Other reasons for 100,000

Robert Booth`s excellent summary of the reasons to explain the high death rate from Covid does well to include a long-term factor, the "health of the nation", with Britain actually going into the pandemic "in poor health" (The tragic numbers: Why are they so high? 27/01/21). Strangely, however, Booth fails to mention two other important and relevant points: firstly, how ten years of unnecessary austerity measures had led to massive under-investment in the NHS, with the obvious consequence of unpreparedness for a busy winter period, let alone one with the added problems caused by a pandemic. As Rafael Behr says, the pandemic has revealed the "penalty we all pay for neglect of public health infrastructure" (The pandemic has made the case for social democracy, 27/01/21). What is also omitted, but equally revealing, is that the government and NHS leadership knew of the gaps in Britain`s ability to cope with such an emergency after Operation Cygnus, a government simulation of a flu outbreak, in 2016 (What was Exercise Cygnus and what did it find, 07/05/20). The Cygnus report stressed how the UK`s preparedness was "currently not sufficient to cope" with a pandemic`s demands. The exercise had shown how important it was to have sufficient PPE for all doctors and nurses, ventilators and critical care beds for the patients. How many lives could have been saved had the Tory prime ministers, May and Johnson, and the relevant Health Secretaries, Hunt and Hancock, done their jobs properly? Has ideologically driven austerity ever cost a nation so dear?