The Covid Inquiry
- Thread starter brogdale
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brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
That was, partly, what peaked my interest in whether or not she'd appear; she's so useless she might actually blab something she's not meant to. Also interested as my FiL was in a care home through the debacle and she's my parent's MP.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Hancock not wrong that many of the right questions werent asked and the right planning not done because the wrong doctrine was being followed (shit plan A, let a pandemic happen and then just deal with the consequences like mortuary capacity).
Exercise Nimbus, a Feb 2020 ministerial level planning exercise based on the reasonable worst case scenario for this particular pandemic, highlighted that. It was all about body bags and dodgy triage, and the likes of the Home Office considering the possibility of social unrest and an interest in 'stickers'.
Here is a little bit of that Nimbus stuff which was put up on screen weeks ago and that I didnt cover at the time:
When I go on about the longstanding tradition of cold calculations in this country, this is the sort of thing I'm on about, these were the priorities, this was how the situation was originally going to be managed.
Exercise Nimbus, a Feb 2020 ministerial level planning exercise based on the reasonable worst case scenario for this particular pandemic, highlighted that. It was all about body bags and dodgy triage, and the likes of the Home Office considering the possibility of social unrest and an interest in 'stickers'.
Here is a little bit of that Nimbus stuff which was put up on screen weeks ago and that I didnt cover at the time:
When I go on about the longstanding tradition of cold calculations in this country, this is the sort of thing I'm on about, these were the priorities, this was how the situation was originally going to be managed.
Apparently she was the catalyst for Cummings banning Govt ministers appearing on GMB for a year or something. I can just picture him punching the wall every time it was her turn.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Hancock didnt routinely receive all the SAGE minutes during a crucial early period.
With the benefit of hindsight, he thinks Feb 28th was a key moment where they had enough info and should have decided to act, and should have locked down on 2nd March, 6 doubling times earlier, which would have led to fewer than 10% of the first wave deaths we actually ended up with.
With the benefit of hindsight, he thinks Feb 28th was a key moment where they had enough info and should have decided to act, and should have locked down on 2nd March, 6 doubling times earlier, which would have led to fewer than 10% of the first wave deaths we actually ended up with.
elbows
Well-Known Member
A fair chunk of time in this module has been taken up with issues of whether herd immunity was part of the original plan. Some witnesses were more honest than others about the original plan. Others sought to pretend that the original plan never involved that and never went in the bin, that the only substantial u-turn in mid March was just a question of timing of measures, and fiddling with their strength a bit. Whitty and Vallance were some of those who were a bit slippery about this, acknowledging some aspects of reality but not others during their verbal evidence.
But this cabinet office document from around March 12th extract that appeared on the screen today makes it perfectly clear that internally they were indeed using the herd immunity goal as part of the original plan, and the extent to which delaying stuff and not going 'too early' was part of that original plan (a plan that was dead within a day or two).
(GCSA = government chief scientific advisor = Vallance)
This is not surprising really because by this stage they had resorted to desperately explaining this sort of logic to the wider public too, in press conferences and in media appearances. But in the inquiry some try to say that mentioning herd immunity then was just a comms mistake.
But this cabinet office document from around March 12th extract that appeared on the screen today makes it perfectly clear that internally they were indeed using the herd immunity goal as part of the original plan, and the extent to which delaying stuff and not going 'too early' was part of that original plan (a plan that was dead within a day or two).
(GCSA = government chief scientific advisor = Vallance)
This is not surprising really because by this stage they had resorted to desperately explaining this sort of logic to the wider public too, in press conferences and in media appearances. But in the inquiry some try to say that mentioning herd immunity then was just a comms mistake.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
What a strange post.
The term witch hunt would presuppose that the independent inquiry team tasked by the Government to undertake this public inquiry are really operating politically to expose, 'investigate' and ostracise members of that same Government based somehow on their beliefs.
The reality appears to be that exposing what went wrong requires that the incompetent, lying, venal psychopaths in charge are questioned. Of course, they're unlikely to be held to account for the thousands of unnecessary deaths they are responsible for.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Mr Retro has always talked shit about the pandemic on this forum. They never understood the seriousness of the pandemic and express deadly contrarian views. Since the inquiry deals with reality and not the grudges of clueless shitheads, they tend to be unhappy with the inquiry. Their sort of inquiry would invent evidence to prove the whole thing was an overreaction or a dastardly plot. Fuck Mr Retro and others with similar views.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Here is my brief, money-saving witchhunt inquiry into Mr Retros role in the pandemic.
Talked absolute bollocks as the second wave grew. Tried to piss on the figures and projections of what would happen. Climaxing in the following post where in September 2020 they said they would come back about three weeks later to see if the deaths were rising in a way that was on track with the projections. What happened next in the real world proved the warnings were true, the projections were broadly accurate and that it was Mr Retro who was clueless. But as they did not hold public office they had the luxury of not actually returning three weeks later to admit they got it all wrong. Instead they fell completely silent till June 2021, avoiding the second wave of death entirely. By June 2021 vaccines meant that UK policy was more to their liking, ie far less mandatory rules about behaviour, and Mr Retro was able to post again without shame, celebrate the new reality and move on to talking shit about masks etc.
Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
Talked absolute bollocks as the second wave grew. Tried to piss on the figures and projections of what would happen. Climaxing in the following post where in September 2020 they said they would come back about three weeks later to see if the deaths were rising in a way that was on track with the projections. What happened next in the real world proved the warnings were true, the projections were broadly accurate and that it was Mr Retro who was clueless. But as they did not hold public office they had the luxury of not actually returning three weeks later to admit they got it all wrong. Instead they fell completely silent till June 2021, avoiding the second wave of death entirely. By June 2021 vaccines meant that UK policy was more to their liking, ie far less mandatory rules about behaviour, and Mr Retro was able to post again without shame, celebrate the new reality and move on to talking shit about masks etc.
Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
teuchter
je suis teuchter
I don't think I understand exactly why this "herd immunity" thing needs to be such a big issue.
Is it not the case that herd immunity inevitably has to be, to some extent, part of the plan? The only plan that would not involve herd immunity at all would be a zero covid one, something that most people agree just wasn't ever going to work in the UK.
In March 2020 no one knew what the vaccine prospects were - how long it would take to make one and how effective it would be. It can be easy to look at things with hindsight as if things could be planned at that point with knowledge about what the vaccine picture was gong to look like.
I don't think it was ever a binary yes/no to herd immunity being part of the plan. The "flattening the curve" approach makes sense when you have no idea when vaccination might be possible - unless you are going to impose quite drastic measures for an undetermined period of time.
None of this is to say that taking action earlier would not have made a big difference.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Lets see how brief I can make this explaination, given that I struggle to keep my posts short, I'll try:
'Herd immunity' became shorthand for the standard, traditional UK pandemic plan where you only try to shave off the very peak rather than massively suppress a wave. It became shorthand for this because in the final few days of this original plans survival, several prominent figures resorted to using the concept in a final doomed attempt to save that original plan in terms of winning the 'public debate', winning over a skeptical media and public who were asking why we werent doing what other countries were doing in terms of strength and timing of measures.
The potential for vaccines to exist and the timing of their availability is only one factor that determines whether a government can hope to stick to a plan that involves exiting the acute pandemic phase of restrictions by building population immunity by letting huge numbers of infections happen, whether that approach still 'makes sense'. Other factors include the ones that did indeed cause the original plan to go in the bin: whether people will actually put up with the amount of death involved, and whether the number of hospitalisations that policy would result in could possibly be coped with by health systems. Onvce the penny dropped in central government and elsewhere that the numbers made this approach impossible, the plan went in the bin and we had lockdowns etc instead. Nothing changed on the vaccine side of that equation at the time, it was these other factors that left then with no choice but to ditch the original plan.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Other reasons it matters are that politicians and others dont want to admit they are going to tolerate a certain amount of death, and we fail to have a sensible public debate about exactly what amount of death would be agreed to be tolerable.
So we get language claiming that even the original 'shave off the top' mitigation approach was designed to 'minimise deaths', and this is just not true and is a deliberate muddying of the waters. If you are trying to build population immunity by allowing many infections to happen, then you are not trying to minimise deaths. You are just trying to shave off the top of some death peaks. Its happened again in this inquiry module, mostly by those who want to claim we didnt change plan completely in mid March, we just changed the timing.
So we get language claiming that even the original 'shave off the top' mitigation approach was designed to 'minimise deaths', and this is just not true and is a deliberate muddying of the waters. If you are trying to build population immunity by allowing many infections to happen, then you are not trying to minimise deaths. You are just trying to shave off the top of some death peaks. Its happened again in this inquiry module, mostly by those who want to claim we didnt change plan completely in mid March, we just changed the timing.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Herd immunity involves a threshold. Unless you hit that threshold, which might be 75-80% of the population, you dont get herd immunity. Instead as more people get infected over time, you get a gradual reduction in the pool of susceptible individuals. The number of susceptible individuals in the population is one of the key variables that epidemiological models use, it makes a difference to the size of the wave projection curves such models generate. But this isnt the same as herd immunity, which doesnt kick in unless enough of the population are immune that others are protected by virtue of the virus struggling to find populations to transmit in on a scale that enables exponential growth. A threshold for herd immunity also relies on other factors such as how good the immunity is, how long it lasts, whether it stops infection and transmission.
Although the term herd immunity was sloppily used in a broader way, it shouldnt really be unless the policies etc actually involve trying to hit that final threshold. The much slower increase in the proportion of non-susceptible people that countries saw as a result of preventing many but not all infections shouldnt really be labelled as herd immunity. Indeed, when other factors such as strength and length of immunity are factored in, even after many millions of infections and huge vaccination programmes, the real version of herd immunity arguably still doesnt fully apply to this virus. Those who are still vulnerable to death from this virus are not being fully protected by the amount of immunity in the population, so deaths are ongoing. Obviously the scale of the problem has still changed a lot, which is why we dont have restrictions any more, but the pure version of herd immunity was never reached.
Since the original plan was very much the standard UK pandemic plan, we can look at it from the angle of other pandemics (usually flu pandemics) too. In these contexts the population immunity picture has always been part of the rationale for letting the pandemic virus spread. An immune naive-population is what makes a virus have pandemic potential in the first place. Epidemiologists worst nightmares always involve the susceptible population pool being huge, and one way or another that pool will indeed decrease over time and we dont get to exit the acute phase of the pandemic till that happens. With flu the assumptions about vaccines becoming available within a reasonable timeframe are stronger. But traditionally there was also the assumption that the numbers game, in terms of hospitalisations and deaths and public acceptance of the situation, would mean the government could afford to let a big chunk of the population catch the disease over a series of waves. In the case of cthe covid pandemic, neither the virus, the public attitudes or the health system capacity enabled this approach to be sustainable. If they had stuck to the original plan for longer, they would still have been forced to switch to the suppression plan at some stage.
Hopefully this series of posts demonstrates that I am not simply disagreeing with everything you said, and the picture is messy with various degrees of success and failure, and other factors and ways to measure success.
As for zero covid, unless the whole world had managed an elimination strategy, there was no reasonable prospect of it being a permanent solution, and the few countries that went for a zero covid approach did so to play for time. The successes of their approach show up in both their health and economic data, and how long and drastic their lockdown periods actually were compared to ours. But they still needed an eventual exit strategy, one that was enabled by vaccines.
In many respects the difference between the policy we ended up having to go for had some key similarities to the situation the zero covid countries faced, just with more death in the meantime. Every country ended up in a situation where the fullest version of 'let it rip' was impossible, even if you imposed no formal measures the population changed their behaviour to some extent. Everyone was left needing an exit strategy that involved some combination of vaccines and some proportion of the population catch the virus at some point, with the biggest differences involving various sorts of timing. At certain stages of the first 18 months or so, what mattered most was how timely countries were in trying to bring R below 1, not whether they were then aiming to get case rates all the way down to zero or not.
elbows
Well-Known Member
One final way to answer you post is to think of future pandemics.
Do I believe that the traditional UK pandemic plan is permanently dead as a result of the covid pandemic? No. At the very least future governments will be keener to be seen to be doing more, in order to maintain public confidence in the strategy. But the question of how much death is tolerable has still not been answered by the covid pandemic, apart from it being more obvious how much is considered to be 'way too much by a huge amount'. But if the properties of the virus are considered to be compatible with the health service capacity, and economic judgements are still made in the usual way, some slightly modified version of the original plan may still be what our government, and many others, go for. If that numbers game doesnt look like it will work, and pharmaceutical options arent available quickly, then we will be better prepared to activate alternative plans that have more in common with what we ended up having to do in the covid pandemic, but this country wont rush to do that because the downsides are obvious.
The only things that would change my view on that would be if we actually had a much better debate about acceptable levels of death, or if our entire approach to health and health service funding radically changed in the intervening years, or if the levels of global interconnectivity and approach to borders radically changed, or if medical innovations gave us some brilliant new weapons that were more likely to be available from the early pandemic stages onwards.
Do I believe that the traditional UK pandemic plan is permanently dead as a result of the covid pandemic? No. At the very least future governments will be keener to be seen to be doing more, in order to maintain public confidence in the strategy. But the question of how much death is tolerable has still not been answered by the covid pandemic, apart from it being more obvious how much is considered to be 'way too much by a huge amount'. But if the properties of the virus are considered to be compatible with the health service capacity, and economic judgements are still made in the usual way, some slightly modified version of the original plan may still be what our government, and many others, go for. If that numbers game doesnt look like it will work, and pharmaceutical options arent available quickly, then we will be better prepared to activate alternative plans that have more in common with what we ended up having to do in the covid pandemic, but this country wont rush to do that because the downsides are obvious.
The only things that would change my view on that would be if we actually had a much better debate about acceptable levels of death, or if our entire approach to health and health service funding radically changed in the intervening years, or if the levels of global interconnectivity and approach to borders radically changed, or if medical innovations gave us some brilliant new weapons that were more likely to be available from the early pandemic stages onwards.
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elbows
Well-Known Member
Oh one more alternative answer that is actually short:
The herd immunity controversy was shorthand for this countries failure to realise a few weeks sooner than it did that the original approach was doomed and that we were weeks further ahead in the first wave than realised. If the original plan had gone in the bin by late Feb or the early days of March, or perhaps even only 3-7 days earlier than it did, things wouldnt have been framed in that way. It would still have been a technical consideration that influenced the original advice from SAGE and the modelling groups, but it wouldnt have become a hot potato in public.
The herd immunity controversy was shorthand for this countries failure to realise a few weeks sooner than it did that the original approach was doomed and that we were weeks further ahead in the first wave than realised. If the original plan had gone in the bin by late Feb or the early days of March, or perhaps even only 3-7 days earlier than it did, things wouldnt have been framed in that way. It would still have been a technical consideration that influenced the original advice from SAGE and the modelling groups, but it wouldnt have become a hot potato in public.
elbows
Well-Known Member
There have been plenty of good questions to Hancock today but I dont think there have been many illuminating answers so I havent got much to add to the thread now.
I did post a few things in the wrong thread yesterday by mistake, will probably put them here at some point.
I did post a few things in the wrong thread yesterday by mistake, will probably put them here at some point.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Since you asked that her name has come up 3 or 4 times in questions to Hancock. But I didnt notice any damning evidence in this context, the bits I can remember were mostly positive stuff, and I havent had a chance to pull out the relevant parts of the transcript or evidence on the screen, apart from this very last one from a few minutes ago:
elbows
Well-Known Member
One of the only new things I learnt today is that Hancocks mother still attends a long covid clinic, so he keeps going on about how long covid has affected him personally.
He still excuses the fact that in terms of official department & government communications to the public, they hardly ever mentioned long covid, wants to avoid any responsibility for that failing, and uses the above to go on about how seriously he personally took long covid.
He still excuses the fact that in terms of official department & government communications to the public, they hardly ever mentioned long covid, wants to avoid any responsibility for that failing, and uses the above to go on about how seriously he personally took long covid.
elbows
Well-Known Member
An example of media reporting of evidence that suggested Sunak would rather close secondary schools than shops.
www.shropshirestar.com
Sunak would have put ‘enormous pressure’ on Johnson – Covid inquiry
Former health secretary Matt Hancock is giving evidence for a second day.
elbows
Well-Known Member
So part of the Johnson approach is to get 'those around him' to let it be known in advance to the likes of Chris Mason and no doubt others what approach he will take to giving evidence.
Boris Johnson to apologise to Covid Inquiry but say he got big calls right
But the former PM will argue robustly his government got many big pandemic calls right.
www.bbc.co.uk
elbows
Well-Known Member
Triggle has written the BBCs 8 questions for Johnson piece.
Its not that awful, and even points out that there were more deaths in the winter wave.
Theres still some flaws with it, It doesnt vover everything and isnt totally perfect framing. The bit that plays most obviously to the typical Triggle shit is the question of whether voluntary measures would have been enough in the first wave, ie whether a formal lockdown could have been avoided. For example he says 'Some at the inquiry have wondered whether those earlier, less restrictive measures were enough.' but actually it was the inquiries lead counsel that repeatedly asked this question, and witnesses invariably gave the same response, that by this stage of the first wave there was no time left to give the initial measures more time to see how well they worked, simply too much lag between behaviour and getting hospital data. And although some behaviour was changing, there were still behaviours that worried them, especially crowded shops and people not having a complete sense of quite how serious things were.
It is an interesting question but this article doesnt explicitly set out the ways we could have found out:
If we had acted earlier then there would actually have been enough time to judge whether the initial measures were enough.
We might expect that if this had happened, at the very least the tone and messaging would have needed to be serious and consistent, in order to get peole to voluntarily comply to the extent necessary. And even without full lockdown, its likely that problem areas would have arisen that would have required further work and changes to behaviour in just a few short weeks. Chances of success would also have been greater if we'd done more to limit the initial seeding of the disease and keep prevalence down before this period began.
What the inquiry itself failed to point out is that the first wave wasnt the only opportunity to ask that big question and maybe get a useful answer. Those that really cared about avoiding lockdowns could have taken an approach that let us find out whether voluntary stuff would be enough when the second wave loomed. Instead, they resisted doing the right things at the right time and left us in a similar position to mid-March, left us without sufficient time to judge non-mandatory measures before there was no time left to resist pulling the strongest levers without leaving things too late to stop NHS collapse.
Theres lots of other factors too, I wont try to list them all. eg if we had actually done test & trace properly and kept prevalence down before the autumn-winter growth got too large for such systems to possibly cope with. Or if we had actually supported more people to be able to do the right thing, eg self-isolation payments done properly and sooner.
I'm not sure we could have tested this stuff properly for the Kent/alpha wave, because increased transmissibility meant that even if something short of lockdown had been enough for the original variant, there wouldnt be confidence that it would have been enough to get R below 1 in the alpha wave. But then we could also wonder whether we'd have ended up with the alpha variant if we'd kept prevalence down in the earlier period. I dont think the inquiry has asked that question, and even if they had any answer would be at best a guess, albeit one that could incorporate the realities of high prevalence giving the virus far more opportunities to mutate.
Its not that awful, and even points out that there were more deaths in the winter wave.
Covid inquiry: Eight uncomfortable questions facing Boris Johnson
With the former PM appearing at the inquiry, we take a look at what he may be expected to answer.
www.bbc.co.uk
Theres still some flaws with it, It doesnt vover everything and isnt totally perfect framing. The bit that plays most obviously to the typical Triggle shit is the question of whether voluntary measures would have been enough in the first wave, ie whether a formal lockdown could have been avoided. For example he says 'Some at the inquiry have wondered whether those earlier, less restrictive measures were enough.' but actually it was the inquiries lead counsel that repeatedly asked this question, and witnesses invariably gave the same response, that by this stage of the first wave there was no time left to give the initial measures more time to see how well they worked, simply too much lag between behaviour and getting hospital data. And although some behaviour was changing, there were still behaviours that worried them, especially crowded shops and people not having a complete sense of quite how serious things were.
It is an interesting question but this article doesnt explicitly set out the ways we could have found out:
If we had acted earlier then there would actually have been enough time to judge whether the initial measures were enough.
We might expect that if this had happened, at the very least the tone and messaging would have needed to be serious and consistent, in order to get peole to voluntarily comply to the extent necessary. And even without full lockdown, its likely that problem areas would have arisen that would have required further work and changes to behaviour in just a few short weeks. Chances of success would also have been greater if we'd done more to limit the initial seeding of the disease and keep prevalence down before this period began.
What the inquiry itself failed to point out is that the first wave wasnt the only opportunity to ask that big question and maybe get a useful answer. Those that really cared about avoiding lockdowns could have taken an approach that let us find out whether voluntary stuff would be enough when the second wave loomed. Instead, they resisted doing the right things at the right time and left us in a similar position to mid-March, left us without sufficient time to judge non-mandatory measures before there was no time left to resist pulling the strongest levers without leaving things too late to stop NHS collapse.
Theres lots of other factors too, I wont try to list them all. eg if we had actually done test & trace properly and kept prevalence down before the autumn-winter growth got too large for such systems to possibly cope with. Or if we had actually supported more people to be able to do the right thing, eg self-isolation payments done properly and sooner.
I'm not sure we could have tested this stuff properly for the Kent/alpha wave, because increased transmissibility meant that even if something short of lockdown had been enough for the original variant, there wouldnt be confidence that it would have been enough to get R below 1 in the alpha wave. But then we could also wonder whether we'd have ended up with the alpha variant if we'd kept prevalence down in the earlier period. I dont think the inquiry has asked that question, and even if they had any answer would be at best a guess, albeit one that could incorporate the realities of high prevalence giving the virus far more opportunities to mutate.
Silas Loom
Advanced. Forthright. Signifficant.
The plan to send commandos to steal vaccines from the Netherlands is pretty special, even for Johnson.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
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