Peter Cochrane: Experts, damn experts
The COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak should concentrate some people’s minds about the importance of experts, argues Professor Peter Cochrane
During a TV interview in 2017 politician Michael Gove famously asserted that, "The British people have had enough of experts"1. It would appear that the current government was of this mind as they conscripted more and more unqualified ‘thinkers' and ‘advisors' to their ranks.
But how times of changed! Since the COVID-19 coronavirus erupted, government and TV has been awash with medical experts, strategists, computer modellers, statisticians and pandemic specialists. Better still, it seems the Great British people cannot get enough of their expertise.
It appears that when the chips are down and lives are at risk people lust after the real thing. No more folk lore, witches tales, rumour and bigotry, just gives us the facts, sound advice and let's get on with it. This is in complete contrast to the Brexit debacle powered by lies, half truths, and raw emotion that only weeks ago was dividing the nation.
So here we are with a sensible phased roll out of precautions continually adjusted to save as many lives as possible while still keeping as much of the economy going. So far so good! But COVID-19 is spreading and killing faster and more wildly than anticipated, and the shortfalls in earlier emergency planning cycles, including the stockpiling of drugs and consumables, hospital bed availability, and forward equipment orders are now ‘red flags'.
Switch back to the 1980s and the Thatcher government's belief in pure market forces. A wholesale migration into a ‘service economy' was enacted, as precursors to our present COVID-19 national supply issues. Manufacturing Industry was demeaned as outdated, unnecessary, and without a part to play in a future UK economy. ‘Manufacturing' became a dirty word.
So gradually at first, the relevant industrial disciplines were removed from the school curriculum, apprenticeship schemes went into decline, and whole engineering departments were closed in universities. This saw manufacture and expertise flood abroad as the UK become increasingly dependent on overseas suppliers. But this tends to be the way with any ‘crude globalisation' devoid of strategic thinking and planning.
And so, like much of the western world the UK now depends on manufacturers in South-East Asia and India for the bulk of it's IT, clothing, and more. Thankfully, a healthy proportion of the key medical, drug and instrument companies are still retained in the UK, EU and US. But while the UK accounts for around 10 per cent of the global pharmaceuticals market, it supplies less than one per cent of the medical hardware/instrumentation.
Back to the plot: In the specific case of patient ventilators the UK has no manufacturers and faces a potential shortfall of some 20,000 units. But this is not all, there are shortages of everything from face masks to critical life saving drugs and other general medical supplies. A large proportion of the ingredients are manufactured in China. The plan was: we just go out on the open market and buy what we need when we need it. The snag is, this is a crisis and the normal demand and supply situation has ceased to apply. So, normally reliable suppliers have switched to serving their home countries - in many cases, compelled to do so.
To solve this ventilator shortage problem the government has approached UK industry to produce around 20,000 in a few weeks from a standing start. Only people educated in the classics, economics and the law could be so naive to think that this might be feasible. Where do we get the designs, the expertise, the trained engineers and technicians? And where is the spare manufacturing capacity?
This isn't going to happen fast, if at all, and we could see people die as a result. My guess is that if the COVID-19 cases accelerate beyond the bed, ventilator and medical staff capacity, then arbitraging based on age, fitness, and capacity to contribute to the nation will quickly come into play.
When we get to the far side of this crisis, I hope the politicians will have learned something about reliability and resilience of supply chains, which ironically, is something I now teach. And being an expert, I also hope the British people will have changed their mind.
Professor Peter Cochrane OBE is the former CTO of BT, who now works as a consultant focusing on solving problems and improving the world through the application of technology. He is also a professor at the University of Suffolk's School of Science, Technology and Engineering
1. The full quote: "I think the people in this country have had enough of experts from organizations with acronyms saying they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong."