Thread by @globalhlthtwit

We were told you cannot suppress Covid so "we must live with the virus". When Asian states did suppress Covid19, within a month by early March 2020, SAGE were 'unanimous' that these states would face a huge second wave. Here are the cases in UK, S Korea and China: (1)

...and here are the deaths (2)

And here is a comparison of death rates in countries that did and did not suppress the virus with effective find, test and supported isolation programmes. (3)

'Living with the virus' strategy has led to more than one million people with Long Covid, including tens of thousands of children, based on government figures. (4)

The government decided on a 'world-beating' test, trace and isolate system in April 2020. Then they outsourced it to call centre companies like SERCO, against all population science (learned from AIDs, Ebola and community engagement research)+ public health advice (5)

UK failed to organise local contact tracing on the Asian model where they achieved test results within hours, + did regular home visits w one tracer per 1200-1500 population to monitor symptoms+isolation. If we'd copied Wuhan we would have had 45000 tracers in England. (6)

This week the FT report that SERCO has made record profits based on the 'more lucrative' test and trace system run by Baroness Harding who now considers herself an appropriate candidate to run NHS England. The CEO of SERCO Rupert Soames was just paid £4.8m. (7)

The 1% rise in health worker 'pay rise' given by Johnson and Sunak is a pay cut based on the latest inflation figures of 2.1% (8)

At the select committee, Minister of Health Hancock said the government didn't pay people to isolate because they would 'game the system'. So poor people avoided testing. By contrast, Asian states, Norway and Finland did pay people their salaries or generous support. (9)

Despite this evidence, senior Ministers and even government medical advisers say it is OK to live with the virus in a race with the vaccine. If we create new escape variants they will be responsible. (10)

None of the Asian states have had lockdowns. None of them had a fall in GDP in 2020 worse than -0.9%. The UK's GDP fell by 9.1% in 2020. The economic costs of our wrong coronavirus strategy have been devastating. (11)

I see no reason why we couldn't have copied the Asian model. The racial stereotyping and talk about the obstacle of 'western individualism' simply masks the colossal failure of govt public health strategy based on 'live with the virus'. A strategy that they still support. (12)

Yes, we have done excellently on developing a vaccine, its procurement and the roll-out largely through primary care trusts and general practices. But sound public health could have prevented so many deaths, + allowed vaccination without competing surges of cases. (13)