...we had to get within days of a collapse of NHS services to become inevitable before the government paid any attention.

I think they looked at Italy, decided that what Italy was doing was a 'take it on the chin' policy, and went for the same. Italy wasn't doing that, they were just taken unawares. They decided to let the disease rip, until someone from Imperial got hold of Johnson and showed him the numbers

Like, nobody in government ran the numbers? Were they really complete idiots? Yes. Yes the were. They were also sociopaths.

I recall tweeting right then before I did the maths "that's a hell of a roll of the dice", then I did the numbers. And it was terrifying...

...and very obviously at that point we were weeks away from a total collapse in the health service, we'd run out of places to store bodies and we'd be unable to treat basic health conditions. The numbers were absolutely solid.

It was maddening saying this in real time. I sat down with the number of deaths we'd had the day Johsnon ruled out lockdown, worked out how many cases that meant when they'd caught Covid, the time to show symptoms, a published range of R values, and how long it took to kill..

The 750-page document also has stinging criticism of “toxic and chaotic” culture inside Boris Johnson’s Downing Street – which it said the then PM. actively embraced – in which loudest voices held sway and women were sidelined.

I feel that they've suffered enough already.

Polio is a complete and utter bastard, vaccinations are extraordinarily successful, do not let lying grifters tell you otherwise. (fin)

...this is a disease that, even if you shrug it off, can hit you again, hard, later, in adulthood. In your prime. And it can ruin your old age, kill your children, and wreck a whole family. The fact that the initial infection is often not that bad completely misses the point. (9)

...and here's the real kicker - we don't know the % of peopel who were asymptomatic who get post polio syndrome. We know it happens, but because we don't have great data we don't know the % of hard to diagnose pain and mobility issues are post polio syndrome (8)

80-95% of people who did get ill will, at some point, suffer post polio syndrome. Thats 15-30 years after infection, or even later, and we can't prevent it. That means loss of mobility and pain, fatigue, its shit. (7)

...its very, very infectious. So that low % of serious cases and deaths, that's basically the % of unimunised children who'll get as sick as that, or die. But that's just the -start- (6)