Cummings, Covid and groupthink – a cautionary tale

It is hard to deny the importance of the issues raised this week by Dominic Cummings. His decision to identify the many mistakes made at the start of the pandemic is not about seeking vengeance; it is a vital process to ensure that errors are identified and not repeated. A vaccine-evading variant or a new virus could come along at any time. Should this happen, ministers must be ready.

Some of the world’s finest minds worked on pandemic planning, in Britain and throughout the western world. The UK was once ranked as more prepared for a new virus than any country in Europe. But the failure to provide adequate PPE equipment was the most visible sign of implosion. We had made a plan to fight the last war: to tackle a new influenza, rather than a Sars-style coronavirus that Asian countries had widely anticipated. Cummings was candid about his own regrets: specifically, failing to run a ‘red team’ analysis (i.e.