[makomk]

Here's how this would go. The UK government did have epidemic plans, including a stockpile of PPE. Here's how the BBC described that stockpile: "Coronavirus: UK failed to stockpile crucial PPE". Of the four items that it complains were missing from the stockpile - gowns, visors, swabs and body bags - two (gowns and swabs) were ones that the government didn't expect to need for the epidemics it was planning for, the visors are expensive and bulky to store but so easy to manufacture hobbyists with 3D printers can literally do it at home, and I'm not even sure what's going on with body bags because there was famously a huge Brexit stockpile of those. Anyway, my overall point is that governments and corporations don't get credit for planning, they get blamed for the ways in which their plans don't predict the future exactly.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Perhaps you missed the C4 doco which showed that stockpiles of PPE of all kinds were run down and what was left was often out of date.

Or the conclusions of the government's own Exercise Cygnus in 2016 which stated clearly that this should never be allowed to happen because the consequences would be beyond horrific.