I’ve been enjoying reading about the different aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic and Spike has been quite hard to get hold of in Australia, despite it being published in 2021. However, it’s definitely a book worth tracking down if you’re interested in how expertise and leadership can be no match for power and politics.

Spike details the first 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, from the first mutterings about a new virus to lockdowns, overcapacity healthcare and tens of thousands of deaths. It’s told from Jeremy Farrar’s perspective as an expert on infectious disease and practical knowledge on epidemics. He was also a member of the UK SAGE committee on COVID-19, advising the government. It starts as the virus is contained to Wuhan, then slowly spreads before exponential growth across the world. It’s a unique insight as Farrar’s informal talks with colleagues and other experts combine with the advice offered to the UK government on how to manage the pandemic. The warnings about hospitals being overloaded and hundreds of thousands of excess deaths are still chilling to read, as are the thoughts about a virus made by humans (which turned out to be false, but there are some very gripping, spy-like moments).

As the book goes on, I found that this was not simply another pandemic book. It’s a book about power, who holds it and what they do with that power. We talk about leadership and leaders in their respective fields, but what happens when other leaders don’t listen to the expert leaders? What happens when recommendations are changed, ignored or delayed? It seemed at times that science and data were being neglected for the economy, for freedom and perhaps politics. Sometimes it seemed like nobody was willing to take the lead and carry the responsibility of implementing closure of schools, pubs and shops. Of course this is only one side of the story, but there are various email excerpts and others who verify what happened. This was frankly scary to me (and a little too familiar at times from across the world…’gold standard’ anyone from Australia?)

One thing I really liked about this book is that it had a who’s who list at the back, as when you don’t know all the people involved it can be quite confusing to follow. The first chapters were very engrossing even though I knew what the unknowns were, it almost read like a thriller novel. It’s easy to understand and chilling reading at times thinking about the responsibilities experts and public figures have and how that gets conveyed to the general public.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com ( )

Catches the excitement and fears of the early days, but also the difficulties in getting the seriousness of it across to authorities. Basically we were caught napping, and reacted weeks too late, but where we went most wrong seems to have been in not locking down before Christmas 2020; he feels thousands more died that was necessary at that time.
There are stories of the politicians simply not listening to sober advice, or being completely naïve in the face of non-expert talkers. He was also exasperated by the herd immunity story which he says was never supported by the scientists, but which the politicians seized on.
He was horrified to see PHE closed in the middle of it all.
UK adn US were expected to do best in any pandemic, instead they did poorly but other places did surprisingly well, Korea, NZ, Norway, not Sweden, Taiwan, and indeed China.
He thinks it was not from a Wuhan lab.
We don't get into details on track and trace, nor why we tested so poorly. PHE had been shrunk to unable to react.
Basically there is lots of talent out there to sort these things, but it all needs funding, long term, and coordinating, in a global forum of reasonable people. Fat chance! ( )