When the Coronavirus pandemic first came to light, I was sympathetic towards the government. After all, this kind of event is unheard of in peacetime.
What followed was the complete systematic failure of the government in response to the Coronavirus. It was so bad that if there are future pandemics people will look at the UK as an example what not to do.
To start with the timing of the lockdown was far too slow to arrive. The government should have called for a lockdown weeks before they did.
When bars, pubs and restaurants were ordered to shut on the 20th March it was timed appallingly. It encouraged more people to go out and ‘have one last drink’ before the beer taps were turned off.
They should have also closed in the middle of the week, not after a Friday evening binge when so many people typically like to drink heavily.
The government was also woefully slow at supplying the correct Personal Protective Equipment, it needed to be supplied to not just hospitals but also other sectors such as care homes and prisons. The home care leader in fact condemned the government over their PPE response, calling it ‘scandalous’ in an open letter.
Then there is the death rate, the highest in Europe only the USA has a higher total number of Coronavirus deaths.
| Country | Total Deaths |
| USA | 80,697 |
| UK | 31,855 |
| Italy | 30,560 |
| Spain | 26,621 |
| France | 26,380 |
These are the latest figures as of 10th May 20:00
A public enquiry is needed to establish what went so wrong and why the death rate in the UK is so high.
Testing was another key issue that the government failed on, constantly missing their testing targets and not sending tests out quickly enough.
The chief scientific advisor Patrick Vallance admitted that coronavirus testing should have been ramped up more quickly. Despite this the government continues to miss testing targets.
To add to this the Opposition’s response has been poor. They often supported the government and failed to hold them to account on key issues. This is down to bad leadership and shows how ineffectual the Opposition is under Sir Keir Starmer.
There has been a slight change to the lockdown, changing the tagline ‘Stay at home’ to ‘Stay alert, control the virus, save lives.’
This change has been highly criticised. ‘Stay alert,’ has been the most highly criticised. How can anyone stay alert for a virus we cannot see?
The pandemic has been handled very poorly with lots of discrepancies on what the public can and can’t do during lockdown. For example you can’t go fishing by yourself or go for a drive, but people can gather in a big group on Westminster Bridge to clap!
The worry is this isn’t anywhere near over and the government continues to mess things up.
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