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Baroness Hallet has released her interim report

Into the UK covid pandemic and the then governments response.

To say it's findings are damning...is an understatement.

Poor preparedness.
Poor response structure.
Poor exercises pre-pandemic.

Never again can a disease be allowed to lead to so many deaths and so much suffering
.

Institutions and structures responsible for emergency planning were labyrinthine in their complexity

Fatal strategic flaws underpinning the assessment of risks and their consequences


It goes on and on for several hundred pages

The inquiry has no hesitation in concluding that the processes; planning and policy of the civil contingency structures within the UK government and devolved administrations and civil services failed their citizens

https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/reports
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SW-User
Did it need a public enquiry to tell us that!


We simply were not expecting it. Why should we. We did not know what China was up to. And perhaps we never will.
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
@SW-User A public health emergency is almost by definition unexpected. That doesn't mean that one need be totally unprepared. Why is there not a department of the state specifically responsible for dealing with public health emergencies?

Norway was not expecting COVID either but in Norway we have the Folkehelseinstituttet, The Norwegian Institute of Public Health, which has a department specifically set up for this purpose:
Division of Infection Control

Article | Updated 21.02.2024

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health is the country's infectious disease institute. The Division of Infection Control takes care of most of the tasks related to this role, and aims to contribute to effective infection control in Norway. The work is authorised by the Infection Control Act (§ 7-9) and several of its regulations.
https://www.fhi.no/en/ab/niph/divisions/infection-control-environmental-health/

For all I know the UK has such a thing too but it doesn't seem to be well defined or have much of a public presence.

Most of the rules implemented to control COVID come from the FHI/NIPH. There was much less political interference with the process of defining the rules. Norway reacted faster than the UK and controlled outbreaks without resort to draconian lockdown* measures. In the end we had a negative excess death rate; that is fewer people died during the COVID emergency than would have been expected to die in normal times.

I'm well aware that the UK is more densely populated so it can be more difficult to control epidemics. But the endless political tinkering made it much worse that it had to be. Not to mention idiotic gestures like 'Eat out to help out.'.

We had our share of idiocy too, but thankfully they were private individuals organizing wedding receptions in contravention of the rules rather than politicians and civil servants partying at taxpayer's expense.

* Lockdown cannot be implemented without a change in the constitution.
Picklebobble2 · 56-60, M
@SW-User We needed a public inquiry because of the number of public deaths attributed to covid and the government's response.

It's remit was initially carefully defined within fairly tight parameters.
But once public submissions were investigated it was clear why those parameters were set.
Because the sheer scale of covid's impact on the UK's institutions went far beyond what the Johnson/May government's submissions said they had.

People forget the number of people that live in institutions in this country run into the hundreds of thousands.
Old folks homes; prisons; detention centres; children's homes; bail hostels.....

And if it finds those in government or those departments acting on the government's behalf, acted in such a way as to cause unnecessary suffering or neglect, that puts the heads of those departments or quango bodies, potentially liable to criminal charge.
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
@Picklebobble2
that puts the heads of those departments or quango bodies, potentially liable to criminal charge.

I'd love to see the politicians in charge in the dock but I can't see it happening. Johnson and Sunak and their cronies should definitely be charged with something but what exactly?
Picklebobble2 · 56-60, M
@ninalanyon given my answer above, you can now put into context the timing of the election and how upset so many sitting MP'S were at the lack of time to prepare...etc.

They were worried for themselves and their seats when perhaps Sunak; Starmer and particularly Ed Davey (see his grilling in front of the investigation committee yesterday ?...he didn't come out of it well) were considering the potential fallout once the inquiry chair reports it's full findings.
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
@Picklebobble2 But given the structure of government in the UK and the quite staggering amount of political interference in what should be technical decisions is there really any likelihood that the response to any similar future national emergency could be different?

That is, were the problems the fault of the Conservative party and its leadership or are they simply a result of the way the country is governed.

For instance, why were politicians involved at all in the purchase of protective clothing?