108 Comments

Dominic --- I believe you

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"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing." - Buffet

So true in this instance....they clearly had no idea how to counter such a major incident...even though there was plenty of education that this was likely going to happen within our life-times. It had already happened with SARS, but they prepped nothing.

Were any "war games" conducted at all for this kind of situation before 2020? Even a bio-weapon type situation?

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Hi Dom - Effective Altruism have released this document outlining how one can Improve Institutional Decision-Making (IIDM), and it seems rather apt having just read the complete lack of maxims regarding any decision-making from tight No. 10 team. Here it is for those interested parties: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ttpSEgE3by7AAhQ7w/improving-institutional-decision-making-which-institutions-a

I am studying Quadratic Voting as a means of helping to address (among other things) certain facets of IIDM.

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Maybe should have liaised with this lot... https://www.covid-arg.com/group

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Dido Harding given £20 billion for track and trace.

20p silicon wristbands, (infected, vaccinated, tested, shielding, keyworkers), cctv, human eyes and google maps using Zoe style simple mobile phone app.... no exposure of sensitive medical info.

Gives huge 10-20 million person daily dataset of infections in uk, and means to track, trace and support.

Not even tried..... £5 billion vaccination program, £1 billion rapid test, .... follow the money.

Turing beat enigma with paper punch cards , pencils and smart thinking. Virus has not got brain.

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Also, a question about 'power in Whitehall' and how to actually make something happen.

You want an immediate Covid enquiry (for good reasons). What is the actual plan to make that happen? Asking on Twitter is about as effective as a change.org petition, which is to say, worse than useless.

It'll only happen when (if) some Whitehall figure judges it politically less painful to change the timescale than to leave it as it is.

Who is that person, and what will actually move the needle on that calculation?

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What's your take on the use of personal Gmail by Hancock, Bethell and Whately?

Convenience, stupidity, diary management, corruption, technical illiteracy, criminal intent, arse-covering, or a select mix of the above?

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You do know don’t you, that care homes were being advised by the CQC (under government guidance) not to lockdown at the start of the pandemic. Some did anyway (they were largely those who had the resources to do this, mainly staff who would agree to isolate in the home) and ended up with no infections. They knew exactly how infections would spread, and this was largely through the peripatetic workforce. They were admonished by the CQC, but ignored them. I know this partly because I’m a lay inspector for the CQC. You should investigate this

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The issue of some care providers offering post hospital transition arrangements for the elderly who may have covid, rather than directly back into their care homes, has not been explored or publicised enough

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Given the apparent issues with COBRA, number 10 set up, lack of basic IT etc. Was moving the 'nerve centre', say into the Elizabeth Conference Centre, ever considered?

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Jun 29, 2021Liked by Dominic Cummings

Having worked across many organisations in the private and public sector (central and local govt, nhs, regulators,quangos, prison service) I know that the culture of the public sector is designed to avoid accountability. Some of this goes to a basic but arcane value set, which runs along the lines of ‘if I am offering a public service, I don’t deserve to have my performance assessed. In fact the whole private sector notion of ‘performance’ is anathema to me’. So this deeply held but well hidden construct runs through everything - organisation structures, job design, the way people are or aren’t rewarded, the kind of people who get hired. People like me have tinkered at the edges, tried to introduce ‘change’ (the whole concept of change is seen as an ‘initiative’ which has no bearing on cultural or behavioural transformation. In fact they often love to use the word ‘transformation’ as it makes them sound as if they really mean it this time) Dominic speaks to everything I know and have experienced, but there is no critical mass to disrupt, never will be, and the nature of the change required is just not achievable. The most anyone can hope for is transactional change. At the level of, like, some civil servants learn some project management skills. They will eff this up too though because they’ll make some simple principles into an industry called Prince 2 (again,focus on process change,not cultural, leadership behavioural)

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Do you think that the PM is mentally ill? I ask because the 'volte-face' about sacked/resigned seems madly abrupt and a bit bonkers. Spin needs diminished interest which always comes with the passage of time but rewriting yesterday's history is a risk too far surely? Or is he just badly advised by some impetuous advisor?

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The truth about the 8th April peak fatality date

4 weeks too late

Yet the NHS wasn't overwhelmed

Evidence that the virus was already dissapearing & weakening

Yet they continued peddling fear propaganda and lies

WHY is Dominic blind to this???

I think it's due to subconscious beliefs embedded

Maybe Dominic isn't as clever as he thinks he is?

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Underneath ‘specific regime change’, dictatorship.

I suspect the Great British Public prefers the consensual, and in your view rather ineffective and amateurish form of government represented by Heywood, to that of Pharaoh Cummings.

This is Britain. We believe in Democracy, protected by strong institutions. Many fantasists find this arrangement frustrating.

But frustration is often preferable to mass death, once The Rule Of Law is trodden over by bright sparks such as yourself.

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What was the response to your 26th April note? It seems insane that you felt the need to write it - who else was 'the eye in the sky', the executive knitting everyone together?

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I was working as a statistician elsewhere in government (with some very talented people) while all this was going. It's honestly terrifying that all of the standard data analysis we assumed was being done by far more competent people than ourselves was barely even happening months later.

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