Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle with Coronavirus

I brought this book to read chapter11.As a senior nurse of 28 years on the front line I wanted to see if what I had witnessed in reality was acknowledged in this book. It was a honest reflection, but didn’t go far enough for me. But I totally understand why this couldn’t be published.The NHS & the country has failed a huge amount of patients in this pandemic. The failure in care was a decision not to provide the gold standard in care which would have been intensive care. To get around this the decision was made not to resuscitate many patients that would have recovered given the opportunity to go t intensive care. And to be honest I struggle to sleep at night with the things I’ve seen & witnessed this last 12 months. The relatives of these unfortunate souls will never know the suffering endured by they’re loved ones & there needs be an inquiry into these failing. The truth will tell & when the public realise they were failed they won’t be clapping the NHS.

If you have lost a family member, loved one or friend to covid-19 then this is a must read.First of all, it is written almost like a best-selling thriller buy sadly one which you already know part of the ending. I found that despite this, I could not put this book down as tragic decision or more truthfully indecision is enacted on almost every page. In the back of your mind your inner voice starts by saying ‘No, No, No!’ and by the end is screaming ‘Why, Why, Why’.The book details the events of the pandemic and shows that the government response of ‘following the science’ is a barefaced lie. It clearly demonstrates that the government held onto the ‘herd immunity’ principle even though they were aware of the truly tragic consequences of this decision. If any official or scientific member of the numerous committees, struggling to get members of the government to listen to them, mentioned these words or discussed this point with the media then they were given a dressing down thereby showing that the government was pursuing this policy but did not essentially want the public to know. The truly shocking realisation is the amount of lies this government told and keeps on telling to cover the reality that they were being informed of daily.If the tragic dithering and indecision at the start is not enough it beggars belief when you read the same mistakes being repeated again and again later on in the pandemic. What is clear is that this government will undoubtedly do everything in its power and by any means to deflect responsibility and attempt to rewrite the history of this pandemic when the evidence is already there of their slow response and lack of thorough preparation that caused the worst fatality rate in the Western World.Towards the end of the book, you begin to wonder what has the country done to deserve this tragedy? You then realise the shocking truth that when you elect a work-shy incompetent chancer to the highest office in the land you get what you paid for!Will the people of the country ‘forgive and forget’ after a successful roll out of the vaccine?Unfortunately, there are probably going to be over 150,000 souls who will not have that opportunity. Perhaps we should think of this the next time we are standing in an election booth.

I voted conservative in the 2019 GE and also Brexit in 2016, so i have no real political axe to grind in that i am some swivel eyed far left momentum / corbynite ( apologies to all those in momentum/ this not my description of you, but more an MSM description)What I saw play out in front of me and now from reading the detail behind the decisions, sickens me to the pit of my stomachAt every juncture mistakes were made. Not only were mistakes made, they were repeated. My ire and opprobrium for this government at this very point is palpableJohnson presided over and is responsible for 10s of thousands of deaths. I dont usually write reviews, but I was compelled to after reading this. The book is a great read and I should be spending more time on this point, but I cannot, due to the level of anger I have for this governmentThere has to be an inquiry, as simple as that and resignations, legal proceedings, whatever it takes to get to the truthJohnson was beholden to his back bench cranks, I.e, Baker and the other members of asinine, swivel eyed, bovine CRGNot only that we had the conservative poster boy , sunak, who true to his libertarian roots pushed for looser restrictions which subsequently led to an even greater death toll. The fact that sunak doesn't even seem to understand how a modern monetary system works and that the burden for the furlough would fall on tax payers also is a blatant lie from someone wilfully ignorant or down right pathological and or a sociopath.1000s of people died under this government's laissez faire attitude to putting in the correct mitigations at the right time and for misunderstanding the dichotomy of wealth and health ( they are not mutually exclusive)There also has to be an inquiry into the non governmental actors, I.e Vallance and others with regards to the herd immunity narrative which was being promulgatedI am no economist as I am no immunlogist, but even I understood that the more hosts you have to jump between the more chance for genetic drift or variants , so HI should have been persona non grata in the discussions leading up to the events.At the end of the day you have a litany of failures by a government which took a lite touch approach to a novel pathogen of unknown capabilities. It's on the government, it's on Johnson, they should hang their heads in collective shameYou will not have my vote againYoursUtterly embarrassed

Well researched and well written account of the pandemic so far. Some of which was new to me despite following this story. Damning for those in power and tragic for those affected. Yes there’s one unfortunate error but I really don’t think that warrants a one star review when the rest is so well written. We all make mistakes, and when checking intensely, we can become naturally blind to them. It doesn’t ruin the book for me at all. I recommend this.