@earl-of-trumps saidWhereas instead they should really blame ..........
I'm sure the majority of people in most countries blame the leader
The post that was quoted here has been removedThere was a plan created about a decade ago for a pandemic, the assumption was it would be an influenza variant. The "herd immunity" plan is fine if the infection fatality ratio is similar to what it is for influenza, the problem is that the IFR is much higher. It wouldn't be completely disastrous had they not made cuts which rendered the pandemic plan unworkable, so there isn't enough PPE and there aren't enough ventilators for what was planned. The Conservatives have had plenty of time to correct the plan and just keep failing to.
There was an article in the Sunday Times [1] archived here [2] which catalogues the failures and it makes for quite shocking reading. The following excerpt is a bit of a jaw dropper:
In the Far East the threat was being treated more seriously in the early weeks of February. Martin Hibberd, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was in a unique position to compare the UK’s response with Singapore, where he had advised in the past.
“Singapore realised, as soon as Wuhan reported it, that cases were going to turn up in Singapore. And so they prepared for that. I looked at the UK and I can see a different strategy and approach.
“The interesting thing for me is, I’ve worked with Singapore in 2003 and 2009 and basically they copied the UK pandemic preparedness plan. But the difference is they actually implemented it.”
[1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-38-days-when-britain-sleepwalked-into-disaster-hq3b9tlgh
[2] https://archive.is/9p4yR