Covid-19 has exposed this country for what it really is

Another sign of immaturity is that we're not asking key questions about the way we run the country or the NHS.

One of the problems with the government's response to COVD-19 is that we Britons are now an immature citizenry served by a cynical press corps desperate for clicks (which makes them seek out, and sometimes create political disasters) and a political class that refuses to think in the long term, and therefore spends its time putting out fires to stop the house burning down rather than improving the building.

The problem all along has been a population that (perhaps rightly) chafed against restricting their own lifestyles, while simultaneously refusing to accept that this would have led, at the peak moments, to the sort of short-term healthcare system overload and triage we saw in Northern Italy in Spring 2020.

Ok, we're against lockdowns, but I'll guarantee that many of those people who were either all out against lockdowns on principle, or went along with it, but didn't really change their lifestyles at all, would have also screamed blue murder - to the point at which the government might have been thrown out - had the NHS been forced to start triaging patients, and sending home to die those it thought had the least chance of surviving. Of course, this was all egged on by a hysterical press corps that, as aforementioned, is desperate for disasters it can splash on front pages.

Another sign of immaturity is that we're not asking key questions about the way we run the country or the NHS. We focus on palace gossip far too much in our political discourse, which in this case was about "who messed up, who was incompetent, and who should be fired."

But how much is being asked about *why* we were so underprepared? Why was there no war gaming for the response to coronaviruses, when it seemed clear that they were as much a threat as a more virulent strain of flu? Why were we left scrambling for PPE, ventilators, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machines? Why did we seed care homes with a disease that is thousands of times more deadly to the old than it is the young? And most importantly, nobody seems to be asking whether it is wise to save money by running the NHS at the bare minimum number of beds it needs, which is certainly the most efficient way of running things (rather like just in time logistics for manufacturing) but doesn't even leave slack for seasonal flu season, let alone a pandemic?

The right's answer is largely silence, while the left just rolls out its desire for more funding for the NHS, which really means higher wages for unionised workers, and nothing at all to do with reorganisation.

This is indicative of our polity. A political class that is both incompetent at execution and unwilling to plan for the long term, and especially for low-probability but high-cost contingencies. A press that stokes hysteria. A largely (but not entirely) immature electorate. COVID-19 has been like a receding tide, exposing who was swimming naked.