Project COVID

For six, sometimes long year, I was a manager on engineering projects.

It was complicated, time consuming and often stressful.

But there is a point I want to make, and how this links to the Government and COVID.

At the start of the project, each stage is planned out, there are deliverables, verification activities, risks and oportunities are hightlighted and mitigated for or against. Nothing is left to chance.

All through you are not just doing what needs to be done that day, that moment, but planning ahead as to what comes next, in the next week, next month, or next stage of the project.

Nothing is left to chance. It can't be, as leaving it to chance could mean loss of money or the project failing.

And now to COVID. And Brexit, really.

All though both, the Government has not looked, or been able to look, at what comes next.

If we look at the lockdowns in March/April, November and now, there has to be an idea on how the relaxation will be managed. Track, trace and isolation are critical in this, and yet Baroness Dido Harding, who has spaffed £22,000,000,000 on the system has gone missing. No one talks about track and trace because it has been such a failure. And yet without this, there is no way of knowing how the pandemic is spreading, and dampening down hotspots.

Its how sensible countries have controlled COVID.

Because this has failed, and has been failing for 11 months,there has to be a return time and time again to lockdowns, as even if track and trace were working, with daily nfections now officially exceeding 60,000 a day, even a working system couldn't cope with those numbers.

And I remember writing in May and June how the data just did not suport the levels of lossening we were seeing, there were COVID levels, traffic lights, and data on tests carried out and people actually tested, none of which reached targets of supported the lowring of the gaurd. Yet we did.

With Brexit, the Government, the PMs, only saw to the end of the day, the week or month, saying what it took to get them there. Same with negotiations, while the UK argued with itself as to come to an agreement on the current issue, the EU had agreement from all 27 member states not just on that, but everything right to the signing of an actual trade agreement. The UK was always several steps behind, not seeing how the EU was herding our flock of cats towards just where it wanted.

If the team I worked with had executed projects as badly as our Government has with Brexit and COVID, we would have been fired, and rightly so, but it would never have happened, as the project would have been managed correctly from the start. Instead we have a Government of newspaper columinists and advisors who know a good slogan, but atually getting things done is way beyond their skill level.

Which is why we should worry now more than ever, as the rolling out of a vaccination program to 70,000,000 people, with a time limited vaccine, that needs special storage conditions, and doing it in as short a time as possible, I don't think there are many people here who think this Government is actually up to the task, and is just waiting for the eventual fail.

Johnsn has said there will be transparancy from next week, with figures on numbers vaccinated, number of centres and so on. But actual jabs have to increase by an order of magnitude in days, from the current 300,000 a week to two million a day.

A stiff challenge.

One one on which the nation's health is riding.

If it went wrong, would you trust Johnson and co to admit it?