Pandemic London: The Unheeded Scientific Warning of 2014

By Paul Coleman

London Intelligence, 

May 2020

Rewind six years to 2014. Duncan Selbie, the chief executive of Public Health England, warns the UK government: 'The prospect of a flu pandemic is one of the highest risks faced by the UK.
'We need to be confident that our planning and responses are sufficiently flexible to deal with every eventuality,' says Selbie.
'Ensuring the country is fully prepared and able to respond quickly and effectively is a top priority for Public Health England, and, of course, for the government.'

Threat

Selbie issues his warning to the Conservative government in Pandemic Influenza Response Plan 2014, a report published in August of that year by Public Health England, the agency that advises the government and the National Health Service on public health strategy.  

The PHE report, prepared by Nick Phin, John Simpson, Gaynor Marshall, Hilary Moulsdale and Mike Laing, also states: 'Pandemic influenza has been classified by the Cabinet Office as the number one threat to the UK population.'
In their report the PHE quintet warn: 'As a guide, the impact could range from a 1918-type pandemic, where severe disease was mainly in young adults, to a 2009 pandemic, where the illness was mild in most groups of the population.'

PHE Chief Executive Duncan Selbie (Image: PHE)

H1N1
By 'mild', the PHE quintet mean that the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 killed between 151,700 and 575,400 people around the world.

Less than one tenth of 1% of people infected with symptoms died, according to World Health Organisation estimates. 
The PHE quintet state: 'The 2009 H1N1 pandemic certainly tested our plans for dealing with new pandemic strains. Fortunately, it was a mild one.'

1918-19

However, the PHE's reference to the possible return of a 1918-19 type of pandemic - as a worst-case scenario - ought to have prompted all UK politicians to act.
The 'Spanish Flu' pandemic of 1918-19 killed at least 50 million people worldwide - and possibly as many as 100 million. 
It spread in just under two years, killing ten times as many people who died actually fighting in World War I.
Many of those who died horribly from the 1918-19 avian flu were strong, young adults.

Waves

The 1918-19 avian flu pandemic consisted of two waves.
Both waves spread rapidly; firstly amongst young men fighting in World War I and then to poorer people living in bad housing in densely populated cities.

The pandemic quickly became global, transmitted mainly by soldiers, travelling on ships and trains. 
It killed an estimated 17 million people in India alone.
Up to 3% of all people infected with flu symptoms died.

The 1918-19 avian flu pandemic first spread at a Kansas army base in the USA
(Source: Florence Nightingale Museum) 

Londoners
The virus killed 10% of 300,000 British troops infected towards the end of World War I.

It also killed at least 18,000 Londoners, according to the Museum of London. 
London hospitals were overrun with infected people. 
Many doctors and nurses died.
The pandemic compelled a Conservative-Liberal coalition government to create the first ever ministry of health in 1919. 

Health and care
Phin and his colleagues recommended in their Pandemic Influenza Response Plan 2014 that government and the NHS prepare for a 2009-type pandemic and a worst-case scenario 1918-19 pandemic.
They listed an array of measures involving almost every branch of government and all hospitals and care homes. 
Notably, these measures included the provision of 'personal protective equipment' to staff in 'health and communal care settings'.

Cygnus
What happened also to Exercise Cygnus?
PHE had scheduled this extensive pandemic response simulation for October 2014. 
Local NHS trusts were waiting for this multi-agency pandemic flu exercise involving 'local resilience forums'. 
However, it is said this had to be postponed due to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. 
Exercise Cygnus eventually took place in October 2016, delayed further by the May 2015 general election and the June 2016 Brexit referendum.
The simulation is said to have revealed shortages of intensive care beds, essential equipment and mortuary capacity.
Yet the full conclusions of Exercise Cygnus were never published.

Later warning

The Global Health Council also warned in March 2018 that flu pandemic is the number one health risk to the world's population, estimating three hundred million could die over just two years. 

Other virologists in 2018 warned that a 21st Century virus would transmit much faster and further as it would be borne by infected people travelling by air, contaminating further people at airports. 

A new virus, they said, could criss-cross the world in just 24 hours. 

Worst-case scenario

The scientific consensus in 2018 was that a 21st Century flu pandemic would kill 1% of all infected people.

Scientists estimated that if one third of British people caught a deadly new influenza, then a 1 per cent fatality rate would result in some 200,000 people dying.

Trouble

Professor Wendy Barclay of Imperial College London, an expert in the field of respiratory influenza viruses, spoke in 2018 about the PHE's plan, notably about its warning of a repeat of the 1918-19 pandemic as a worst-case scenario.

"You have to plan for the worst-case scenario, because if that one comes and you're not ready for it, then you're in big trouble," said Barclay. 

"It's reassuring to say we have ways of dealing with influenza pandemics today which were not available in 1918. But I think if we saw anything like a one per cent fatality rate then it would be a terrible experience for everyone."
Barclay said this whilst holding the Pandemic Influenza Response Plan 2014 in her hand.

Terrible

Two years on, we are now in the midst of the ongoing terrible carnage of Covid-19. 
The UK government says the pandemic has officially killed 37,048 people (as of Tuesday 26 May) - the highest number of deaths in any European country.
The Office for National Statistics say the death toll is likely to be over 47,000 people. 

Other estimates put the UK death toll at over 65,000 people. 

Essential

Covid-19 is now believed to have killed 235 health and social care workers, according to Nursing Notes.

Covid-19 has also killed bus drivers, postal service workers and other workers in essential sectors.
All of this we now know.
But we still know little about the UK government's response to the PHE's Pandemic Influenza Response Plan 2014.
David Cameron was Prime Minister and Jeremy Hunt was Health Secretary.
What attention did these two key politicians also pay to the later warnings made by Barclay and other scientists?

Emergency
What also happened to the actual authors of Pandemic Influenza Response Plan 2014?
Nick Phin is now deputy director of PHE's National Infection Service. 

John Simpson is deputy director of PHE's Health Protection Directorate and is head of the Emergency Response Department. 

Hilary Moulsdale is exercise manager in emergency preparedness and response, based at Porton Down, the emergency response department for England.
Gaynor Marshall retired as manager of supra regional emergency preparedness manager and national support in September 2014.

Duncan Selbie is still PHE chief executive.

Scientists

A government spokesman said in April 2020: "This is an unprecedented global pandemic and we have take the right steps at the right time to combat it. Our response at all times is guided by the best scientific advice."
Government politicians daily mantra they are vigorously 'following the science' and 'listening to scientists'.
Nevertheless, the UK government remains heavily criticised in May 2020 for presiding over the Covid-19 deaths of large numbers of elderly care home residents and for failing to provide personal protective equipment for staff in hospitals and care homes.

Foresight
'Hindsight is a wonderful thing,' politicians often tell the people when the people challenge them about past mistakes that cause present miseries.
Politicians use the cosy hindsight homily to excuse their procrastination and inaction.
UK government politicians could have chosen to abide by another homily; 'pray for the best and prepare for the worst.'

Myth
So, how did successive UK governments since 2014 respond to the 'best scientific advice' gifted to them by the authors of the Pandemic Influenza Response Plan 2014?
Did they complacently rely on a blind faith in anti-viral drugs, antibiotics and existing public health plans?

Did they actually believe in the blithering myth of Britain's island nation exceptionalism; of the kind that blathers, 'No virus, please, we're British.'

Or were politicians too busy pursuing their personal political ambitions and agendas?

Accountable
NHS doctors and nurses are drilled daily about how they must own up to errors in real time in order to prevent unnecessary risks that might lead to a loss of life.
UK government politicians, who dictate on policy and pay to those doctors and nurses, behave antithetically to this code. 
The British political class instinctively seeks to cover up fatal errors facilitated by their own clouded judgement.
Will government politicians ever be rendered accountable for their response to the scientific foresight contained in the Pandemic Influenza Response Plan 2014?

Sources:

Pandemic Influenza Response Plan 2014, Public Health England, © Crown copyright 2014.

The Flu That Killed 50 Million, BBC TV, September 2018.

Nursing Notes
Museum of London
Florence Nightingale Museum

© Paul Coleman, London Intelligence ® London, May 2020.

No fire safety sprinklers - two years after Grenfell and ten since Lakanal

The Hazelwood Tower in north Kensington is just one of almost 2,000 council-owned and managed residential tower blocks in England and Wales with no fitted sprinkler systems.

Sprinkler systems are fitted to only 112 - around five per cent - of 2,107 council-owned housing tower blocks in England and Wales.

Hazelwood Tower overlooks the nearby Grenfell Tower where a fire on 14 June 2017 killed 72 people. 

Lakanal

Channel 4 News presented the figures on 2 July - the day before the tenth anniversary of the Lakanal House fire at Camberwell in South London. 

The Lakanal House fire on 3 July 2009 killed six people, including three children, one a 20-day-old baby.

After Lakanal, an inquest jury found serious failings by Southwark Council and concluded the deaths were avoidable. The coroner, Judge Frances Kirkham, wanted local councils to retrofit sprinklers, to enhance fire risk assessments and to follow stricter fire safety regulations. 

Ignored

However, a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition and successive Conservative governments, led by David Cameron and Theresa May, ignored imposing such duties on local authorities. 
Thousands of tower blocks are thus without sprinkler systems.

Local councils, especially Labour-run authorities, claim government austerity cuts to their budgets since 2010 have prevented them from retro-fitting sprinkler systems to existing council blocks and from implementing other fire safety measures.

That failure, austerity and Britain's ongoing political paralysis means thousands of residents in council tower blocks have to live with the constant risk of fire.

© Paul Coleman, London Intelligence ®, July 2019.

Still no charges brought two years after the Grenfell Tower fire

© Grenfell United June 2019

Campaigners have projected the slogan, '2 years after Grenfell this building still hasn't kept its promises', onto the Houses of Parliament.

Grenfell United - campaigning on behalf of survivors, bereaved and residents - carried out the protest.

Nobody has yet been arrested for the fire on the Lancaster West council estate of 14 June 2017 that killed 72 people.

Criminal

Police say they have identified potential suspects for corporate manslaughter and gross negligence manslaughter and have interviewed individuals under criminal caution.

But police say there is no guarantee that criminal charges will be brought.

Police are delaying charging decisions until after a public inquiry ends.

Caution

However, the inquiry has been delayed throughout 2019 so no-one will be charged before at least 2021.

One of the most complex criminal investigations ever also involves 45 million digital documents and 14,500 physical exhibits. 

One 180 officers and staff are working full-time.

© London Intelligence, June 2019

UN poverty expert says UK austerity and welfare cuts violate human rights

UN poverty expert Philip Alston speaks with a Clacton pastor (© United Nations)

United Kingdom government policies have led to the systematic immiseration of millions across Great Britain, according to the United Nations (22 May 2019). 

Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, calls for a new vision that embodies compassion to end the unnecessary hardship.    

“The results of the austerity experiment are crystal clear,” says Alston in his report following an official visit to the country in November 2018. 
“There are 14 million people living in poverty, record levels of hunger and homelessness, falling life expectancy for some groups, ever fewer community services, and greatly reduced policing, while access to the courts for lower-income groups has been dramatically rolled back by cuts to legal aid." 

Undermine

“The imposition of austerity was an ideological project designed to radically reshape the relationship between the Government and the citizenry,” adds Alston. “UK standards of well-being have descended precipitately in a remarkably short period of time, as a result of deliberate policy choices made when many other options were available.

“The Government’s ‘work not welfare’ mantra conveys the message that individuals and families can seek charity but that the State will no longer provide the basic social safety net to which all political parties had been committed since 1945,” Alston says. 

“It is hard to imagine a recipe better designed to exacerbate inequality and poverty and to undermine the life prospects of many millions,” reports Alston. “But in response to this social calamity, the Government has doubled down on its policies."

Brutish

The Conservative government's Work and Pensions Secretary, Amber Rudd, may officially complain about the work - especially as Alston compares her department's policies to the setting up of Victorian workhouses. 

Alston has angered the government by saying austerity and welfare cuts threaten to make the lives of millions of less well off British people "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".

Rudd says Alston is politically biased and his report is under-researched.

Charity to cope

“The endlessly repeated response that there are more people in employment than ever before overlooks inconvenient facts: largely as a result of slashed government spending on services, close to 40 percent of children are predicted to be living in poverty two years from now; 16 percent of people over 65 live in relative poverty; and millions of those who are in-work are dependent upon various forms of charity to cope.”

Alston acknowledges the Government has taken action on a number of the issues raised in his preliminary report. “I welcome the moves to adopt a uniform poverty measure, to systematically survey food insecurity, and to further delay the rollout of Universal Credit. That programme will be improved by plans to provide more time to repay advances, to reduce debt payment limits, and to reduce extreme penalties. But, for all the talk that austerity is over, massive disinvestment in the social safety net continues unabated,” Alston says. 

Homelessness
The UN report on a 'shocking increase...in homelessness and rough sleeping' and that 'a growing number of homeless families - 24,000 between April and June 2018 - have been dispatched to live in accommodation far from their schools, jobs and community networks'. 
Alston says there are '1.2 million people on the social housing waiting list in 2017, but less than 6,000 homes were built that year'. 

Crisis

“It is difficult to see recent changes as more than window dressing to minimise political fallout,” adds Alston. “The situation demands a new vision that embodies British compassion and places social rights and economic security front and centre.” 

Alston accepts Brexit is clearly an issue of utmost concern to all sides but it has also become a tragic distraction from the social and economic policies that in the meantime are shaping a Britain that it is hard to believe any political parties really want. “It certainly won’t be a prouder, stronger, and more self-confident British community that emerges unless attention is given to the crisis of destitution and the chronic insecurity of low-income earners,” says Alston.

Impact

“Given the significant resources available in the country, the sustained and widespread cuts to social support, which have caused so much pain and misery, amount to retrogressive measures in clear violation of the United Kingdom’s human rights obligations,” Alston says. 

“The Government should restore local government funding to ensure crucial social protection can help people escape poverty, reverse particularly regressive measures such as the benefits cap and two-child limit, and audit the impact of tax and spending decisions on different groups.” 

Visit to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, United Nations General Assembly, 2019

Philip Alston, from Australia, took up his functions as the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in June 2014. According to the UN, Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organisation and serve in their individual capacity.

© Paul Coleman, London Intelligence ®, May 2019

Enjoying a lute lunch with the guitarist Michael Butten

© London Intelligence, October 2018

I feel privileged to have lunched today (Thursday, 4 October) with the Italian guitarist Luigi Legnani (1790-1877), the German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and the British lutenist John Dowland (1553-1626). 

Their 21^stCentury central London medium today is the award-winning British guitarist Michael Butten. Butten's flowing lunchtime recital of pieces from each of those composers fills the air inside the cavernous church hall at St John’s Smith Square in Westminster. In Butten’s accomplished hands, their passionately composed music reverberates with searing clarity down through the centuries. 

Berkshire-born Butten spellbinds around 60 lunchtime concert-goers with Legnani’s majestic and oft-frisky Fantasia in A Op.19. Yet Butten captivates most with his church hall resurrection of Dowland’s Praeludium and Lachrimae Pavane, the latter based perhaps on Dowland’s most famous lute song, Flow My Tears. 

Lost Love

Butten’s Dowland interpretations are moving and evocative, inviting us to hear what Dowland wanted to convey with his soulful 17^thcentury lute compositions. I momentarily close my eyes on Butten to open my ears wider to let this musical poetry fire my imagination. An image appears of a mourner of a lost love. The grieving soul wanders deep through a midwinter forest of England now long gone.

Butten later glides through Bach’s Violin Sonata No.3 in C and richly deserves his echoing ovation inside a church hall that itself echoes England’s past pain; St John’s Smith Square suffered a gutting direct hit from a Luftwaffe bomb on 10 May 1941, the last day of the Blitz. The entire church needed rebuilding.

Butten too seeks to resurrect, as he himself puts it, ‘the often neglected guitar music of British composers’ and the ‘lute repertoire of the British renaissance’, notably Dowland to whom Butten encores in tribute.

Butten’s subtle guitar playing stands alone as extremely good value; and exceptional value at just a tenner for an autumnal lunchtime. 
But it’s worthwhile too to keep an eye on Butten’s noble mission to infuse fresh interest into – what is, essentially - the soul music of 17^thCentury England.

michaelbutten.co.uk

© Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, October 2018

Is Crossrail delayed Crossrail denied ?

By Paul Coleman

It’s not a delay if you stop to sharpen the scythe. 

Delay beats error and always trumps never.

However, such clichés don’t easily hitch to Crossrail, London’s much-vaunted east-west railway. 

Red-faces

It’s autumn 2018 and Crossrail should now be all set for a full operation of new Elizabeth Line train services, scything through London's congested and overcrowded rush-hour commutes. 

The tracks are laid in new tunnels under central London. 

New trains are tested and ready and waiting to run along the Elizabeth Line (above).

But in late August the government and Transport for London announce Crossrail will be delayed by ‘nearly a year’ due to the need for further technical tests following a raft of problems.

The delay and an attached cost over-run red-faces London’s political establishment, chiefly because the government and TfL are allocating £15.4 billion of taxpayers’ hard-earned money to Crossrail, up from the project's original £14.8bn.

Pricing out 

Hence, the pressure mounts on Crossrail chief executive Simon Wright, TfL and the government to deliver a fully operative Elizabeth Line for London as soon as possible. 

It’s bad news to keep a nonagenarian monarch waiting for a train, let alone millions of Londoners. 

Yet Crossrail has already affected millions of Londoners even before a single train service has run - by raising house values for private homeowners near its suburban stations but also pricing out potential homebuyers.   

For an analysis of the deeper impact of Crossrail on London's political economy, see Crossrail: All That Glitters..

 

© London Intelligence, September 2018. 

London Intelligence ®️ is a registered trademark of London Intelligence Limited.

 

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Council Cuts & Thieving Bean Counters

Council Cuts & Thieving Bean Counters, the latest update from Grenfell MediaWatch.


© London Intelligence, September 2018.