How badly has the British government
handled the Coronavirus crisis?
Has their strategy and messaging
changed over time? And, with more
than 2300 people dead so far and the number rising rapidly,
did they fail to understand the scale of the challenge
which confronted them just a few weeks ago?
Allow the disease to as it were move through the population.
We’re going to have to generate what we call
herd immunity. 60% is the sort of figure
you need to get herd immunity. To build up some degree
of herd immunity. Herd immunity
is not our goal or policy. It’s a scientific concept.
Our policy is to protect lives. Many more families
are going to lose loved ones before their time.
Stayat home folks, protect our NHS, save lives.
There were actually a few coronavirus patients
and I shook hands with everybody. The rate of infection
has been doubling every three to four days.
We’re already seeing the government trying
to cast blame elsewhere - whether that’s China
or the general public. Dramatic pause -
Some of the reporting from China was not clear.
Is China to blame for Britain’s slow response?
Or did our politicians only realise the scale
of the problem when it was too late? And should we be blaming
ordinary members of the public - or does that just let
the government off the hook?
Why in your view are people ignoring the advice?
Well, I don’t know because it’s very selfish.
Covid-19 is a pandemic, an act of nature -
It was going to take lives whatever happened,
but it’s the actions that states have taken that have,
so far, saved lives.
That’s why, per head, South Korea, Norway
and Germany have far fewer deaths
than countries like Britain, the United States and Sweden.
People are inevitably going to die from this virus,
and factors like an older population - like in Italy - matter.
But how societies respond - through measures like testing,
social distancing, lockdowns and protective equipment
can also make a critical difference.
Now, when you’re dealing with a crisis you first need to appreciate
the scale of the problem. So when did British politicians
start doing that?
Let’s look at the timeline. The first known case of Covid-19
was in Wuhan, China, back in November 2019.
By December it was clear that there was human to human
transmission of this virus. Doctors who tried
to raise the alarm with colleagues about a new disease
in late December were reprimanded and
the Chinese authorities didn’t publicly admit there was
human-to-human transmission of Covid-19 until January -
by which time a 61 year old male had died,
and cases had been reported in Thailand and Japan.
This was wrong and is why parts of the British press,
and government, are now trying to blame
the Chinese authorities.
But that was just the start. On January 23rd,
Britain’s Department of Health issued its first
press release on Covid-19, reassuring the public
that the “risk to the UK population has been assessed as low”
and that any visitors to Wuhan, the epicentre of the breakout,
“should maintain good hand, respiratory and personal hygiene”.
But within 24 hours of this press release:
the city of Wuhan, and others in Hubei province,
went into complete lockdown - making that advice
immediately obsolete.
On January 24th, 6 Chinese doctors
published an article in The Lancet, a globally recognised medical journal,
stating that “Covid-19 could have acquired the ability
for efficient human transmission”.
Furthermore, and of even greater concern,
was how it was already clear that high numbers of those
affected required ICU treatment. That combination
of easy transmission, and intensity, would soon
overwhelm healthcare systems around the world.
And yet the British government at this point, like many others,
still failed to see the threat.
On that same day, the 24th January,
Britain’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty claimed,
“We all agree that the risk to the UK public remains low,
but there may well be cases in the UK at some stage.
We have tried and tested measures in place to respond.
The UK is well prepared for these types of incidents,
with excellent readiness against infectious diseases.”
The potential severity was now clear
and British authorities accepted there may be cases
in the UK at some stage, but - they were adamant -
measures in place were sufficient.
Three days later, on January 27th,
that stance was repeated as Health Secretary Matt Hancock
told parliament there were no confirmed cases
of coronavirus in the UK and that the risk
to the UK population was “low”.
Answering parliamentary questions on both the 29th
and 30th of January the government
repeated that claim, although it now advised
against all travel to Hubei Province -
‘advised’ being odd because Wuhan was already in lockdown.
Furthermore, by now it had been known for a week
that Covid-19 was both easily transmittable
and led to large numbers of people requiring intensive care.
On the 30th the government upgraded the threat
of Coronavirus from low to moderate.
A day later the WHO declared coronavirus a global emergency
as the death toll in China jumped to 170
and the virus began to spread across
Hubei province rapidly.
On January 31st Britain left the European Union,
it could be argued that given the importance
of that moment in the government’s agenda,
they had taken their eye off the ball,
and yet even in the days that followed
their response to the Covid-19 threat remained the same.
On that same day Britain had its first two known
cases of the virus, with two Chinese students
in York testing positive.
As late as the 7th of February Public Health England repeated how:
“The risk to individuals remains low” appearing to contradict
the stance of other government agencies,
and the World Health Organisation. Indeed it was so confident
the UK had sufficient capacity it said it was “testing samples
from countries that do not have assured
testing capabilities.”
What is more, despite Wuhan being on lockdown for two weeks,
where large numbers of people went into intensive care,
the government’s advice was, that if you had travelled
from Hubei Province to the UK in the previous 14 days to
“immediately, even if you do not have symptoms of the virus:
stay indoors and avoid contact with other people
as you would with the flu.” They also instructed people
to call NHS 111 to inform them of their recent travel abroad.
It added, “If you have returned to the UK from China,
Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore,
Malaysia or Macau in the last 14 days
and develop symptoms of cough or fever
or shortness of breath, you should immediately:
stay indoors and avoid contact with other people”.
Even now, with the WHO having declared
a ‘global emergency’ the British government’s approach
was about self-regulation and, critically, no testing -
which whenever mentioned by the British government
was related to helping other countries.
We now know that large numbers of people
infected with Covid-19 are asymptomatic,
meaning at this point there could have been hundreds
of people passing on the disease
to their friends, housemates or family members
without knowing. And because the virus
can take more than a week to incubate,
those people in turn would pass it on -
even if they self-isolated after becoming sick.
By this point it was clear, the British government
was not taking this as seriously as they should.
It was only on February 10th that the department for health
and social care declared “the incidence or
transmission of novel Coronavirus constitutes
a serious and imminent threat to public health”
and isolation facilities for those travelling
from Hubei Province were established.
Yet in the week that followed the virus itself was still seen
as primarily being an issue of foreign policy.
The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said:
“The UK is a world leader in tackling global health issues,
spending £6.5 billion over the last 5 years.
Thanks in part to the centre of excellence
that is the NHS, British doctors have been at the centre
of the response to every major disease outbreak around the world
in recent decades and coronavirus is no different.”
Yet until just six days before that people were
coming to the UK from the affected area
and weren’t being tested.
I’ve been through essentially no screening process.
Furthermore any self-isolation was entirely voluntary.
On the 24th of February, China and the WHO
held a joint press conference and told the world that,
at the peak of the outbreak in Wuhan, exhausted medical staff
lacked personal protective equipment and that China’s hospitals
needed to invest in more ventilators.
Now the advice to other nations was clear with Dr Bruce Aylward,
a senior WHO adviser, being completely candid
about its scale declaring “Complacency is the single biggest risk.
Thinking you’ve beaten this virus is the single biggest risk.”
It was now long established that the virus was
easily transmittable, dangerous and overwhelmed
even well-resourced healthcare systems.
What is more the Chinese experience
demonstrated the need for far greater capacity
of ventilators and safety equipment for healthcare workers.
Now, it was around this time, at the end of February,
that in a story published in The Sunday Times
it was alleged that Downing Street advisor
Dominic Cummings outlined the government’s strategy
at a private engagement. Those present say
it was dramatically at odds with the
scientific evidence so far, and the recommendations
of the WHO. The quote in the Times read:
“Herd immunity - protect the economy
and if that means some pensioners die, too bad”.
Despite the first known cases being as far back
as late January it it was not until 3 March that the UK government
announced its official “coronavirus action plan”.
Even now, however, the tone was off, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson
failing to convey the severity of the crisis,
telling people they should simply “wash your hands with soap and water
for the length of time it takes to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice.”
Happy birthday to you happy birthday to you.
On the 5th of March, Johnson sowed yet more confusion when he appeared
on daytime TV show:
I’ve been going around hospitals as you can imagine
and I always shake hands.
The prime minister even shook hands with his TV hosts after saying this.
This was done more than a month after it was widely known
that Covid spread remarkably easily and was far more fatal
than seasonal flu. Even now, however,
the Prime Minister failed to take it seriously.
On the 10th of March, the government was still saying there was “no rationale”
to postpone sporting events in Britain because of coronavirus.
The Cheltenham horse racing festival
went ahead that day, attended by a quarter
of a million people. It would later be found that
10 of those people were infected by the virus.
Meanwhile, closer to home, Johnson announced on 12 March
that testing of people with mild symptoms would stop,
flying in the face of World Health Organisation advice.
The next day, on the 13th, his chief scientific adviser
Sir Patrick Vallance appeared to repeat
the alleged comments of Cummings:
We do face the prospect - as the Prime Minister said yesterday -
of an increasing number of people dying.
In other words, for hundreds of thousands of people
to die and millions to enter emergency care.
And one more thing - the premise of herd immunity
is that once you have had coronavirus you are immune -
the thing is, we don’t actually know how long immunity might last for.
The science remains completely unclear Afterall, this virus was only known to us
since December last year.
At this point it was a matter of speculation on radio
and TV news as to whether we would be seeing a similar
number of casualties to the second world war.
What do you think was tougher - living through the Blitz
or living through this virus? Living through this virus.
And this from a government which for weeks
had been claiming to be “well prepared”
and the risk to be low.
On March 15th the Health secretary Matt Hancock told Sky News
that the country had around 5,000 ventilators, but that
we would “need many times more than that.”
The urgent need for ventilators had been established in the Lancet
3 weeks earlier, and yet, until this point, the government
had failed to consider procuring new ventilators or building extra
healthcare capacity.
The following day, on March 16, Hancock asked ventilator
manufacturers in a tweet to contact the government,
a tweet! — underlining its lack of preparedness.
Several other Tory cabinet ministers did likewise.
This was the same Matt Hancock who,
just six weeks earlier, had said the risk to
British nationals was ‘low’ and that the country
was well-prepared - but now the government
was beginning to acknowledge a full-blown crisis,
and in real time on social media.
Yet still the Prime Minister himself didn’t appear to be taking things seriously:
On the 16 of March Johnson stated that “risks of transmission of the disease
at mass gatherings such as sporting events are relatively low” and while
he advised people to avoid bars, cafes and pubs -
these places remained open, with his own father appearing
on daytime television saying he would go to one.
Of course I’ll go to a pub if I need to go to a pub.
The following day, on the 17th, as Johnson
chaired a conference call with ventilator manufacturers,
he reportedly joked about it as “Operation Last Gasp”.
By that point 71 people had died.
By 20th March the first reports of hospitals being overwhelmed
were coming in and, despite the government
repeatedly saying that NHS staff would have all the
equipment they needed, staff were reported
to be wearing paper masks, plastic aprons
and gloves instead of full PPE.
We have doctors telling us that they feel like lambs to the slaughter.
All of this was a month after the exact same shortages
were highlighted by the WHO and healthcare professionals in Wuhan.
Here, as with ventilators and so much else,
the government had failed to act as it should have.
It was not until 23 March that Johnson finally announced
some form of lockdown - two months after the original action
had been taken in Wuhan, where it had long been known to work.
By now, the UK death toll exceeded 300 and Johnson said that
the Coronavirus “is the biggest threat
this country had faced in decades” but just a week earlier mass gatherings
like concerts and sporting events, major risks for transmission,
were still going ahead. This concert in Cardiff
was held on March 14.
Four days later, on 27 March as the death toll stood at 759,
the editor of The Lancet Richard Horton lamented that the NHS
had been “wholly unprepared for this pandemic”
and called it a “national scandal” the gravity of which
“has yet to be understood”. He slammed both the
Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientific Adviser
for not heeding the warnings from China early enough.
“They had a duty to immediately put
the NHS and British public on high alert”, Horton said, “February should
have been used to expand coronavirus testing capacity,
ensure the distribution of WHO-approved PPE
[personal protective equipment] and establish training programmes
and guidelines to protect NHS staff.”
“They didn’t take any of those actions.
The result has been chaos and panic across the NHS.
Patients will die unnecessarily. NHS staff will die unnecessarily.”
How could we allow this to happen? The hypocrisy of clapping
NHS workers and yet the government not supporting them to go
into that frontline is tragic.
It’s not uncommon for staff to have panic attacks.
I’d assumed it would be the older and the sicker
but some of them are coming through and are young and fit.
The following day, on 28th March,
Stephen Powis, the medical director of NHS England,
openly conceded that “If we can keep deaths
below 20,000 we will have done very well in this epidemic.”
20,000 deaths. Less than three weeks
after the government said there was “no rationale”
to postpone sporting events and a little more than 2 weeks
after it decided that testing people with mild symptoms was unnecessary -
contrary to WHO advice - “Test, test, test” -
20,000 deaths was being presented as a success story.
Given that remarkable U-turn, with it becoming ever clearer
that the government had been asleep at the wheel,
it’s no surprise that, more recently, there’s been a concerted effort
to blame the public and, yes, China. And yet it’s the government
which failed to act quickly and decisively enough.
The choices they made have, without any doubt cost
the lives of many, many people. We’ll find out just how many
in the weeks and months ahead. For now, however,
Britain is on the same trend as Italy despite having
additional weeks to prepare.
Why the government failed to respond appropriately
for a month, if not more, is unclear. It is likely that the accumulation
of a general election hangover, similar scares in previous years
failing to be as bad as predicted, and a default among Britain’s
political class to think that they are somehow immune
to tragedies elsewhere all played their part.
And yet we now know that we aren’t different.
For a government to go from a “low threat”
to “20,000 deaths would be an outstanding achievement” -
within the space of 2 months - is a spectacular failure,
from the Prime Minister, to the Department for Health
and the government’s scientific advisers.
Action now taken will undoubtedly save lives -
but from testing, to protective equipment
to simply failing to comprehend the scale of the problem
until it was too late - the government’s previous actions
seem almost inexplicable. This is, without any doubt,
one of the single greatest failures of government planning
in recent history.
And how do NHS workers view things - the ones taking risks
to keep us safe after years of budgetary cuts
and rising workloads?
“We are literally making it up as we go along”,
said one, according to the Lancet. “It feels as if we are actively
harming patients,” said another. “Total carnage” and
“Forget lockdown— we are going into meltdown.”
One staffer is reported as saying “When I was country director
in many conflict zones, we had better preparedness.”
“The hospitals in London are overwhelmed.”
And finally, “The public and media are not aware that today
we no longer live in a city (London) with a properly functioning
western health-care system.”
A health crisis was inevitable. But calamity of this magnitude -
well that was a result of political negligence.
In the months and years ahead when people look back
and reflect on what was wrong - whether that’s an inquest or inquiry -
if it is found that herd immunity was a strategy adopted and pushed
by senior members of government, advisors, ministers, scientists,
those people would be responsible for the lives of many many people.
Once more, they should never be welcome in public life ever again.