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The Covid Inquiry

The only stage I've had any sympathy with Johnson today was when it came to the period where the extent of the nightmare started to become clear but when failings in the rest of government (very much including the senior civil servants), bad scientific and medical advice and data, meant an absurd situation. One where he was left looking at these two graphs, with them both showing an absolute shitshow for the NHS. Having to look at these but without anything else yet being proposed, and with the likes of Whitty still fucking going on about the risks of going too early! But of course since Johnson was also shit, he didnt actually take that opportunity to go mad and demand something else be done, some kind of penny dropped in his mind but he didnt do anything about it, it was left to others like Cummings to go mad about that stuff days later.

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Pickman's model said:
He was himself a bed blocker who had had a good innings when the nhs sadly saved him. The doctors and nurses who enabled him to recover must be gnashing their teeth at their missed opportunity for a pillow job which might have saved thousands of lives.
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I was dating a nurse at that time. Apparently the chat amongst them when he went in was why doesn't one of them just stand on his tubes. Sadly he survived. I recall someone earlier in the enquiry saying that things got much more efficient once Raab took over for that period which is astonishing in itself.
 
It's the phrase, albeit from a few hours ago but I'm at work, is 'I should have twigged there was a problem'.
No, I should have twigged that that patch on the wall of my son's bedroom was damp and not 'just dodgy paint'.
Or
I should have twigged that the remarkably cheap lager I bought the other was so cheap because it was non-alcpholic and the 0%s written all over it was not because it was 'diet'.


Johnson was a political leader, surrounded by experts and evidence that said to him that there wad a fairly prolific and deadly virus coming from Asia that could wipe out millions.
It's not even the fact he's incompetent, it's because he's so fucking arrogant about it.
 
As I recall it was the far right conspiraloon headbangers who were mainly going on about herd immunity at the time, as in let the old fuckers die.
 
steveo87 said:
Johnson was a political leader, surrounded by experts and evidence that said to him that there wad a fairly prolific and deadly virus coming from Asia that could wipe out millions.
It's not even the fact he's incompetent, it's because he's so fucking arrogant about it.
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The arrogance of others was also a key part of the first wave story. Theres ample inquiry evidence of all the hideously bad advice he was given early on, the expert failings, the government failings, the atrocious standard UK pandemic plan, the limited ambitions to do anything about a pandemic. Some experts that the government actually listened to started to get a clue by the end of Feb or early March, and then the penny gradually dropped for others, eventually including Johnson. But the higher up you go the longer it took for reality to effectively puncture bubbles of complacency and arrogance. Whitty and Vallance were part of the problem until the point that most at the top realised plan a was doomed. All of these people were still defending the original plan in public right up to Friday 13th March, and not many diverged from that privately until that date or the next day either.

After that date nearly everyone else maintained some sense of pandemic reality. So when it came to those at fault for what happened later, including the very deadly second wave, the blame falls on far fewer shoulders - Johnson, Sunak, those on the right of the Tory party, the right wing media etc that Johnson wanted to listen to.
 
two sheds said:
As I recall it was the far right conspiraloon headbangers who were mainly going on about herd immunity at the time, as in let the old fuckers die.
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No, it went far beyond that. People like Vallance, the governments chief scientific advisor, were also desperately using it in interviews they gave to the media when trying to defend plan A from increasing attacks and growing skepticism. Everyone had noticed what other countries were doing by then, and wanted to know why the UK plan was so different. When it came to Vallance mentioning it to the media, this was mostly at just the point where that plan was about to go in the bin (eg Thursday 12th and Friday 13th March 2020), it was a last ditch attempt to justify the unjustifiable.
 
Wow. He didn't believe in long Covid. The aforementioned nurse I was was going out with would differ with that. I had to look after her every night after work due to the horrors that she was dealing with. And probably still is.
 
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Petcha said:
I recall someone earlier in the enquiry saying that things got much more efficient once Raab took over for that period which is astonishing in itself.
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Systems people could say nice things about Raab because he was predictable and stuck to routine, the system could operate in a orderly way with that sort of person sitting in the role. And he wasnt the Johnson sort of lazy and didnt do shambolic divide and rule in the way Johnson did.

It was also an easier period to deal with because the very big first wave decisions had already been made before that point, the giant u-turn was already out of the way. They could concentrate on certain operational matters and planning the first unlocking by then.
 
teqniq said:
Jeez this clip of which part of I posted above, claiming to not know what a factory reset is:

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'I've given you everything that I THINK YOU NEED!!!!' (BJ's last comment in clip).

He's just trolling us because he knows there'll be no real consequences for himself other than a 'telling off'.
 
Tried to bullshit his way out of the fact Whitty and Vallance werent conculted on Eat Out to Help Out, expresses surprise that they werent told, tries to go on about how much publicity there was about the policy to imply they must have known, but does confirm that his surprise extended back to September 2020 when Whitty made a 'eat out to help the virus' comment in a meeting while looking at Johnson in a pointed way.

Closest he has got to losing his cool so far was when they put a selection of his 'let it rip' and 'let old people die' type comments on the screen. Again he uses the approach of claiming that these werent his actual views, he was just saying that stuff in meetings in order to challenge the consensus in the meeting room and to represent the layperson.

They managed to get him to say that a consequence of the mistake of acting too late would be more lives lost, but he wont concede that he acted too late or too weakly when the second wave was growing in September.
 
The inquiry has been pretty weak when it came to the second wave, they go over it too quickly with most witnesses even though it was more avoidable and more deadly and blame can be attributed far more narrowly. And they've not really turned the heat up on Johnson that much so far, no more than a moderate grilling, barely luke warm at times.
 
Bereaved families legal representatives questioning him now. Picking at his claims that we ended up in the middle of the pack when it came to pandemic excess deaths. Unrest in the public gallery in response to his bluster and denial of the evidence, chair had to ask them to behave.
 
What will out come of this Inquiry but?
No one going to Prison of Death Row sadly.

Boris on this rule.
2 meters 3 meters or even 5 meters rule.
How ridiculous 2 meter rule was.

I had a argument with Bank staff back then because I wasn't standing on a Covid spot on floor!
She didn't like it when said told Mask doesn't work if sitting under you chin.

Wounder if Boris has an earpiece telling him what to say.
 
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Sunak is appearing before the inquiry on Monday and then thats it for witnesses in this module, except that they will have to have a special session to do Simon Case at some point next year.
 
Funny how Allegra 'how to make a party into a business meeting' Stratton never gets brought up in relation to Partygate these days. She was briefing them exactly how to spin things ahead of time. The bitch.
 
Ming said:
Funny how Allegra 'how to make a party into a business meeting' Stratton never gets brought up in relation to Partygate these days. She was briefing them exactly how to spin things ahead of time. The bitch.
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Yes she seems to have gone down the memory hole as far as this inquiry is concerned too.
 
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