Exclusive: UK prepared for wrong sort of pandemic, says former chief medical officer
All the work done was on that epidemic of teenagers exploding under the pressure the second Bogof pizza
Exclusive: UK prepared for wrong sort of pandemic, says former chief medical officer
All the work done was on that epidemic of teenagers exploding under the pressure the second Bogof pizza
The only thing being prepared for at PHE was enjoying their fat pensions & knighthoods.
What BiS said, in spades.
I am guessing that these titans of epidemiology learned their craft on a British Rail management development programme.
“But NHS England were in the room, and local authorities were in the room. If you’re in a big meeting and you make a recommendation, you kind of assume people will have a think about it. In this case, it appears that they didn’t.
If you make a recommendation, dear, you should ensure it is carried out. You assign the task to someone, give them the necessary resources and agree a delivery date. You were, after all, the Chief Medical Officer.
Seems she went to the same buck passing classes as the Dan Andrew’s government in Victoria.
Looks like she’s getting her realisation in first.
“to be fair I was quite busy with other things.”
Like plucking the safe alcohol recommendations out of thin air? Like fiddling the obesity figures for kids?
Thee’s a Change.org petition to give all (all!) NHS staff a 15% pay rise. So far there is no equivalent petition for a pay cut.
Don’t forget producing endless radio ads with child actors telling the proles to cut everything out of their diets except carbohydrates. These have continued long after it became clear that this was a terrible idea.
@Philip
Meanwhile, Morrisons (who were giving a 10% reduction for NHS staff in recognition of their efforts) have extended that to also giving teachers the same.
Presumably in recognition of teachers having to mostly sit around doing nothing on full pay but occasionally having to actually do the job they are well paid to do.
What sort of Pandemic should the UK have prepared for?
One that involved no preparation presumably?
Are we still talking about PHE? Surely they’ve all been strung up by now?
Covid-19 isn’t the only virus that has caught PHE looking like rabbits in the headlights: they are also totally unprepared to create a vaccine to The Green Madness, a serious outbreak of which has just escalated in Downing Street bedwarmers.
Wrong sort of experts! Sacking and garnering of pensions called for.
How does one prepare for a pandemic?
Some say the government has grossly mishandled the pandemic. Yet we are to believe they could have been successful at preparing.
‘meant UK never put plans in place to tackle major coronavirus’
You can’t ‘tackle major coronavirus’ NOW. What could you have done a year ago to ‘prepare’ for it?
I’m thinking this could be an appeal for funding for a new, big money branch of the NHS.
Just remember that the current generation of experts received their education a generation or so ago.
Now look at the current education system both here and in the USA and consider the likely mental ability and worldview of the next generation of experts who will be calling the shots while governments nod like Oi Winston.
Gov’t screwed up royally here, therefore we need to give them a lot of money so they’ll get it right next time!
Somehow it seems like I’ve heard this before.
What puzzled me all along is why the country hadn’t stockpiled PPE, irrespective of Covidpanics. Would have thought they would have been doing it since at least the 50s. It’d be a standard response to external threats. Especially during the Cold War years. Use of biological or radiological munitions. It’s even a current threat. Plenty of nutcase regimes within the operational radius of an ICBM. Iran certainly may have the capability. The NORKs are trying for it. Or the terrorist option of delivery via DHL or shipping container.
Or are we still in the mode of being prepared for the last war but one? Stocks of Anderson shelters & barrage balloons?
I reckon that if Boris asked for park railings to be melted down, covid19 would stop being a threat
BIS,
The country or more precisely the legions of highly paid procurement staff within the nhs failed to stockpile PPE. It was their responsibility (the hint is in the job title) not the governments and they failed miserably.
Fortunately private enterprise stepped in and quickly set up an exchange website which embarrassingly showed ginormous (into the billions) quantities of masks, gloves, gowns etc already sitting in the uk and available for purchase. The site remains live and currently shows over 45 billion available items.
https://www.ppeexchange.co.uk/
There shouldn’t have been a problem (shortage) but you can always count on civil servants to balls it up and blame everyone else.
@ John
the likely mental ability and worldview of the next generation of experts
I’m happy I shan’t be around to see it though I am concerned for my descendants.
Dame Sally Davies comes across as being thick as a plank.
I’m surprised she isn’t on the Biden’s cornavirus taskforce.
It’d be nice to think there would be a proper reckoning when all this is said and done. But we’ll almost certainly get the search for the guilty, followed by the punishment of the innocent.
By rights Dame Sally would be at the front of the queue for punishment. Mind you she’s a game old girl, who enjoys a glass of wine, but only after fighting with herself about whether she’s going to get cancer. There really is no hell too sever for these people.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3428377/Britain-s-doctor-ask-want-glass-wine-want-raise-risk-breast-cancer.html
Asiaseen
In all seriousness I can imagine the scenario set out in the excellent satire Idiocracy becoming factual within 50 years.
Is an idiocracy the inevitable result of government jobs being a good way for idiots to make a comfortable living? I’ve mentioned elsewhere how impressed I am with the way the music app on my phone works seamlessly with my car stereo and my sports watch. The really clever people are doing stuff like that.
One major and persistent problem is when these scandals occur, a Minister resigns…and the actual guilty incompetents stay in the job, or are shuffled sideways to fuck something else up. They never take responsibility, they have no stake in the game, so things never change. It is a fundamental flaw.
By rights Dame Sally would be at the front of the queue for punishment.
In the absence of this, I try to be satisfied that she wrestles with thoughts of her own mortality every time she is offered a glass of wine, however I suspect she doesn’t give a damn and just made that shit up to frighten the proles.
I am increasingly of the opinion that the best use of the Nightingale Hospitals would be to gather every PHE employee, the top 1,000 Department of Health officials, the top 1,000 NHS managers and everyone on SAGE within, in an appropriately socially-distanced fashion, and then block the doors and burn the fucking things down.
How did we cope with previous pandemics? We seemed to cope quite well. Just doing a bit of scientific thinking, but I hypothesise that it’s the existence of PHE that has caused all the problems.
Dame Sally came across as entirely unimpressive. Why Trinity proposed her as Chief Nanny is hard to fathom. Tokenism?