1/ Great package on UK v Asian pandemic planning in today's paper, plus more on #ExerciseCygnus
Kicks off with scoop interview with Taiwan’s vice-President and epidemiologist Chen Chien-jen via @niccijsmith Very interesting on WHO and patient zero...⬇️
telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
2/ Then with help from @journobill + @DanielFalush + Twitter encouragement from @Dr2NisreenAlwan an analysis of the UK pandemic strategy against those of S Korea, Singapore, Taiwan etc telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
3/ UK plan raises white flag from off: "It will not be possible to stop the spread ... either in the country of origin or in the UK", it says.
Asian plans, by contrast, all go for virus containment in bid to save lives. As @DanielFalush says, the "framing" is entirely different.
4/ In Taiwan they have family stockpiles of PPE. "The family is the basic unit of the community and the core of the pandemic preparedness program"...
5/ Which brings us back to #ExerciseCygnus . Did that 2016 drill not set off alarm bells? "We discussed herd immunity" a Whitehall source said. "Everything we planned for was based on the idea that a disease would kill lots and lots of people". telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/1…
6/ Government has never published the findings on Cygnus. So we put in an FOI request for it This is what we got back...
7/ We will try to appeal. "There are serious questions for ministers on what lessons were learnt from the Cygnus pandemic drill that can only be answered by publishing", said shadow health sec @JonAshworth last night.
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