UK Covid-19 Inquiry - Module 1: The resilience and preparedness of the United Kingdom
Chapter 2 The system – institutions, structures and leadership
Chapter 2 provides a helpful summary of the international surveillance structure and international and national (i.e., within the UK) links. The latter was illustrated graphically in a Figure we reproduce below.
We swear on Matt Hancok’s head that the figure is not a joke or one of our satires.
There are also separate, somewhat simpler wiring diagrams for each devolved nation: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The report also describes the functions of each of the main bodies involved in surveillance and decision-making.
The Inquiry’s observations are important. No one who gave evidence could explain why such a complicated system existed. The labyrinth of bodies was inefficient, lacked focus, cumbersome, and almost certainly had a large degree of overlap. In other words, no one was overseeing anything.
The system is further befuddled by constant reorganizations.
The Threats, Hazards, Resilience, and Contingencies subcommittee established a Pandemic Flu Readiness Board in 2017. ⁵⁰ The last time the subcommittee met was in February 2017. In July 2019, it was formally “taken out of the committee structure.” The Pandemic Flu Readiness Board was supposed to coordinate planning across the UK devolved administrations and 14 relevant UK government departments. In 2021, it was replaced by the Pandemic Diseases Capabilities Board due to acknowledgement of its fundamental structural flaws. During the Pandemic, Public Health England was abolished and replaced by the UKHSA due to structural flaws.
Similarly, Northern Ireland's civil contingencies structures underwent major reform between 2015 and 2020. Before the pandemic, the Welsh Government Resilience Team was located within the Community Safety Division. Both were regularly moved around departments within the Welsh Government and in 2021, the Welsh Resilience Team was reorganised again.
In Scotland, the Resilience Division was relocated from a directorate in the Directorate-General Constitution and External Affairs to a directorate in the Directorate-General Education and Justice. In April 2021, it was moved back to a directorate in the renamed Directorate-General Strategy and External Affairs.
Reshuffling the deck chairs creates the illusion that the system is prepared. However, the bewildering array of structures lacking institutional knowledge and subject to constant reorganization can only lead to more confusion and chaos.
The Inquiry made two recommendations in Chapter 2:
and
In a situation of uncertainty and potential great fear (which the tone of the Inquiry does nothing to alleviate), it becomes clear that only very simple, streamlined and very well-rehearsed procedures will work if, of course, the actions are based on solid evidence that they will make a difference. This bureaucratic reshuffling does not convince us, and of course, the topic of risk-benefit of any of the measures is not discussed. However, the impossibly complicated wiring diagram of Table 2 points to one of the causes of the disaster that engulfed the UK.
The diagram of Table 2 points to one of the causes of the disaster that engulfed the UK. Remember the rhetoric of pandemic preparedness that the UK was one of the best-prepared nations on the globe? The Inquiry's solution to the bewildering array of organizations and constant reorganizations is to create yet another body. TTE wonders how long it will last before it is renamed and reorganised.
Good grief - that spaghetti-salad diagram makes one wonder how anything got actually done, and how the whole of the UK was suddenly able to march in lockstep to lockdown and masks ... Is that what the Recommendation No1 refers to?
Little anecdote from Wales, on the swine-flu thingie: I was out dog walking with another dog lady from down the road. Crossing into a certain area of the local park which was bordered by fences from tennis courts and walls enclosing allotments, she told me that the local council had designated this as the area where they'd put up a temporary morgue for all the dead ... 'Fear' influencing 'preparedness' seems to've gripped local authorities then as they did during covid.
Fear is a very bad counsellor when having to make far-reaching decisions. I've already quoted elsewhere what the 1st Duke of Wellington said: ‘The people of England must be governed by persons who are not afraid.’
For the last 34 years, I've not seen one unafraid person governing us in the whole of the UK, not in No 10, not in Whitehall, not in local councils ...
What a diabolical racket to exploit and control the people.
This treachery has been in the planning for years.
All that money and effort going into a manufactured crisis based on common respiratory symptoms, which it’s been admitted from the beginning aren’t a serious problem for most people, it’s usually self-limiting disease.
As Emma McArthur asked in an email questioning Geert Vanden Bossche, “Why has a 'pandemic industry' been constructed, over decades, around vaccination, when it is widely known that vaccines for respiratory viruses like influenza are not particularly effective and do not prevent infection and transmission, nor provide long-term immunity?”
See: "...is this actually about creating a lucrative pandemic industry, overseen by the empire-building World Health Organization, at the behest of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI, and other vested interests?" https://elizabethhart.substack.com/p/is-this-actually-about-creating-a