Enjoying the Sunshine

This morning I did some more xmas stuff whilst I listened to the Covid Inquiry. This afternoon I walked with H on Kelling Heath, it was nice and sunny when we set out, but the sun was setting as we returned and the temperature dropped to 1C - a lovely walk though. These horses were out enjoying the sunshine. 

Covid Inquiry (for my record only)
Boris Johnson gave evidence to the Inquiry today and will continue tomorrow. I only saw the evidence this morning, and was again struck by the aggressive nature of the Inquiry. Boris took responsibility for all key decisions made (the KC listed each main decision and asked if he took responsibility one by one, which was OTT). The culture is such in Govt that Boris says it wasn't unusual for others to tell him he should 'get rid' of different Ministers and Advisors. He also said that different messaging coming from the different nations in the UK was an issue. He said that there should have been a more balanced mix of people around him (too many men). Some people were advising lockdown, others such as the CMO were warning about acting too quickly leading to 'fatigue'. Boris inferred that he felt they couldn't really accept what was happening so quickly - I can believe that this is true. 

I think we have to remember the context when listening to the evidence, the election was in Dec 2019, most ministers were new in post, and Brexit was delivered at the end of Jan 2020. Existing pandemic plans were completely inadequate. The CMO gets a number of alerts every week about health issues emerging at home and abroad, virtually all lead to no impact on the UK. Previous health scares like BSE and concerns about SARS and MERS spreading to the UK didn't materialise. 

At the end of the day it was a really bad virus. It was completely new, it was highly transmissible, it also spread through asymptomatic transmission (around a third of people didn't have symptoms), and it had a mortality rate of 2% (Boris read that in Italy it was 8% as there was an elderly population) - so it was most like the reasonable worst care scenario, which has a relatively low likelihood in planning terms.  The virus was known about at the end of Dec, most cases were still in China in late Jan, the WHO said it was a pandemic on 11 Mar and we locked down on 23rd Mar.  We all have behavioural biases - professional people in particular (scientists and medical professionals for example) are prone to Confirmation Bias, where your brain searches for the data that matches your existing view and past experience (such as how a pandemic would be).  I wonder if too many advisors, meetings and the volume of information, sometimes conflicting, led to key risk indicators not being as visible as they should have been. As a lay person what caught my attention was the lockdown in Wuhan on 23rd Jan, the new hospital being built in Wuhan in only 10 days at the end of Jan; the outbreak on the cruise ship Diamond Princess in early Feb (700 infected and 9 died); and the outbreak in Italy in early Mar with a lockdown and a failing health system. Lessons need to be learnt and lots of changes made, but our key advisors and Ministers are human beings who will make mistakes, particularly when rare events happen.