The biggest questions that governments in every part of the UK have to answer are these: the lockdown was justified partly as a means to buy time to put the systems (tracktrace/effective small local lockdowns/mass testing etc) in place which would mean we might not need to...

... return to onerous blanket restrictions either nationally or across large swathes of the country. Given such restrictions are returning- what happened to those systems? What effect have they had? Were these the wrong strategies in the first place? And now do we need new ones?

Because though obviously the acute problem of the rising cases is worrying, perhaps the bigger worry is the strategic one: the fact we’re at all and there’s not much sense yet from any politician of how we prevent it again, while we wait for a vaccine, which may never come.

So in short: is it the same strategies but better executed? Or something different?

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/st...39528249171968
NEW: Once again Test and Trace in England has its worst week yet. Just 59.6% of close contacts of people infected were reached in the week to 14th October. Down from 63% from the previous week.

Experts say that the hit rate needs to be at least 80% to be effective.

In addition, only 15.1% of people who undertook an on site in person test received their result in 24 hours.

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/st...27391336730624
How can the strategies the UK has invested in be doing so badly? Can't fully blame Serco as they're only a part of it, for same reason probably can't fully blame Dido Harding though certainly hasn't demonstrated any expertise yet. Don't even start on isolating vulnerable because there are so many problems with that it's a last resort after exhausting everything else rather than go-to as some are suggesting.