I lie in bed this week with a stinking cold. Obviously I didn’t think it was a cold. We never do now do we? No hangover passes without me sticking various swabs up my nose to see if the sweats I am feeling are self inflicted or if I have been exposed to Covid-19. I guess we are lucky at eighteen months on we at least are able to test constantly, invading our sinuses with spiky swabs.
It wasn’t always like this though and the mornings reading of the joint committee report of the Health and Social Care Committee and the Science and Technology Committee about how well the UK government managed the pandemic is not making my sore head feel any better. Describing the slow approach to social distancing rules and lockdowns as “one of the most important public health failures the UK has ever experienced.” Stating further that not locking down sooner was “the wrong policy and it led to the highest initial death toll than would have resulted from a more empathic early policy.”
If I was reading this morning still raw from the bereavement of my nearest and dearest I would have more than a sore head. I would have a broken heart. When I think back to those early weeks when I was buying sympathy cards for my constituents in bulk online, when I remember the painful conversations with a widow, too scared to see her children through her grief because she was sure that she was going to infect and kill them, I want to scream at the cack-handed and deliberative decisions that were made.
The fact that this morning senior minister Steve Barclay refused to apologise to these very same families who are grieving the loss of their families is callous and protectionist to say the least. And that is the rub for me. Yes of course mistakes get made, and some things were handled better than others. No one would deny that – but in the simple act of pushing away an apology to tens of thousands of people who are hurting from loss, and doubling down about how they made the right decisions and “followed the science” does not speak of a government that is going to be able to learn the lessons of the pandemic. I mourn our losses but I am also worried about our future.
This report speaks of a problem with the testing regime which left us exposed, it highlights very much after the fact what we were all screaming about at the time in terms of what was happening in our care homes. We all knew that Covid-positive patients were being placed in care homes without tests. Instead of government ministers being defensive, it would be absolutely welcomed if they came out and told us about how they will manage these things differently in the future.
One of the cases I handled was of the death of a woman in her 40s. She had suffered from eating disorders and substance misuse issues and for years before the pandemic hit I had been trying to get her adequate care, rehabilitations and treatment. I couldn’t so she was weak to the oncoming wave. The report speaks of inequalities in race and disability that exacerbated the response to the pandemic of these groups and it very much felt at the time it was happening, as their representative, that the government just gave in to the fact that vulnerable people were going to die. There was a shrugging “oh well” vibe.
instead of callous ministers refusing to apologise the British public deserve better, we deserve a roadmap for the future that will tackle these inequalities that left so many people vulnerable. The government remain in quite a politically-strong position so they have the bandwidth to be grown up and open in the face of this report. Why oh why do they always choose to beat their chests while claiming world-beating status. We were world-beating in some regards – sadly we continue to push for top league positions in the amount of cases and number of deaths.
The ministerial response to a frankly damning report was predictable. We are meant to all pretend that we are all eternal happy optimists and ignore the impending crisis that are rolling down our streets. First it was Covid, then it was the worst economic hit in all G7 countries. Now we are meant to sing jolly jingoistic songs while inflation spirals, the cost of living surges and while businesses cant afford to put the gas on. Crisis after crisis and no one in government with the guts to say that perhaps they need a new way of dealing with and making decisions when we are hit by global and national shocks.
A terrifying pattern has formed and that is that if you say what I am saying now Boris Johnson will call you a moaning mini-pessimist. It’s rubbish, I am even with my bad head I’m a natural optimist who loves a gag, I am just scared that even in the face of such clearly written reality the government doesn’t choose optimism it chooses fantasy.
My head hurts.
