We must learn from this pandemic

WHAT a grim time this seems.

Thank goodness for the hope of the vaccines, which are coming on stream. This will accelerate over the coming weeks, meaning there is practical hope! Afterwards, we will need two key things:

Firstly, to have a full public inquiry and possibly a local inquiry. Mistakes have been made, so lessons must be learned.

This has been a national civilian crisis, the worst for a century. So ministers need to be held to account for some of their decisions, and light needs to be shone on what we have experienced. It’s been rough. Some countries have handled it a lot better.

Secondly, we will need to develop a new National Pandemic Preparedness Plan, and a regional one and a revised Bristol one too. Again, we can learn lessons.

We must aim to have the best Pandemic Preparedness Plan in Europe. We can learn from everywhere which has had success – South Korea, with its data-driven and nimble approach; New Zealand, an island which kept the virus at bay; Taiwan and Singapore, which kept infections low; Vietnam, which mobilised a community army; and, yes, Germany, which had a different structure to its health work, and lower infections and deaths than us.

We can build on our strengths in science, and on the NHS’s great fortitude and resilience. Public health and communications and messaging can and must improve.

We all need to play our part. There will be lessons to learn, and learn them we must.

We must not forget this experience, as people forgot the lessons from the 1918-20 pandemic. We must get through this together, and learn and improve!

That is our duty to those who died and to future generations. If you need a big project of national unity post-Brexit, this could be it.

Chris Watson

Bristol