Dithering, Incompetence, Lies and Austerity: How the UK Government Failed to Tackle COVID-19: Part 1
Why the Government’s Actions Matter
Society becomes more wholesome, more serene, and spiritually healthier, if it knows that its citizens have at the back of their consciousness the knowledge that not only themselves, but all their fellows, have access, when ill, to the best that medical skill can provide. But private charity and endowment, although inescapably essential at one time, cannot meet the cost of all this. If the job is to be done, the state must accept financial responsibility.
In Place of Fear by Nye Bevan
The NHS is one of the greatest ideas human beings have ever had. It was created with the guiding principles that the place in which you happen to live, the name you have and the money in your pocket should not determine your access to high quality healthcare. Why this is vital to society collectively and each person in it individually should perhaps be obvious, but given the last ten years of Government evidently requires repeating.
Even if I am cautious and sensible in my actions, my health may be risked by the people around me. If my neighbour is ill, she may pass that illness to me and to my loved ones. If she is inoculated, then she is safer and I am safer. By taking care of my neighbours, they are healthier and I am healthier. This, in turn, makes us more capable of providing for ourselves, for our families, and for those who are unable, for whatever reason, to provide for themselves. The floor for all of us is raised.
The transmissibility of infectious diseases means that our behaviour as a group — as a country, as a world-spanning species — may sometimes be the greatest factor in its spread, may be even more important than medical intervention. Our neighbours can behave in ways that directly endanger us, and so, collectively, we may attempt to enforce good practice to manage and eradicate disease. Poor irrigation in farms that produce both livestock and spinach can spread E. coli. Feeding cows meal made from cattle infected with BSE and sheep infected with scrapie can cause CJD outbreaks. Thus we adopt food regulations at home and trade agreements with foreign countries to prevent bad practices, to prevent the spread of disease via our food chain.
Public health is fundamental to why we have a concept of society. One of the reasons we imbue an organisation with a monopoly of power — that we call government — is because we understand that communities may more effectively fight illness than can individuals. When a natural disaster strikes, governments are not responsible for the fact of that disaster. But we are not dogs, which can only bark in fear at thunder storms. That is not the baseline against which human competence should be measured. We do not and should not stand alone when disaster looms.
Governments bear a great and terrible responsibility for our collective response to natural calamity. It is part of the job. Through medical science governments can develop strategies to reduce the impact of disease, strategies which may then be adapted to the other rights and responsibilities human beings have. When governments fail to do this people may, and very often do, die as a result. Governments are accountable for those additional, avoidable, unnecessary deaths.
The world has seen a series of deadly pandemics over the past couple of decades. Since the outbreaks of SARS, swine flu and bird flu the medical experts of nations around the world have gained valuable knowledge and developed procedures to respond accordingly. The UK is blessed with some of the finest scientific minds in disciplines related to the outbreak and management of disease. The UK has one of the most accessible healthcare systems the world has ever seen. The UK had a well-tested, well-drilled plan.
When COVID-19, a novel coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China, began infecting people on a wide scale, the UK also had the horrible benefit of witnessing the pattern of the outbreak throughout the world, most distressingly, at the time, in Italy. For such a highly infectious disease its mortality rate appeared shockingly high. Severe cases were horrifyingly common, requiring intensive care in a hospital. Even ‘mild’ cases could result in lasting lung damage and complications.
The Global Health Security Index rated the UK as one of the most prepared countries in the world for a global pandemic. The UK should have been ready. As COVID-19 kills thousands of people in countries of supposedly high preparedness, as the UK’s death rate has escalated even more dramatically than Italy, this international ranking looks like a sickening joke. What went so wrong?
This is part 1 of a series.
Part 2, The Outbreak in China, Onwards is here.
Part 3, The Johnson Government, or Rabbits in the Headlights is here.
Part 4, Government Timidity and Opacity Kills is here.
