Are there any senior politicians who are likely to be in the running who've not committed similar errors? That is the question. I've no confidence in any of these people to provide the leadership that Britain needs desperately but that goes across all parties. Essentially there was an all-party consensus. Any debate about the Swine Flu or Covid-19 was completely disallowed. The system seems to drive any form of real debate underground. Something rotten with the state of Westminster, me thinks.
There were many things we could have learned from the UK Swine flu panicdemic response. From my perspective it seemed we either learned the wrong lessons or drew the wrong conclusions about what to do better next time.
The first lesson from Swine Flu was that having a hotline for diagnosis and prescribing of antivirals staffed by lay people is a bad idea and leads to predictable harms https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fears-over-swine-flu-bad-410845. Personally I think that could have been anticipated and avoided the first time.
In round 2 (Covid) we no longer had lay people staffing the hotlines, but we still had remote triage and hotlines for diagnosis. When a nation has been encouraged to panic, services inevitably can't cope with the predictable rise in demand, so some form of remote triage is necessary. However I think too many barriers were put up preventing face to face clinical assessment of people who needed to be seen, and it was a mistake to exclude GPs from this process. Serious diagnoses were still missed and misdiagnosed as Covid and later as Long Covid, due to the bias to diagnosis and the emphasis on avoiding face to face contact. Resources in the community were diverted towards single diagnosis Covid assessment centres. In areas like ours these services were not needed, and it was hugely wasteful, with teams of highly trained emergency care practitioners not doing their usual job for far longer than initially envisaged.
The second lesson from Swine Flu was that though GPs may be better than lay people at distinguishing what is clearly not 'swine flu', it isn't really possible to make a firm diagnosis of 'swine flu' clinically, as it doesn't have any distinct characteristics compared with a myriad of other viruses and non virus causes of flu like illness: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/17/swine-flu-misdiagnosis-tests. I think this probably spawned the mass testing and moonshot approach of Covid, but then there was also a blatant disregard for the accuracy of testing and testing ironically became disconnected from clinical symptoms.
I'm not optimistic that we have learned from the covid testing fiasco and that it won't just happen again in the same way next time, unless we are completely bankrupt by round 3, which we might be. But somehow we always seem to find money for wars and pandemics.
The third lesson should have been when considering committing huge sums of public money to antiviral stockpiles, those in charge of decisions need to dig a bit deeper and not just take the word of industry or of those with conflicts of interest who are set to profit enormously regardless of whether said intervention has a net overall benefit or harm.
Some people did very well indeed from the pandemic response, and the Covid inquiry was a whitewash, so I am noy optimistic about any lessons being learned there either..
I also suspect that some things will never make sense because we are dealing with decisions made by the military pharmaceutical industrial complex and it is entirely possible that some of what we experienced was testing systems. So it doesn’t really matter who is in govt the next time, if they are not and never were the ones calling the shots.
re - '....So it doesn’t really matter who is in govt the next time, if they are not and never were the ones calling the shots....' Agreed - i see US pulling shots, their off-shored GoF funded research caused the problem and they panicked when it looked to be going south at a rate of knots. Whether US will be allowed to call the shots next time is open to question.
Andy Burnhan has had his unaccountable snout in the limitless taxpayer’s gravy trough- sorry about the mix of metaphors here - for way too long. Just imagine if politicians were paid by results with performance indicator targets designed by our too old geezers.
Whoops just saw a pig fly by totally swine flu free 🤬
A little footnote to the swine flu epidemic: local politicians must have been given ministerial advice going beyond providing 'flu friends' and Tamiflu.
One fine early morning walking in the local park with my dogs another dog walker 'either connections' told me that one part of our park would be sequestered once the swine flu hit, and that a temporary morgue would be installed there ...
As we all know, nothing happened - but those plans were ready to go. I wonder if Covid revived those plans, with bells on.
I was still working in the NHS , albeit on sick leave due to work stress. I don't recall knowing Burnham was health minister. Same with swine flu, it had very little impact on my life . The only conversation with family was whilst in Whistler after sharing Peak to Peak cabin with Mexican nationals. We were not worried.
Scary how much we don't notice, or is it?
I personally think Burnham is guilty of bigger misteps some of it related to my work stress
It was uncovered by the rapporteur Paul Flynn, who investigated the fakery behind the Swine flu, that the main lesson to be learned was that Big Harma had unreasonable influence over the WHO and the Emergency Committee set up to advise on the 'pandemic' consisted of those in the pay of Big Harma, including one Neil Ferguson. This undue influence was also behind Wolfgang Wodarg's statement at the hearing 'The definition of a pandemic was changed by the WHO... It was only this change of definition which made it possible to transform a run-of-the-mill ‘flu' into a worldwide pandemic – and made it possible for the pharmaceutical industry to transform this opportunity into cash, under contracts which were mainly secret'.
Regardless of who is at the helm of the Westminster Punch and Judy show, can't we revert to the previous definition in the UK, if not the world? Can't we compel any advisory committee, such as SAGE, to be truly independent of Big Harma?
Are there any senior politicians who are likely to be in the running who've not committed similar errors? That is the question. I've no confidence in any of these people to provide the leadership that Britain needs desperately but that goes across all parties. Essentially there was an all-party consensus. Any debate about the Swine Flu or Covid-19 was completely disallowed. The system seems to drive any form of real debate underground. Something rotten with the state of Westminster, me thinks.
There were many things we could have learned from the UK Swine flu panicdemic response. From my perspective it seemed we either learned the wrong lessons or drew the wrong conclusions about what to do better next time.
The first lesson from Swine Flu was that having a hotline for diagnosis and prescribing of antivirals staffed by lay people is a bad idea and leads to predictable harms https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fears-over-swine-flu-bad-410845. Personally I think that could have been anticipated and avoided the first time.
In round 2 (Covid) we no longer had lay people staffing the hotlines, but we still had remote triage and hotlines for diagnosis. When a nation has been encouraged to panic, services inevitably can't cope with the predictable rise in demand, so some form of remote triage is necessary. However I think too many barriers were put up preventing face to face clinical assessment of people who needed to be seen, and it was a mistake to exclude GPs from this process. Serious diagnoses were still missed and misdiagnosed as Covid and later as Long Covid, due to the bias to diagnosis and the emphasis on avoiding face to face contact. Resources in the community were diverted towards single diagnosis Covid assessment centres. In areas like ours these services were not needed, and it was hugely wasteful, with teams of highly trained emergency care practitioners not doing their usual job for far longer than initially envisaged.
The second lesson from Swine Flu was that though GPs may be better than lay people at distinguishing what is clearly not 'swine flu', it isn't really possible to make a firm diagnosis of 'swine flu' clinically, as it doesn't have any distinct characteristics compared with a myriad of other viruses and non virus causes of flu like illness: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/17/swine-flu-misdiagnosis-tests. I think this probably spawned the mass testing and moonshot approach of Covid, but then there was also a blatant disregard for the accuracy of testing and testing ironically became disconnected from clinical symptoms.
I'm not optimistic that we have learned from the covid testing fiasco and that it won't just happen again in the same way next time, unless we are completely bankrupt by round 3, which we might be. But somehow we always seem to find money for wars and pandemics.
The third lesson should have been when considering committing huge sums of public money to antiviral stockpiles, those in charge of decisions need to dig a bit deeper and not just take the word of industry or of those with conflicts of interest who are set to profit enormously regardless of whether said intervention has a net overall benefit or harm.
Some people did very well indeed from the pandemic response, and the Covid inquiry was a whitewash, so I am noy optimistic about any lessons being learned there either..
I also suspect that some things will never make sense because we are dealing with decisions made by the military pharmaceutical industrial complex and it is entirely possible that some of what we experienced was testing systems. So it doesn’t really matter who is in govt the next time, if they are not and never were the ones calling the shots.
re - '....So it doesn’t really matter who is in govt the next time, if they are not and never were the ones calling the shots....' Agreed - i see US pulling shots, their off-shored GoF funded research caused the problem and they panicked when it looked to be going south at a rate of knots. Whether US will be allowed to call the shots next time is open to question.
Andy Burnhan has had his unaccountable snout in the limitless taxpayer’s gravy trough- sorry about the mix of metaphors here - for way too long. Just imagine if politicians were paid by results with performance indicator targets designed by our too old geezers.
Whoops just saw a pig fly by totally swine flu free 🤬
A little footnote to the swine flu epidemic: local politicians must have been given ministerial advice going beyond providing 'flu friends' and Tamiflu.
One fine early morning walking in the local park with my dogs another dog walker 'either connections' told me that one part of our park would be sequestered once the swine flu hit, and that a temporary morgue would be installed there ...
As we all know, nothing happened - but those plans were ready to go. I wonder if Covid revived those plans, with bells on.
I was still working in the NHS , albeit on sick leave due to work stress. I don't recall knowing Burnham was health minister. Same with swine flu, it had very little impact on my life . The only conversation with family was whilst in Whistler after sharing Peak to Peak cabin with Mexican nationals. We were not worried.
Scary how much we don't notice, or is it?
I personally think Burnham is guilty of bigger misteps some of it related to my work stress
It was uncovered by the rapporteur Paul Flynn, who investigated the fakery behind the Swine flu, that the main lesson to be learned was that Big Harma had unreasonable influence over the WHO and the Emergency Committee set up to advise on the 'pandemic' consisted of those in the pay of Big Harma, including one Neil Ferguson. This undue influence was also behind Wolfgang Wodarg's statement at the hearing 'The definition of a pandemic was changed by the WHO... It was only this change of definition which made it possible to transform a run-of-the-mill ‘flu' into a worldwide pandemic – and made it possible for the pharmaceutical industry to transform this opportunity into cash, under contracts which were mainly secret'.
Regardless of who is at the helm of the Westminster Punch and Judy show, can't we revert to the previous definition in the UK, if not the world? Can't we compel any advisory committee, such as SAGE, to be truly independent of Big Harma?
You are both true heroes. Thank you for your endless perseverance.
Was he involved in any mad cows (of the animal variety)? NB to self. ‘Do a bit of research?’