Should There Be An Inquiry Into The Government's Covid Response?

[Untitled]

The Resolution Foundation has estimated in its report on the first year of the pandemic in the UK that the delay in introducing the winter lockdown caused 27,000 extra deaths and that delays to introducing lockdowns meant that when they were introduced that had to go on for longer:

https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/the-12-month-stretch/

It is obvious that the government wasted precious time in March 2020 when the threat was visible... then there is the travesty of Tory allies being given contracts without competition despite being inexperienced and unqualified to meet them.

I personally think an inquiry is an excellent idea and well justified.

[Deskdiary]

"126,000 British people are dead Khandro"

Only took a few posts for hysteria to kick in I see. I can almost hear you wailing.

An enquiry is a total waste of money as all enquiries are marvellous using the gift of hindsight that we all possess.

I reckon I could run the enquiry for £34 and come to the same conclusion as an enquiry costing millions.

Boris instructed the lockdown too late - err, he was following the advice of SAGE (he's basically effed isn't he; had he not followed SAGE, he'd be slagged-off, and yet he did follow SAGE, and he's slagged-off - complete no-win situation), people whining like stuck pigs about PPE - foresight would have told us to stockpile gazillions of PPE, but who does that?

People just like to moan for the sake of moaning - it's pathetic.

[Peter Pedant]

well said DeeDee
bits I agree wiv anyway

[Peter Pedant]

// untitled, I believe an inquiry would be acceptable to most on condition that it proved Covid was all Corbyn's fault.//

great satire - what about ( as in Scortland)

untitled, I believe an inquiry would be acceptable to most because it will prove Covid was all Corbyn's fault.

Pity really that all politicians do ( see Trump appeach) is vote on strictly party lines

[Peter Pedant]

.//foo n yet a year later Britain still has the seventh highest death rate per million in the whole world. Now if that isn't British ingenuity, what is?//
see

https://www.google.com/search?q=british+covid+death+rate&rlz=1C1ONGR_en-GBGB933GB933&oq=british+covid+death+rate&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30l2j0i390l2j69i64.5602j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

and you will see 95 in the last week - and so the death rate at that time was probably one of the lowest in Europe

No of deaths - yup we are up in the top ten but you said death rate
case fatality ratio - no deffs / no cases, was terrible 10% now seems to be around 1-2% average

death rate is a number per unit time - recently ours is very low
(but people seem terribly loath to say - yeah vacca innit?)

[Khandro]

If only these people had been in charge of covid 19 operations, then everything would have run so smoothly:

https://labour.org.uk/people/shadow-cabinet-2/

I wonder why they are all smiling ?

[Peter Pedant]

they are all smiling because......
none of them have had cabinet experience
and so they dont know what it is like !

[jno]

///126,000 British people are dead Khandro...
and 75,000 !!! & counting, are dead in similarly sized Germany///

similarly sized my eye. Britain has 68m people, Germany has 84m - a quarter as many again.

And they're still counting in Britain too, believe it or not.

[Khandro]

// Britain has 68m people, Germany has 84m - a quarter as many again.//

and we know why it has increased don't we?

[dave50]

Why all the fuss about the number of deaths in the UK compared to other countries? Its a pandemic, people die I'm afraid, some countries fared better than others. The government did what they thought was right at the time, at every stage. Hindsight may say it was wrong but we were in uncharted waters. I have no axe to grind, there was nothing malicious in the decisions, it is what it is and as I have said many times not everyone can be saved, its time to move on and look forward.

[Ken4155]

Today's hindsight is tomorrow's foresight.

[fbg40]

I will try and give an analogy - Grenfell Tower was an "unprecedented event" and they had to find a scapegoat - Dany Cotton was that scapegoat. I am a retired Fireman (I don't use the term Firefighter). The Covid outbreak was also an "unprecedented event" and no doubt a scapegoat/s will be required. Nuff' said.
FBG40

[bednobs]

"And they're still counting in Britain too, believe it or not"

they are sadly still counting everywhere JNO

[jim360]

This will not be the last pandemic we face. Of course there should be an enquiry, to try and be better-prepared for the next one. The Government hasn't got it all wrong -- although they ultimately weren't needed, I'd regard the Nightingale project as a success, for example; and that's to say nothing of the effective vaccine roll-out -- but we are deluding ourselves if we think this was the best possible outcome. The evidence of outcomes in other countries speaks to that. There's no sense in not trying to sort out how to respond better to a similar event, in treating this like a one-off, when it will manifestly not be.

[naomi24]

No. A waste of time and money. Move on.

[jim360]

And when the next pandemic rolls around, how do you plan to respond to that?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. So take advantage of it.

[naomi24]

Great! Time and money spent by puffed up people spouting bags of hot air. Conclusion? Lessons will be learnt - as always. But they won’t be because they never are. Back to the drawing board.

[jim360]

Of course they can be learned. As a case in point, consider South Korea between MERS and Covid. MERS wasn't even that serious, in comparison to Covid, but South Korea wasn't happy and held an enquiry into pandemic response.

The result is that the outcome there has been among the best in the world, and even when a second wave threatened to blow up there, nothing came of it and a country with a similar population to the UK has had only 33 deaths per million, compared to around 60 times that.

The idea that a similar exercise here would be worthless is ludicrous, not to mention surprisingly pessimistic of the UK's ability to improve. And in any case, it's always worth trying to be better.