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A Timeline of the Plague Year: a Comprehensive Record of the Uk Government’S Response to the Coronavirus Crisis

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A Timeline of the Plague Year: a Comprehensive Record of the Uk Government’S Response to the Coronavirus Crisis A TIMELINE OF THE PLAGUE YEAR: A COMPREHENSIVE RECORD OF THE UK GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE TO THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS IAN SINCLAIR RUPERT READ Edited by JOANNA BOOTH 'The stru!le of man against power is the stru!le of memory against forgetting' – Milan Kundera About the authors Prof. Rupert Read is an expert on the Precautionary Principle, and co- author with Nassim Taleb et al of The precautionary principle. He writes regularly on the pandemic from this perspective, most notably in Byline Times. His most recent book is Parents for a future: how loving our children can stop climate collapse, with UEA Press. Ian Sinclair is the author of The March That Shook Blair: An Oral History of 15 February 2003, published by Peace News Press. Joanna Booth is a book editor and freelance journalist working primarily on local council stories. She has worked in higher education and as a data analyst. She currently writes at ephemeraldigest.co.uk Introduction ‘They really are scared that the verdict of history is going to condemn them for contributing to the deaths of tens of thousands of British citizens. They are desperately trying to rewrite the timeline of what happened. And we must not let them do that.’ Richard Horton, Editor- in-Chief of The Lancet, April 2020 The impetus for this book came from a sense Rupert had, in February– March 2020, of the then-emerging coronavirus pandemic in the UK as being, in the words of Richard Horton, a ‘national scandal’, especially when compared to the appropriately rapid and precautious response to Covid-19 that occurred in many other island states (such as Taiwan and New Zealand).1 After being invited by Rupert on 1 April 2020 to join him in compiling a timeline of the crisis, Ian led on developing the content of the timeline, and Rupert added to it and arranged for its publication in what is becoming a keystone of alternative media in this country, the Byline Times2. The original timeline published by Byline Times was also borne out of a realisation and frustration the media were failing to hold the govern- ment to account, and failing to educate the public about the dangers the virus presented to the nation. Like many people, in the first weeks of the crisis, journalists and newspapers seemed stunned by the sheer viii Introduction speed of events and the paradigm shift politics and society were under- going. Arguably too, as with previous national crises, much of the media were very sympathetic to the government’s position in the early part of the pandemic. To highlight just one egregious example from the liberal, critical end of the mainstream press, on 14 March 2020, the Guardian published a full- page article titled ‘Which activities are safe and which should people avoid?’ written by science correspondent Hannah Devlin. Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, is quoted exten- sively in the piece, saying he would not stop visiting his elderly relatives, that it was OK to visit the pub, and that from the perspective of indi- vidual risk there was not a strong argument for avoiding big sporting events.3 Just over a week after this reckless journalism was published, the Prime Minister announced an unprecedented national lockdown. Of course, there have been many important and critical news reports – much of our timeline is made up of them, after all – but to quote Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, ‘That a careful reader looking for a fact can sometimes find it with diligence and a sceptical eye tells us nothing about whether that fact received the attention and context it deserved, whether it was intelligible to the reader or effectively distorted or suppressed.’ 4 After the Byline Times piece received a lot of positive attention on Twitter and elsewhere, Ian and Rupert agreed to continue to update the timeline. And with the media performance improving in March 2020, the aim shifted a little – from highlighting critical information being ignored by the media to compiling the most comprehensive record of the govern- ment’s response to the pandemic. The plan was to create a detailed account of the pandemic, which would be useful to anyone interested in following the key events of the crisis as it progressed, and also to histo- rians studying the pandemic in the future. It was agreed the timeline would, as much as possible, be based on mainstream sources (the press, television and radio news, medical journals, health experts and organisa- tions, trade unions, polling organisations, etc.), and presented in a broadly neutral manner to allow the reader to make up their mind about Introduction ix events. Nicholson Baker’s 2008 book Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization was a key influence on Ian when it came to considering the format and tone of the timeline. Accordingly, since April 2020 the timeline has been updated every week and, for simplicity and speed, published on Ian’s Medium blog.5 Others have compiled timelines at various stages of the crisis – Led By Donkeys created an impressive timeline6, audaciously projecting it onto Barnard Castle – but true to our aim we are confident our timeline is by some distance the most comprehensive record of the government’s response to the pandemic in the UK. Joanna contacted Ian and Rupert in late 2020 suggesting the timeline be made into an eBook. Documenting the events in a book was important not only as evidence but for posterity, Joanna believed. This was public knowledge that needed to be kept safe. For context, this introduction has been added, along with short intro- ductions, summarizing key at the start of each month, and a conclusion written by Rupert. The entries in the timeline nearly all appear at the time they took place. Sometimes reports on events were not published until afterwards, so an event that took place in 2016, such as Operation Cygnus, appears in 2016, rather than when the report was published. To make the timeline more accessible and more navigable, key words and concepts have been highlighted throughout the text – e.g. ‘herd immunity’, ‘care homes’ etc. There is a paperback and eBook version of the text available. Each entry in the timeline has a link showing where it was sourced. The eBook contains clickable URLs that link to the sources cited. On occasion there is a source that is not available as a web reference. The paperback contains references for each entry. Each link has been reproduced and referenced at the end of the text in the ‘References’ section. ONE 2010-19 AS THE PANDEMIC BEGAN TO SPREAD IN THE UK AND OVERWHELM the National Health Service, it quickly became apparent that the ability of the government and society to respond to the crisis was hampered by policies implemented over a decade ago. Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser, explained how the public spending cuts imposed by the 2010-15 Conservative-Liberal Democrat government had cost lives, while the results of large-scale training sessions and reports on responding to a pandemic were repeatedly ignored by the government. 2010–19: ‘SEVERAL EMERGENCY PLANNERS AND SCIENTISTS SAID THAT the plans to protect the UK in a pandemic had once been a top priority and had been well-funded for a decade following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001,’ the recent expose in the Sunday Times reports. ‘But then austerity cuts struck. “We were the envy of the world,’ the source said, ‘but pandemic planning became a casualty of the austerity years when there were more pressing needs”’ (Sunday Times). ‘It goes right back to 2010, when the government came in with a very clear policy to reduce public spending across the board, including the National Health Service,’ Sir David King tells LBC Radio when asked 2 IAN SINCLAIR & RUPERT READ about the UK’s response being slower than in other countries. ‘I’m afraid these austerity measures did lead to the cutting back on the risk management programmes.’ Presenter Nick Ferrari asks whether ‘aus- terity measures cost lives?’ Professor King replies, ‘Absolutely. That is what I’m saying’ (Independent). ‘Bill Morgan, an adviser to then-health secretary Andrew Lansley, who sat in on many pandemic planning discussions in the UK’s 2010–15 coali- tion government, said, ‘I can’t recall anyone raising the possibility of a non-flu pandemic, and we need to understand why that was because our future contingency plans need to cover everything with pandemic potential”’ (Financial Times). Commenting on the challenge of Covid-19 to the NHS, Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden, co-founder of the Doctors’ Association, says, ‘we cannot ignore the state the NHS has been left in by this government. After years of short-staffing, our health service is much less equipped to deal with this pandemic while continuing to provide care for non-Covid- related illness or injury’ (Guardian). ‘I think much of the readiness within the state had disappeared by the time the pandemic hit,’ Professor Gabriel Scally, President of Epidemi- ology and Public Health at the Royal Society of Medicine and a member of Independent SAGE, tells the first session of the People’s Covid Inquiry. ‘From 2010 onwards, in particular, there was a hollowing out of the state to the structures and organisation of many of the relevant services. And, the NHS of course moved too with the reforms to a commissioning and contracting model. The public health structure … and local authority had a much-reduced role and much-reduced resources’ (Morning Star). After interviewing dozens of public health directors, politicians, experts in infectious disease control, government scientific and political advis- ers, NHS leaders and emergency planners, a Guardian investigation reveals that in the years leading up to the pandemic the ‘infrastructure that was once in place to respond to public health crises was fractured, and in some places demolished, by policies introduced by recent Conservative governments, with some changes going as far back as Labour’s years in power.’ Approximately 32,000 overnight beds had A Timeline of The Plague Year: A Comprehensive Record… 3 been taken out of hospitals in England in just over a decade, including some lost under Labour.
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