Plan the work... and work the plan

NOW I wonder... will a nasty little unhindered monster get up my nose first, or will I have had a jab in the arm 21 days beforehand to stop him? That is indeed the big question.

Britain is close to having the worst pandemic casualties statistics on the planet. Forget £22 billion spent on “track and trace”.

We are now single minded on vaccine production and distribution and we are doing more than any other country. With our casualty rate, goodness we needed to be.

The best known secret in

Newton Abbot is the Sherborne House location in Kingsteignton Road for the vaccination of some 70,000 patient with predetermined appointments.

Start date is (was) planned for Saturday (January 16). But the NHS cannot – dare not announce that date.

Why? When you plan to vaccinate 70,00 people you do not need 70,000 vaccines NOW.

What the local team needs is cast iron assurances that, as the never ending flow of people enters and leaves Sherborne House, the flow does not stop and they all leave having been vaccinated.

The supply line of vaccine delivery is an absolute must happen.

As I write on January 13 I understand they do not have that assurance of vaccine delivery.

At the moment they have enough for about three or four days.

If they have planned appointments stretching for, say, eight days hence, what happens on the fifth day when they only have 27 or 47 little bottles left?

And they have 400 people with predetermined appointment dates for the next four days?

Newton Abbot is not alone in this sorry state. Four days ago we heard 40% of 80-plus-year-olds had been vaccinated. On Wednesday, on

BBC Radio 4, we were told the same statistic.

No one in their right mind should have though Covid-19 would go away on its own. Plans for the order for vaccinations should have been decided months ago – before we had a vaccine.

Decisions on regional distribution, vaccination locations, premises to be used, trained staff needed, volunteers needed, should have been taken.

They should have even known the production and delivery capability of our pharmaceutical industry and the supply of vaccine bottles and labels of the then unknown vaccine.

In 1941, with maybe four weeks notice of a withdrawal, we took 330,000 men off the beaches of Dunkirk in the middle of a battle without a computer in sight.

This government refuses to admit its failure to evacuate Covid-19, when they have known for nearly a year, mass vaccination may well be our final option.

I would not put one of them in charge of a supermarket trolley park. Did no one ever tell them that the secret of any organisation of an intended action is fastidious preplanning?

Have none of them ever just thought of looking at the preplanning files for the D-day invasion?

Have any of them ever really studied the art of action management?

To put it simply... plan the work and work the plan.

M Don Frampton Newton Abbot, Devon