Here's your chance ?

All these experts who say the government got it wrong with the covid pandemic should now say what they would do. All the evidence from scientists and doctors yesterday will provide a basis for Boris's plans for the next few months.
So instead of blindly criticising you should all say now, and remember you have to take full responsibility, with all the media, other doctors, scientists and the general public shouting abuse as to why they think you got it wrong. If you cannot say today then you have no right to criticise at a later date,
You have a choice to take what is the best action for health and the economy (just as important in the long term).So either hide like Captain Hindsight (Keir Starmer) or attempt to take the difficult decisions now, and hope the public will at least attempt to abide by the new rules.

After yesterday, and todays, conflicting "evidence," assessments, forecasts. predictions etc where the experts, doctors and scientists were contradicting each other, I am glad it is not me making the decisions, and so I will not criticise later.

I know the Tory party haters will criticise anyway as it would not matter what Boris says or does they will say it was wrong, but sensible people will know how hard it is to make these decisions.

this needs to stop...

we have as many cases now as we had on May 8th was said recently... back then daily testing was just about hitting the 10k mark and various experts ,including government experts were claiming the ACTUAL infections were between 10 and 20 times higher but not recorded due to the limited tests mostly being in hospitals and therefore mild and asymptomatic cases not counted... so you increase tests to between 25 and 30 times the amount , are now picking up the milder/. asymptomatic cases and claiming some sort of equivalent... thats really not how anything works...
deaths on May 8th were 589... yesterday they were 11... anyone that thinks this flies and can argue that 589 then = 11 now please come and do my books..

I’m most definitely not a Tory supporter but I fully realise any government would’ve had an impossible task of having a good response, but what the Tory government did have though is a chance to not have such a bad response. So many minor things that could have helped slow the spread or improved public willingness to comply with lockdown rules.
Off the top of my head;

Giving 24 hour warning all the pubs would shut so loads of people went out for “one last drink”.
Reopening pubs on a Saturday instead of a midweek Tuesday or Wednesday evening, I imagine the initial rush would’ve been lessened.

Making closing times 10pm from the get go for pubs and restaurants, let’s be honest, drunk people can’t socially distance properly.

All this talk of getting people back into offices, working from home has to be the absolute safest thing people can be doing at the moment, instead of trying to force offices to be Covid safe and spreading the get back to work message it should’ve been down to peoples personal choice whether they go back in.

Producing a test and trace app that actually works. We’ve still not got one whilst many countries do, it’s not a perfect solution but even if 20% of the population download it it gives that 20% chance a warning they may have been in a Covid risk place.

The Cummings fiasco, I don’t mean firing him but he didn’t even apologise, he doubled down that what he did was the right thing to do. Whether or not you believe that, he had a huge hand in coming up with the lockdown rules yet he so wilfully and unapologetically broke them I imagine a lot of people used that as an excuse to break lockdown.

Enforcing the lockdown, I’ve seen and heard almost nothing about people being fined for breaching lockdown despite a huge emphasis on the punishment being increased fines.

Monitoring arrivals into the country. Unlike Europe we’ve got the luxury of being and island and outside the Schengen area. I could drive from Lisbon to Tallinn without having to show any ID or go through any checks. Yet for us anyone entering the country has to go through some sort of checkpoint. Yet people were free to arrive in the country and disappear anywhere they wanted to.

Talks of Boris relaxing the 6 person rule for Christmas Day as if Covid won’t spread on a holiday, it just undermines the rule for these upcoming months if people know the government think it’s okay to break the rules for specific events.



I’m not advocating for something like China where people couldn’t leave their apartments for weeks but in a few minutes without any research I’ve managed to think of a few things that I believe would’ve helped.
I’m sure someone with more knowledge could provide dozens, if not hundreds of changes if they looked into it

I’m most definitely not a Tory supporter but I fully realise any government would’ve had an impossible task of having a good response, but what the Tory government did have though is a chance to not have such a bad response. So many minor things that could have helped slow the spread or improved public willingness to comply with lockdown rules.
Off the top of my head;

Giving 24 hour warning all the pubs would shut so loads of people went out for “one last drink”.
Reopening pubs on a Saturday instead of a midweek Tuesday or Wednesday evening, I imagine the initial rush would’ve been lessened.

Making closing times 10pm from the get go for pubs and restaurants, let’s be honest, drunk people can’t socially distance properly.

All this talk of getting people back into offices, working from home has to be the absolute safest thing people can be doing at the moment, instead of trying to force offices to be Covid safe and spreading the get back to work message it should’ve been down to peoples personal choice whether they go back in.

Producing a test and trace app that actually works. We’ve still not got one whilst many countries do, it’s not a perfect solution but even if 20% of the population download it it gives that 20% chance a warning they may have been in a Covid risk place.

The Cummings fiasco, I don’t mean firing him but he didn’t even apologise, he doubled down that what he did was the right thing to do. Whether or not you believe that, he had a huge hand in coming up with the lockdown rules yet he so wilfully and unapologetically broke them I imagine a lot of people used that as an excuse to break lockdown.

Enforcing the lockdown, I’ve seen and heard almost nothing about people being fined for breaching lockdown despite a huge emphasis on the punishment being increased fines.

Monitoring arrivals into the country. Unlike Europe we’ve got the luxury of being and island and outside the Schengen area. I could drive from Lisbon to Tallinn without having to show any ID or go through any checks. Yet for us anyone entering the country has to go through some sort of checkpoint. Yet people were free to arrive in the country and disappear anywhere they wanted to.

Talks of Boris relaxing the 6 person rule for Christmas Day as if Covid won’t spread on a holiday, it just undermines the rule for these upcoming months if people know the government think it’s okay to break the rules for specific events.



I’m not advocating for something like China where people couldn’t leave their apartments for weeks but in a few minutes without any research I’ve managed to think of a few things that I believe would’ve helped.
I’m sure someone with more knowledge could provide dozens, if not hundreds of changes if they looked into it

youve missed the big one... and this is across all our governments and all the on holiday opposition parties..

NOT declaring loud and clear how many avoidable deaths they are prepared to sacrifice.... dominic cummings ?????..there are people dying every single day not of covid but because theyve been shafted by our response to covid... and how about a plan to get our NHS back to where it was.

1. Moving away from testing way back in March was a huge error and many said that at the time. They didn’t need testing particularly then but it was clear we would need it when the pandemic escalated. They lost months of preparation time and, as a result, huge delays continue to be experienced.
2. PPE - as a result of cutting NHS stocks to a minimum, NHS staff were, at best, exposed to unnecessary risk, at worse lost their lives. The government also missed an opportunity in January to join the EU countries in a joint procurement of PPE resulting in UK suffering more than most. And finally, the UK government, realising they had made errors, overturned/outbid a contract that NHS Wales had procured and diverted PPE, destined for Wales, to England.
3. Government said all schools in England back in July. Did not consult, did not provide detailed guidance until the Friday before they were due to open. As a result they had to backtrack and no schools in England re-opened.

All Three of these major cock-ups could have been easily been avoided by better and more prompt decision making and that’s without even mentioning the initial delay in lockdown and allowing evens like Cheltenham, Champions League, etc., to take place.

So this government is culpable, at least to a limited extent, however you dress it up.

1. Moving away from testing way back in March was a huge error and many said that at the time. They didn’t need testing particularly then but it was clear we would need it when the pandemic escalated. They lost months of preparation time and, as a result, huge delays continue to be experienced.
2. PPE - as a result of cutting NHS stocks to a minimum, NHS staff were, at best, exposed to unnecessary risk, at worse lost their lives. The government also missed an opportunity in January to join the EU countries in a joint procurement of PPE resulting in UK suffering more than most. And finally, the UK government, realising they had made errors, overturned/outbid a contract that NHS Wales had procured and diverted PPE, destined for Wales, to England.
3. Government said all schools in England back in July. Did not consult, did not provide detailed guidance until the Friday before they were due to open. As a result they had to backtrack and no schools in England re-opened.

All Three of these major cock-ups could have been easily been avoided by better and more prompt decision making and that’s without even mentioning the initial delay in lockdown and allowing evens like Cheltenham, Champions League, etc., to take place.

So this government is culpable, at least to a limited extent, however you dress it up.

where exactly did we lose months..? it caught everyne off guard no matter how much you try to move dates the truth is documented... head of medical emergencies in Madrid was claiming Spain would only have a few cases on Feb 9th .and Italy { the first to have serious numbers but were weeks ahead of ourselves } didnt announce their locked down until the 11th of march , everyone else with much smaller numbers did very little as no one quite knew what to do , not just the Tories.. .all countries had problems with and many had protests over lack of PPE.. and the EU super order { january } didnt start finding its way into hospitals until late April...long after the fuss here...and yes Cheltenham.. at that point no one bar Italy { the day before } had locked down , La Liga like ourselves had full grounds the weekend before, womens day in Spain { who also had much bigger figures than us at the time } was on the Monday and literally millions were out here and across Europe the following weekend...
as for schools... had they continued they would be wrong just as they are wrong in your eyes for changing tack...


personally i didnt and dont agree with the lockdown.. i think people panicked and felt they should do something, but not knowing what..well locking down was something and it had apparently worked in China...
but not sure you can blame one political party in one country when everyone did many things the same to deal with a problem none had dealt with before and unsure of what its effects might be,,, criticism is all with hindsight... and extremely selective memories..

We lost months because from March until around June the government did nothing/very little to get system that worked in place.

That only started when they finally realised the scientists were right and we needed a track and trace system that worked!!

No comments about the other cock-ups I listed then ?

We lost months because from March until around June the government did nothing/very little to get system that worked in place.

That only started when they finally realised the scientists were right and we needed a track and trace system that worked!!

No comments about the other cock-ups I listed then ?

as said above..
PPE was not worse here than elsewhere.... cheltenham was a piers morgan red herring rant about a few thousand pple when millions were out on the following weekend and not just here but all over europe...and literally millions were yet to fly home from covid hotspots... . schools .....whatever they did would be seen as wrong

We lost months because from March until around June the government did nothing/very little to get system that worked in place.

That only started when they finally realised the scientists were right and we needed a track and trace system that worked!!

No comments about the other cock-ups I listed then ?

What were the minimum PPE requirements for the NHS at the time of onset? I only ask, because the NHS are responsible for procurement, not the Government as has been broached here before.

We lost months because from March until around June the government did nothing/very little to get system that worked in place.

That only started when they finally realised the scientists were right and we needed a track and trace system that worked!!

No comments about the other cock-ups I listed then ?

What were the minimum PPE requirements for the NHS at the time of onset? I only ask, because the NHS are responsible for procurement, not the Government as has been broached here before.

The point was that because of underfunding NHS could not keep sufficient stocks of PPE to cover them for such an outbreak. This had been pointed out prior to the pandemic following an audit report and not acted upon !

We lost months because from March until around June the government did nothing/very little to get system that worked in place.

That only started when they finally realised the scientists were right and we needed a track and trace system that worked!!

No comments about the other cock-ups I listed then ?

as said above..
PPE was not worse here than elsewhere.... cheltenham was a piers morgan red herring rant about a few thousand pple when millions were out on the following weekend and not just here but all over europe...and literally millions were yet to fly home from covid hotspots... . schools .....whatever they did would be seen as wrong

You're wrong on PPE. Simple. We were way worse off than the other major EU countries.

Cheltenham was not a red herring it was proven as a major factor in the initial spread. Read the scientific advice.

You are right that either way they could be criticised on schools. However, their poor handling resulted in a last minute U-turn which is my main point. Research would have educated the decision either way and not wasted time or effort in either preparing to open or not !!

If you want to place your confidence in Boris crack on.

I have my own views based on research and not listening to the media one way or the other !!

We lost months because from March until around June the government did nothing/very little to get system that worked in place.

That only started when they finally realised the scientists were right and we needed a track and trace system that worked!!

No comments about the other cock-ups I listed then ?

What were the minimum PPE requirements for the NHS at the time of onset? I only ask, because the NHS are responsible for procurement, not the Government as has been broached here before.

The point was that because of underfunding NHS could not keep sufficient stocks of PPE to cover them for such an outbreak. This had been pointed out prior to the pandemic following an audit report and not acted upon !

The NHS will always be underfunded. The budget is agreed and it is up to the Boards to decide how it is spent. That is their job. You cannot stockpile PPE in vast quantities because of its shelf life, and ultimately great cost of this.

The 2009 report refered to influenza epidemic, not a coronavirus pandemic. Quite different in terms of contagion rapidity, especially amongst the vulnerable. There is also a degree of immunity available as a control measure for flu outbreak.

We lost months because from March until around June the government did nothing/very little to get system that worked in place.

That only started when they finally realised the scientists were right and we needed a track and trace system that worked!!

No comments about the other cock-ups I listed then ?

What were the minimum PPE requirements for the NHS at the time of onset? I only ask, because the NHS are responsible for procurement, not the Government as has been broached here before.

The point was that because of underfunding NHS could not keep sufficient stocks of PPE to cover them for such an outbreak. This had been pointed out prior to the pandemic following an audit report and not acted upon !

The NHS will always be underfunded. The budget is agreed and it is up to the Boards to decide how it is spent. That is their job. You cannot stockpile PPE in vast quantities because of its shelf life, and ultimately great cost of this.

The 2009 report refered to influenza epidemic, not a coronavirus pandemic. Quite different in terms of contagion rapidity, especially amongst the vulnerable. There is also a degree of immunity available as a control measure for flu outbreak.

Wrong, see the attached report that was not refuted by the government.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-52440641

But I suppose you'll say all the NHS sources in the report are wrong

It caught us completely off guard, there was absolutely no way we could have prepared for it.
I mean, it's not like the tories got rid of our anti pandemic team.... Oh wait.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18515 ... hs-crisis/

It caught us completely off guard, there was absolutely no way we could have prepared for it.
I mean, it's not like the tories got rid of our anti pandemic team.... Oh wait.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18515 ... hs-crisis/

Spot on COVID certainly took everyone by surprise but a pandemic is something that most advanced countries prepare for on an annual basis e.g. SARS, etc.

The point I'm making is that the current government didn't prepare and the report you quote probably gives the reason why !!

The OP mntioned the Cummins saga and that is the one incident that has mostly lost faith in the Government. It was wrong what he did and even if it his case was bad he is in a position to carry out the correct actions without bringing distruct on himself. If it was an ordinary citizen doing the same as him they would have got arrested without doubt. The fact he never apologised or Boris dindn't take out any action against him has turned peole against the Government. Whatever the Government try to do they will get heavily criticised and that is their own fault.

We lost months because from March until around June the government did nothing/very little to get system that worked in place.

That only started when they finally realised the scientists were right and we needed a track and trace system that worked!!

No comments about the other cock-ups I listed then ?

What were the minimum PPE requirements for the NHS at the time of onset? I only ask, because the NHS are responsible for procurement, not the Government as has been broached here before.

The point was that because of underfunding NHS could not keep sufficient stocks of PPE to cover them for such an outbreak. This had been pointed out prior to the pandemic following an audit report and not acted upon !

The NHS will always be underfunded. The budget is agreed and it is up to the Boards to decide how it is spent. That is their job. You cannot stockpile PPE in vast quantities because of its shelf life, and ultimately great cost of this.

The 2009 report refered to influenza epidemic, not a coronavirus pandemic. Quite different in terms of contagion rapidity, especially amongst the vulnerable. There is also a degree of immunity available as a control measure for flu outbreak.

Wrong, see the attached report that was not refuted by the government.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-52440641

But I suppose you'll say all the NHS sources in the report are wrong

a long standing critic of the government said.....well exactly what you would expect a long standing critic to say... . doctors and nurses said...jesus who wrote that ? WOL ? the world had a PPE shortage at the time including China who makes most of it... yes its a BBC news article ,report ....being it was reported by panorama.. this wasnt an independent report by anyone of any worth... how can anyone not see this....its read it...DO NOT THINK about it ... repeat it...

It caught us completely off guard, there was absolutely no way we could have prepared for it.
I mean, it's not like the tories got rid of our anti pandemic team.... Oh wait.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18515 ... hs-crisis/

Spot on COVID certainly took everyone by surprise but a pandemic is something that most advanced countries prepare for on an annual basis e.g. SARS, etc.

The point I'm making is that the current government didn't prepare and the report you quote probably gives the reason why !!

most advanced countries found themselves in exactly the same spot though..
whether it was the army going into nursing homes in spain where the dead and dying had been abandoned.. to hospitals in Italy with people dying in corridors, or german doctors having a nude ppe protest.. it caught out everyone left wing right wing.. wealthy countries and not so wealthy..

Exactly mate.. long standing critics of the Government and the inherent myopia. They’ve nothing else to do.