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by BlackVanilla
1852 days ago
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I think the most valuable thing we can glean from this is the failure of systems. The focus by the BBC has been on transient matters. What will happen to Johnson and Hancock for instance? I think the focus on this is misplaced. If 'lessons are to be learnt', we must focus on systems and their failures too. Cummings mentioned the the example of PPE logistics. In February/March 2020, he asked what the plan was and an offical replied something along the lines of, "we should get the PPE shipped in a few weeks". Cummings said he was surprised that PPE was being shipped, rather than flown. PPE procurement had always been shipped, so the offical was simply following protocol even if it meant causing more deaths. Another issue he identified was the scattering of authority. It was not clear who was in charge of pandemic planning. Ministers decided policy, but could not hire and fire civil servants or move people who could effectively solve these sorts of issues to where they would be most useful. He said if Bill Gates were put in charge on 1 March, he would find it a nightmare. Obviously, this is one person's evidence and we should wait until hearing from more people before forming assigning blame. However, if we are to respond to the next big crisis better, we should look at our systems and not solely focus on the transitory state of politics. |
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Is there a failure of systems? Government bureaucracies are huge with a lot of institutional inertia. They will never be able to move on a dime. And this was a situation where in a matter of weeks or even days, we had to realign not only the entire government bureaucracy but also the rest of the economy. Come on ... we have to give ourselves a little break.
You cited a screw up with PPE logistics. OK. Sure. But there was a shortage of PPE equipment in _every_ country in the world. And we got through it in a matter of weeks. Is that really that bad? I understand you can pick apart individual choices but in the big picture, it's not clear that things would have been different if PPE shortage was curtailed a tiny bit quicker. And yes, it would have been nice to be prepared for something like this, but then again, there are lots of things that can go wrong. Are we really prepared, for example, for a major solar event? And we know it's only a matter of time before that hits.