My morning read has started with this:
Coronavirus: lessons learned to date
Executive Summary
Covid-19 has been the biggest crisis our country has faced in generations, and the greatest peacetime challenge in a century. It has disrupted our lives to an extent few predicted; separated friends and families; closed businesses and damaged livelihoods; and, most tragically of all, it has been associated with the deaths of over 150,000 people in the UK and nearly 5 million people worldwide to date.
1
The United Kingdom is not alone in having suffered badly because of covid-19 and the pandemic is far from over. Comparing the experience of different countries is not straightforward: covid-related deaths are recorded in varying ways. The effect of the pandemic on particular countries has been different at different times—for example some countries that fared better than others in the early months of the pandemic have subsequently experienced more fatalities.
2 But in 2020 the UK did significantly worse in terms of covid deaths than many countries—especially compared to those in East Asia even though they were much closer geographically to where the virus first appeared.
3 The scale of this early loss requires us to ask why the UK was affected worse than others.
Conversely the success of the vaccine programme—one of the most effective in Europe and, for a country of our size one of the most effective in the world—shows that positive as well as negative lessons should be taken from our handling of the pandemic. All learning needs to happen rapidly because of the likelihood of future pandemics which is why we are producing this Report now. Its purpose is not to point fingers of blame but ensure an accurate understanding of both successes and failures to date so that crucial lessons can be learned for the future.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5802/cmselect/cmsctech/92/9204.htm
