Covid pandemic decisions were fraught with complexities, not least due to the then imperfect knowledge about the disease, lack of informed science, the mythological fiction of forecasting and modelling, pressures from different quarters, competing political agendas, and not least emotional overkill around death and suffering.
The Catch 22 of any decision being painted as wrong is exemplified by Sherbhert’s article of 19 October 2020 about whether any Government could ever do the right thing.
WHATSAPP IS NOT FORENSIC EVIDENCE
Numerous journalists and other self-appointed judges of pandemic behaviour, decisions and measures by Government, experts and advisers at the time, are busy castigating Matt Hancock, Health Minister for the worst period of the pandemic, and others such as experts and advisers especially if they seemed to favour lockdown: all as evidenced by WhatsApp messages which have been leaked, rightly or wrongly. Judging history and especially attacking Government decisions requires careful balance and not high emotion, and at least a balanced recall of all the relevant circumstances of the time.
2020 was the critical year: all governments around the world, except perhaps China, were caught on the hop by a disease both they and medical advisers knew little about as to its infectiousness, seriousness, who was vulnerable and least of all how to respond in order to minimise damage. Of course, people would die, but predicting how many proved a most emotional and inaccurate science. Herd immunity was a theoretical remedy, which perhaps beguiled authorities at first and which experts rejected, but with hindsight those who would now say lockdowns were wrong may have advocated. Learning came with trial and error and observation of other countries’ experiences and sharing of information. By the end of 2020 thinking varied considerably from that in March or June or October.
However, during the haphazard learning, hard decisions had to be made amid theoretical epidemiological modelling: these belched up worst case, reasonable worst case and best case etc. with huge variations depending which school produced them. The doomster cases which instilled the fear were the most quoted and largely the most inaccurate! What “could” happen, if repeated often enough, became unwittingly what “would”, and were treated like forecasts, not mere possibilities. Groups of scientists in SAGE and Alternative SAGE expounded “advice” at polar opposites, all best guessing, as the science was so juvenile as to the disease, albeit becoming more informed as time went by.
LOCKDOWN OR NOT?
By say October 2020, the majority of UK experts, at least who got a lot of airtime, favoured lockdown as the way to protect people from the disease racing away. Maybe it was the best way to protect the NHS, but at what cost? Medical advisers and some politicians such as Matt Hancock erred towards lockdown. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were reluctant lockdowners. Most Western countries adopted lockdowns, but Sweden veered the other way most of the time. Who was right will never be known as it is unknown what an alternative strategy would have produced at the time.
Yet Ministers at various times were accused of killing people because of their decisions taken in good faith, but allegedly too slow to lockdown. UK leaders were regularly pilloried for having the worst deaths record, with emotional frenzy dictating judgements. But the more rational experts declared from early on that the measure of deaths would only emerge over time, with “excess” deaths the real test. In fact, the UK turned out middle of the road in that measure, ahead of the likes of Germany, Spain and Italy. The judgemental cries of murderer based on league tables at the time were just irrational and wrong.
Now, as people eye WhatsApp messages which veer to lockdown, emotional irrationality is judging again but in the opposite direction. The modern thinking is lockdowns do more harm than good, with long-lasting effects. Their proponents are being pilloried by the “told you so” gang. In October 2020, UKGOV decided to try a three-tier system to slow the disease. But sage scientists and politicians including Keir Starmer, with a “too little too late” mantra, clamoured for lockdowns and circuit breakers, chastising because Government took a decision not following SAGE advice perhaps? Yet sage covered itself by saying it only looked at slowing the disease, not other factors like effects on economy or education, which leaders had to weigh. In short, all messy, damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Nobody was absolutely right or wrong.
At the same time as most experts in the UK called for lockdown, The Great Barrington Declaration, signed by thousands of scientists from around the globe, called on governments to focus less on lockdown. But they were dismissed by SAGE and so also by government and it got little media traction.
LEARNING LESSONS IS A PRIORITY
A public enquiry has already eaten £85 million with no public hearings yet. “Sides” have appointed dozens of expensive lawyers to plead causes. It will probably try to be all things to all people and take years. Is what people want blood and blame, or real improvements against the next pandemic, to avoid repeated mistakes? If the WhatsApp warriors are anything to go by, blood and blame is their priority. But WhatsApp messages tell a little story, of spur of the moment responses omitting all other information, thought, conversations and activity resulting from consideration. Natural justice, a great English value, is not served by today’s witch hunt. Is the public enquiry a waste of time and money? It will be unless it is very focussed and streamlined.
Sweden has already completed their public enquiry. Unless the NHS for example is incompetent, surely its management have established by now at least 90% of the core things that went well or went badly, and the changes needed for the future. So too procurement in the medical sector. So too the need for less dependence on foreign enemies for key kit, like vaccines. Independent capabilities are obviously a need. So too the key downsides of lockdown. So too how best to shield the vulnerable, assuming if they wish to be shielded. And so on. Should not all the lessons learnt be published now? And if incomplete, tight schedules set for completion of them? Should not the NHS and other health care bodies, including the social care sector, have a blueprint for how to deal with the next pandemic, and should it not be published now?
If the right executives are not in place to make this all happen, should not government sack the wrong ones and appoint new? Today again the UK media are homing in on the easy pickings of denigrating personalities, especially those they are less fond of, to produce lynch mob judgements, at the expense of fair hearings. Rather than the gallows, serious focus on improved defences and methods of accumulating expertise and accessing it rapidly to fend off the next deadly virus, as a global cooperation exercise, would benefit the UK and other nations and perhaps save lives.
See also:- Covid is not an Existential Threat – So Why Trash the Economy – Covid – Learning to Live with it – Covid 19 – Taking Off – Stopping Lockdown and Collateral Covid Damage
