Government Slammed In Made Up Numbers Shock

Covid: UK's early response worst public health failure ever, MPs say

The UK's failure to do more to stop Covid spreading early in the pandemic was one of the worst ever public health failures, a report by MPs says.

The government approach - backed by its scientists - was to try to manage the situation and in effect achieve herd immunity by infection, it said.

This led to a delay in introducing the first lockdown, costing thousands of lives.

As we cannot run the pandemic again under different policies we cannot possibly know if the policy pattern actually followed was optimal or not. Almost certainly not, but given the circumstances that is scarcely surprising. To claim that lockdown delay cost thousands of lives is worthless rhetoric.

We can reasonably maintain that policies followed were less than optimal in both political and cost benefit senses. In which case an earlier lockdown could have made things worse, but lockdown fans have simplicity and hindsight on their side.