Serious questions about the origins, responses and lockdown exit strategies are being asked. Here are 34 of the most important questions the public deserve to know the answer to.
The UK Sunday papers are this morning filled with difficult questions about the Covid-19 outbreak, with answers being demanded on the true origin of the coronavirus, the government's apparent failure to take the pandemic seriously, and the refusal of the government to disclose details about its exit plan for ending the so-called 'lockdown' of the country.
A cover story on this morning's Sunday Times reads: "Revealed - how the government sleepwalked into catastrophe". A special report by the paper reveals how the government 'ignored warnings from scientists and lost a crucial five weeks in the fight to tackle the coronavirus...with complacency at the heart of the government ...".
Similar questions are being asked across the Atlantic, where President Donald Trump is waging war on the mainstream media - who he accuses of downplaying the severity of the disease and of unfairly reporting on his administrations response - and also the World Health Organisation (WHO) and China, who he blames for failing to warn the wider world about the dangers of Covid-19. It is without doubt that a blame game has begun, with Trump's eye no doubt on the Presidential Election looming later this year.
What are these difficult questions, and how might we begin to go about fining the answers? Here we take a look at three key areas of questions: origins, responses and exit planning.
Origins
On 31 December 2019, China reported to the WHO that several cases of an unusual pneumonia had been reported in the Wuhan region. China said the virus could not be transmitted from human to human.
1. Why did China silence Dr Li Wenliang, who warned his colleagues about the coronavirus and was immediately silenced by the government? Why did China then wait three weeks after his initial warnings - and then his death from the disease - before taking action to contain the outbreak?
2. Did the virus originate in a Wuhan live animal market?
3. Did the virus originate in a lab four miles from the Wuhan live animal market where bat coronavirus was being studied and where human infectious diseases were being investigated?
4. Were safety measures at the Wuhan lab investigating the coronavirus stringent enough? Could the outbreak have leaked from here?
5. Why was China so slow to warn the rest of the world about the dangers of Covid-19?
6. Why was the World Health organisation not quicker to respond to the outbreak and declare a global pandemic? China reported the outbreak to the WHO on 31 December 2019, and it was a month later on 30 January that a Public Health Emergency of Global Concern was announced.
7. Why did governments in the West not begin preparing to fight the pandemic earlier? Why did they not stockpile essential supplies and draw up contingency plans sooner?
8. Why were governments not already prepared to fight a pandemic, which was already considered to be a major risk?
9. Why did the government ignore warnings from scientists in their initial response to reports of the outbreak and take a calm, business-as-usual approach?
Responses
The Sunday Times reports today (19/04/2020) that the British government wasted 5 weeks - or 38 days - in its response to the Covid-19 outbreak. The paper reports that in this time Britain 'sleepwalked into disaster' as the Prime Minister took holidays instead of chairing emergency COBRA meetings with top experts, whilst scientists warnings 'fell on deaf ears'.
10. Why has a senior Downing Street adviser said training for a pandemic 'had been neglected for years' and 'stockpiles of personal protective equipment...run down and out of date'? Why was the government not better prepared?
11. Why did the UK government waste 5 weeks (from 24 January) in the fight to tackle the coronavirus by ignoring early warnings from scientists that up to 380,000 people in the UK could die from the outbreak?
12. Why has China failed to report accurate figures for the number of deaths from the coronavirus in the country?
13. Why did Boris Johnson take a 12 day holiday in February - after the outbreak had been declared a global health emergency - in order to focus on preparing to tell his family for the news his new girlfriend Carrie Symonds was pregnant? This would obviously be a difficult time - his new girlfriend was no more than 5 years older than his oldest child, whilst he was still married to his ex-wife and mother to four of his children. But ministers were told to keep their briefings 'short' if they wanted the Prime Minister to read them - is this acceptable at the beginning of a global health pandemic?
14. Why were businesses not warned earlier that a lockdown of the UK may have to be enforced in order to stop the spread of the outbreak? This would have allowed businesses to begin thinking about cashflow and business continuity arrangements.
15. Why were more people not tested for the virus? Testing allowed South Korea to respond to the outbreak in a much more efficient and successful way - whilst testing was abandoned by the UK government very early on. People who showed any symptoms (but did not necessarily have the virus) were instead told to simply self-isolate at home.
16. Why did Boris Johnson only announce a 'full battle plan' to fight the virus 5 weeks after the first emergency government meeting on the virus (which he had not attended because he was on holiday)? When this plan was unveiled - on 2 March - why did it take a further 9 days for a lockdown to actually be brought into force?
17. Why were NHS and care home staff left without proper personal protective equipment on the front line?
18. Why had training for key workers on how to respond to a pandemic been delayed by two years so that funding could instead be spent on a no-deal Brexit, as reported by the Sunday Times (19/04/2020)?
19. Why have ministers refused to be transparent about planning and strategies from government, instead repeating their mantra that 'we are being led by the science' and accusing journalists of asking inappropriate questions.
Exit Planning
20. Why is the UK government refusing to reveal its exit plan to the public, leading to accusations from senior Conservatives that the government is treating people 'like children'?
21. Will the only end to a lockdown be the creation of a vaccine that can be administered to the whole population? Would the population be persuaded to remain under lockdown restrictions for potentially 12 months?
22. Should the most vulnerable in society - for example the elderly - be self-isolating until a vaccine can be found and developed, which could take 12-18 months?
23. Is Donald Trump right that the cure [a lockdown] could be worse than the virus itself, in terms of the impact on the economy?
24. What measures are in place for dealing with a second wave of the virus?
25. Has the public relations campaign run by the government - 'to 'stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives' - been efficient and transparent? Has this Brexit-campaign style mantra ('Get Brexit Done') been a success?
26. If lockdown rules are relaxed, will they have to be tightened again when people go back to normal life and the virus continues to spread?
27. Has the government made it clear that the lockdown is a delay strategy and not a solution strategy?
28. How will the economy restart with millions of people unemployed and a predicted 1 in 5 businesses out of business?
29. How will social distancing be maintained as the country returns to normal - how will distancing strategies be managed and implemented in daily life?
30. Are schools ready to respond to the Covid-19 crisis? Are students going to be happy with the temporary grading system? Will students have to delay their education by a year in order to take the exams which were cancelled? Will students have been held back by missing months of education because of the crisis?
31. Will parents feel safe if their children return to school in three weeks, as is planned by the government, after weeks of the government's message about the dangers of the virus - and no vaccine so no guarantee it will not quickly spread on the playground?
32. Will the UK economy be plunged into a recession? How will businesses recover from the lockdown measures, having been forced to close, without warning, overnight?
33. When will the hospitality industry be able to re-open - the industry employs millions in environments where social distancing is impossible.
34. How will the billions of pounds in spending - on furlough and business support schemes - be repaid by the government? Will a rise in taxes or austerity be required in order to balance the books - how many years will it take to pay off these debts?
35. Will the West continue to trade in the same way with China or ask difficult questions about how the outbreak was able to begin, spread across the globe and cause chaos for the world economy?
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