Spreading the risk: too much digital and in cash

Section62

AlanP_2 said:

I'm surprised to see how many posters seem to think that governments may have a plan for such a situation. Given how much pre-planning had gone on for a pandemic prior to COVID that seems overly optimistic by a long way to me.

I worked in a public sector emergency Planing and Business Continuity  role for a few years and the briefings from health partners was that a pandemic was a "when it happens" risk not an "if it happens" risk.

...

Goverments had carried out pre-planning for a pandemic, but assumptions had (rightly) been made on the type of pandemic and it wasn't anything like Covid turned out to be.

But health emergency planning isn't the same as planning for defence and national security planning, so the issues experienced dealing with Covid don't mean that plans aren't in place for other aspects of civilian and military life.

A major flu pandemic was something the government knew would be coming sometime in the future.  Cyber attacks and other national security threats are happening every day.  The latter tends to focus the minds of politicians more than discussions about something which might or might not happen before they leave office.

TheBanker

AlanP_2 said:

I'm surprised to see how many posters seem to think that governments may have a plan for such a situation. Given how much pre-planning had gone on for a pandemic prior to COVID that seems overly optimistic by a long way to me.

I worked in a public sector emergency Planing and Business Continuity  role for a few years and the briefings from health partners was that a pandemic was a "when it happens" risk not an "if it happens" risk.

This was reflected in the National Risk Register, see here for the 2025 edition if you are interested

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-risk-register-2025

(There is an unpublished National Security Register as well which is more likely to have additional "nation state" level risks identified.)

Despite this, and to a degree understandably, there was limited preparation at a strategic, national level as putting mitigation measures in place had costs and there isn't an unlimited supply of money.

Drugs, PPE etc have a limited shelf life.

Having a few empty hospitals and associated staff on standby "just in case"  whilst there are long waiting lists anyway is a sure fire vote winner the vast majority of the time 😱

The pandemic was bad - but the world did not end. We didn't have the right plans or supplies, but as a species we adapted. I don't want to get into the politics of lockdowns etc but it is amazing how quickly the country adapted to working from home. I have enormous respect for the NHS staff who worked, and others (volunteers, the armed forces, the fire service and a load of others) backed them up. We never used them, but we built the Nightingale hospitals in a few weeks. We increased ventilator production and designed and manufactured vaccines at record speed.

With better planning, it might not have lasted as long, fewer people would have died, the economy might be in a better place... but we're still here. As we will next time.