There should be inquiry into handling of Covid-19
‘FAIL to prepare,prepare to fail’ is a well-known truism which seems more relevant than ever when considering the Government’s handling of Covid-19.
Most people now believe we were too slow into lockdown and two prominent scientists who have been advising the Government, have recently said our death toll would have been far lower if we had entered lockdown earlier.
Judging when lockdown should take place was obviously a very difficult decision to make but it seems likely we did not lockdown earlier at least in part, as a direct result of the woefully inadequate Covid-19 testing capacity available at the time when the virus really took hold in this country.
This meant the scientists advising the Government were not able to properly assess the extent of the virus and speed at which it was spreading.
Professor Chris Whitty alluded to this in a recent Government Covid-19 briefing.
I have my doubts whether it will happen, but there clearly needs to be an independent inquiry into the Government’s handling of the virus to make sure lessons are learnt for the future.
I think shining a spotlight on what the Government did between January 2 (when the first positive tests in this country for the virus were recorded) and mid-March (when the virus began to take hold) would be particularly revealing.
Who knows, we might even find out what Boris was up to when he skipped the five Covid19-related COBRA meetings in February.
Whatever Boris was up to, I assume even he might now realise that ‘winging it’ is no way to deal with a pandemic – although then again, probably not.
I am afraid the Government mantra ‘We took the right decisions at the right time’ would now seem comical, were it not for its deadly connotations.
Be careful of where you get your news
MR Corcoran should try and curb his enthusiasm for conspiracy theories and ultra right-wing propaganda
His diatribe against Sir Mark Sedwill is another unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.
A little bit of research on Google using the main points in Mr Corcoran’s latest disclosure leads to the so-called news platform Unity News Network.
UNN is judged by independent commentators to be extremely right-wing, with few scruples about the role truth and evidence play in its reporting.
In any society it’s healthy to have a broad range of opinions, but extremist material camouflaged as a legitimate point of view is both worrying and corrosive.
The great American journalist William Shirer spent many years during the 1930s and early 40s working in the Third
Reich. He was one of the few foreigners to witness the rise of hatred and brutality, facilitated by the insidious propaganda of Goebbels.
Shirer would, I’m certain, be appalled that after the unimaginable suffering required to rid the world of Goebbels and his like, his imitators are once again trying to poison people’s minds.
What is happening to our intelligence?
PERHAPS we should be considering popping over to the West Coast and throwing the statue of Eric Morecambe into the sea?
It surely cannot have been right to have been laughing at all his antics over the years when we were surrounded by all this apparent evil statuary.
Then again, we may wish to scratch our heads and wonder what the overall level of intelligence is in this country these days, and why the police aren’t taking action against acts of
vandalism.