Failures of State: How Britain made the same mistake twice (Pt 2)
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2021
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the second of three episodes this week, the Sunday Times Insight team explains how Britain unleashed a second disastrous wave of the virus despite repeated warnings from experts.
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Guests:
- Jonathan Calvert, Insight Editor, The Sunday Times.
- George Arbuthnott, Deputy Insight Editor, The Sunday Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Links:
- Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle with Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott.
- Audiobook of Failures of State.
- ‘Rishi Sunak was the main person responsible for Covid’s second wave’, The Times.
Clips used: BBC, ITV, Sky News, Euronews, Unherd, CNN.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Yesterday, in part one of what's been a year long investigation, the Sunday Times Insight |
| 0:08.8 | team explained how, at the start of the pandemic, the government wasted five weeks sleepwalking |
| 0:16.7 | into disaster. |
| 0:18.6 | The whole policy of mitigation and herd immunity that the government was pursuing in March |
| 0:24.1 | was seriously flawed. |
| 0:27.2 | 1.5 million infections had spread across the country before Boris Johnson announced |
| 0:33.2 | the first lockdown. |
| 0:35.4 | The Prime Minister himself became seriously ill with COVID. |
| 0:40.0 | On leaving hospital, he promised to do everything he could to avoid a second peak. |
| 0:46.5 | So why did it happen all over again? |
| 0:49.6 | His provocation was actually growing exponentially just like the virus. |
| 0:55.0 | All listening to stories of our times from the Times and the Sunday Times, I'm Manvine |
| 0:59.9 | Rana. |
| 1:00.9 | Today, failures of state, part two, how Britain made the same mistake twice. |
| 1:15.4 | By April 2020, the first wave of the virus was running rampant, streets were empty, hospitals |
| 1:24.5 | were full, but we were told the UK had avoided the worst of it. |
| 1:31.2 | Seems like these from Italy wouldn't be repeated here in Britain. |
| 1:35.6 | They're fighting a war here and they're losing. |
| 1:38.7 | Wherever you go, people are on gurneys, encoders and meeting rooms, they're everywhere. |
| 1:44.8 | Both Matt, Hancock and the NHS would later claim that everybody had got the treatment |
| 1:50.4 | that they required, which is not what we see in the statistics. |
| 1:54.5 | The NHS has not, at any point, been overwhelmed by coronavirus. |
... |
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