Imagine you're in Government when a national crisis breaks – something that might pose a significant threat to the lives of your citizens as well as considerable economic and social hardship. You would warn the public, of course. You would do everything possible to adapt existing plans and develop new types of mitigation. You would use all the resources at your disposal – from national functions to local capabilities, to tackle the problem.

And yet, when Covid hit the UK, only two of these things happened. The Government warned the public and developed new solutions, like the vaccine. But they failed to effectively deploy all the resources at their disposal.