 cases for us today...... I suspect we’ll be on lockdown by the end of the week.

The GFC II  was called here in Feb 2020

I'd add the Oxford covid vaccine team started their amazing work in early Jan '20

No answers to difficult questions...just like the other thread.

Perhaps don't bring it up again in future.....I only replied today because you did just this.

Maybe Wintertree did that as most of the SAGE problem was with modellers adapting flu models. The epidemiologists, virologists and medical staff experienced with facing outbreaks had a very different view.

You call that someone explicity calling for an immedate lockdown?!!!!!

Your latest round of questions doesn't seem to recognise much of this point, which I feel I have communicated clearly.  Previously when I have answered any questions you dismiss my answers, claim them waffle, write them off or hold them unacceptable.   You clearly have absolutely no interest in my perspective, and are - still - doggedly trying to frame it as a specific criticism of the action of one government at a specific point in time, which is not compatible with my comment that: 

We locked down two weeks too late as a result of mistakes made years, months and weeks before, I got a good 50 post kicking for it.

You can always not reply, you know.

I've asked you a queston about Cygnus which you ignored....

And even if I accept your argument you must concede that every single major European nation also 'failed' in early March.....so there was nothing 'special' about us not locking down by the 9th March.

No, its just one of the earlier posts where an actual date was called and it was before March 9th. I don't see why you are pushing this line as unlike the government we on UKC didn't have the data. In posts from late Feb the prospect of a lockdown was in the main discussions of the subject here if the TTI failed. There was simply no choice but to lockdown once the virus was growing unchecked in the general population, given the growth rates of hospitalisations elsewhere. What was actually going on in SAGE before March 9th is detailed in the Boris is Toast link.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1251616775504113664.html

I'm pushing it because Winteree claimed there were calls on here for a lockdown to be in place by the 9th March.....

I'm fully aware of what was going on in SAGE as I've read the meeting minutes.....none of them call for a lockdown before the 9th March......and I've stated earlier in this thread the earliest paper I am aware of that calls for a lockdown was published on the 9th March.....if anything else exists out there then I would like to read it.

This whole thing started because I said a couple of weeks ago that apart from us locking down about a week too late we were not that much out of step with the rest of Europe...... the 16th would have put us 2 days behind Spain and the same as France.......Wintertree then popped up to say our government should have locked down the 9th and I defended them not doing so based on a whole host of factors, not least that the country would not have accepted Boris issuing a stay at home message on the evening of the 8th March. 

I’m not asking you to.  Long ago I said two people can reasonably reach two different perspectives - especially when so much is not in the public domain, as with the situation around communications last feb/mar.  I have put my view and my reasons out there.  It’s clear I won’t change your mind.  As I made clear I stand by my view.

Why “must” I “concede” that?  What a funny position.  I’ve never claimed otherwise so I have nothing to “concede”.  Likewise, “special” is a funny word.  We had two examples from Wuhan Province and Northern Italy.  That put us in a position of significantly more knowledge than Italy by the time each nation respectively realised they had lost control to exponential, undetected community transmission.

And ever since I realised that was what was apparently motivating your posts, I have been at absolute pains of repetition to make it clear that I see the faults as lying years, months and weeks before then, indeed over multiple governments (plural), and so your ongoing defence of the government at the moment in time has really very little to do with my point.  I feel this is a key factor you continue to skip over, so hell bent you appear on defending the government as was on the 9th for not locking down on the 9th.  

More waffle and word soup....

Answer the question on Cygnus then....

What in the recommendations from Operation Cygnus would have altered our flu pandemic plan to include a lockdown to suppress an infectious disease?

In reply to wintertree:

No.....can you answer this question:

What in the recommendations from Operation Cygnus would have altered our flu pandemic plan to include a lockdown to suppress an infectious disease?

Just read the Boris is Toast link...the concerns were known amongst the scientists but not minuted. The leadership had been looking at a herd immunity approach based on flu models (as Sweden later acknowledged, with them and NL). When data reality broke the model limits Ferguson and others on SAGE called for an immediate lockdown.

Lockdowns were called here from Feb for the conditions before March 9th when the government knew the TTI had failed. I haven't time to search all saved threads for your pedantic point and can't search all as some were lost to pub death.

You are telling me things I already know and yes no one on SAGE called for a lockdown before the 9th March....Ferguson presented his now famous paper to the government on the 13th March.

Pedantic? You mean a key point Winteree made to help push his POV......ok.

Yet again you show yourself of being unable to engage respectfully or maturely. 

I see you’re asking another question.  I think if the recommendations from Cygnus 2016 had been followed we would have had every chance at improving the government’s understanding of the situation in early 2020.  I see specific ways this could have happened.  You will no doubt write this off as waffle and word soup. 

I stand by my views.  So far, you alone are arguing against me, and you always end up to mild offence about my posts rather than engaging with the content.  In my book, that means you know you can’t make your point effectively but can’t back down.

Read this carefully:

We locked down two weeks too late last March, as a result of mistakes made years, months and weeks before.  

Now, ask yourself: “Why am I still focusing my entire argument of the chronology of two weeks in March?”.

Welcome to the party pal.  Nothing short of SAGE minutes or a letter to a broadsheet counts. 

What recommendations? Name them and how they would have altered government thinking of how to handle COVID-19, bearing in mind the recommendations will have related to how to manage a flu pandemic....

Well 13th contradicts the Times article, which if you read the link you would know.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1251616775504113664.html

Oops missed the fact an easier to read version is now linked at the bottom:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-38-days-when-britain-sl..." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" id="guid-604b9f2f95ec6" class="counterlink">https://archive.is/20200418182037/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-38-days-when-britain-sl...

Edit: doesn't work from UKC but the internal link does.

No.  Because you will resort to allegations of word soup, waffle, or “it doesn’t say lockdown in 40 foot high flaming letters”.  I’ve read them.  I am satisfied that if we had followed the recommendations of a pandemic planning exercise we would have been better placed to handle a pandemic.   This does not seem to me like a large stretch of the imagination.  Others can go and read them and make their own conclusions.  

How about a paper?

Stephen Riley managed to write one that was published on the 9th March....why couldn't these numerous  scientists calling for lockdown earlier do similar?

hahahahahaha......we are talking about lockdown and it's delay of 2 weeks.

Name one recommendation....you don't have to defend it, just name it.

The earlier models did not model a lockdown.....the famous one I am talking about that did was given to the government on the 13th I believe:

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-03...

The point remains that before this SAGE was not calling for a lockdown.

it's a worse effect than that.  It means that the committee might have been influenced by the mekon.

It also means that the deliberations and advice might have been influenced by the fact that they knew that, as a result of the mekon's presence, they did not have a single clear channel of communication with the government.  They knew that there was a back channel that might be feeding dubious metadata and possibly corrupt data about the meeting in parallel.

It's pretty obvious that that might make them defensive and less decisive with a highly opinionated "watchdog" planted in with them.

The Legal term is "Undue Influence".

It's just more evidence of this lot of badly motivated entitled kids not having enough adults in the house to show them how things should be done.

Back to respectful and mature engagement then?

So you think that following all the recommendations of the 2016 pandemic planning exercise would not have left us better prepared to understand and manage such a pandemic when it arrived?

That seems, well, foolish frankly.

I can see clear ways in which some of the recommendations could have left the government and SAGE better prepared for a pandemic - and I would hope that if better prepared, they would take better action.  

I am asking you which new recommendations for the management of a flu pandemic which would be allowed to flow through the nation (the flu playbook since we had any pandemic plan) would if implemented have led to the government deciding to lockdown earlier.....when a lockdown was not part of the plan or the recommendations.

Done before Jan. They had been researching before then about what to do in pandemic situations. In effect they pressed the go button in Jan. But without that preparation  it would never have got ofthe ground. 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/health-55041371

Fascinating stuff. 

You seem to have a limited understanding of the recommendations.  

They were not a playbook of "If x happens in a pandemic, you need to do y."

• Hence, asking me to name a recommendation saying we should lock down is a fool's errand.

They were a list of changes that could be made to policy and procedure etc, to leave us better placed for a future pandemic

• These including modelling, behavioural understanding, communications and pre-emptive legislative easements.

I can see how issues over modelling, issues over behavioural understanding, issues over communication and issues over sudden legislative changes in the lack of pre-considered easements all contributed to the difficulties faced by our response last March.  

Perhaps you're going to come back to this sentence with words like "waffle" and "word soup" rather than engage with any of it.  Or perhaps it's another hahahahahaha.

I don't think it unreasonable of you to have a different opinion to me.  Given the number of other posters who have expressed opinions aligned to parts of mine over several threads, I don't think it unreasonable of me to stand by mine.

Sorry but are you claiming that the flu playbook is to not let it spread through the population?

Have you actually read our flu pandemic plan....no where does it state even in the loosest or vague terms to maybe implement SD measures with the aim of supressing the virus i.e. a lockdown. It discusses school closures and mass gatherings, that is it

A stay at home lockdown is a world away from our pandemic flu plan and I bring you back to the point Ferguson made that before Italy did it, it was unthinkable a western democratic nation would shut a whole nation down........so no, I don't accept that not implementing all the recommendations of Operation Cygnus would have made it more likely for us to lockdown by the 9th March...

I have literally never claimed that.

Yes, in detail.  Well, except for the redacted bits.

Yes, because it is largely resulting from an exercise in a period when control was already lost. Nevertheless, there are many lessons raised by the exercise that were not acted on.

It is my belief that if they had been acted on - particularly in the areas I addressed above, we would have been better prepared in the earlier stages of a pandemic.  Cygnus was largely "gamed" in later stages and so does not directly address those early stages, but clearly the recommendations if acted upon would have improved many aspects of government awareness and preparedness for a pandemic.

 It is my belief that if the government and its mechanisms had been so better prepared, that they would have made better decisions, earlier on.  

That's fine.   To me, your point appears to be that:

• Acting on 4 recommendations and 22 lessons from a pandemic simulation exercise would not have left the government better placed to make better, faster decisions when a pandemic came along.
• The recommendations on improving modelling, behavioural understanding, communications (with the public and internally to the state) and the legal situation in anticipation of a pandemic could in no way have helped the government to act faster.

So, once again we think different things.  I choose to believe that being better prepared would have paid off, in spades.  You choose to believe it would not have.

Who is putting words in my mouth now?

I am talking about the imposition of a stay at home lockdown so early, nothing else.....you seem to have a real blind spot that until Italy did it, it was politically unthinkable for us to do it....so how implementing all the Cygnus recommendations would have helped is beyond me.....do you think the government communicating  stories of potential doom in early March in anticipation of a lockdown on the 9th would have worked when we has 3 deaths by the 8th March and no other nation in Europe had locked down.....you have to have public buy in and you are not living in the real world if you think Boris announcing a stay at home message on the 8th March (when at that point no other European nation had locked down) would have been accepted......and you still haven't explained why we shouldn't have done it on the 2nd March or even earlier.

Well, you either think that acting on the recommendations and lessons would have left us better prepared or would not.  Apologies if I misunderstood.  You made it clear that you thought acting on those things would not have helped.  

I have no blind spot there.  

It’s clear that it was for many politically unthinkable.  But why?

Because of mistakes made weeks, months and years before that point.  I must have said this phrase literally 100 times, yet you can not look beyond what was justified by the time we arrived at that point.  

Mistakes such as not acting in advice to improve behavioural understanding and public communications as part of pandemic preparedness (years) which manifested in shambolic messaging in the months and weeks leading up to the 9th.  Mistakes we had been told to learn, following a planning exercise years before.  We blew opportunity after opportunity to prepare the people so that earlier and wider acceptance of NPIs was not politically risky; if we had managed that we might have staved off the need to lockdown by some period of time, at which point the misfortune of others gives the messaging machine even more with to remove political risk.

I feel you have not understood my point, at all, and I’m at a loss as to what more I can do.  Many other posters over several threads have understood it; you’ve generally dismissed them with your absurdly reduced straw man too.

No it was politcally unthinkable because shutting down a western democratic was so draconian as to make it seem unacceptable.....Italy did it because it literally had no choice and that opened the window in Europe, as numerous other countries locked down in the following week......it's that simple, if you don't acknowledge this then fair enough but the fact no other European country locked down so early, and Spain which was the 2nd epicentre didn't impose it until the 14th March tells me our government was not out of step at that point......it sure was in the following week as it did not ramp up the SD measures.

Anyhow we won't agree so have a good evening....

We both hold different opinions, and make no mistake, that is all that they are.

I am stating mine and, despite various mild churlish behaviour from you, I am trying to communicate why I hold my opinions.  I do not ask you to concede nor acknowledge that am I right.

You insist on wanting me to concede or acknowledge that you are right.  

I don’t have a problem with you having a different opinion, and I have said I thinks it’s normal to reasonably arrive at different, incompatible opinions.

Who knows how this would have gone without such a liturgy of mistakes and missed opportunities over the last years, months and weeks before March.  But I like to hope it could have gone better, because that means there are lessons to be learnt for the future.

G’night.

Yeah; that's exactly what I meant by the Mekon's presence.

I think one of the biggest scandals which isn't fully appreciated yet is the way the Tories have looked after people who own financial assets and property and their own mates through this rather than productive industry and 'ordinary' people.   The anger about this aspect will come when we open up and the normal processes of debt collection and liquidation crash down on sectors of the economy devastated by Covid and Brexit.

Test and Trace in particular is getting a really easy run for what is an almost unimaginable amount of corruption and failure.   £37 billion for Test and Trace.  The defence budget is about £45 billion.  The NHS gets about £115 billion.   A bridge to Ireland is about £15 billion.   Apple spent about $19Billion on R&D in 2020 i.e. less than half of £37 billion.

And what did we actually get for £37 billion - double the R&D bdget of Apple?  An organisation that f*cks about with Excel spreadsheets for its critical reporting.

If a normal company or government department was spending £37 billion primarily on IT you'd expect to see an absolute f*ckton of contracts and opportunities cascading into the industry on a larger scale than even the MOD or NHS.  Imagine trying to staff up to the same kind of level as Apple R&D in a year.   I've seen nothing.   This is total bullsh*t.  Like the PPE nonsense this money isn't going into the normal supply chain it's getting trousered by c*nts that are mates with the Tories.

And the second shoe that will fall is tax rises to pay for this total profligacy and corruption because you can be damned sure it won't be paid for by a wealth tax when the Chancellor's wife is worth half a billion.

About 70% of the £37b is for testing and the budget is In think until next year. This will be somewhere around 200m tests, which works out at £130 a test. I'm not sure that's as unreasonable as is being made out

The tracing bit.seems a complete.failute by contrast.

More interesting perhaps is what is or should be being done for other major risks such as "space weather"

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk › ...PDF
Web results
National Risk Register - Gov.uk

Like everything else you say, I find that hard to believe

Wrong. https://fullfact.org/health/test-trace-march-2021/

Manufacturing (productive industry) has been allowed to continue throughout the whole of the pandemic. 

Or

More than £1 billion have been spent on purchasing lateral flow tests, but this is a tiny fraction of the full cost of delivering the testing programme. [13] Staff in schools, universities, care homes, and local public health teams are struggling under immense pressure. The added burden of delivering mass testing may jeopardise education, care of residents, and the critically important covid-19 vaccination programme.  

In the face of so much potential for harm and so little evidence of benefit, why is the government pushing the rollout? It seems at least plausible that this is because hundreds of millions of Innova testing kits were purchased before it was known how they would perform in people without symptoms and when administered by less than expert hands. These tests are now sitting in warehouses around the country. The message has gone out that “they have to be used,” or “as long as testing detects otherwise unknown cases, the whole exercise will be worthwhile.” Perhaps rather than potentially fuelling the UK’s outbreak, the warehoused kits could be donated to a country without PCR testing capacity that could use them in line with manufacturer’s instructions. 

It's not really "or" is it? Just another matter.

You'd think if you were buying 200 million of something you might possibly get a quantity discount.

£130 quid a shot and they are handing them out like smarties.  F*ck knows how much money is going into the testing of kids going back to school.   My daughter just came home with two of them.  It's like somebody was burning through a warehouse full of expensive dodgy sh*t they shouldn't have bought.

There is a huge heap of sh*t building up, the only thing that is keeping it under control is that the people responsible are in control of the system.  Just like Trump they'll be desperate to hold on, because they'll be worried about the personal consequences if their actions are properly investigated.

Grafter or grifter?

Chopper, any day...

I thought 'graft' had acquired a pejorative meaning in more recent years, probably adopting more of the 'grifter' meaning.

Whatever, I don't mean to suggest he was hard working. Well, for himself, possibly, but not for the good of the country... Replace 'grafter' with 'odious shitbag' if you like.

That's not how having approved suppliers (who may or may not have links to the people who 'approve' them) works.

I can buy a single item of stationery at full RRP from a local shop for an average of 60% less than a public sector body who buy them by the thousands can.

Awesome, that it's been 'allowed to continue'!  Slight problem is there's far fewer customers because of Covid and Brexit.

That link didnt work. I assume it refers to solar storm along the lines of the carrington event?

Nothings really changed with respect to what needs being manufactured.
People still need stuff so that they can live their lives as they did pre-pandemic and that stuff doesn't just magically appear out of nowhere.
Do you know of any items that are now not available because of Covid?
I don't, I can buy the same things as I did twelve months ago.
As for Brexit, Bingo! Well done for introducing that into the discussion... 

 

Yeah right.  Like people are still buying the same number of cars, phones, computers, clothes etc as they did before.  No effect from concerns about job security, staying at home, disruption of supply chains, reduced business travel etc etc.

A lot of people and industries are spending much less money than before.  A lot of design projects have been cancelled.

I know that demand for my own services which are used when people design new electronic products basically fell off a cliff when the Covid sh*t hit the fan.   It looked to me that customers were hunkering down and not kicking off new design projects.  Cutting discretionary expenditure to zero is SOP for companies when they think their business is going to take a tumble.

It has a huge effect on anyone who primarily exports.  40% reduction in exports to the EU in a year.  And even when you sell outside the EU you don't have the trade deals you used to have through the EU.  Brexit and Covid in the same year, no fun at all.

so would a pandemic killing over 100000 in the UK have been unthinkable.  It is the government's duty to be prepared for unthinkable emergencies and to act appropriately.  You know full well that in any period when the horizon should have been scanned by political OTHR we had a gang fully occupied in pushing through the most extreme Brexit they could manage, illegally proroguing Parliament.  An Extraordinary failure by an Extraordinary Government.

All through this pandemic the decisions seem to be taken on the fly without advanced planning.

I'm guessing you've no formal training in economics? 

I don't see why you can't accept the idea that if the conclusions and recommendations of Cygnus had been implemented, then the idea of lockdown might have been more politically, scientifically and publicly acceptable earlier. A charismatic and capable leader might then have even been able to lead the British public into being at the vanguard of implementing a policy such as lockdown.

The fact that lockdown wasn't mentioned in Cygnus is irrelevant.

Looking back at last year, what would have been the ideal response? Now obviously we can say we should have locked down 2 months earlier but that's getting a bit silly. The opinion you're arguing about is that a lockdown 2 weeks earlier would in retrospect have been great.

So one week of that was probably locked in by the actions of previous governments and scientists during those previous governments. Don't forget that implementing Cygnus would have affected scientific attitudes as well as political and public; scientists would have been more likely to have seen the need for, and to call for a lockdown earlier.

The other week's delay I think we can put to Boris and his government's door directly - a better leader would have acted decisively and quickly, using better communication to explain the unfortunate need to be prudent and then take a foot off the gas if it ended up being an over-reaction.

I wasn't going to reply as I couldn't face another trip round the loop with Blunderbuss, but somehow I think that won't be an issue tonight.

I'm glad this doesn't seem like such an unthinkable idea to some other posters.

The 2016 Cygnus report is horrific reading to me - somehow the authors arrived at the assumption that a pandemic would basically be like a "lite" version of the movie Threads, with the Army keeping the public out of medical facilities and digging mass graves.  I think if the behavioural and modelling work the report recommended had been followed, there's every chance the work and conversations coming out of that could have shaped things very differently.

We'll never know now, and all we have are different opinions of what may have been.