News flash NHS waiting lists have reached 7 million.

It was is just a poxy virus for gods sake. People die of the common cold flu and infleunca related illneses every year around this time we were not practising social distancing and wearing face masks then.

The UK's failure to do more to stop Covid spreading early in the pandemic was one of the country's worst public health failures, a report by MPs says.

The government approach - backed by its scientists - was to try to manage the situation and in effect achieve herd immunity by infection, it said.

This led to a delay in introducing the first lockdown, costing thousands of lives, the MPs found.

But their report highlighted successes too, including the vaccination rollout.

It described the approach to vaccination - from the research and development through to the rollout of the jabs - as "one of the most effective initiatives in UK history".

But campaigners criticised the report for failing to focus on those who had died, saying references to practical issues, including problems with laptops, was "laughable".

The 150-page document, Coronavirus: Lessons learned to date, is from the Health and Social Care Committee and the Science and Technology Committee, and MPs from all parties.

It predominantly focused on the response to the pandemic in England. The committees did not look at steps taken individually by Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

The MPs called the pandemic, which has claimed more than 150,000 lives in the UK and nearly five million worldwide so far, the "biggest peacetime challenge" for a century.

Some early failings, the report suggested, resulted from apparent "group-think" among scientists and ministers.

It meant the UK was not as open to different approaches on earlier lockdowns, border controls and test and trace as it should have been. (..)

A major review into the UK Government’s handling of the pandemic and its impact on the NHS, the health of the population, and doctors, has been undertaken by the BMA. The first two reports conclude that the UK Government failed in its duty of care to protect doctors and the wider healthcare workforce from avoidable harm and suffering in its management of the COVID-19 pandemic. This failure is evidenced in detail and published today by the BMA.

The reports, part of a series of five, are the most comprehensive accounts of the lived experiences of doctors throughout the pandemic, collated from thousands of doctors across the UK, including those who were on the frontline during COVID-19. They also draw upon real-time surveys over the past two years, as well as formal testimonies, data and evidence sessions from stakeholders. Page after page details the devastating impact of the pandemic on medical professionals as individuals, and on the NHS, showing mistake after mistake – errors of judgement and policy made by the UK Government - which amount to a failure of a duty of care to the workforce. (..)