Justifying their existence?

There has been a lot of pressure on the government to start saying what the future will look like as lockdown restrictions are eased. It had so far not engaged in that discussion while rather oddly refusing to say that it won't say anything. It just ignored the question. Which has caused a lot of irritation in many quarters. But today Dominic Raab, while revealing some of the options under consideration on Andrew Marr's show (schools will be required to separate pupils, offices must have fewer staff present, non-essential businesses would have to follow the supermarkets and create two metre gaps between customers - all stuff we'd long since already guessed) resisted pressure to set down options for easing the lockdown within a few days. He said that would be irresponsible and "only create more uncertainty in the public's mind". The government has decided so far to treat us like children and stick to the simplest of messages. To my surprise I don't have a problem with that.

Meanwhile the Welsh and Scottish authorities tried, as is often their inclination, to bounce the UK government by making statements about their policies for easing lockdown. I've had a quick look at the Scottish statement* and, while it's refreshingly clear that we won't return to the old normal for a long time, it uses a lot of words to say not very much. Oh there's plenty of stuff about the principles they will apply but the only bit of meat I could find in there was this:

We are likely to require that gathering in groups, for example in pubs or at public events, is banned or restricted for some time to come. And good hand hygiene and cough hygiene must become fundamental habits. We cannot afford to have exceptions. Each one of us will have to adapt to this as the new normal, at least until we are sure that we can be more protected by a vaccine or treatment.

Wow, tell us something else we hadn't already long since figured out. I was surprised this announcement didn't produce even more frustration than the UK government's studied silence. It gets a raspberry from me, but then everything Nicola Sturgeon says usually does, while accepting that she is a formidable political operator.

Which is more than I can say for almost any of the Welsh politicians. There have only been two in the five years I've been paying attention who have made any favourable impression on me. Carwyn Jones, who was first minister for 9 years, always came across as competent and assured, until the knives came out after the suicide of Welsh Assembly member Carl Sargeant. Jones was accused of mishandling allegations of inappropriate behaviour against Sargeant. It's never been clear to me that he did anything wrong but it was the first time he ever appeared rattled. The other? Vaughan Gething, the confident and apparently competent Welsh Health Secretary who blotted his copybook the other day by failing to mute his mic and being heard swearing at a Labour colleague in a virtual Welsh Assembly meeting. As the gist of it was "what the ****'s the matter with her?" and it might well have been a stupid question (most of them are) I am hoping he will survive. After all if you've got a problem with Raab, Hancock and Gove you want to see and hear the bunch of underwhelming prats who run Wales.....

Anyway the Welsh administration also mooted that it might make some "careful and controlled, small changes" to the restrictions. Again they didn't say what they might be - they had more questions than answers. Literally, as they posed seven questions to consider before decisions are made:

• Would easing a restriction have a negative effect on containing the virus?
• Does a particular measure pose a low risk of further infection?
• How can it be monitored and enforced?
• Can it be reversed quickly if it creates unintended consequences?
• Does it have a positive economic benefit?
• Does it have a positive impact on people's wellbeing?
• Does it have a positive impact on equality?

 Leaving aside the last point as being empty virtue signalling (after all, if it helps most people then should it matter if it doesn't have a positive impact on equality?) there's nothing wrong with this list of questions except, per Monty Python, that they are all statements of the bleedin' obvious.

So the only interesting thing in the Welsh pronouncement for me was personal. It included the concept that the restrictions would be eased in stages "like a traffic light in reverse".  The first, red, phase would have few restrictions removed, the amber zone would see more relaxation and only at green would we reach a situation "much more like the lives we had before the crisis hit".

The reason this was interesting for me was simple nostalgia. The "traffic light" red-amber-green concept has become widespread in public and business life, for example in food labelling. It was work colleagues of mine who first persuaded the government to adopt a traffic light system for categorising risks back in the 1990s. As the company provided consultancy and advice to the defence and environment ministries (and probably some others as well) I can't remember what the specific application was though I remember the people. I think they chuckled when I suggested a traffic light approach to some management reports and, when I looked askance they reminded me where it came from. They weren't claiming to have invented the concept - though they would have been in the vanguard of it - just to have promoted its deployment. But as the earliest references to traffic light systems on Wikipedia date from around 2007 and this conversation was definitely several years earlier (I think 2001 and I'd left the company by 2007) I don't doubt their version of events.

While there isn't anything wrong in the Welsh administration's approach, as usual it just doesn't add any particular value. The performance of most Welsh (and I think Scottish) public functions lags England which I suspect can be explained by competence more than scale. The Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board is responsible for the north Wales NHS and has just distinguished itself by contributing to a blip in the covid-19 death statistics in Wales, having retrospectively reported 84 deaths apparently after realising that they were still reporting monthly rather than daily. This is only the latest in a long line of failings by a body that has been in special measures for 5 years. The best thing that could happen for the Welsh NHS would be for it to abolish itself and hand responsibility to the English NHS.

Anyway, in preparation for deploying its traffic light easing, the BBC reports that Wales has just tightened its restrictions on exercise. It has reverted to discouraging people from driving "any significant distance" to exercise, the English guidance having been clarified as a drive much shorter in time than the period of exercise. If they just want to keep the English out, why not close the border? They say "busy places like parks should be avoided" when the UK government has encouraged local authorities to keep parks open. The point that caught my eye, however, was for cyclists. The Beeb says they should only go "a reasonable walking distance from home" noting that why isn't spelled out but "the rules say an accident a long way from home could put more pressure on the NHS". Eh? If you need to call an ambulance why does it make any difference whether you are near to your home or not?

This is bananas. Personally, having been buzzed many times by cyclists on the dual use north Wales coastal path who seem to feel social distancing doesn't apply to them and often approach at frightening speed from behind, I'd be more worried about cyclists doing laps of their locality. I watched a lady older than me and walking towards me nearly jump out of her skin the other day when a cyclist going in the same direction as her sped past at around 20mph at less than arms length. Motorists are told cyclists are entitled to their wobble so surely walkers are allowed to change direction and go across the path (good job she didn't). Cyclists often complain about motorists buzzing them. What's sauce for the goose....

The Scottish and Welsh administrations seem to spend as much time trying to justify their existence as doing what they were set up to do. They do not bring greater local accountability. Many people in north Wales feel the Cardiff administration is remote and generally irrelevant. And on occasions harmful. The husband of a former Conwy MP died of covid in hospital recently having been admitted to a general ward. His first test sample got lost and he was dead by the time the the result from the second came through. His widow is campaigning that samples should be sent to Liverpool (80 minutes away) rather than Cardiff (4 hours).

We had - still have - a perfectly good method for local government and accountability without devolution and the regional assemblies: they are called councils.

But perhaps the oddest development was the news last night that the government is planning to establish a series of regular meetings with senior medical directors of the major sports in a bid to return to action as soon as possible. It was described as a "quickening of the pace" and intended to help sport resume within weeks "if progress was made". I haven't missed sport as much as I thought I would and I found this news almost depressing. We haven't heard of equivalent discussions in other areas of business and activity, though I accept that doesn't mean they aren't taking place. However, if that's what the government think is most important, we are in real trouble.

* https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-framework-decision-making/pages/7/

Has Rishi Sunak been too generous?

I noted a few days ago that I was uneasy about the number of businesses that appear to have decided it is in their business interests to go into hibernation, temporarily cease trading and take advantage of Rishi Sunak's bold schemes which he described as the most generous in the world. (What Is Essential? 20 April). It's not clear the chancellor expected this degree of gaming of the system, potentially hitting the economy even harder than he allowed for. Evidence is building that some of the help to individuals and businesses may be too generous to enable the economy to function as effectively as it could, even in these difficult circumstances. But I accept that each business has to take its own decisions about how to best get through to the other side.

Meanwhile the furlough scheme, underpinning 80% of normal wages has not been without criticism because of details such as how agency workers are paid. Apparently a large chunk of their regular earnings are paid as if they were discretionary bonuses which don't count as 'normal' pay. There are myriad other issues as well but I don't criticise Sunak on that account - it had to be a simple, one size fits all scheme that could be implemented quickly. The problem is simply that resources which could have helped the economy and the national effort to tackle the virus have been kept locked up because many furloughed people don't need to work. They can volunteer or indeed do work for another employer - provided their contract with their current employer allows it*. None of my contracts of employment - at least none that I can remember - would have allowed this. The point about an emergency is that the government can change almost anything though I understand they would be reluctant on things like this.

The most vivid example of the impact is the requirement for seasonal workers to pick fruit and vegetable crops which requires 70,000 pairs of hands each year. 99% come from the EU, nearly 60% from Romania and Bulgaria. The government apparently hoped that some of the people laid off would work in a "land army" of seasonal workers. Well 35,000 did apply - a worthwhile half the requirement. But then the chancellor announced his furlough scheme. Only 20% of them completed the application process and only 3,000, less than 10% of the original applicants, are committing. "We think it's partly because the chancellor's subsidy schemes mean many people no longer need farm work" said an agricultural recruitment agency**. So planeloads of Romanians are being brought in.

Wherever the chancellor looks there must be problems. So while the food sector is generally flat out, dairy farmers are having to pour away milk and are getting a fraction of their cost price from the supermarkets. One such farmer normally supplies milk to Costa Coffee and BA. At the moment they don't qualify for government support but within weeks but will soon run out of cash to buy feed. Given there is a groundswell of opinion about becoming less reliant on imports it would be unfortunate if we have eaten much of the dairy herd.

Meanwhile he has businesses who don't qualify for the support so far offered lobbying hard, Virgin Atlantic being one. I'm not sure I would bail out Virgin but not because it's majority owner is rich or it's other main shareholder is the large American company, Delta. My reservation is that I can't see air travel returning to anything like normal for a very long time. It may be that a structural reduction in the capacity is inevitable. If so, how long should we bail out the weaker companies for?

Some have argued that allowing firms like Virgin to go under would mean we pay higher prices in the future on the Atlantic routes dominated by a BA-American duopoly***. But the planes and slots would still be there for another business to enter and undercut them if the market is lucrative enough. Oh I feel sympathy for the staff alright, but if the jobs aren't there long term they aren't there.

So I can understand why Sunak is sitting on his hands on this one at the moment. It's his job to see that the economy is in a position to restart. That doesn't mean bailing out every firm. The measures taken to deal with the economic impacts of the financial crisis protected a lot of weak companies which is not in the best interest of the economy long term. It would be unfortunate if the economic and financial measures taken to deal with the medical crisis leave us with a legacy of too many weak companies, shuffling into the future like zombies but without the strength to flourish. It might be better in some cases to let the weakest companies go to the wall and prepare a bold and visionary scheme to encourage entrepreneurs to start new companies in the recovery.

While uneasy I'm not yet critical of Sunak and the government's approach. They had to act quickly and it would have been worse to announce something inadequate and to have had to bolster it. Sunak is trying to support the economy and the population in general and he can't worry too much about some things falling through the cracks. But as we move forward into easing restrictions he may have to get smarter. It won't be easy but we all have a vested interest in him getting it right.

And if Sunak had been significantly less generous he could have been on the end of rants like American comedian Vic Dibetto's, whose in-car video has been viewed over 10 million times on social media. It's a fabulous, passionate, red-faced expletive ridden tirade about what he thinks the US government should be doing. You can find it in lots of places: as well as showing the video the Guardian **** gives some background. As a buddy said on facebook "can we hire this guy to ask the questions at the UK daily government briefing?"

It would be more fun to watch than the questions our journos ask.

* https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/coronavirus-if-your-employer-has-told-you-not-to-work/
** Lettuce help - Romanians come to the rescue of farmers, Sunday Times 19 April
*** Alex Brummer, Virgin deserves a lifeline, Daily Mail 23 April
**** https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/apr/24/vic-dibitetto-coronavirus-rant-video-interview

Alexanders galore

I wrote recently about the bountiful crop of Alexanders (smyrnium olastratum) which grow abundantly around here and turn out to be edible (We'll be ok if celery and leeks sell out, 13 April). I noted that it can be found on waste ground, adjacent to ancient ruins and in hedgerows, especially near the sea. Well here's a lovely display on waste ground adjacent to the river Conwy estuary near some ancient ruins that, I think, were once called a "golf course", featuring rather curious earthworks which must have had a purpose at one time.

And here's another crop nestling at the base of a blackthorn hedge adjacent to a different ancient structure called a "railway".

That stretch of railway is still in use although no-one here knows why as it was hardly used by anyone even in the long forgotten days before the "lockdown". We assume it's some sort of job creation scheme for train drivers and signallers who, after all, are amongst the lowest paid and neediest in society. (Sorry that's not irony, it's just not funny in both senses).

I wondered about trying to make Alexanders soup. I found a couple of recipes, one with herbs and creamed another supplemented with parsnip. But Mrs H squashed the idea with a resounding "yuk". I guess you don't know which dog has been peeing on them.

Why wasn't it made someone's job in February?

I tend to think there is an awful lot of wise after the event hindsight being deployed by commentators in the discussion about our preparedness for the pandemic. But it may well be the case that the UK was slow to act from late January till March.

It's clear the UK led the world in pandemic planning - at least we did 10 years ago. One adviser to Singapore noted that their plan had been based almost entirely on the UK's plan. The difference was it had been implemented.

But ours had been implemented too: Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Health 2007-9, noted that the WHO described our preparations as "amongst the best in the world" at that time. Mind, one of the points praised was the concept of "sleeping contracts", ready to be activated when required. Which just shows that no plan is perfect as, in a rapidly spreading pandemic (and this has been rapid) those sleeping contracts might remain asleep as the suppliers of PPE for example may well be maxed out.

If there has been a problem it may well have been what some would call bureaucratic inefficiency. The governement is aware of at least 6000 companies who have offered to help with supply of PPE.  One company boss, having been contacted by NHS Supply Chain*,  noted that he provided quotes to supply surgical masks, protective suits, eye protection and sanitising gel and pledged to provide samples within three days. Having heard nothing he has supplied quotes every 7 days as market prices of raw materials change. Actually he has heard back from the NHS: they complained that his updates had confused them. 

A spokesbod said that the government was processing offers from 6,000 suppliers. One might reasonably jump to the conclusion that they haven't had enough people working on this and, if so, since there must be an awful lot of buyers around the country on furlough then we haven't been maximising the use of our national resources. (The way furlough is working was a worry of mine in yesterday's post).

Eventually the inevitable inquiry will give us answers. But in the meantime I was alarmed to read that Matt Hancock has just appointed a "PPE tsar" to lead a national effort and "get a grip" on the supply of protective equipment for NHS workers. Horse and stable door come to mind.... And I was even more alarmed to read that Hancock's time has probably been spread to thinly, having to bring together efforts on expanding testing, sourcing and delivering PPE and increasing hospital capacity including efforts to buy and build ventilators. 

Wow. I had blithely assumed that chunks of this would have been delegated or reassigned. It is believed Michael Gove has argued for a wartime style ministry of supply to co-ordinate some of this workload. Well he would, wouldn't he but Gove is probably under-utilised currently and he won't be the only cabinet minister in that category. I can perhaps understand (though not accept) that Hancock would have resisted any move by Raab to reassign parts of his normal duties. But Boris Johnson didn't go in to hospital until 5 April, long after I would have thought we should have moved into emergency mode in terms of management of the various elements of this crisis.

I am reminded of a chap who was my boss for several years who was ex-military and a very sharp cookie indeed. I am certain he would have told Hancock "you've got enough on your plate" and pointed at specific other people identifying which ones would be responsible for PPE supply, ventilator supply and providing extra hospital capacity. This would cut entirely across normal lines of management in the NHS and Public Health England, but so what? A good thing probably as we've also heard PHE has been overly protective of its role and slow to react.

Now of course Hancock will have had people dealing with all of these various things. But they've still  been taking some of his attention. Said boss of mine believed strongly that if an issue was sufficiently important it required 100% of somebody's attention to manage it. I can recall a time when I had charge of a group of around 500 people, with a divestment of one large activity to another company in negotiation and myriad other issues to manage. My boss decided that resolving a particular commercial issue with the Ministry of Defence had become mission critical. There were several millions of pounds at stake and the dispute needed to be cleared up for the divestment to go through, avoiding potentially troublesome indemnities. I was told to leave everything to my (very capable) team of managers and spend 100% of my time on this single issue. At first I didn't see how I could spend all my time on the one issue and was spotted chairing a short review with part of my team. My boss was apoplectic: he went, as they say, apeshit. When he said 100% he meant 100%. He didn't care if I worked a 25 hour week instead of my normal 60 hours plus as a result. He wanted me thinking about nothing else and distracted by nothing else. And I did nothing else for about 3 weeks. We got our settlement (£3 million - I thought we'd do well to get £1 million) and the divestment went through. No other milk got spilled as a result.

So I would have thought that a big hitter should have been put in charge of each of those key deliveries to the NHS, none of which would take up much of Hancock's time under normal circumstances. And it should have been done a long time ago, way before we went into lockdown. I remember another piece of advice I received from a wise mentor early in my career: if you want to make sure something is done, make it someone's job. (He meant their whole job).

I said at the outset that I thought a lot of hindsight was being deployed. In case I am accused of the same I have checked my whatsapp message log as I recalled a message I sent to my sons while I was on holiday a while back:

"I've been reading what a prof from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, a co-discoverer of ebola, has to say about corona virus. He thinks we could be in for a huge number of cases, given its quick spread in China. You guys live in populated areas and travel on trains. I predict a run on face masks so buy early! Mind they don't do much good.....the main advice is lots of handwashing and stay 3ft** away from people.... lecture over."

The date? 11 February. I also said masks were readily available (at that time) on Amazon. If I knew masks would be in short supply by 11 February why was Hancock appointing a PPE tsar in mid April?

* NHS Supply Chain is a limited company wholly owned by the Secretary of Sate for Health and Social Care which manages the sourcing, delivery and supply of healthcare and food products to the NHS and social care organisations in England and Wales.

** 3 feet was the initial advice

Some of the quotations here come from "Hancock hands kit shortage problem to 2012 Games boss" in the Sunday Times, 19 April

What is essential?

The government was, apparently, surprised by the degree of compliance when we went into lockdown, as it had been a bit sketchy up to then. So how's it going? From my own observations many over 70s I know are determined to go out for their own shopping. Traffic seems very quiet on some occasions and quite busy on others. As well as my own observations, monitoring traffic going over the causeway and bridge towards Conwy from my breakfast table, Democracy Man (aka Tony) has given regular facebook updates on activity in Sefton which he monitors during his government approved exercise (by bike)*. It sounds as if there is more traffic in Sefton, which caused Tony to wonder whether there is more business being undertaken than we thought. One of his followers suggested black market activities, but then (stereotype alert) Sefton is on Merseyside.....

Such spot observations could be misleading - the official stats** show that when we moved to lockdown on 24 March the total volume of traffic fell from around 70% to just below 40%. And there it has pretty well stayed, with dips at the weekends and Easter when it goes down into the 20s before bouncing back to the high 30s when folk who can work do and the rest of us decide we have to go out to shop.

I've been pondering what work is allowed and what isn't. I've heard of people left without a bathroom, the job being stopped after the old one was stripped out. And yet the government advice*** clearly says that work in people's homes can continue, provided social distancing is observed. Friends in the north west have a bomb crater back garden as their landscapers walked off the job when lockdown started. Meanwhile neighbours of ours have had serious landscaping works start last week, with the team not always appearing to my eye to social distance. But then it is a family business so maybe they all live together. Meanwhile a stonemason would be perfectly willing to start work pointing the wall that holds my house and garden up a Welsh hillside, which he could readily do while maintaining much more than two metres distance. Except that he can't get cement because the local builders merchants are closed. The neighbours' landscapers have sourced concrete blocks from Anglesey, 35 miles away.

I'm not sure why many of these decisions are being made by the individual traders. Most builders merchants closed following the PM's 23 March announcement in which he said (I think) that only "essential" businesses should remain open. But that's what he said, the regulations don't say that. Others decided their products were on the government's essential list and have remained open. The government guidance says you can travel to work if you can't work from home and that you can work away from home provided you can social distance and not breach the shielding of vulnerable people.

The guidance is clear that all retail outlets had to close with "notable" exceptions. The list of such exceptions is actually quite long, and includes "hardware shops and equipment, plant and tool hire". I note that it is entirely silent on wholesale businesses. So my assumption is that builders merchants could legally remain open to supply the trade and anyway could argue they supply hardware and equipment. 

This leads to an obvious conclusion: Democracy Man is right that there is a lot more "work" that isn't banned than we have realised. But a lot of work that isn't banned has shut down. Is that what the Chancellor wanted I wonder? Either way, it's probably because of what the chancellor did.

Rishi Sunak has had a lot of plaudits for his budget and then his emergency coronavirus measures. It's notable that, just as Alistair Darling's measures (like taking equity in banks and increasing liquidity by quantitative easing) were followed by the US and EU so, pretty well, were Sunak's. It's clear that prompt and radical action was needed and that, in the circumstances, a one size fits all type approach would have to be adopted. There has been criticism that small businesses can't access the aid they were offered and, as with PPE, there seems to be a sheer volume problem of dealing with all the enquiries. But I am uneasy. My concern is that many businesses have decided that it is in their interest to close, rather than because they were told to. Maybe they see advantage in closing and furloughing their staff. In which case there could be more (safe) economic activity than we have at present and less call on the government's purse. Which of course is ultimately our money.

When the time comes to relax the restrictions - I don't expect they'll be totally removed for a long time - it may prove difficult enough for the government to define what is allowed and what isn't without companies gaming the system.

I also have a little voice at the back of my brain saying that one of the great strengths of a market economy is its ability to rapidly move resources to meet demand. Except at the moment some businesses can be tided over and many individuals can get most of their normal income without working. Which means that they don't need to consider alternative opportunities, be that covering for migrant workers who can't travel (so crops may rot in fields) or helping to deliver PPE or other essentials, like all those goods that are being ordered online (haha). There is a massive opportunity cost in keeping people idle even when they can't do their normal job. This can only be done for a very short time or it will be economically destructive.

Many of those goods available on line include things that can't be bought in the shops and so presumably aren't "essential". In terms of shops the official guidance says "basic necessities". Hmm, basic....

For me the public service that has not covered itself in glory during the lockdown is the police. Although pragmatism has ruled for the most part there have been random acts of officiousness, like the PC recorded telling a householder that their child should not play in the (fenced) front garden, through to two officers, shoulder to shoulder (though maybe they live together) telling a hapless sunbather to move with no other person within 50 yards, through to the Derbyshire police shaming dog walkers they've filmed by drone.

Some police forces have seemed determined to get people's backs up. The prize went to the Northamptonshire Chief Constable who suggested that, should people continue to break the rules he might resort to road blocks and searching people's shopping trolleys. Good luck with defining "essential" in a shopping trolley, mate! Which of these items would cause Plod to issue a ticket?

Champagne, whisky, smoked salmon, caviar, a pair of socks or a tin of paint and brushes?

Well, obviously anything you can eat or drink seems to be essential, however non-essential it really is. So all of those things have become "basic necessities". The socks are on sale at Asda supermarkets but not at clothes shops, though of course you can buy online, so I imagine Plod would consider them a basic necessity. The item that could be a problem is the paint and brushes which could get you a fixed penalty. Even though you haven't made an extra journey.

The government and its advisers accept that there are all sorts of health disbenefits from the lockdown, including mental health risks. Doing manual tasks like painting and decorating can be very therapeutic. So if you live in Northamptonshire my advice would be to get a note from your GP, if you can get them to answer, to prescribe painting for your well being. Or use the Rod Liddle defence: take a loaf of bread and a bottle of domestos in with you when shopping for your potentially non-essential booze. Another defence suggested was to say that you came for flour, pasta and alcohol gel handwash and didn't want to waste your journey by going home empty handed.

Mrs H had suggested to me that the police could be doing sterling work right now smashing county lines or trapping paedos by monitoring social media, whereas they seem to be driving around aimlessly looking for something to do. Until last week when we heard a siren from the estate down the hill from our house. On looking out we saw a large police van (you'd call it a riot van if it had the shutters on) which was travelling slowly away from us with its blue light flashing and sounding it's siren every few seconds. Two police officers walked either side in hi viz. Two walked ahead in the type of outfits worn by football mascots or Disneyworld staff. People were pouring out of their houses to see what was going on and leaflets were being handed out. We despaired at what seemed to be a terrifically good way of kiboshing social distancing. Presumably somebody thought this was a good idea. And even if it was a junior officer they got somebody more senior to agree. Good grief....

The government presumably decided that the guidance can only be detailed to a certain extent and beyond that the public have to be trusted to act like grown ups. Which for the most part they have. Police acting as children's entertainers doesn't qualify as grown up for me and certainly not essential.


* more substantial musings appear on his always fascinating blog at https://tonyrobertson.mycouncillor.org.uk/
**  The daily COBR slides can be found on gov.uk 
*** https://phw.nhs.wales/topics/latest-information-on-novel-coronavirus-covid-19/self-isolation-advice/  The (English) government advice on which businesses can remain open is at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/further-businesses-and-premises-to-close/further-businesses-and-premises-to-close-guidance

A time for wisdom

On our daily permitted exercise yesterday Mrs H and I debated whether the government was switching it's key parameter from the ability of the NHS to cope to minimising deaths. Nothing explicit has been said but with the NHS currently living within its expanded capacity (it seems the Nightingale hospitals have barely been used other than to test them out with small numbers) the key statistic ministers are saying they want to see responding is the number of deaths coming down.

The Sunday Times reports today that the inner quad of four senior cabinet minsters (Raab, Gove, Sunak and Hancock) may not agree on what to do next. Sunak, supported by several other cabinet ministers outside the quad, is concerned that most businesses have only one to three months of cash reserves and significant problems will result if the lockdown isn't eased soon. Gove backed him up in cabinet last week, saying he agreed with Sunak and had concluded that "we need to run this hot", but Hancock doesn't agree.

I had been reflecting that, if the NHS has significant capacity in reserve, restrictions could be eased as the government had said that was the single most important issue. On the other hand finessing the restrictions to try to stay comfortably but not excessively within that capacity won't be easy and it does mean accepting more deaths than continued lockdown.  I sense ministers were relieved the daily death total dipped after approaching but never quite reaching 1000 and I wonder if that has become a psychological barrier they don't want to breach.

Dominic Cummings has returned to work and isn't one of the "let's get going again" hawks having read a lot about Spanish flu, when countries that came out of lockdown sooner not only lost more lives but also took bigger economic hits. Chris Whitty is in that camp. A cabinet source told the Sunday Times "The problem of running hot is that there is a delay of several weeks between taking action and seeing results. We want to avoid the situation where you relax the rules and then have to tighten them again". (Such relaxation and tightening was considered almost inevitable in the "hammer and dance" strategy I commented on previously, see post of 7 April).

It seems to me they are getting ahead of themselves here. We have the luxury of being behind a lot of other countries in the progress of the outbreak - a good couple of weeks behind Italy and Spain for a start. We can watch what happens as those countries (and France and USA too probably) start to ease restrictions. We can also look at countries like Sweden and Denmark which did not go as far with restrictions in the first place. Ministers had said now was not the time to decide on how to ease restrictions and they were right: it's a decision that doesn't need to be made yet.

Usually when I've met senior people from business, the civil service and politics I've been impressed at how sharp they are. They size up issues very quickly and see more angles while someone is introducing the subject than anyone involved in the preparatory work ever thought of. And they often instinctively balance risks and opportunities in coming to an almost instant conclusion about what they think is the best course of action. Which generally turns out to be sound - but not always. In business people often say they'd settle for being right 80% of the time, because what matters is moving forward quickly.

But quick decisions aren't always wise. Slow decisions might not be wise either: they may be informed by more information though that might just add more confusion. I get the feeling that if we wait for the scientists to give clear advice we might wait too long. I've seen some strategically catastrophic decisions taken at snail's pace.

The high flyers I've met who struck me as wise were also sharp, but not necessarily as sharp as a razor. Oh they could see all the angles pretty quickly too but sometimes they would sense that the issue wasn't as clear cut as others were making it out to be. They'd fairly rapidly decide the best course of action, even if they couldn't necessarily explain all of their logic. When in time it turned out to be a good decision, especially if it hadn't been the majority thinking, we'd say what a wise leader we had. (Or maybe lucky, as in give me lucky generals).

This is surely a time for wisdom - and luck, in terms of the decision makers' hunches. The wise thing right now is to watch what happens elsewhere.

The Sunday Times also reports that the phrase "exit strategy" has been banned in Whitehall after one epidemiologist pointed out that the only virus ever to be eradicated was smallpox. D'oh! I'm with the journalists on this one: they haven't been asking for an exit strategy from the virus, they've been asking how we move out of the lockdown, as everyone knows that the virus will still be around at some level at that point. Don't they?

If we can't have wise people in Whitehall can we at least have folk who understand English and logic?

Spreadsheet Phil

Spreadsheet Phil was Philip Hammond's nickname amongst his staff at the Treasury. I've purloined his monicker for the day and put together one of my punk spreadsheets to try to understand the NHS data for Covid 19 deaths by day of occurrence. As I expected the data comes through slowly and a bit erratically. If you take the raw data from the NHS England website*  you can understand why the experts are saying we're not at the peak yet and why they'll need to be some way past it to be sure.

Taking yesterday's data as an example, for England 740 deaths were announced of which 151 took place on 15 April, 314 on the 14th, 122 on the 13th and the remainder on earlier dates stretching back to early March.

Here's an extract from my cumulative table showing how the deaths we knew about for a particular day (horizontal heading) tot up over the following days (left side column):

APRIL	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
2	84	0	0
3	263	87	0
4	397	286	99	0
5	448	400	280	97	0
6	462	425	350	285	69	0
7	495	462	440	464	341	81	0
8	512	485	503	557	503	387	135	0
9	531	515	534	604	560	487	419	140	0
10	544	530	564	643	603	557	573	496	117	0
11	553	543	581	671	635	606	634	657	442	115	0
12	555	544	584	675	640	616	660	709	562	423	121	0
13	557	549	590	680	645	625	673	737	611	516	443	118	0
14	558	554	599	693	655	631	692	750	636	579	575	437	122	0
15	558	557	599	698	657	638	699	771	653	606	637	540	399	113	0
16	559	558	604	699	660	643	704	782	674	624	660	589	521	427	151
17	559	558	604	699	660	643	704	782	674	624	660	589	521	427	151

It looks to me like it takes about 4 days for the deaths on a particular day to be known within 20% and more like 8 days for the data to become fairly settled.  Given that we'll want to see the figures falling for several days in a row that means we'll be more like 10 days or more after the event before the stattos are sure that we're past the peak.

And then the relaxations that make sense depend on whether we got R down to 0.9 (so not much scope) or 0.5 (quite a bit of scope), which Whitty hinted at on Thursday.

What is striking is that (if I've understood the NHS data and manipulated it correctly) the total deaths by day (bottom row of figures, not reliable after about April 10) aren't anything like as peaky as most folk seem to think. You can see why the experts aren't sure we're at the peak yet.

I also think that, from the comments of some journalists, they expect the cumulative deaths curve to flatten and then turn down and decline. Which ain't exactly going to happen unless the Easter resurrection becomes a widespread phenomenon.

They'd be better leaving the politicians to concentrate on consulting their experts and getting on with the work that needs to be done.

Fat chance but I think I'll do that for now.

* https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/