When the dust settles

That's not my title, it is the title of a book written by Lucy Easthope, a woman who specialises in every aspect of disaster management.

Her book has been serialised on R4 this week, and this morning she has been interviewed for Woman's Hour, inevitably focussing on the pandemic and the plans made well in advance of its predicted  occurrence. People like her not only make plans for the future, they also deal with the aftermath of disasters, down to the return of personal items to bereaved families. 

They train coroners and undertakers on the correct way to tell the truth to the relatives of those who are killed by floods, earthquakes, fires and train crashes, because telling kind lies to them does not help the grieving process in the long run. In her own words, she sometimes has to bring a family right back to square one to begin the process - with its sense of rawness and loss - all over again.

She said that people in her position commonly face strong resistance when they take control over disasters, both potential and actual. She was asked what group give her the most problems, and without hesitation she replied, 'central government'.

Strategic plans were being made for the event of a pandemic as far back as 2014 and meetings with central government had been arranged to consolidate them. Plans like these rely on, well, planning, and good plans are well thought-out with everyone's cooperation.

In the run-up to 2020, the government cancelled most of the meetings, saying that they could not rehearse for Brexit at the same time as rehearsing for a pandemic. It was too much to cope with. We all know what happened. It is still happening.

Easthope's pandemic plans hinged on PPE. She knew that without sufficient supplies of it people would die alone in hospitals and care homes, and in most cases be buried alone as well. There is a very human side to her logistics. She looked into current stocks of PPE in Britain and discovered that they had been allowed to run very low in order to save money.

She confirmed what we all knew at the time, which was that the government were waiting too long to make very important decisions. On average, they were two weeks too late with every action.

When they did get around to re-stocking PPE supplies, the rest of the world was doing the same thing and unscrupulous manufacturers seized the opportunity to make millions by selling defective equipment to the NHS Trust.

They swung in the opposite direction and over-ordered so much PPE that it is now costing the country £7 million a week to store in shipping containers at busy docks.

There will be an inquiry - when the dust settles - but I hope Boris does not prevent the results from being published, as he does with every other bit of negative news which would shine a light into his dark corner.