The United Kingdom’s Slow Virus Shutdown Cost Thousands Of Lives

Nikki Attkisson | Last Updated : October 14, 2021

There is the inability of the United Kingdom to enforce a lockdown during the initial periods of the COVID. The influenza A/H1N1 pandemic resulted in thousands of needless deaths and is considered one of the country’s greatest public health disasters. Legislators found in the nation’s first comprehensive study on the pandemic released on Tuesday.

The United Kingdom’s Slow Virus Shutdown Cost Thousands Of Lives

According to the report, the deadly delay resulted from the failings of British government members to challenge the suggestions of scientific advisers, likely to result in a dangerous level of “groupthink” that caused each other to dismiss the more aggressive strategy applied in East and Southeast Asia to restrict infections, resulting in a dangerous level of “groupthink.”

The United Kingdom's Slow Virus Shutdown Cost Thousands Of Lives
People, some wearing protective face masks, walk over Westminster Bridge, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in London, Britain, July 4, 2021. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

When the National Health Service in the United Kingdom was on the verge of being overrun by rapidly growing illnesses, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative administration eventually ordered a lockdown, which took effect at the end of March 2020.

As stated in the joint report from the House of Commons science and health committees. The United Kingdom needs to learn all it can from this experience in order to prevent a repetition of it in the future.

The purpose of the investigation, according to lawmakers, is to determine why the United Kingdom fared “much worse” than many other nations during the early stages of the epidemic. And over 137,000 coronavirus fatalities have been reported in the United Kingdom, the second greatest toll in Europe behind Russia.

Officials from the government, on the other hand, claimed they did the best they could with the knowledge they had at the time. Bereaved relatives responded angrily to the parliamentary report, expressing their displeasure that the individuals who died as a result of COVID-19 got so little attention in the 150-page study. According to them, it was only “speaking to their colleagues and friends” that the joint committee was interested in.

Lawmakers published their conclusions as a result of their dissatisfaction with the timeline for a full public investigation into the government’s reaction to the COVID-19 crisis. According to Johnson, the investigation will begin in the spring of next year. According to the study, evidence from 50 witnesses, notably Ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock as well as senior government insider Dominic Cummings, was used to compile the findings. There were 22 members of Parliament from the three biggest political parties in Parliament, including the ruling Conservatives, the opposition Labour Party, as well as the Scottish National Party, who all voted unanimously in favor of the bill.

Both the government’s early emphasis on vaccinations as the ultimate means of containing and eradicating the epidemic, as well as its choice to invest in vaccine research, received high acclaim from both committees. These choices resulted in the success of the United Kingdom’s immunization program, which has resulted in almost 80 percent of individuals aged 12 and older is completely vaccinated. “Millions of lives gets eventually be saved as a consequence of the worldwide vaccination campaign, in which the United Kingdom has taken a leadership role,” the committees said in their statement.


Nikki Attkisson

With over 15 years as a practicing journalist, Nikki Attkisson found herself at Powdersville Post now after working at several other publications. She is an award-winning journalist with an entrepreneurial spirit and worked as a journalist covering technology, innovation, environmental issues, politics, health etc. Nikki Attkisson has also worked on product development, content strategy, and editorial management for numerous media companies. She began her career at local news stations and worked as a reporter in national newspapers.

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