OT: UK COVID RESPONSE "WORST EVER"

Britain’s early handling of the coronavirus pandemic was one of the worst public health failures in UK history, with ministers and scientists taking a “fatalistic” approach that exacerbated the death toll, a landmark inquiry has found.


“Groupthink”, evidence of British exceptionalism and a deliberately “slow and gradualist” approach meant the UK fared “significantly worse” than other countries, according to the 151-page “Coronavirus: lessons learned to date” report led by two former Conservative ministers.


The 2016 exercise warned of the need to stockpile PPE four years before the Covid pandemic hit.

Coronavirus report warned of impact on UK four years before pandemic


The crisis exposed “major deficiencies in the machinery of government”, with public bodies unable to share vital information and scientific advice impaired by a lack of transparency, input from international experts and meaningful challenge.

Despite being one of the first countries to develop a test for Covid in January 2020, the UK “squandered” its lead and “converted it into one of permanent crisis”. The consequences were profound, the report says. “For a country with a world-class expertise in data analysis, to face the biggest health crisis in 100 years with virtually no data to analyse was an almost unimaginable setback.”


Boris Johnson did not order a complete lockdown until 23 March 2020, two months after the government’s Sage committee of scientific advisers first met to discuss the crisis. “This slow and gradualist approach was not inadvertent, nor did it reflect bureaucratic delay or disagreement between ministers and their advisers. It was a deliberate policy – proposed by official scientific advisers and adopted by the governments of all of the nations of the UK,” the report says.


“It is now clear that this was the wrong policy, and that it led to a higher initial death toll than would have resulted from a more emphatic early policy. In a pandemic spreading rapidly and exponentially, every week counted.”

Decisions on lockdowns and social distancing during the early weeks of the pandemic – and the advice that led to them – “rank as one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced”, the report concludes, stressing: “This happened despite the UK counting on some of the best expertise available anywhere in the world, and despite having an open, democratic system that allowed plentiful challenge.”


The report from the Commons science and technology committee and the health and social care committee draws on evidence from more than 50 witnesses, including the former health secretary Matt Hancock, the government’s chief scientific and medical advisers, and leading figures from the vaccine taskforce and NHS Test and Trace.

It celebrates some aspects of the UK’s Covid response, in particular the rapid development, approval and delivery of vaccines, and the world-leading Recovery trial that identified life-saving treatments, but is highly critical of other areas.

Some of the most serious early failings, the report suggests, resulted from apparent groupthink among scientists and ministers which led to “fatalism”. Greg Clark, the chair of the science and technology committee, said he dismissed the allegation that government policy sought to reach “herd immunity” through infection but the outcome came to be seen as the only viable option.


“It was more a reflection of fatalism,” Clark said. “That if you don’t have the prospect of a vaccine being developed, if you think people won’t obey instructions to lockdown for very long, and have a wholly inadequate ability to test, trace and isolate people, that is what you are left with.”


Government preparations for a pandemic focused on influenza, ‘the wrong type of disease’ MPs said.

The “impossibility” of suppressing the virus was only challenged, the MPs say, when it became clear the NHS could be overwhelmed.

The report questions why international experts were not part of the UK scientific advisory process and why measures that worked in other countries were not brought in as a precaution, as a response was hammered out.

While Public Health England told the MPs it had formally studied and rejected the South Korean approach, no evidence was provided despite repeated requests.

“We must conclude that no formal evaluation took place, which amounts to an extraordinary and negligent omission given Korea’s success in containing the pandemic, which was well publicised at the time,” the report says.

The MPs said the government’s decision to halt mass testing in March 2020 – days after the World Health Organization called for “painstaking contact tracing and rigorous quarantine of close contacts” – was a “serious mistake”.

When the test, trace and isolate system was rolled out it was “slow, uncertain and often chaotic”, “ultimately failed in its stated objective to prevent future lockdowns”, and “severely hampered the UK’s response to the pandemic”. The problem was compounded, the report adds, by the failure of public bodies to share data, including between national and local government.


Further criticism is levelled at poor protection in care homes, for black, Asian and minority ethnic groups and for people with learning disabilities.


Prof Trish Greenhalgh, of the University of Oxford, said the report hinted at a “less than healthy relationship” between government and its scientific advisory bodies. “It would appear that even senior government ministers were reluctant to push back on scientific advice that seemed to go against commonsense interpretations of the unfolding crisis,” she said.

“It would appear that Sage, Cobra, Public Health England and other bodies repeatedly dismissed the precautionary principle in favour of not taking decisive action until definitive evidence emerged and could be signed off as the truth.”

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said the report was damning. Hannah Brady, of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, said the report found the deaths of 150,000 people were “redeemed” by the success of the vaccine rollout.

“The report … is laughable and more interested in political arguments about whether you can bring laptops to Cobra meetings than it is in the experiences of those who tragically lost parents, partners or children to Covid-19. This is an attempt to ignore and gaslight bereaved families, who will see it as a slap in the face,” she said

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This is a pretty damning report and says much about our current Prime Minister and his Cabinet

It's not about the vaccine, it's about how the Covid-19 situation was handled and flew in the face of available evidence even at that early time

Any thoughts of Boris being an 'amiable and jocular' character should now be replaced with one word; inept

He (as the Oi/c) has made it worse yet still claims to have had his finger on the pulse. Maybe, but sadly it appears not to have been a beating one...!

No different to our Defence policies. Mothballing equipment hoping it will be good enough for the next shit show we get involved in and again leading to the death of many for no reason and the pathetic reasons the politicians will give. Spend billions on obsolete nuclear deterrent when we have not got enough soldiers to fill an Infantry Battalion. Top heavy on fat generals and fecking idiots who think if we are diverse enough everything will be fine.

Chris,

I said this on numerous occasions and guess what the usual posters shot me down every time.

Appreciate that this would not have helped you Annis but the moment it appeared to be getting out of control in Late January/February - this country should have shut all airports

If we can keep rabies out - we could have kept this out.

We simply didn't do enough and the problem is now with us forever

Appreciate that this would not have helped you Annis but the moment it appeared to be getting out of control in Late January/February - this country should have shut all airports

If we can keep rabies out - we could have kept this out.

We simply didn't do enough and the problem is now with us forever

This.

I honestly think that there will be calls for people to be jailed once the proper inquiry is done. That is providing the inquiry is not influenced by political forces.

If we had had an effective response together with our amazing vaccine success then we really could have coped well.

We are a bloody island. Really could have coped better had we acted earlier.

Also, as a member of the military, I think we should have been more involved. It was a time of crisis.

This is a pretty damning report and says much about our current Prime Minister and his Cabinet

It's not about the vaccine, it's about how the Covid-19 situation was handled and flew in the face of available evidence even at that easy time

Any thoughts of Boris being an 'amiable and jocular' character should now be replaced with one word; inept

He (as the Oi/c) has made it worse yet still claims to have had his finger on the pulse. Maybe, but sadly it appears not to have been a beating one...!

Chris the whole government should be sacked now, trouble is I do not think labour would have fared any better. As for Boris being inept, i would have used the word dangerous. In the stated 2016 report it said we should have been stock piling then, and also on the first signs of the pandemic complete lockdown all flights in banned, and all the illegals from France stopped and sent back to France. Who knows how many let in were infected. If they had done all what I stated, then tens of thousands of deaths could have been avoided. An absolute shambles, and this from me who voted for this shower of s**t we have in government

The only reason we even kept a lid on this to the limited extent we did was the expertise we have in NHS and scientific community.

In reality we could have avoided a lot of the lockdowns and other measures if Boris had listened and locked down earlier and stopped inward travel from abroad.

The other disaster was not prioritising testing when they already knew that China and other earlier effected countries had managed the outbreaks by taking that very route.

Even worse is the way that for 3-4 years the NHS had been flagging up the issues with low stock levels of PPE in readiness for any sort of epidemic or pandemic. If the NHS had been allowed to maintain higher levels of stock as they had been asking for then the spread could have been managed within our hospitals and not got out of control. Nobody could predict the COVID-19 pandemic, but many had predicted a pandemic for years after near misses with SARS, etc.

Boris has always been a buffoon with no substance. So when the country needed leadership we had him .......................

Looks like a few culprits for a poor response, France & Italy although locked down before us didn't fair any better. USA was a disaster as were several eastern European counties and South America off the scale. Wonder will they have an enquiry onto the handling in Wales..

0% chance of any politician being banged up despite controlling the majority of covid contracts, all a big elite get richer quick scam.

Hindsight is wonderful they say if lockdown happened a couple days earlier saved 20k lives?? How did they work that out..... yes hot things wron but can anyone honestly say other parties would done any better in the situation? If drakeford had his way we would still be in lockdown only reason we are not is that WG dont have the money to support workers furlough.

Looks like a few culprits for a poor response, France & Italy although locked down before us didn't fair any better. USA was a disaster as were several eastern European counties and South America off the scale. Wonder will they have an enquiry onto the handling in Wales..

I don't really understand why the Welsh Government are against having their own enquiry.

The figures would suggest that despite having an older population Wales COVID deaths per million were lower than England all the way through apart from a short period Oct-Dec 2020 and Wales were quickest to get the vaccine out too.

But it shouldn't be about comparing with other countries it's about identifying where things could/should have been done better. On that score even Boris's greatest fan couldn't really argue that his handling of the crisis should have been much better if he had actually listened to the advice he was being given.

Looks like a few culprits for a poor response, France & Italy although locked down before us didn't fair any better. USA was a disaster as were several eastern European counties and South America off the scale. Wonder will they have an enquiry onto the handling in Wales..

I don't really understand why the Welsh Government are against having their own enquiry.

The figures would suggest that despite having an older population Wales COVID deaths per million were lower than England all the way through apart from a short period Oct-Dec 2020 and Wales were quickest to get the vaccine out too.

But it shouldn't be about comparing with other countries it's about identifying where things could/should have been done better. On that score even Boris's greatest fan couldn't really argue that his handling of the crisis should have been much better if he had actually listened to the advice he was being given.

Part of blame was due to gvmnt listening to experts and scientific evidence ..... looks like not only gvmnt got things wrong..... unfortunately all this enquiry is going to do is start a spat between the political parties .

Report says Boris listened to the Scientific Advisers. Unlikely Wales acted on the 2015 report, and wouldn’t want to highlight it with an enquiry.

Report says Boris listened to the Scientific Advisers. Unlikely Wales acted on the 2015 report, and wouldn’t want to highlight it with an enquiry.

WG appeared to follow one person's advice chief medical officer so would that stand upto scrutiny?
.....boris had lots different advisers maybe to many and probably giving conflicting answers so taking longer to pass advice on.. plus some so called experts had vested interest and made money out of being advisors longer take more money made..

This is a pretty damning report and says much about our current Prime Minister and his Cabinet

It's not about the vaccine, it's about how the Covid-19 situation was handled and flew in the face of available evidence even at that easy time

Any thoughts of Boris being an 'amiable and jocular' character should now be replaced with one word; inept

He (as the Oi/c) has made it worse yet still claims to have had his finger on the pulse. Maybe, but sadly it appears not to have been a beating one...!

Easy with hindsight, no one was saying we should have locked down in March when I went to Mexico, and while there all the Americans were laughing their heads off at what they thought was the start of panic. It all changed and people started consider it serious as we were due to fly back on 12th March. In hindsight we could have locked down a week or two earlier but that was about it, and the public probably weren't ready to accept the restrictions much before that.

The care home cock up was the biggest mistake and even without hindsight, that was a terrible mistake.

Hindsight is wonderful they say if lockdown happened a couple days earlier saved 20k lives?? How did they work that out..... yes hot things wron but can anyone honestly say other parties would done any better in the situation? If drakeford had his way we would still be in lockdown only reason we are not is that WG dont have the money to support workers furlough.

Have to agree. A fortnight before lockdown the thought of telling everyone to stay indoors was a completely bizzare concept that most people would not have believed they would see in their lifetime. France only locked down a week before us despite having covid much earlier and Belgium had horrendous figures early on. All governments made mistakes. The big failure was not the timing of the lockdown but what happened in care homes. But all uk governments were at fault here, the worst offenders being Scotland

Personally I take this report with a huge pinch of salt as it represents the opinions of a bunch of politicians who would have done what differently.

Looking through the rear view mirror is easy acting without the benefit of hindsight is a lot harder. In hindsight were mistakes made, absolutely, and yes if things had been done differently or more importantly faster then almost certainly there would have been fewer infections and fewer deaths, but to put an arbitrary figure like 20,000 on it is nothing more than political masturbation. I'm sure this Parliamentary Committee are proud of this report but where is the proof on that 20,000 fewer deaths claims. Don't hold your breath for the answer.

This country deserves a Full Independent Enquiry into how this was handled and I'm sure it will make stark reading of that I have no doubt.

For me it's easy to blame the man in charge at the time, in this case BJ, but following 10 years of Tory austerity he had to go to war with this virus with what was available. Like testing capacity which was pathetic for a country the size of the UK when all this started. Today we have one of the biggest testing capacity in the world. In fact only 2 countries USA and India has done more. As of yesterday the UK has done more tests than France, Germany and Spain combined not bad from a standing start.

The devolved administrations also cannot escape scrutiny in respect of Public Enquiry. If BJ and his Government made a mess of England what about Drakeford and his looney left cronies in Wales. Just compare the deaths in Wales against England per 100,000 population, Wales 188.5 England 213.2 how does that work when England has a population just under 18 times larger. In terms of death where covid is mentioned on the death certificate Wales has 261.5 per 100,000 England despite a population 18 times bigger is 243.7.

In terms of "Worst Ever Public Health Response" both Drakeford and Sturgeon in Scotland have just as many questions to answer as BJ. For me this has been a massive failure of our political system where cheap grubby politics has been put ahead of Public Health.

Personally I take this report with a huge pinch of salt as it represents the opinions of a bunch of politicians who would have done what differently.

Looking through the rear view mirror is easy acting without the benefit of hindsight is a lot harder. In hindsight were mistakes made, absolutely, and yes if things had been done differently or more importantly faster then almost certainly there would have been fewer infections and fewer deaths, but to put an arbitrary figure like 20,000 on it is nothing more than political masturbation. I'm sure this Parliamentary Committee are proud of this report but where is the proof on that 20,000 fewer deaths claims. Don't hold your breath for the answer.

This country deserves a Full Independent Enquiry into how this was handled and I'm sure it will make stark reading of that I have no doubt.

For me it's easy to blame the man in charge at the time, in this case BJ, but following 10 years of Tory austerity he had to go to war with this virus with what was available. Like testing capacity which was pathetic for a country the size of the UK when all this started. Today we have one of the biggest testing capacity in the world. In fact only 2 countries USA and India has done more. As of yesterday the UK has done more tests than France, Germany and Spain combined not bad from a standing start.

The devolved administrations also cannot escape scrutiny in respect of Public Enquiry. If BJ and his Government made a mess of England what about Drakeford and his looney left cronies in Wales. Just compare the deaths in Wales against England per 100,000 population, Wales 188.5 England 213.2 how does that work when England has a population just under 18 times larger. In terms of death where covid is mentioned on the death certificate Wales has 261.5 per 100,000 England despite a population 18 times bigger is 243.7.

In terms of "Worst Ever Public Health Response" both Drakeford and Sturgeon in Scotland have just as many questions to answer as BJ. For me this has been a massive failure of our political system where cheap grubby politics has been put ahead of Public Health.

Top post I bet there having this debate in every country around the world, basically the world wasn't prepared.

The WHO has to shoulder blame with thier early slow responses which governments eagly listened too ,was the government slow of course ,its interesting that care home deaths in the early days were far worse in Wales and Scotland .

I remember the opposition criticism of the governments decision to chuck millions at vaccine research and production.

What about calling jail time on those in Germany and France who stated the AstraZeneca vaccine was unsafe and slowing take up and saving deaths.

Personally I take this report with a huge pinch of salt as it represents the opinions of a bunch of politicians who would have done what differently.

Looking through the rear view mirror is easy acting without the benefit of hindsight is a lot harder. In hindsight were mistakes made, absolutely, and yes if things had been done differently or more importantly faster then almost certainly there would have been fewer infections and fewer deaths, but to put an arbitrary figure like 20,000 on it is nothing more than political masturbation. I'm sure this Parliamentary Committee are proud of this report but where is the proof on that 20,000 fewer deaths claims. Don't hold your breath for the answer.

This country deserves a Full Independent Enquiry into how this was handled and I'm sure it will make stark reading of that I have no doubt.

For me it's easy to blame the man in charge at the time, in this case BJ, but following 10 years of Tory austerity he had to go to war with this virus with what was available. Like testing capacity which was pathetic for a country the size of the UK when all this started. Today we have one of the biggest testing capacity in the world. In fact only 2 countries USA and India has done more. As of yesterday the UK has done more tests than France, Germany and Spain combined not bad from a standing start.

The devolved administrations also cannot escape scrutiny in respect of Public Enquiry. If BJ and his Government made a mess of England what about Drakeford and his looney left cronies in Wales. Just compare the deaths in Wales against England per 100,000 population, Wales 188.5 England 213.2 how does that work when England has a population just under 18 times larger. In terms of death where covid is mentioned on the death certificate Wales has 261.5 per 100,000 England despite a population 18 times bigger is 243.7.

In terms of "Worst Ever Public Health Response" both Drakeford and Sturgeon in Scotland have just as many questions to answer as BJ. For me this has been a massive failure of our political system where cheap grubby politics has been put ahead of Public Health.

Both Scotish & welsh gvmnts persistently avoided doing things same as uk gvmnt just because it was done by tory politicians what was required was joined up responses that never happened which I'm sure contributed to more infections.

The WHO has to shoulder blame with thier early slow responses which governments eagly listened too ,was the government slow of course ,its interesting that care home deaths in the early days were far worse in Wales and Scotland .

I remember the opposition criticism of the governments decision to chuck millions at vaccine research and production.

What about calling jail time on those in Germany and France who stated the AstraZeneca vaccine was unsafe and slowing take up and saving deaths.

And WHO didn't help :

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal of 5 April 2020 claimed that the World Health Organization (WHO) had disclosed information intended to minimise the risk of COVID-19 becoming an epidemic, with the explicit purpose of covering up China's failure to handle the crisis.

Chinese laboratories had sequenced the coronavirus genome at the end of December 2019, but the authorities censored the information.

The WHO waited until 30 January to declare a public health emergency of international concern, and the COVID-19 epidemic was not declared a pandemic until 11 March.

A study by the University of Southampton entitled ‘Effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions for containing the COVID-19 outbreak in China’, financed by the Horizon 2020 programme, showed that if the country had reacted one, two or three weeks earlier, the number of cases could have been 66%, 86% or 95% less, which would have considerably reduced the spread of the virus and the number of victims.

In view of the WHO’s evident negligence, does the Commission, given its competence in matters of public health (Article 168 TFEU), intend to terminate its cooperation with this poorly managed organisation?

by New Day Rising » Tue Oct 12, 2021 4:43 pm

New Day Rising wrote:

The WHO waited until 30 January to declare a public health emergency of international concern, and the COVID-19 epidemic was not declared a pandemic until 11 March.

WHO site info:

On 31 December 2019, WHO was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan City, China. A novel coronavirus was identified as the cause by Chinese authorities on 7 January 2020 and was temporarily named “2019-nCoV”.

On 30 January 2020, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), WHO's highest level of alarm. At that time there were 98 cases and no deaths in 18 countries outside China.

On 11 March 2020, the rapid increase in the number of cases outside China led the WHO Director-General to announce that the outbreak could be characterized as a pandemic. By then more than 118 000 cases had been reported in 114 countries, and 4291 deaths had been recorded.

Given that a pandemic is defined as an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals, it would appear that the WHO declared it to be a pandemic at pretty much as early as they could.

Postby Sven » Tue Oct 12, 2021 9:29 am

This is a pretty damning report and says much about our current Prime Minister and his Cabinet

It's not about the vaccine, it's about how the Covid-19 situation was handled and flew in the face of available evidence even at that easy time

Any thoughts of Boris being an 'amiable and jocular' character should now be replaced with one word; inept

He (as the Oi/c) has made it worse yet still claims to have had his finger on the pulse. Maybe, but sadly it appears not to have been a beating one...!

Spot on, but I still think that one of his biggest gaffs was not having a lockdown across the South East for the Christmas period, when they knew that the Kent Variant was far more infectious and dangerous. And Boris said " why should we try to contain it in the South East - lets spread it right across the country, and subsequently the world."

Just to be clear, Boris didn't actually say it, though his lack of action effectively did.

Talking of hindsight, Captain has been notably quiet today.. almost as if the opposition had supported the Government at the time.

Talking of hindsight, Captain has been notably quiet today.. almost as if the opposition had supported the Government at the time.

This government has a huge majority, wouldn't have mattered anyway. This prime minister doesn't listen to his own cabinet, parliament, advisors or the public. Why do you try and share the blame onto a very weak opposition who wouldn't have made any difference anyway ?

The time for the opposition to be vocal will be once we are over the worst of this pandemic. Otherwise they'll just be criticised for undermining the messages being given out to the public.

That said, I still hope that the current Labour leader will walk away and leave the field open for Andy Burnham. That would make the next election very interesting !!

Well, they all supported the Govt position at the time. Its being spun as if some other magic position was available to take.

Agree with that, Burnham is decent, but may not want the hassle. The Party is chock full of people who are happy to take a position that gets them nowhere near Downing St.

Seems 1983 and 2019 are forgotten already, or accepted.

Well, they all supported the Govt position at the time. Its being spun as if some other magic position was available to take.

Agree with that, Burnham is decent, but may not want the hassle. The Party is chock full of people who are happy to take a position that gets them nowhere near Downing St.

Seems 1983 and 2019 are forgotten already, or accepted.

I think at the time, they had to be seen as part of a providing support albeit through gritted teeth and where they had no choice. They go on about shutting the borders like Australia did. But during those first few months they were screaming at the government for not repatriating quickly enough. Are they now saying we should have left our citizens stranded abroad like the Aussies did.

Locking down earlier. With hindsight we probably should have. But 2 weeks before total lockdown we had a cumulative total of 3 deaths., a week before a cumulative total of 60 deaths. If you set that as your criteria we'll be in lockdown every winter. China who'd be in the pandemic the longest had giving the size of the country a relatively modest death total. It was inconceivable that within a few months, Wales would actually have more deaths than China. It still is to be honest.

If it was all so easy to deal with in the spring of 2020 then the world wouldn't still be in the midst of this 18 months later when our knowledge of the disease.is significantly greater. But the media give us the narrative they want. I'm no fan of Trump, but he was slated for his pandemic performance. Biden on the other hand is getting away without criticism even though by the end of this year more Americans will have died under his watch than did under Trump and despite his access to the vaccines.

by epping blue » Wed Oct 13, 2021 9:13 am

rumpo kid wrote:
Well, they all supported the Govt position at the time. Its being spun as if some other magic position was available to take.

Agree with that, Burnham is decent, but may not want the hassle. The Party is chock full of people who are happy to take a position that gets them nowhere near Downing St.

Seems 1983 and 2019 are forgotten already, or accepted.



I think at the time, they had to be seen as part of a providing support albeit through gritted teeth and where they had no choice. They go on about shutting the borders like Australia did. But during those first few months they were screaming at the government for not repatriating quickly enough. Are they now saying we should have left our citizens stranded abroad like the Aussies did.

Locking down earlier. With hindsight we probably should have. But 2 weeks before total lockdown we had a cumulative total of 3 deaths., a week before a cumulative total of 60 deaths. If you set that as your criteria we'll be in lockdown every winter. China who'd be in the pandemic the longest had giving the size of the country a relatively modest death total. It was inconceivable that within a few months, Wales would actually have more deaths than China. It still is to be honest.

If it was all so easy to deal with in the spring of 2020 then the world wouldn't still be in the midst of this 18 months later when our knowledge of the disease.is significantly greater. But the media give us the narrative they want. I'm no fan of Trump, but he was slated for his pandemic performance. Biden on the other hand is getting away without criticism even though by the end of this year more Americans will have died under his watch than did under Trump and despite his access to the vaccines.

1 We didn't need to leave anyone stranded abroad, but that is no excuse for allowing them in without running any tests and no period of quarantine - we just let them get in and onto the underground or trains etc. which did cause it to spread;

2 There is no way of verifying any figures from China as the Chinese government control all the information issued, so it's not really a worthwhile comparison;

3 Trump is probably the main reason for the problems in the US as his denial of the problem and his inaction would have allowed for the massive spread of the virus which Biden then inherited. He also indoctrinated a lot of his followers to totally ignore all the medical advice they were being given.

Just to be clear, I'm no fan of Biden and certainly not of Trump.