Interesting read if you have a spare 15 minutes.
A chronology of our response to this pandemic.
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/04/11/a...avirus-crisis/
If not here's a brief summary, some of them are shocking;
Late February 2020: According to a Sunday Times report, at a private event Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s Chief Advisor, outlined the government’s strategy at the time in a way that was summarised by someone present as “herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad.” (Guardian)
3 March 2020: “Prime Minister Boris Johnson said… that coronavirus would not stop him greeting people with a handshake, adding that he had shaken the hands of everyone at a hospital where infected patients were being treated” (Reuters).
11 March 2020: WHO declares a coronavirus pandemic. The government allows the UEFA Champions League football match between Liverpool and Atlético Madrid to go ahead at Anfield stadium in Liverpool. 54,000 people attend the game, including 3,000 fans from Spain. Spain closed its schools on 10 March 2020 (Guardian)
12 March 2020: Addressing the “question of banning major public events such as sporting fixtures” the Prime Minister says “The scientific advice as we’ve said over the last couple of weeks is that banning such events will have little effect on the spread” (Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street).
15 March 2020: “When I first heard about this, I could not believe it… my colleagues here in the US… assumed that reports of the UK policy were satire”, notes William Hanage, a professor of the evolution and epidemiology of infectious disease at Harvard University
17 March 2020: As of 17 March the Guardian reports “only the UK and Belarus [in the whole of Europe] had held off implementing full or partial closures” of schools. The UK’s schools remain open (Guardian).
20 March 2020: Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jenny Harries says “The country has a perfectly adequate supply of PPE [Personal Protective Equipment]” and that supply pressures had now been “completely resolved”. (Pulse)
1 April 2020: (ITV News). The government confirms that only 2,000 people out of 500,000 frontline NHS England workers had been tested for coronavirus so far – 0.4 percent.
7 April 2020: “Lack of personal protective equipment continues to be a critical issue. It is heartbreaking to hear that some staff have been told to simply ‘hold their breath’ due to lack of masks”, says Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden, president of the Doctors’ Association UK.
7 April 2020: “World-leading disease data analysts have projected that the UK will become the country worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic in Europe, accounting for more than 40% of total deaths across the continent. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle predicts 66,000 UK deaths from Covid-19 by August, with a peak of nearly 3,000 a day, based on a steep climb in daily deaths early in the outbreak” (Guardian).