What is exposed by Coronovirus

Great piece of investigative journalism today by Ian Birrell [on Tortoise] exposing the repeated failures of UK government to re-boot the social care system in the UK.

Just as a recession reveals businesses in bad shape, so this pandemic has exposed the disastrous state of the social care system. The problem is frequently stated: a sector hit by austerity, filled with struggling providers, poorly paid staff, and with politicians making empty promises. On the steps of Downing Street in July last year when he took office, Boris Johnson promised a “clear plan we have prepared” for the salvation of the sector and to properly care for every older person in the country. It never materialised.

‘Old Money’ 18th May 2020, Tortoise media online

This is a shocking failure by government, the care sector and indeed all of us taxpayers. No more shocking probably than any of the other failures that have been and continue to be exposed in the healthcare, our preparedness for a pandemic such as that outlined in Cygnus (2016) and the shambolic response ladled with lies and bluffing bravado that the UK government gave us; but shocking nonetheless.

Take the opening line of that paragraph again – “just as a recession reveals business in bad shape…”

Many of us have not planned for this kind of disruptive event – many of us are too “geared” to envisage such a thing. It’s just too hard to imagine.

Many of us have found our business model or our core delivery crumble in a matter of weeks – if your business is based in face-to-face interaction, what preparation did you make for this being denied you?

Many of us have not provisioned for a massive revenue drop – who’s going to tell the shareholders that the revenue is conditional on certain things continuing to be true, Mark?

Maybe it’s time to admit we start constantly challenging ourselves and the key assumptions in our businesses to different future scenarios – however unlikely they seem.

Who’d have thought a global pandemic of a highly infectious respiratory virus – think SARS on steroids – might be coming our way?

Well plenty of us. Including the Obama Presidency and HMG. And a whole bunch of future-gazers.

Just nobody wanted to believe it could happen, so vested are they in how things are.

As I’ve observed many times before here, humans are very poor at ‘doing the math’, especially probability calculations.