Perhaps they are not going for self isolation in preference to self elimination!

Obviously the victim didn't drink enough Vodka, or have enough Saunas?

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-belarus-president-refuses-to-cancel-anything-and-says-vodka-and-saunas-will-ward-off-coronavirus-11965396

Latest JFF model predictions.

Total confirmed cases: 86178

Peak daily: 4470 (April 5th)

Today: 3076 new confirmed cases

This of course is one of those things conveniently swept under the carpet for various reasons. Nevertheless this Cygnus exercise and drill simulated almost exactly what would happen and was right. It was ignored and if ithadn't been we would have been much better placed than most, although not saved from it, clearly. Hopefully when we get back to normal and have a proper opposition again there will be an inquiry into why, after instigating such a useful exercise, it was ignored. It could prove to be this Government's WOMD but I doubt it.

If I was a person who was doing business of any description in China on a regular basis, my faith in the authorities in that country to look after people's best interests and their well-being would now have been destroyed for ever.

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Maybe but the US would fill the gap and exactly the same can be said about them.

My guess is the govt probably took it as seriously as most people did back in January. They assumed it would stay in China and just be another bird flu. Think back to how many people actually took the threat seriously a few months back and it seems less of a suprise that the government didn't either.

Of course, this all being said, I am very dissapointed that the government didn't do more in the early stages. I don't think I (and others on here), were exceptionally prophetic by any means. But just that people are simply not used to a crisis and are incapable of recognizing one when it appears on the horizon. Part of this is because it has been so long since we have experienced an actual crisis. I hope, in the aftermath, of COVID we start taking other threats more seriously.

I've long been of the opinion that climate change, despite it being a serious problem, gets disproportionally too much coverage when there are other far more serious threats that get no mention at all. One of those threats I highlighted was a pandemic. But there are others, and some are even worse.

It's even worse actually, that Cygnus exercise back in 2016 simulated a pandemic which had a treatment for and a vaccine, yet it still 'resulted' in the NHS being overwhelmed with a lack of PPE and ventilators identified as the biggest problems. The results were never published and the recommendations were not implemented. 

That was hilarious. I can't wait to see him gunning down a strand of RNA when it comes for him off of all those contaminated arms he's bought!

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/03/why-weren-t-we-ready

Also happened during New Labour where alot of modelling was done due to the threat of the 2009 pandemic.

Whitehall's complacency has gone on for decades. In light of this I am extremely dissapointed that Cumming's science drive to turn Whitehall from a 'Oxford PPE graduate' human resources obsessed, emotional support animal petting farce into something fit for the 21st century has apparantely failed (or at least has not yet been implemented). Cummings's science and long term planning focus is exactly what we needed to avoid something like this from happening.

The real solution is to completely overhaul the NHS and properly fund public services. 

The NHS is not going to be overhauled though, we both know that.

And funding an ineffectual model is not the answer either. The US has one of the biggest public investments into their healthcare system, and it's terrible. I don't think throwing more money at the NHS is going to solve the problem. But then, as I say, overhaul is not going to happen either until the British people start to realize the NHS is not as great as they think it is.

Thanks, very interesting read. It sounds like mitigation (instead of containtment/suppression) has always been the Whitehall plan and it underestimated the impact on the NHS. Thankfully, Cummings changed his opinion quickly (on the 13th of March apparently):

"But the government’s planning documents – which date from 2005 to 2018 but are mainly based on the 2011 “Influenza Preparedness Strategy” – suggest that Britain may in fact have been prepared, just for the wrong outcome. The UK’s plans appear to have rested on a false assumption: if a pandemic such as Covid-19 struck, the UK intended only to mitigate rather than suppress the impact.

Mitigation accepts that the virus will spread. Suppression does not. Boris Johnson did not come up with the concept of taking the virus “on the chin”, as he put in an interview on 5 March. Nor did Dominic Cummings, his most senior adviser, who is reported to have at first welcomed the idea. The strategy predates them both.Strict social distancing of the kind that Britain has now enforced does not underpin any of its planning documents."

At least they ran an exercise. The question always has been and always will be - how much should the government or a public body spend on something which might never happen?

Following this outbreak of course, billions will be spent on preparing for the possibility of a pandemic - then one does not occur for decades, the equipment and PPE will become obsolete and there will be different priorities. Nobody can accurately predict what will happen or when - you could prepare for a tsunami by moving everyone five miles inland - but if there is no tsunami, people will soon return to the coast - but at least there can be an early warning system put in place for a tsunami, but there is no such possibility when it comes to a pandemic.

Anyhow. article in The Times with an interesting suggestion on how to punish China - a sovereign debt default:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/china-should-write-off-debts-to-cover-the-cost-of-covid-19-vmzh7hprp

"Despite Beijing’s determined efforts, a comprehensive timeline has now emerged of the response of the authorities in Hubei province and in Beijing to the spread of the Covid-19 virus, proving that the Chinese authorities engaged in a cover-up in the critical early days. This makes them morally responsible for the global consequences of the pandemic in at least some key ways.

China took the virus to be a public relations challenge, rather than a severe threat to human health. Doctors who tried to alert the authorities were told to keep quiet. Those who went public with their concerns were arrested. As if to confirm this observation, Beijing has since gone on to mount a global propaganda effort to deflect responsibility and somehow blame the United States for the breakout. The only thing that matters is that the Communist Party is not believed responsible for its early failures.

...

And if Beijing fails to heed this call, then it should be for the international community to come together and proclaim a proportional default on debts to China to pay for the fallout from Covid-19. By this agreement, perhaps underwritten by the IMF and the World Bank, we would proclaim than any such default would not hamper a country’s ability to seek credit on the open markets of the West.

..."

 What system would you model the "NHS" on?

I'd start by doing some kind of meta analysis on all the healthcare systems across the western world. The in depth study would look at a wide range of objective metrics. Ideally, then, you'd base the healthcare system on the best qualities of each system. I expect it to look alot more like a European model but perhaps with elements of other healthcare systems that work well in specific areas. For example, I'm given to understand that the US is leading in some particularly rare diseases. Hell I'm sure the NHS, as it is, is world leading in something.

I don't know the answer, but the first step to finding the solution is acknoledging that we need to be asking these questions.

Social Insurance like Germany - it provides a diverse and responsive system with a multiplicity of supply, control in the hands of the patient, but with costs underwritten by the state via social insurance.

It is the best compromise - you get excellent treatment without being at the mercy of a state controlled monolith.

Ouch, that was a car crash of an interview.  Moral of the story: be properly briefed and don't try to obfuscate when you've been caught out.

Yes. I also think the NHS should no longer be a political football and should a be a cross party focus that is removed from the election cycle

100% sure? That's a bit extreme. I might be 99% sure but it's not that improbable that the virus was made in some lab. That's the thing about conspiracy theories, they represent an absence of evidence, but also sometimes not much evidence of absence. This is why you tend to assume a null hypothesis (i,e that the conspiracy theory is just conjecture until you have evidence to believe otherwise). But, ultimately, it should not be completely dismissed as impossible. Because the reality is, it isn't impossible, there is nothing to stop a country like China from engineering a virus like this (the science to do this isn't even new). Imagine a country like nazi germany existing today, I'm sure this is exactly the kind of thing they would be doing (and you can bet they would also be doing a pretty good job of covering it up). And while China isn't right over there, if any country was going to do it, why not a totalitarian dictatorship that puts 'undesirables' in concentration camps where their organs are sold?

You can have a proper cost/benefit analysis and I don't see a problem in regularly spending a lot of money for ventilators and PPE, which probably last for a decent period of time anyway. Spending billions on it is probably better than spending billions on Brexit, spending hundreds of millions on public health campaigns in February would have been better than spending hundreds of millions in October communicating sheer bollocks about Brexit.

Anyway, the newstatesman article says that the (probably) flawed Whitehall planning (herd immunity) goes back to the Labour years.

Even though I am largely uninformed on this, I tend to agree with you, the healthcare systems in Germany, France and Switzerland are better funded than the NHS and they seem to perform well.

Absolutely.

But, as others have said, it needs a fundamental review which looks at best practice and best value for money around the world; and it needs to reflect the reality of an ageing population and therefore must embrace social care as well.

I quite like the idea of a healthcare system that covers a core of services fully and requires a sliding scale of contributions for other treatments.  Somehow it has to stop being treated as a bottomless pit of money which can be used to meet everything when we know that's just impossible (given we already have bed blocking, long waiting lists and de facto rationing of some treatments).

Also, any review must look at prevention and promoting good health;'that means tackling bad diets, poor lifestyles and excess consumption of sugar and alcohol, amongst other things.