So many people in high places commanding high wages and for what no ppe for there staff,no plan, delay only ppe for hospitals all other arenas not thought of one step at a time, carers for homes and care homes forgotten about amongst many other a. A huge review is required to ensure these fundamental mistakes don't happen again because there will be another time and the country needs to review what it needs to include as regards strategically important industries
So we're going to quarantine people coming into the country shouldn't this have been case 12weeks back no taking of people's temps coming into country. Here we are an island nation that should have isolated itself properly long ago and only have had limited impact instead 30000 deaths and rising inept government lack of thought indecisive and inability to create and implement a proper plan similar to the management of many organisations within the country with the faintest idea of what to do and relying on the basic logic implemented by people below them. A country full of leaders that haven't got the basic abilities to lead when anything differing form the normal presents itself. Like I said island nation the numbers should have been a lot lower and should have been looking to start coming out of it
How many of you commenting have been involved in an Inquiry? Are you aware of what individuals contribute and at what personal cost in the hope that something will change?
I have. So many of us try our best. It was singularly depressing and it is also depressing that those involved in trying to improve things are pilloried even by some of you commenting here and from within this sector. Especially hard to read Anonymous @14.51 from the 'shop floor' who was the very type of person I was trying to support and protect in the future. Stop shooting the messengers and being distracted from the reality. This culture needs to change and you at the 'shop floor' could realise you are part of wider teams and society.
I was not well remunerated, have no impressive title and the stress of it and the seriousness with which I viewed the task broke me. Does that satisfy you? That is why officials, often junior, or early career, or without authority, or even senior civil servants and experts are scared. You'd be surprised at who I am talking about. Long serving and hard working. I was harassed online despite being junior and poorly paid and was a lightning rod for abuse - hence me writing as anonymously as I can. Look to how safety in the air industry and other safety critical industries differs in this wholesale pile-on and inappropriate blame deeply within your comments.
It does not need to be a 'beast' or rumble on, but the pressure to get is right is enormous and leads to that. Would you sacrifice yourself for that? Would it be worth it?
It's Inquiry by the way - maybe accept you aren't expert in all other fields so might hesitate to spout rubbish about us? Wouldn't you want us working hard to make things safer for you on your 'shop floor'?
I think the most important discussion needs to be centred on the very real and practical question of just how you prepare for rare but catastrophic events in an era of financial scarcity - what's reasonable and did we fail to do that?
Following the Cygnus exercise in 2016, it is very easy to say the UK fell asleep at the wheel with the pandemic already in the headlights. However, had we stockpiled to the hilt, for instance, and there was no Covid-19, the very same people would be accused of overreacting too (a microcosm of this is commissioning ferry capacity 'in case' Brexit was a transport trainwreck).
Not remotely leaning one way or another. Just suggesting it should be neither witch hunt nor white wash.
A public enquiry is the last thing we need right now. A wasteful distraction.
We haven't even learnt to adopt the recommendations of previous inquires:
Trust boss gave misleading information to GMC about consultant who was unfairly dismissed
BMJ 2020; 369 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1838 (Published 05 May 2020)
GMC/CQC well informed but sitting on their hands
Commented on:
2020-05-07T14:07:38.697
Generally, inquiries take too long, and fudge critical issues (apart from costing a shed load, and resulting in remarkably little action). So, not one of those please.
But this does need an inquiry.
Surely the point of an inquiry is to learn lessons and take rapid action to prevent recurrence? The outcomes should be fast, and they should be very limited in number (eg 5, not 86...). And they need to meet a "good enough" standard.
And, much as I might want to allocate blame for the predicament that the UK finds itself in, frankly that is not helpful in meeting the principles above, so don't go there. Leave that to journalists who should be holding ministers and experts to account in real time - I wish!
Commented on:
2020-05-07T14:01:04.747
An urgent inquiry into the UK government's handling of Covid-19 is indeed a priority as Una O'Brien persuasively argues and should begin at once. It needs to involve the devolved administrations too. It also needs to be conducted at pace as far as possible since the longer the inquiry sits the less impact it is likely to have. However, we live in a very different political climate from the one O'Brien inhabited - one where the government with a handsome majority is more committed to manipulating public opinion than informing it. Sadly our political discourse has become increasingly infantilised fuelled by No 10's approach to communication and managing the message. So, while an inquiry is needed and should proceed in the manner O'Brien sets out, let's be realistic about it's likely negligible impact on a government that prefers to go on the attack and undermine the way our system of government operates rather than admit mistakes in order to learn from them. Unless, that is, Covid-19 by some minor miracle triggers a change in our politics. Maybe it will, just as it has changed other aspects of our lives and possibly for the foreseeable future. Our political system is broken and badly in need to repair. Unless we fix it, an inquiry's findings will most likely be of value largely to the media and academia.
It would be a complete waste of time and money, like so many previous inquiries.
We all know already that a pandemic was predicted, the government was warned, but failed to prepare properly.
Because preparation was inadequate the first response to news of a coming pandemic was denial which hindered responsiveness.
Because capacity to deal in the classically accepted way to a pandemic was not there, too much time was taken in looking at alternatives.
A gross error was made in opting for the herd immunity theory despite it not being clear that immunity to a coronavirus was available in this case or would in itself prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Tens of thousands of extra deaths are as a result of lack of preparedness, lack of appropriate responsiveness, managing corona virus by clearing out hospitals of all non-elective work, lack of ICU capacity and ventilators, lack of PPE , lack of trained staff (anesthetists, ICU staff) and lack of testing capacity to track and trace effectively.
Who is to blame? the government and any advisers who did not warn of the risks. On the presumption that any adviser covered their back that leaves the government.
Solution? put David Cameron, George Osborn, Andrew Lansley , Theresa May, Jeremy Hunt, Boris Johnston and Matt Hancock in a locked room.
They will all agree it was Matt Hancock's fault.
Well well, we are not even out of lockdown and it starts.... That fine.. enquire all you want unless of course you are currently deeply involved at operational level when you will/do not have the time, or quite frankly energy, to feed a beast of an enquiry of this magnitude at this time - if people are not busy enough that they have the spare time required for a large scale public enquiry please feel free to join us on the 'shop floor' where it is not any quieter - we could do with the extra hands!
Commented on:
2020-05-07T13:50:20.747
Anon @13:41 is correct - a thoroughly well-thought out argument - but will anyone listen? As well as Mid Staffs, one could quote Bristol Royal Infirmary Public Inquiry [Sir Ian Kennedy QC, July 2001]; Liverpool Care Pathway Review [Baroness Julia Neuberger DBE, July 2013]; University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Report [Dr Bill Kirkup CBE, March 2015]; Southern Health Independent Review [Mazars LLP, December 2015]; and Gosport War Memorial Hospital Report [Rt Rev James Jones KBE, June 2018].
Patronising disposition of unaccountable power; institutional regime; ‘old boy’s culture’; lax safety; secrecy; lack of monitoring; arrogance; indifference; disrespect; poor practice; uncaring; rushed; ignorant are just some of the adjectives from the conclusions of these expensive inquiries?
Buy can anyone put their hand on their heart and honestly say that anything has changed?
What is the basic premise of the inquiry? Does the caveat of the 'response' mean it won't cover if any other option than that lockdown was the only option? How can we measure against the do nothing option when you cannot prove a negative. The zeitgeist is lockdown and isolation but some Scandinavian countries took a different path and seem to have come through also.
I understand that lead in times to mobilise such inquiries take time and so it's also sensible to presume that the learning will move on apace too. We don't even know for sure how the virus spreads, it's length of incubation, whether children are lower risk spreaders, that the new emerging paediatric condition is down to covid-19 yet? Seriously, we are still flying blind on facts and clear knowledge but talking about an inquiry of the response. Hindsight doesn't apply either as there was absolutely no other differing projection than predicted Armageddon. The media frenzy scared everybody. The NHS emptied its hospitals with many going back to care homes without a test because it simply wasn't available. This situation has never happened before in living or documented memory unless you reference the great plague as a comparator. We've seen over 30,000 deaths. Compared to what? The predictive models have no reference either. Will the inquiry try to quantify how many deaths were avoided? Where are you going to get a baseline? Italy, Spain, Iran or African nations. We still have absolutely no idea whether their approach was 'the' factor which allowed differing reported cases and deaths.
As a country we chose a path of lockdown with the impact to our lives that will be poured over as much as the second world war. There is no urgency or immediate need for this inquiry other than saying 'we are doing something, we are having an inquiry' Set a date for 2023 and let's get this crisis over first.
"We have only to think of Grenfell, Ladbroke Grove and Mid-Staffs. For the covid-19 inquiry, perhaps its biggest challenge will be to hear the voice of all those who have suffered in this crisis" - So I make that around 66m..
I think the public at large have already made their minds up with regard to what went wrong, but focus should be on the 'modelling assumptions' used and whether there was arrogance at the highest level that the assurances given by the 'experts' were correct and were not subject to rigour and challenge.
Not closing the borders, even now, seems to be a nonsensical position to take, and it would be interesting to see why this was not implemented.
Lastly all the Cabinet papers, NHS E and Department of Health meeting records need to be available with no redactions so that the public can be reassured that decisions were not made for political/economic reasons e.g., herd immunity but with the intention of saving lives.
The utter rediculousness and lack of understanding around this virus and its propogation is quite frankly unbelievable. Everyone wants to draw comparisons with other countries. Simple common sense should allow you to realise that all the published figures depend on who you test, how often you test and what testing regimes are in place. Unless we are all doing exactly the same thing then the figures are proxy comparisons at best. Tanzania has about the same population as us and they only have 16 deaths - perhaps we should adopt their approach to combating the virus?
In Italy and Spain, the healthcare system became overloaded and there were not enough Critical care facilities to help those that were sick and therefore people died becouse someone had to make a decition about who gets the critical care facility and who does not.
Has this happened in the UK? has anybody that needed Critical care been denied access to it?
I thought the HSJ was meant to help promote understanding in Healthcare? perhaps it should start there
An inquiry before all the facts are even known? What lessons are you going to learn from that? Or is this scope very specifically aimed at certain individuals?
I hear people poo-poo-ing "herd immunity". There is no vaccine and unlikely to be one this year. The virus will soon be endemic globally so it will come back around, again and again. The risk to the under 18s is miniscule, for under 35s is very small, small for under 55s and then moderate above with men massivley more at risk. The current cost of lockdown is £10bn a month - economically unsustainable for much longer. The question is not who is going to catch it because sooner or later we all will; the question is can the system cope with the serious cases when they do get it? At the moment the answer appears to be yes, although it was a close thing in some areas.
Have there been problems with PPE and so forth? Yes. Deliberately? Negligently? Enough to prove beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law against circumstances inherited? Tricky, I would think.
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