1. He's obviously an asshole.

2. He's obviously right; the UK response was absolutely crazy.

One thing that struck me is that he tweeted a picture of the graph[1] the government was using when they were going for the 'herd immunity' strategy.

We'd seen that graph before, but the lines didn't have numbers on them.

The government briefing graph had numbers, and their 'optimum' number was 250k deaths.

Which is, you know, terrifying.

[1] https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1396493979064094720

On (2), it's not that I disagree. But he's apologizing on behalf of the government, where he singlehandedly in his personal decision cost lives too.

And that's in addition to the fact that as a member of that government he's also collectively responsible.

Yes, both things can be true. He can be an asshole who singlehandedly cost lives by undermining what effort the government was making, AND he's right that the government didn't do enough.

So he was part of poor handling of the fire, but then on his own time he went to the fire station and blew up some firetrucks for fun, while the fire was still raging.

I actually think the just (although extremely unlikely) response to all of this would be to start a criminal investigation against the people involved in the response.

If you run a factory which, by some accident, kills tens of thousands of people, you can expect a criminal investigation for gross negligence. The same rules should apply here. The vast gap between the UK's death rate and the death rates of similar nations must be explained.

This is a nice thought but applying corporate manslaughter charges in this way within government would have a raft of unintended consequences.

The unfortunate reality is that governments have to make life and death decisions on a daily basis, so making it illegal for them to make decisions where more people will die would have a highly restrictive effect (examples below).

If a reallocation of NHS budget funding in the future causes an increase in a certain illness, could the chancellor be sued?

Could ministers be put in jail for smart motorways, where motorways have become more dangerous and cause more death in order to increase their capacity? (It was cheaper than doing a full widening)

Is it possible for a president to declare a war, or push the red button, without getting put behind bars?

There's a difference between policies that have unintended consequences, and simple incompetence, carelessness, or malice. I actually think heads of state should take a great deal more care when declaring wars, and Generals should take a lot more care in their prosecution - part of the humanitarian cost of essential legal immunity for heads of state is that a lot of wars are fought for essentially political reasons when a peaceful solution is absolutely possible, or the war itself serves no purpose. If the Blair administration had been put on trial for their actions in the run up to the Iraq war, for instance, there's no doubt that a reasonable court would frown upon the extent to which they mislead the public, and the disastrous effects of these efforts.

Maybe they would be found innocent, maybe not, but a depoliticized analysis of the extent to which they were culpable for the outcomes of their decisions would be very useful to the public at large.

In the case of the coronavirus response, the UK has double the death rate of similar nations (France, Germany), which are themselves not exemplars of a successful response. This is an extreme circumstance, on the level of a war, indeed worse than the second world war for british civilians, and it absolutely makes sense that people should be held accountable.

Can you name a recent prime minister who wouldn't have been found guilty under this law?

We have already argued for Blair and Boris.

Cameron was bombing hospitals so he’s going to go too…

It wouldn’t be manslaughter, but what about the windrush scandal? Maybe we could get May for that too.

Brown might be safe, is that it? All others behind bars?

In terms of COVID being worse than the Second World War for civilians I think this takes a very rosey perspective of the Second World War - for instance you are only counting “civilian” deaths but let’s not forget that there was a mandatory draft so the soldiers were effectively civilians with guns, and millions of our civilians were forced into the battlefield (but I guess we did have to sit around in our underwear and watch lots of Netflix). While each death is also a tragedy, I also think we have to take age into account, and appreciate that those young men in the battlefield had a lot more life left in them than the average COVID death.

I'm not really proposing a new law - just the application of existing laws about manslaughter to people who, historically, do a lot of it. Just because there are a lot of prime ministers that have fallen well short of any reasonable standard when it came to decisions that cost lives does not mean that we should continue to give governments carte blanche.

What you are describing is not a dysfunctional idea, but rather a dysfunctional system where there is no accountability. Boris Johnson can break the rules on donations (for example), pick an investigator for an 'independent investigation', and nobody will even mention the fact that it's a complete farce, because all the journalists are afraid of losing access.

Agreed on all, but worth discussing this point:

> he government briefing graph had numbers, and their 'optimum' number was 250k deaths.

Even if we say the worst of Covid in the Uk is over, the roll just from direct Covid is something like 160k lives - more than half the 250k number.

But then you add all the deaths from lack of treatment, surgery, etc and I think it is becoming a blurred picture.

Add economic impact trickling down to NHS funding and I really wonder how current response compares to letting it all rip.

I’m not saying you should just let people die. Rather, sometimes you’re dealt a crap hand, and you can’t know which of the awful options is good until after the game.

You are speaking as if the people dying by lack of treatments / surgery would have been avoided if COVID had been left uncontrolled, which is the total opposite.

All the beds would have been occupied by COVID patients!

That's what happened with the 3rd wave in Canada, most 80+ already had their vaccine so the death count wasn't high but everyone who got covid in lower age brackets spent weeks (and are still there), which forced some hospitals to move their ICU ward to parking lots in army Baracks.

The 250k number was not completely uncontrolled. It was apparently supposed to be "optimal" in the sense that it's the fastest way to reach same number of people who would eventually die whether it took 3 months or a year to reach herd immunity. The plan still includes social distancing and things to prevent it becoming overwhelming.

Maybe. I would still like to see a thorough analysis (post mitten if you like). Everyone takes it for granted, it is not obvious to me. But of course possible.

In a vacuum, I would agree. However, given that 'herd immunity' was absolutely not the approach east asian countries were going for, many of which had been battling with COVID already, and who had a great deal of experience in respiratory diseases, I think it was at best reckless.

I guess the thing that bugs me is that Boris Johnson is kind of a flippant person, and that approach carried over to the response to COVID, with the weeks of head-start we got being wasted as he missed important meetings to work on a Shakespeare book, and made the whole thing out to be some kind of joke, when if he had actually being paying attention, he probably would have seen it for the deadly threat it was before he caught it (and nearly died of it).

I’m curious how Sweden’s herd immunity strategy worked out for them?

Seems pretty well, actually. I'd be interested to know why - I'm also not entirely clear if they 'stayed the course'. I think there's also the aspect that not all lockdowns are created equal, so it's possible that the swedish restrictions might be actually more restrictive (in terms of virus spread, if not civil liberties) than the UK ones, which had a notable gap when it came to workplaces.

> all the deaths from lack of treatment, surgery,

Is there evidence of any of these? I thought this was just a political talking point that wasn't based in reality of any sort, as there hasn't been any academic quantification of it that I have found, and I haven't even found any stories about anecdotes in the media, which is exactly the sort of thing the media loves to sensationalize.

9% of people in England, and 23% of people in Northern Ireland, have had crucial treatment or surgery postponed, effectively indefinitely. This isn’t necessarily all life-threatening, eg includes hip replacements etc. but that’s not exactly benign either. Note these are percentages of population, not of patients or cases.

A friend of mine is a senior neurologist at a major hospital in the UK. He said that under Covid all his junior medics, who do a lot of the actual treatments and other legwork, disappeared to other departments. Not only are they not treating and diagnosing neurological patients, but also not getting the job-specific training for when Covid is over.

This is sort of quantitative anecdata, granted, but serious enough that it makes me think it is a real issue.

> He added that "in a well-run entity", the prime minister could have appointed a "sort of dictator" to run the Covid response, with the power to "fire anybody or move anybody".

That was him basically, no? That’s what makes it all worse. “The government’s decisions [that I took/forced] were awful and someone [other than me] should be held responsible”.

Well he hasn’t even finished yet, so let’s wait until he is done before we blame him for stuff he hasn’t said.

Not holding my breath.

This quote comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ps2lTqaVNw&t=331s

I wouldn't expect you to hold your breath for a few hours, but if you waited you woul dhave discovered that he did agree that his actions undermined public confidence and apologised calling it a “terrible, terrible, terrible mistake”, .