Tuesday 21 April 2020

If only the NHS had employed a few people like this...

From The Independent:

A dystopian novel about a deadly pandemic wreaking havoc across the world that was rejected 15 years ago has finally been published after reality once more proved itself stranger than fiction.

Scottish author Peter May, 68, a former journalist and BBC screenwriter, wrote Lockdown in 2005, imagining London as the epicentre of a global outbreak, only to see his manuscript turned away by publishers, who deemed its subject matter “extremely unrealistic and unreasonable”.

“At the time I wrote the book, scientists were predicting that bird flu was going to be the next major world pandemic,” Mr May told CNN. “It was a very, very scary thing and it was a real possibility, so I put a lot of research into it and came up with the idea, what if this pandemic began in London? What could happen if a city like that was completely locked down?”

His novel centres around a police detective investigating the murder of a child after their bones are discovered at the site of a makeshift hospital, an idea anticipating the opening of the NHS Nightingale at the capital’s ExCeL Centre this week.


As far-fetched as this scenario might have seemed at the time (and still does), it was never beyond the bounds of probability, and you'd think that - like South Korea - health services/governments would at least have some plans in place for a recurrence of Spanish Flu, Hong Kong flu, SARS, swine flu, MERS, bird flu. Not to mention Ebola. There have been five of these outbreaks in the last two decades, and just because we were lucky each time, that was all it was - pure luck.

Even if the NHS didn't stockpile the necessary stuff (they wouldn't have known exactly what to stock pile and how much; they wouldn't know which age groups would be worst affected; you can't develop a test for a virus you don't know about yet etc), they could at least have had contracts in place with the manufacturers and laboratories to churn out however many million bits of kit at short notice; and some plans on what to do if it affects children, pregnant women, younger adults or older people worst etc.

9 comments:

Staffordshire man said...

Check out "Station Eleven", I read it a couple of years back and I understand they started making a series based on the book late last year.

It's a good read

Mark Wadsworth said...

SM, exactly, Peter May wasn't the only one making such predictions, some guesses will turn out to be more accurate than others. The NHS clearly did bugger all.

Blissex2 said...

«you'd think that - like South Korea - health services/governments would at least have some plans in place for a recurrence of Spanish Flu, Hong Kong flu, SARS, swine flu, MERS, bird flu. Not to mention Ebola. There have been five of these outbreaks in the last two decades»

Well, surely the chinese government did: they started building temporary hospitals as the number of deaths was still quite low, in the same way that they built empty cities as the number of countryside migrants into cities was still not that high.

But it turns out that because of EU "bullying" the UK did have a published contingency plan, even if fairly optimistic:

http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=87568

«Thus, while the media puzzles over the reason, a clear statement of the rationale for its actions has actually been published and can be found in its "Scientific Summary of Pandemic Influenza & its Mitigation", produced in 2011 by the Cameron coalition government. The Summary backs up the 2011 Strategy which became finalised in the 2014 version. This is the plan currently in force and forms the basis of the government response. The fact that the "scientific summary" document even exists, however, is wonderfully ironic in this post-Brexit world, as it was produced and prepared in accordance with Decision No 2119/98/EC of the European Community, later augmented by Decision No 1082/2013/EU. The document itself comes with "Underpinning Evidence Base components", conveniently listed here by the EU's European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). The fact that it is to be found on the EU's Europa website almost certainly guarantees protection from media curiosity.»
«The point that so many miss is that policies to deal with major events such as pandemics take decades to develop. The genesis of the current UK policy seems to lie in the response of the Blair government in 2005 to a call by the WHO for increased preparedness for pandemics, with the production of strategy documents. Going through several iterations, but with only minor changes, we ended up with the policy in its final form on 2014, supplemented by multiple planning documents for all levels of government – with the EU taking a close interest in developments.»

Blissex2 said...

«they could at least have had contracts in place with the manufacturers and laboratories to churn out however many million bits of kit at short notice»

Booking capacity to keep idle "just in case" for many years is expensive, and the Conservatives want to minimize the cost of the NHS to their own (who use private "silver plan" and "gold plan" insurers) by running it at least at 110% of capacity.

Graeme said...

How do you calculate this 110% of capacity given that so many ICU beds around the country are vacant?

Mark Wadsworth said...

B2, whether it was an EU approved plan or not is by the by, the plan was clearly crap and completely deficient. As can be said for the plans of most countries.

G, good question.

Staffordshire man said...

Really good post from Marc Andreesen (netscape)

https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/?fbclid=IwAR0jOrsdC_pI-k2tXpr8vb0U3K7NrwpOysUBd-COEA_GCspKBGGc2SwiE0E

Mark Wadsworth said...

SM, yes, good article, except the bit where he claims building more homes in SF will get prices down. It didn't work on Manhattan or in London and it won't work anywhere else, ever.

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