From Outbreak to Epidemic: How the UK Government was too Slow to Act

Chris Whittey and Patrick Vallance. Two men who really understand the government strategy. Two smart and educated men. Two men free from the restraints and cloudiness of political double-think. And so it makes sense to listen to them. Day after day, forget the political blabble and really pay attention to what they have to say because nobody in this country is more informed or better understands the crisis this country is facing.

It therefore makes sense to use the remarks of these two men to determine just how the UK has seen the threat proposed by the coronavirus at every step along the way.

We started with talk of '60-70%' for herd immunity. This was mis-represented by much of the media as the aim of the government. To the contrary, it was never mentioned in their online action plan and this herd immunity is merely meant as a symptom of flattening the curve. We've all heard about flattening the curve; the trouble is government wasn't aiming for a flat enough curve. Betting dangerously on uncertainties such as the reappearence of the disease year-after-year, the ability to even build meaningful immunity within an individual and how able the virus is to mutate we ended up with a risky plan that failed to realise that we were facing a different disease in an entirely different country to the one we witnessed from 5,000 miles.

Firstly, you may have seen SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) described as 36 or 8 or 4 or 3 different viruses by different outlets. The true number is a debate for virologists (and to some extent linguists) but ultimately it doesn't matter. All that matters is that the virus that filled Italy's morgues over the past few weeks is a notably more contagious and deadly virus than was faced in Wuhan.

Secondly, no matter how many libertarians cry in Parliament and no matter how many videos are circulated of police overextending their newfound power it is almost impossible to comprehend just how draconian the measures implemented in China were. Digging up roads, using millions of facial recognition cameras and filling the streets with armed police accompanied with such an unrecognisable cauldron of fear of the CCP make the mask-wearing citizens of China so much safer from the virus than we ever could be.

Overwhelmingly, these factors both weren't understood and weren't recognised quickly enough by our government. Case by case, the UK was amongst the slowest in Europe to close public events and implement lockdowns and must now bear the awful consequences.

Don't let yourself be dissuaded, it can be said a thousand times but we are not simply at 'a later stage' of the plan - 'doing the right things at the right time' - we have had to completely reverse our strategy as a country and it has and will cost lives.