Governments have trouble preparing for uncertain and rare disasters, such as pandemics. So they “fight the last war,” expecting that the next disaster will look like the last disaster. Before WWII, France built the Maginot line, which they thought would have protected them against the kind of attack they had faced in WWI. The U.S. was more prepared for an Ebola pandemic than for a Covid pandemic. In an uncertain world, the best way to prepare for rare disasters is to allow and encourage nimble entrepreneurs who can resiliently pivot and improvise to counter whatever disaster arrives.
(p. A8) Britain’s government “failed” the country’s citizens in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, a damning report from an official public inquiry said on Thursday [July 18, 2024], partly because officials had prepared for “the wrong pandemic.”
The arrival of Covid-19 in 2020 exposed flaws in Britain’s public health system and its pandemic preparedness that had been ignored for years, the report said. During the early waves of infections, Britain’s per capita death rate was among the highest in Europe, eventually leading to more than 225,000 deaths in total, according to official data.
“Had the U.K. been better prepared for and more resilient to the pandemic, some of that financial and human cost may have been avoided,” the report said.
. . .
Britain had a plan, but it was “outdated and lacked adaptability,” the report said.
It was also too focused on the possibility of a flu pandemic. “Although it was understandable for the U.K. to prioritize pandemic influenza, this should not have been to the effective exclusion of other potential pathogen outbreaks,” the report said.
. . .
Ministers, who are political appointees, did not have access to a broad enough range of scientific research and opinions that would have informed their policies, and advisers did not feel confident about expressing dissenting views.
“The advice offered to ministers and international bodies may well have been affected by a degree of ‘groupthink’,” the report said.
For the full story see:
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 18, 2024, and has the title “U.K. Failed in Handling of Covid Pandemic, Inquiry Finds.”)
The “damning report” mentioned above, is: