I'm not saying do not investigate mistakes, and don't hold those to account for their mistakes. but no thought has been given to quite what a difficult and unprecedented job that these people have had to do.

I'm not saying that under different Leadership it would not have been different, but different does not equal better.
A firebreak may have helped in your situation, but hindered others (although on the surface, it does appear to be economy over public health) Whats to say, for example, that if we had a firebreak then more businesses go under, this will lead to more poverty leading to more deaths. Ok, not Covid deaths, but deaths caused by the decision Of a government all the same. That's for an enquiry to decide.
And as for opposition Parties, I've no inclination to go back to see what they were saying - their job description appears to be 'disagree with those in power'. It does not mean that that is what they would have done if they were in the same situation. It's all mouth service to them.

"It was a Team effort, I guess it took all players working together to lose this one"

Hold on. Surely a plan to deal with a Pandemic is not a party issue, neither would it have been written recently. We have known about pandemics for a long time.

You can't blame this government for having no blueprint to fall back on, as much as you would like to.

10 January 2020

WHO issued a comprehensive package of technical guidance online with advice to all countries on how to detect, test and manage potential cases, based on what was known about the virus at the time. This guidance was shared with WHO's regional emergency directors to share with WHO representatives in countries.

Based on experience with SARS and MERS and known modes of transmission of respiratory viruses, infection and prevention control guidance were published to protect health workers recommending droplet and contact precautions when caring for patients, and airborne precautions for aerosol generating procedures conducted by health workers.

he Labour Government of 2003 should have created the pandemic policy after the first SARS outbreak Then, should they not?
a tad unfair to point fingers at the current incumbents for not having The foresight to create a pandemic policy for that.

I'm also not commenting on how badly or well it was managed, more that people are quick to find blame and slow on praise for the efforts that people have made.
It's very easy to say that someone could have done better. Who's to say that they could have done given the same decisions in the same circumstances.

"It was a Team effort, I guess it took all players working together to lose this one"

This the same plan, that "Before the pandemic we were assessed as in a better position than almost any other country to survive a pandemic and cope well"?

"It was a Team effort, I guess it took all players working together to lose this one"

Pandemics historically have killed as many people as the wars that have beset this world, yet the resources committed to pandemic prevention and response are a fraction of the resources we commit to security. This paper examines the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 by analysing the preparedness and responses of the UK, the USA, Germany, and South Korea. We will evidence that the UK and USA lacked the levels of preparedness that global health reports indicated, and that their responses were diametrically opposite of those of Germany and South Korea. We argue that decades of deregulation and privatization due to neoliberal, free-market economics by the UK and USA led to the Great Recession of 2008. This, in turn, led to economic collapse and austerity (increased neoliberalism), which negatively impacted investment in healthcare in the UK and USA. This resulted in very different levels of preparedness and responses by the four countries under the microscope.

[Link]