Read on Twitter
1./ Is the UK somehow uniquely bad at tackling the pandemic? No and here's why not. I ask because various Boris haters have gone into overdrive. Here's an arch-Remainer claiming the new strain was used to disguise a U-turn. Get a grip mate. https://twitter.com/Femi_Sorry/status/1340321609006104582
2./ First the good news. Yesterday, just before the Boris bombshell I passed a GP surgery and under big awnings older ladies and gents (all socially distanced) were waiting to be vaccinated. It was, I have to say, very affecting. Can't wait to see more of these signs go up. 
3./ There was a little group of passers by who'd stopped to cheer them on as each was led in by a nurse or a relative. Britain has purchased enough vaccines to jab us all 5 times over. The EU by contrast way may see a serious shortfall. https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/the-planning-disaster-germany-and-europe-could-fall-short-on-vaccine-supplies-a-3db4702d-ae23-4e85-85b7-20145a898abd
https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/the-planning-disaster-germany-and-europe-could-fall-short-on-vaccine-supplies-a-3db4702d-ae23-4e85-85b7-20145a898abd
4./ Der Spiegel says, "The EU appears to have bought too little, too late and at times from the wrong producers. And it appears it turned down hundreds of millions of vaccine doses that are now lacking." Imagine, Boris and Hancock were accused of that! Femi would be horrified...
5./ As for armchair warriors ranting on about how the Tories should have gone for lockdown earlier. Yes, they knew there was a new strain in November. But no, they could not possibly have known it would become the dominant strain, accounting for 60% of infections in London.
6./ There are new strains emerging all the time. Most make no difference. Some appear to drive surges in infection. Right now there's a different new strain from the one in the UK that's implicated in a huge surge in South Africa. https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/south-africa-identifies-new-covid-19-strain-causing-surge-in-cases-2340788
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/south-africa-identifies-new-covid-19-strain-causing-surge-in-cases-2340788
7./ So yes public health advice is inconsistent and subject to change. But that's because the govt is constantly juggling different risks and costs (to the economy, our mental health, the NHS). They made the changes last night because genuinely there was no option.
8./ If it really was some "evil" Tory incompetence to wait till last night as so many of my leftie friends wail then why did Scotland's First Minister rewrite all her public health advice last night when she could have done it last week if she'd wanted to. Or in November?
9./ She too changed plans suddenly because inconvenient facts changed on the ground. It's the same across Europe. Germany saw 838 deaths on Friday, and slammed brakes on as chaotically as us last week. Der Spiegel says "Germany is now faring poorly". https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-is-faring-poorly-in-the-second-wave-of-the-coronavirus-a-afc634db-9220-496b-8aca-fd19f2e0962f
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-is-faring-poorly-in-the-second-wave-of-the-coronavirus-a-afc634db-9220-496b-8aca-fd19f2e0962f
10./ Maybe Boris is to blame? Or is it Brexit? In Germany, antigen tests are now scarce, case numbers have overwhelmed test and trace and care home deaths have soared. Now the press is asking (unfairly) if Merkel dropped the ball. Politics is just cruel. https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/angela-merkel-in-the-corona-crisis-germany-s-chancellor-hits-the-wall-a-48674d4e-ef28-4cfe-8f7a-65a5b14025a9
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/angela-merkel-in-the-corona-crisis-germany-s-chancellor-hits-the-wall-a-48674d4e-ef28-4cfe-8f7a-65a5b14025a9
11./ The German app which was rolled out with great fanfare hasn't measured up (just like the Scottish one). Only a quarter of Germans downloaded it and only a little more than half of the people who test positive are reporting their results using it. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/23/glitches-dent-german-enthusiasm-for-covid-contact-tracing-app
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/23/glitches-dent-german-enthusiasm-for-covid-contact-tracing-app
12./ I'm not dissing the Germans, who did well in the first wave but our media seems determined to ignore other countries' problems and magnify ours. The UK has the 4th biggest death rate per 100 000 in Europe. Here are obvious reasons it may be so high. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/
13./ Doctors now suspect the virus was circulating in northern Italy in November, slowly seeding itself before the explosive outbreak. The same thing may well have been happening here (and in Spain). Test and trace was abandoned in all 3 countries. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-09/covid-19-was-in-italy-in-late-november-2019-new-report-shows
14./ We had to build a new test and trace system from scratch because we didn't have one. No Western country did. South Korea's pandemic plan was based round coronaviruses not flu like all European ones because of its own experience with MERS and SARS. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/whats-south-koreas-secret/611215/
15./ South Korea had only just carried out a full dress rehearsal of its pandemic plan 6 weeks before the first cases of COVID struck the country. Germany scrambled to get test and trace teams in place and it was a near miss. https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/we-re-not-prepared-at-all-a-d91de996-0705-437d-8706-5682e8c0cbee
16./ And from the outset German scientists were genuinely baffled why death rates in the country were lower. Some talked of different strains. Others that it was due to the virus seeding within a younger, healthier cohort. It remains the subject of study. https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1395
17./ As for the first lockdown, Germany did it on March 22nd. We did it March 16th. In Edinburgh on 8th March 60000 rugby supporters watched Scotland beat France. And that week the most left wing of scientists on SAGE, Susan Michie warned against a rush to lock down.
18./ France has had all the same problems we had with PPE (huge stock was destroyed just last year) and lack of preparation. The French public is appalled by the performance of its health system, its pride and joy. At least Macron can brush his hair. https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-french-hospitals-transfer-critically-ill-covid-19-patients-to-germany/a-55526279
19./ Of course Boris got things wrong. The Cummings affair was unforgiveable. He shouldn't have talked glibly about shaking hands in March (like Macron did just 2 weeks ago) but Johnson didn't seek out a crazy conspiracy theory doctor and defend him. https://www.france24.com/en/20200409-macron-visits-marseille-doctor-behind-virus-cure-touted-by-trump
https://www.france24.com/en/20200409-macron-visits-marseille-doctor-behind-virus-cure-touted-by-trump
20./ The lack of balance, & failure to compare our performance fairly has become almost pathological. Maybe there is substance to claims about cronyism, for example, but the people making them like Jolyon Maugham have a record of using flimsy evidence. https://twitter.com/twisterfilm/status/1338994912902123524
https://twitter.com/twisterfilm/status/1338994912902123524
21./ To listen to the flagellators even this new strain is somehow symptomatic of our national shame. In fact we only know about it ahead of the game because of the world class bright sparks of @CovidGenomicsUK; effectively the GCHQ of virus monitoring. https://www.cogconsortium.uk/
22./ Their advice has been constantly updated 24 hours a day and appears responsible alone for this latest sharp and undignified reversal of policy. As it should be. You can read for yourself their take on the new strain here. https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisation-of-an-emergent-sars-cov-2-lineage-in-the-uk-defined-by-a-novel-set-of-spike-mutations/563
https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisation-of-an-emergent-sars-cov-2-lineage-in-the-uk-defined-by-a-novel-set-of-spike-mutations/563
23./ Yes if we all knew what we know now we might have done what New Zealand did with its much smaller population, & far fewer trading links or foreign flights than us. But Dr Hindsight wasn't available to do a diagnosis at the time. He's been putting in the hours recently.
24./ We may think now all the evidence pointed in one direction. It didn't. Japan (a more similar country to us than New Zealand) did almost everything wrong and seemed to get off lightly. In a pandemic mysteries abound, making decisions more difficult. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/14/japan-coronavirus-pandemic-lockdown-testing/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/14/japan-coronavirus-pandemic-lockdown-testing/
25./ So hey if you want to HATE the Tories because it keeps you warm inside, feel free. But don't confuse it with being concerned about facts or learning useful lessons. Britain HAS been really bad at fighting the pandemic. That makes us completely unexceptional.
26./ And for the avoidance of doubt I didn’t vote Tory and I was an earnest Remainer who campaigned hard to stay in. My FB photo is still adorned with a certain blue flag with golden stars. Sentimental pro EU feelings shouldn’t inform our understanding of a pandemic.
