Thread by @Dominic2306

1/ Covid… Summary evidence on lockdowns. For UK political pundits obsessed with spreading nonsense on Sweden/lockdowns, cf. SW econ did a bit WORSE than Denmark which locked down, AND far more deaths in Sweden: noahpinion.substack.com/p/yes-lockdown…

One of the biggest misunderstandings, spread by political pundits even now, is the ‘tradeoff’ argument. Fact: evidence clear that fast hard effective action best policy for economy AND for reducing deaths/suffering

4/ Best example: Taiwan. Also shows that if you REALLY get your act together not only is econ largely unscathed but life is ~ normal. But SW1 (Remain/Leave, Rt/Left) = totally hostile to learning from East Asia

5/ There's a general western problem based on nonsense memes like 'asians all do as they're told it won't work here'. This is what many behavioural science 'experts'/charlatans argued, disastrously, in Feb2020. This nonsense is STILL influencing policy, eg our joke borders policy

6/ Another confusion re Sweden: data shows despite no official 'lockdown' behaviour changed enormously. The closer your measures are to 'welding people inside homes' (per Wuhan at peak) the >> effect on transmission. Semantics of 'lockdown' obscure this really simple point

7/ If you are going to have to do measures ≈ lockdown to avoid health system collapse then the harder/earlier the better & the sooner they can be released. Pseudo 'lockdowns' w/o serious enforcement are hopeless: econ hit & people die anyway, nightmare rumbles on

8/ Waiting room, 1st jab. Remembered Vallance 24/3 amid disaster: will u support taking vaccines out of DH & a new Taskforce, we need different leadership & skills to drive it? CABSEC supported divvying up DH tasks. If not, normal Whitehall process, probably normal result

9/ Success seems to have blinded SW1 to important Qs. a/ We did it much better than Brussels, obviously, but Brussels is not a good comparison. How well did we do relative to ‘how well wd General Groves who ran the Manhattan Project have done it?’

10/ I think we’ll conclude we shd have done Human Challenge trials immediately & cd have got jabs in arms summer. This is not criticism of the VTF which has been constrained in ways they shdnt be. It’s cnctd to b/ where is the public plan for how the VTF will deal with variants?

11/ One of the most fundamental & unarguable lessons of Feb-March is that secrecy contributed greatly to the catastrophe. Openness to scrutiny wd have exposed Gvt errors weeks earlier than happened

12/ So why are MPs accepting the lack of a public plan now for VTF viz variants? Especially when rumours reach me that the silent entropy of Whitehall is slowly turning VTF back into a ‘normal’ entity?

13/ The best hedge re a variant escaping current vaccines is PUBLIC SCRUTINY of Gvt plans. This will hopefully show it’s been taken seriously. If not, better learn now that the Gvt has screwed up again than when ‘variant escapes’ news breaks

14/ I can think of no significant element of covid response that wd not have been improved by discarding secrecy and opening up. This was symbolised by e.g how COBR cd not be used: a constrained STRAP environment cd not cope with the scale/speed, another important lesson

15/ Having watched classified elements of covid response, Gvt cd make the vaccine plans 99% public without risks, ‘national security’ almost totally irrelevant to the critical parts of the problem, a few things cd be withheld while publishing all crucial parts of the plan

16/ These issues are relevant to c/ Who is writing the plan for ‘how we deal with something worse than covid?’ If we get this right now, we do not need to have this sort of disaster again. We’ll also be hedging vs future bioterrorism risks: cf: 80000hours.org/podcast/episod…

17/ The covid plan was supposed to be ‘world class’ but turned out to be part disaster, part non-existent. I urged inside Gvt to do a review of other contingency plans for more dangerous things than covid, a largely *open* process with e.g @wtgowers helping. Happening?

18/ MPs shd force publication of vaccine/variant plan & require mostly open review of other contingency plans before we find out the hard way they're as 'world class' as the covid plan...

19/ Such reviews shd seek out those were right & early on covid. Such people are more likely to spot that other plans have errors, gaps, that institutional planning has blind spots, failure to look at crucial operational details etc. E.g @MWStory

20/ P Vallance & I supported opening up SAGE much earlier than it happened. I argued before 1st lockdown to open up the CODE of SPI-M models for scrutiny. Barrier = SW1 cultural hostility to openness & this barrier means SAGE still too closed & too little of its workings public

21/ Looking at minutes does not give good insight to reality of discussions. E.g looking at minutes of crucial 18/3, which I attended, does not convey true situation, discussion, atmosphere, effects

22/ With something as critical as variants escaping vaccines, there is *no* justification for secrecy, public interest unarguably is *open scrutiny of the plans*

23/ This point is critical re Groves/Manhattan/vaccines & wider covid & wider issue of gvt performance: our civilisation is *abysmal* at seeking Groves/Bob Taylors & getting them into critical roles, *bureaucracies exclude & expel them*, as they did with Groves/Taylor!

24/ The public inquiry will at no point ask: how does the deep institutional wiring of the parties/civil service program destructive behaviour by putting the wrong ppl in wrong jobs with destructive incentives? It will all be about relatively surface errors

25/ If SW1 wanted to 'learn' there wd already be a serious exercise underway. The point of the inquiry is the opposite of learning, it is to delay scrutiny, preserve the broken system & distract public from real Qs, leaving the parties & senior civil service essentially untouched

26/ J Phillips, a brilliant young neuroscientist I recruited to no10, argued for immediate Human Challenge Trials, as did others. We were *far* too slow to listen to such advice. The science 'misfits' who urged this early were clearly right, the 'ethicists' disastrously wrong

27/ So true from @paulg, it’s amazingly rare to find people who *deeply care about results* at senior levels in politics/gvt, those who do are seen as mad/unreliable & are weeded out. SW1 incentives are ~all about rewarding *process + fake signals*. V relevant to covid fiascos

28/ Of the 20 ppl who I saw do most to save 1000s of lives, it's striking how many gone or leaving or planning to leave, & how many who were disastrously wrong/useless been promoted to jobs they can't do/given honours etc

29/ @pmarca on the west's covid failures ('the harsh reality is that it all failed') & the General Groves mentality needed, influential in no10, 4/20, as we pushed thro the vaccine taskforce a16z.com/2020/04/18/its…

30/ Crucial data generally ignored by those who want to downplay covid danger, many 1000s will have serious health problems for years because of our failure to act faster/harder in Feb/March & Sep. Those who predicted this issue wd be 'Gulf War syndrome bollocks' were wrong

31/ There was a PHE exercise called Exercise NIMBUS in a hypothetical future 14/4/20 with mock COBR slides. Assumed peak week 13/5 and >33M cases over 16 week wave, hospitals full by 14/4, >800K deaths, schools told stay open(!!). A/one know *when exercise happened* (think 3/20)?

32/ This, evening of 31/10 re lockdown2, from @wtgowers who was ahead of the game in 3/20, was spot on. If mass testing had been developed properly earlier in year as cd/shd have been, wd probably have avoided lockdowns 2&3 while awaiting vaccine

33/ True but also UK gvt did v badly, turned out we cd/shd have had these tests at millions p/day scale by Sep latest, instead of seriously *starting* in Sep, which wd have greatly changed q42020. Those screaming from ~Feb/March were ignored, months/lives/£ needlessly lost

34/ Mass testing same story as elsewhere: some brilliant/dedicated relatively junior officials (e.g Alex Cooper) + great young scientists (e.g @gaurav_ven) + entrepreneurs held back by senior management/DHSC/PHE (particularly awful) & Whitehall legacy procurement & HR horrorshows

35/ Even tho *the PM/CABSEC/I* all told 9/20 most senior HR & procurement officials to treat mass testing 'like a wartime project', ignore their usual bullshit multimonth processes, mass testing hugely hampered by Whitehall's optimisation for '[awful] process over results'

36/ So much ‘lockdown’ confusion. Obv they're ‘destructive’. But if you have to do it cos alternative is *100s of 1000s choking to death + no NHS for months for everybody else + econ sunk cos everybody hiding in terror* then earlier/harder is better for health AND econ

37/ If we'd had the right preparations + competent people in charge, we wd probably have avoided lockdown1, *definitely* no need for lockdowns 2&3. Given the plan was AWOL/disaster + awful decisions delayed everything, lockdown1 became necessary

38/ Media generally abysmal on covid but even I’ve been surprised by 1 thing: how many hacks have parroted Hancock’s line that ‘herd immunity wasn’t the plan’ when 'herd immunity by Sep' was *literally the official plan in all docs/graphs/meetings* until it was ditched

39/ Yes the media is often incompetent but something deeper is at work: much of SW1 was happy to believe Hancock's bullshit that ‘it’s not the plan’ *so they didn’t have to face the shocking truth*. Most political hacks believe in 'the system'...

40/ In week of 9/3, No10 was made aware by various people that the official plan wd lead to catastrophe. It was then replaced by Plan B. But how 'herd immunity by Sep' cd have been the plan until that week is a fundamental issue in the whole disaster

41/ All those referring to the Sunday Times story 22/3/20 re me dramatically 'changing my mind' at SAGE on 12/3: *there was no SAGE on 12/3*! It's an invented meeting & invented story repeated for a year by political hacks as 'fact'

42/ No10 decided to lie: 'herd immunity has never been... part of our coronavirus strategy'. V foolish, & appalling ethics, to lie about it. The right line wd have been what PM knows is true: our original plan was wrong & we changed when we realised

43/ Lots of hacks have lost their minds. Herd immunity wasn’t ‘a secret strategy’, it was THE OFFICIAL PUBLIC EXPLAINED ON TV/RADIO STRATEGY! Halpern, on SAGE, literally explained it on radio explicitly, 11/3/20, as did others!!

44/ The whole 'flatten the curve' plan A was to get herd immunity by summer & avoid 2nd peak during annual NHS winter crisis. That's why our official graphs had *ONE peak over by summer*! COBR docs/graphs describe herd immunity as ‘the optimal single peak strategy’ etc

45/ What happened is a/ panic about the phrase, ‘comms disaster’. b/ We ditched the herd immunity plan and shifted to Plan B, suppression, which previously the Gvt said/thought would be worse cos it wd lead to a 2nd peak in winter 2020 during the annual NHS crisis

46/ A COBR doc from week of 9/3/20 explains official thinking behind Plan A: ie. suppression either won't work or wd lead to 2nd peak during NHS winter crisis, so the advised herd immunity approach was what DHSC/Cabinet Office described as 'single peak optimal strategy'

47/ In that week it became clear neither Hancock/CABOFF understood herd immunity effects: 100s of 1000s choking to death + no NHS for *anybody* for months + dead unburied + econ implosion; so we moved to Plan B: suppression + Manhattan Project for drugs/vaccines + test&trace etc

48/ Critical as I am of the PM in all sorts of ways, it's vital to understand the disaster was not just his fault: the official plan was disastrously misconceived, DHSC/CABOFF did not understand this or why, & a PlanB had to be bodged amid total & utter chaos

49/ Jenny Harries told us, the same week herd immunity was the official plan, masks are a 'BAD idea', 'we don't want to disrupt people’s lives’, acting ‘too early we will just pop up with another epidemic peak later’. So Whitehall has promoted her, obviously

50/ ‘Herd immunity’ was officially seen as UNAVOIDABLE week of 9/3. It wd come either a) in a single peak over by Sep, or b) in a 2nd peak in winter. (a) was seen as easier to manage & less of a catastrophe so it was Plan A. Cf SAGE 13/3: ‘a near certainty’ suppression>2nd peak

51/ It was in week of 9/3 that we started to figure out Plan B to dodge herd immunity until vaccines. Even AFTER we shifted to PlanB, COBR documents had the ‘OPTIMAL single peak strategy’ graphs showing 260k dead cos the system was so confused in the chaos, see below

52/ Hodges = wrong: *there was neither an intention to lockdown nor as of Fri13/3 any official plan for doing so*. The SAGE minutes show the opposite of what Dan says they say...

53/ Dan says the SAGE minutes show ‘The strategy was to wait for the optimum moment to lockdown’. No. SAGE said *literally the opposite*: lockdown = suppression = ‘near certainty’ of 2nd peak & this was thought to be much WORSE than single peak/herd immunity by Sep, hence graph

54/ On 14/3 one of the things being screamed at the PM was ‘there is *no plan for lockdown* & our current official plan will kill at least 250k & destroy the NHS’. Cf the graph: ‘optimal single peak strategy’ with 3 interventions. That was the official plan, which was abandoned

55/ Another reason we ditched Plan A was it became clear the official system had given ~no thought to all the second order effects of 250k dying, almost all without ICU care. True deaths wd clearly be much >250k cos there would be *no NHS for anybody for months*

56/ On 12/3, the most surreal day of 18 months in Gvt, it was argued to the PM that a/ individual isolation be delayed (‘we’re not ready’), b/ we might not do household quarantine *at all*, c/ given Halpern’s interview on 11th, the PM shd publicly explain the ‘herd immunity’ plan

57/ Re D Halpern: a/ on 11/3 he was simply explaining the OFFICIAL plan, not freelancing; b/ unlike many he supported the switch to Plan B in the next week & told the CABSEC & DHSC that…

58/ NB. Even at SAGE on 18/3 it was *not* all clearly agreed ‘must do national lockdown ASAP’. Halpern supported it with others. Senior DHSC officials were saying even on 18/3: lockdown just means it pops back up again in 2nd wave so why change strategy?

59/ Even at SAGE on 18/3 some argued: even if lockdown needed, delay, finesse timing. Others argued: there's no alternative *so sooner must be better*. The latter were right (I think) & that argument prevailed

60/ Re 'herd immunity': the *official pandemic preparation plan* spelled out explicitly why the 'optimal strategy' was defined in Feb/March as 'single peak', herd immunity by Sep. When crisis hit, this assumption governed thinking:

61/ One way to sift the journalists writing about the inquiry is: if they quote childish military metaphors like ‘grenades’ from supposed ‘allies’, they’re inventing either the quote or the ‘ally’ or probably both. Many journalists want you to believe nonsense...

62/ One of the worst failings in Feb/March, less discussed than lockdown, was the almost total absence of a serious plan for shielding/social care. As in general, there was widespread delusion we HAD a great plan. It turned out to barely exist…

63/ E.g In week of 16/3 the official plan was ‘don’t put a helpline number on the shielding letters because we haven’t sorted out the helplines’. What about the ~1m who will need food/help? No plan until...

64/ Thank god a BRILLIANT young woman working in GDS, Jen Allum, hacked together a team, a plan & & a tool and started turning it around - without her, this would have been an even bigger crisis, >1m wd have been without food/help

65/ First sketch of Plan B, PM study, Fri 13/3 eve - shown PM Sat 14/4: NB. Plan A 'our plan' breaks NHS,>4k p/day dead min.Plan B: lockdown, suppress, crash programs (tests/treatments/vaccines etc), escape 1st AND 2nd wave (squiggly line instead of 1 or 2 peaks)... details later

66/ How to shift to a better regime? What I wrote re COBR, disaster response etc & what’s needed: different selection/training/incentives to get radically better people AND new institutions, each alone won’t work: dominiccummings.com/2019/06/26/on-…

67/ As shown to PM, his study, Sat morning, 14/3, by Ben Warner/me: 'Current plan' = disaster vs 'actual plan'. The PlanB whiteboard is just behind. 'The official plan is a disaster, we need Plan B'

68/ Don’t listen to pundits on science, covid etc when they’re repeatedly incompetently confident making awful judgements on their supposed area of ‘expertise’ & never learn. We need an entity to keep score on these clowns' bullshit. E.g Rentoul

69/ Instead of pundits, follow people like @hsu_steve who warned me 25/2/20 US policy was 'very stupid' & I shd push UK to be much more aggressive, reject herd immunity etc. People like Steve & @MWStory, unlike pundits, know *how to think*

70/ I asked Prof Gowers, Fields medallist, for help week of 9/3. His advice & paper helped convince me to try to bounce policy from Plan A/herd immunity to Plan B (suppress, vaccines etc). He's not on official minutes but he also was on phone for 18/3 SAGE theguardian.com/world/2021/may…

71/ In 2014 I explained how SW1 programs dysfunctional institutions & poor performance. Most big things on covid were here including today’s issue: destructive feedback between EU procurement/judicial review/ Whitehall management: dominiccummings.com/2014/10/30/the…

72/ JR summary: ‘there is no suggestion of actual bias’ but instead of telling officials to focus on the worst crisis since 45, a disease x2 in 2-3 days, I shd have told officials to focus on creating a Potemkin paper trail to negate campaigners claiming ‘appearance’ of bias

73/ I.e if I’d said as the Cabinet Office imploded around me, let’s spend days writing a RAG-rated scorecard for ‘objective criteria’ to guard vs bad PR, then a/ more dead, but b/ it wd have been ‘lawful’. Court is saying: I/officials shd have focused on (b)

74/ On this basis the courts shd rule that many 2020 decisions were similarly ‘unlawful’ as I & the Cabinet Secretary repeatedly told officials ‘focus on imminent threats to lives/destruction, not process/lawyers/Potemkin paper trails’

75/ Court is telling SW1: even in a crisis like a once-a-century pandemic, your real focus shd ALWAYS be the paper trail. This is already a hugely destructive problem & today’s judgment will make it even worse. If covid doesn't justify focus on outcome>process, nothing will

76/ Officials often tell PM 'we need a Potemkin meeting repeating what we've just decided for a paper trail in case of a JR'. Ditto across Whitehall many times a day. I've said for yrs this causes chaos, today guarantees the problem gets more destructive

77/ When it became clear DHSC/PHE/CABOFF weren't gathering vital data, I acted urgently. This data immediately helped key decisions & saved lives. But *our JR process values paper trails over effective action* & this incentivises officials + is very destructive as I wrote 2014

78/ Media coverage today inevitably abysmal. In 12/20, even after covid made our EU-based procurement system a life/death issue, there was *zero coverage from the entire political media* of the procurement Green Paper, such is SW1 antipathy for the dread word ‘management’

79/ Why? High status MPs, officials & hacks see procurement/management as low status + boring. Finkelstein put it well after I advised officials to read Grove’s management classic so they'd learn how to get stuff done: management is ‘really boring’. SW1's attitude killed 1000s

80/ Heywood told SW1: we can't afford serious early warning systems for major disasters & Whitehall has 'nothing to learn from the private sector' on management/data/digital. SW1 believed him. I said this attitude wd kill people: dominiccummings.com/2019/03/01/on-…

81/ Guaranteed: a No10 happy as a DailyMediaEntertainmentService will drop the JR reforms I began & will barely pretend to deal with a problem that’s intellectually tough, no cake headlines just bad ones, & generates ferocious opposition from smart incentivised lawyers/officials

82/ Substack - pls subscribe... Hancock 'no PPE shortage'... Evidence... And if you work for covid victims campaigning for MPs to launch *immediate open inquiry* pls get in touch, I'll help campaign for free, as will others... dominiccummings.substack.com

83/ Horrifically familiar - nobody there at 1700 in biggest crisis since 1945. Hancock tried to delay doing household quarantine in COBR on 16/3 'because the hotline isn't ready'. I knew he wd, had warned PM who overruled thank god #SackHancock, subscribe dominiccummings.substack.com

84/ Re the data dashboard that Faculty built with NHS-X/Palantir. N.B It did NOT use ANY personal data, none went to Faculty/Palantir to make it. It worked on metrics like ‘no of cases in each hospital’. It was for *management decision-making*, nothing to do with individual data

85/ There are big questions re NHS-Digital & plans for *patient data* but this must NOT be confused with *covid dashboard which has NO patient data*, abandoning it wd be disastrous & kill people. Sadly some campaigners deliberately conflate all this & spread misinformation

86/ Evidence on the covid disaster: as the PM said himself, Hancock's performance on testing, procurement, PPE, care homes etc was 'totally fucking hopeless', & his account to MPs was fiction: dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-pm-on-ha…

87/ A few simple Qs to ask the PM:

88/ On 3/5/20 the PM's office thought DHSC care home failings was still 'negligently killing the most vulnerable who we are supposed to be shielding' & No10 was not being told the truth about it. An emergency mtng was called by No10 & confirmed our fears dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-pm-on-ha…

89/ If hacks want to understand what went wrong on mass/fast testing & how Whitehall screwed it again spring 20 until No10 alerted July - I v v highly recommend asking @gaurav_ven, a brilliant young scientist who explained to No10 what DHSC got wrong, why & the solution

90/ Also NB. @gaurav_ven had a great covid proposal but couldn't get it funded spring 2020 cos of HORRIFIC WHITEHALL SCIENCE FUNDING BUREAUCRACY so went to @patrickc & @tylercowen whose v fast funding helped him. Case study for why UK needs ARIA...

91/ In spring 2020 I got @UKRI_News to speak to the Collison/Cowen funding entity for lessons on *moving fast*. Some changes happened including on drugs/vaccines. BUT MPs shd inquire into the details: how exactly, what metrics, show UKRI & other funders improving??

92/ Hancock claimed to MPs a/ 'no PPE shortage', b/ 'everybody got treatment they needed'; c/ he was a heroic success on testing, d/ HMT hampered him on procurement, e/ 'protective ring around care homes'. His claims = false. Evidence here, more to come... dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-pm-on-ha…

93/ Everybody interested in how we can radically improve research funding or covid response or both -- VERY STRONGLY recommend this by @patrickc @tylercowen , I got F.G to help UKRI last spring, helped with covid, much much more needed future.a16z.com/what-we-learne…

94/ New! Why did I throw 'due process' out the window? Why is Jolyon the-kimono-wearing-fox- killer Maugham a menace to society? SHARE, SUBSCRIBE! dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-uks-proc…

95/ New: am accused today of throwing 'due process out the window'. GUILTY! To get the Vaccine Taskforce going, to get PPE for NHS staff, I insisted *all usual processes out the window*. If we had not, then no vaccines end of 2020 & even bigger disaster... dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-uks-proc…

96/ Blog on how our laws killed ppl. CABOFF must appeal recent judgment: judge has created a common law obligation to conduct a form of competition when statute expressly rejects such a need cos of urgency! Judgment is wrong & disaster for Whitehall dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-uks-proc…

97/ Effect of flawed judgment in recent case = 1000s of officials told 'even in a crisis killing people, your priority is creating a paper trail, not the crisis'. The court has made our terrible system that killed people *even worse*. And judicial review needs radical surgery

98/ My rushed instructions on how to change Vaccine Taskforce from another Hancock shitshow to low-friction-fast-decisions success: removing Hancock/normal DHSC clearance processes from £££ decisions *crucial* to success: dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-uks-proc…

99/ New - further evidence on how Hancock/PM negligence killed people, the testing/care home disaster dominiccummings.substack.com/p/more-evidenc…

100/ What did the PM say when I told him Hancock's test-trace plans were hopeless, care home testing not happening...? 'Totally agree'... Hancock's plan 'feels like whistling in the dark... imaginary clouseaus'... #InquiryNow dominiccummings.substack.com/p/more-evidenc…

101/ One of the many things No10 shd be pushing on super-aggressively instead of focusing on being a Media Entertainment Service: a DNA detector to monitor air, not just for covid but for future threats, via @geochurch - arxiv.org/pdf/2105.11949…

102/ Another data point on lab leak hypothesis: Nature paper pointing out that covid was well-optimised for human infection *from the start* nature.com/articles/s4159…

103/ To understand why Whitehall did so badly on covid, contra disgracefully incompetent IfG reports, consider that chunks of the OSS(CIA) sabotage manual cd pass today as 'best practice' in Whitehall & eerily describe being 'in the room' 3/2020
gutenberg.org/files/26184/pa…

104/ Jeremy Farrar confirms what I told MPs and what Hancock and PM have denied. Hancock's claim that everybody got the treatment they needed was false, & the PM knows it's false as he & I were told the truth by Vallance/Whitty after Wave 1 in Cabinet room

105/ One of best things Ive seen on omicron. Ignore Gvt happy talk or hi profile pundits saying small omicron numbers now are 'reassuring'. Balls. EXPONENTIAL GROWTH. We SHD be on wartime footing for vaccines/drugs but Gvts are delaying as always metaculus.com/notebooks/8801…

106/ All year Ive warned re Gvt letting vaccine taskforce atrophy. 🤡 Also Gvt has not ordered enough antivirals. 🤡 NHS/999 already collapsing. No10 farce, experts in despair.🤡 Unless we get lucky we're heading for another🛒shitshow, plan accordingly dominiccummings.substack.com/p/startup-gove…

107/ Best thing I think u can do if you have leverage is pressure No11 (can execute), NOT No10 (farce), to push with all urgency on procuring updated vaccines/drugs. Without fast action omicron wave cd smash NHS before we've got new vaccines etc dominiccummings.substack.com/p/startup-gove…

108/ Quite possible Gvt will have to lockdown again in Q1 cos of NHS collapse so also think about your xmas movements & where you may be spending 8 weeks plus. These discussions are happening in Whitehall but *they aren't telling the public* cos No10 wants only happy talk...

109/ Gvt shd have used 2021 to build properly incl NHS capacity. Instead they tried to rewrite history & failed to rebuild NHS. SW1 pretended they cd 'get back to normal' & stop thinking re pandemics. Now Whitehall is in panic meltdown again. Rotten rotten system & parties...