The total cost of the pandemic to this country could plausibly be approaching the trillions of pounds scale by the time we're through the worst of it. I think t

The total cost of the pandemic to this country could plausibly be approaching the trillions of pounds scale by the time we're through the worst of it. I think the government could have sprung for a few software developers who knew what they were doing back at the start of the year. Apparently they'd already had plenty of time to establish a relatively large group of privileged expert advisors, including some who worked on these kinds of models. Perhaps if they'd been more open about that process, the gap in their capabilities could have been pointed out soon enough to do something useful about it. You write as if you think what I'm describing is somehow unusual. It is not. I have probably worked with at least 30-40 well-qualified people just in my own career from whom any well-mixed team of say 3-5 developers could have done what we're talking about here within a relevant time frame. We are not talking about rocket science, just good software development practices being employed by experienced programmers with technical backgrounds who are used to implementing the models of subject matter experts. This isn't some magical unicorn skill set.