But afaik, the problem wasn't just that they went from A to B, it's that a) it took them too long to do it; and b) they're still not fully prepared to implement B properly.
It's likely this is fair and true. But their actions can still be in good faith, the advice they were getting could have been ambiguous enough for them to think they were doing the right thing.

That we were even talking about "herd immunity" in the early stages shows how unprepared we were. It was a serious option at the time, considered to be viable. It was only when it became clear the NHS would not be able to cope that we changed course. The shift to plan B was far from ideal, but idk how you can expect it to be perfect. You're expecting those in charge to balance health, economics and politics. Under normal circumstances, that's their job. But these are not normal circumstances.

The transition from plan A to B was probably too long. Ten days to implement a lockdown is a long time. But you haven't once even acknowledged the point I made about India doing it in four hours. Clearly doing it immediately is worse than doing it in stages. I agree doing it in ten days is too much, but how are we supposed to know this? It's obvious four hours is not enough.

I mean, there are people who considered all these things in advance. You say it's unprecedented, but that's not entirely true, at least not in the general sense. They've had models for how infectious diseases behave, and how to deal with pandemics for a long time.

Of course they plan for this, but this is the first time such plans have been put into action.

One argument against an early lockdown is it hurts the economy. Well, we ended up having to be in full lockdown for 8 weeks, and are only now just easing out of it, and possibly too early because we don't have adequate TTI yet. Meanwhile other places have had things under control earlier and so their lockdowns lasted less time than ours.

You're still citing mistakes that can be made in good faith, ie forgivable mistakes.


I do strongly suspect they're being influenced by big business to open up and/or never to have closed, if that makes you feel better.

Why would it make me feel better? I'd rather them be incompetent. Bur it's this kind of thing that isn't forgivable. This is corruption.