ESSENTIAL article on #COVID19 - from the Telegraph!

"The striking thing is how consistently the govt failed, in every single element of the response, everywhere you turn. This is probably the most expensive series of errors in the country's history."

https://www.theage.com.au/business/markets/the-handling-of-covid-19-has-led-to-a-very-british-disaster-20200514-p54ssd.html

Despite crushing financial hardship, Greece has had 165 deaths linked to #coronavirus - 15 deaths/million. The UK has at least 500/million.

The Greek Govt - unlike the British Govt - pulled this off by recognising the danger immediately & acting.

Their lockdown was enforced by roadblocks & document checks. They are now well on their way back to commercial normality. claims by both Downing St & Public Health England that they "got it right" cannot be allowed to stand. Every mistake that could have been made, was made.

A #COVID19 cardiologist at a top London hospital - friendly to Boris Johnson - has been so incensed by the daily charade of bogus omniscience that he vented his spleen in an email to Telegraph journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

"Policy was to let the virus rip & then 'cocoon the elderly' (but) we discharged known, suspected, & unknown cases into care homes which were unprepared, with no formal warning that the patients were infected, no testing available, & no PPE to prevent transmission."

"We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable. We let people die without palliation. The official policy was not to visit care homes - and they didn't (and still don't). So, after infecting them with a disease that causes an unpleasant ending...

"...we denied our elders access to a doctor and denied admission to hospital. Simple things like fluids, withheld. Effective palliation like syringe drivers, withheld."

There was never anything to be gained from delaying the lockdown.

Once the brushfire had slipped control due to lack of testing/tracing, each three days of prevarication over lockdown meant a doubling of the infection caseload. Nor did the Sage committee ever have a real grasp of the facts to fine-tune the timing, let alone to play God.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that this secretive body gravely misjudged the speed of contagion long after the danger was obvious to virologists, immunologists, and epidemiologists across the world, and indeed to anybody paying attention.

By all means let's clap #NHS staff but are we implicitly also being asked to clap the managerial and bureaucratic structure responsible for these policies? Is it taboo to raise a whisper of criticism against the edifice?

The UK could have been in a low-death club with Greece, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, or Germany but instead it languishes in a lockdown limbo that is nearing the threshold of structural economic harm. We'll breach 1000 deaths/million before long, without reaching herd immunity.

The Government have now overseen around 60,000 excess deaths - so far.

These deaths could have been held at 1,000 or thereabouts, ideally by Korean methods, or failing that at least by sheer Greek determination.

All the other deaths are in essence a policy failure.