To be ashamed to be British

[yesterdayschild]

Every day more and more British deaths. When compared to other countries some of them third world, we have an appalling death rate from Covid 19.
Why oh why did the government allow 3000 Spanish to enter just to watch a football match when Spain would not allow them to watch in their own country.
Why was the Stereophonics concert allowed when other countries had locked down.
Why are thousands of people still entering the U.K. with no checks.
Why are our NHS staff still begging for PPE

I am feeling very very low about all of this and wish I lived in some other country.

@Biscuit0110 I totally agree. I think that overall the government have handled the situation admirably. There’s no way any other party would have done it much differently. This is not party specific, it is being led and advised by the same medical advisors who would have been advising regardless of who was in power.

@Justanotherlurker, to add, no surprise to see in your last comment to me your oft repeated refrain that nobody - except you of course - uses critical thinking. As said, your comments are so often smug and rude.

Here are some of the names of people working in public health who said the SAGE panel should have been drawn from a wider pool. They are not saying those on the panel have no value but there are big expertise gaps. They have pointed out as just one example it is astonishing that there are no public health experts on the SAGE group.

Professor Allyson Pollock - consultant in public health medicine and was the Director of the Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University.

Dr Bharat Pankhania - senior clinical lecturer has widespread experience of advising on national communicable disease control action plans at national and international level.

Devi Sridhar - Professor of Public Health

John Ashton - clinician and former regional director of Public Health England

@Graphista, v fair point!

I’d rather be British than American right now.

does anyone actually realise britain is a much smaller country than most or is that to difficult to understand ? our cases will seem high in relation to the like of the u.s ?

Britain is not and never has been a country. It's the largest island of the British Isles and houses 3 countries (bit of debate as to whether Wales has full 'country' status). The UK is also not a country, but a union of 4 nations.

I have no issue with being British, it's not possible for me to be anything else as I was born and have always lived on Great Britain. It's got nothing to do with pride.

Own your nationality and if you're ashamed of it then surely it's time to change your representative. 50% of English people voted for this tory government. They're the people who should be ashamed.

Emigrate OP. Simple

I'd rather be in Sweden. But obviously not if I am old and expendible.

Their stats are similar to full lockdown countries. But I realise it is not all that simple, and community/civilian attitudes are a bit different. But still...

And Czech Republic and Greece are doing so well too. I am sure there are many other countries the same. I wouldn't rate US for any reason at all, they are being led by an Orange moron. God Bless America, they will need it.

Meanwhile it is just lockdown after lockdown and irregular testing and so on here. Anyway, just having a rant.

Oh my, we are not that great really. But we are told we are.

I havent read the full thread. But i had been ashamed to be British for quite a few years prior to this. So many issues. But funnily enough lockdown and COVID life seems to have brought back a strong good community spirit. People working together to support those who need help. People trying to support their local communities. I hope we dont lose that too quickly afterwards.

They are not saying those on the panel have no value but there are big expertise gaps. They have pointed out as just one example it is astonishing that there are no public health experts on the SAGE group.

So an op-ed piece should be used as some kind of validation when you yourself have taken your slant from twitter and admittedly know nothing about it, nor actually live in the UK?

You trying an appeal to authority using former heads is exactly the same types of arguments brexiteers made.

If i sound smug, maybe don't try an appeal to authority fallacy and link an opinion piece and admit you get your knowledge from twitter...

One of the things I am proud of about being British is our worldwide leadership in Science.

So why did the government decide to handpick the SAGE membership excluding some very important fields and keep it secret so it did not get exposed to the usual process of peer review and consensus through debate of all the evidence.

No shortage of eminent scientists with relevant knowledge and experience who are appalled that the government ignored all the lessons learned elsewhere in the world and abandoned the gold standard of testing contact tracing and quarantine that has and is saving lives worldwide. World renowned scientists like Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse etc etc

Why did the government ignore our existing world leading research capabilities for testing, instead opting to requisition their most advanced machinery and try to establish from scratch super testing centres with commercial partners who had no expertise. Those individual research centres have been able to establish local initiatives with local hospitals (Crick /UCLH/ Royal Marsden - Cambridge /Adenbrookes) that have managed more tests per day for some time now, in spite of government.

You might be proud of British Science but this government have done everything they can to undermine it unless it is Cummings beloved Maths geeks and techies, first Brexit, now with Covid.

They say they have followed the science but as Prof Sir Brian Cox has highlighted Science is all about collaboration between differing points of view, not just the ones you want to hear, there is no certainty to be followed.

This is not party specific, it is being led and advised by the same medical advisors who would have been advising regardless of who was in power.

It has been pointed out that is highly unusual to have two on the scientific advisory group who are not scientists, Cummings and can’t remember the name of the other man but someone working for Cummings, and it is feared what influence they would have had on what the scientific advisors said to the politicians.

Sir David King, a former chief scientific adviser, said he would not have allowed political advisers to attend his advisory meetings.

There are a lot of voices in the field who claim that the govt made poor decisions between January and March. It can’t be forgotten the UK had the advantage of being 2 weeks behind Italy, Spain and France, yet it clearly has made now difference. Is it because the govt did not use this advantage? Seems v possible.

I will say it seems the govt are starting to get more on track with setting up testing and tracing. One public health expert has pointed out their new slogan test, track and trace makes no mention of isolating which they say is vital too. Hopefully govt just using one of their slogans they so like and this will not be another failure to come.

Devi Sridhar - Professor of Public Health

Hindsight is a wonderful thing - from an article 29th Jan -

"To put the cases and deaths so far into perspective, remember that seasonal flu kills between 250,000 and 650,000 people each year." “Right now, you’re probably more likely to be catching flu than you are to be getting coronavirus,” said Devi Sridhar, chair in global public health at the University of Edinburgh.

www.vox.com/2020/1/21/21075017/coronavirus-sars-wuhan-china-pneumonia

@yesterdayschild
I don’t think what you’re feeling is unreasonable.
I understand very much that low feeling. It’s utter crap. Despairing.
Can’t say I’m too proud to be British either, although as another poster pointed out, stupidity isn’t just a British trait, but we do cultivate a good bit of it. Hindsight is a wonderful thing though. We do have a shite government and quite a few dense people who think the rules and lockdown don’t apply to them.
Another country? Yup, New Zealand would be nice right now. But we’re here. It is going to be bloody hard to get through. And it won’t be a fairy story on the other side of this either.
I understand your upset and anxiety though.

I’m not ashamed to be British. I would be ashamed to be American right now though with a moronic leader advising people to rebel against social distancing and inject themselves with clorox. A third of all worldwide cases are in the USA, A THIRD.

I think our lockdown measures should have been stronger personally but equally having read the thread on here a couple of days ago filled with people saying they would actively rebel against further lockdown, maybe we deserve all we get.

I think at the end of all of this (if there is an end) the UK will have done the same, or better than other countries.

Most people will get it most will be fine without intervention, some will die with or without intervention. The ones in the middle who could survive but need a (eg) ventilator are the ones we need to 'worry' about.

Hence the 'flattening of the curve to ensure NHS has capacity to help this group.

Countries that have locked down really quickly and harshly will be hit harder by the next 'wave'

That's my thoughts on it anyway!

If you look at the death rates per million population of each country it reads slightly different. When I last looked Belgium had the highest death rate per million population. It is obvious that countries with 8 million people are not comparable to countries with 66 million people. Also taking into account the type of person, i.e. the Japanese and South Korean people will do exactly as they are requested by their government, whilst some of our population do not! The press criticised the government for being slow to initiate the lockdown and have been asking when they are lifting it ever since.

Dr Bharat Pankhania - senior clinical lecturer has widespread experience of advising on national communicable disease control action plans at national and international level.

24th Feb -

“We now consider this to be a pandemic in all but name, and it’s only a matter of time before the World Health Organization starts to use the term in its communications,” said Dr Bharat Pankhania, from the University of Exeter Medical School."

“This gives us focus and tells us that the virus is now appearing in other countries and transmitting far afield from China. However, it doesn’t change our approach in monitoring the outbreak. In the UK, there’s no need to move towards mitigation strategies, as so far, our containment policies are working. We only have 13 cases, and they are contained and controlled. I expect we will continue with this containment strategy while it’s successful.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/24/coronavirus-outbreak-a-pandemic-in-all-but-name-says-expert

"I’d rather be British than American right now"

^ that's not a hugely comforting thought.

US, then UK, then everyone else in the world for deaths per percentage of the population right now. That's very damning, even if figures adjust slightly in months to come.

Unfortunately we have made a complete dogs bollocks of this from start to now.

If you don't want be here leave, no-one stopping you and I'm sure there are lots of people who would happily swap with you and live here.
nightswimmers glad you're having such wonderful time in Switzerland, having lived there and many countries in Europe it is the most intolerant and racist place I have lived so I know where I would rather be.

@Justanotherlurker, ha ha, now pepper some stock phrases used in debate discourse such as appeal to authority to sound educated and informed. Doesn’t wash with me. Devi Sridhar and Allison Pollock both still actively working in the field. Those who were on government boards can now speak freely and their experience means they are worth listening to.

I have already explained to you I am not referring to tweets from joe blogs down the street but experts in their field. There are a lot of voices out there saying the SAGE group is poorly balanced not just Professor Costello who wrote the Guardian page.

And ending to me with the comment, ‘just admit you get your knowledge from twitter’ is no killer line when I said I have no expertise in pandemic management, nor do you I imagine. However, hearing what those who do from their twitter feeds, articles and pod casts give some surface level insight.

I am also wondering where you with your supposedly excellent critical thinking have deducted I don’t live in the UK and am not British. There is nowhere I have said that. I am British and live in the UK.

@OliviaPopeRules so sorry you have had that experience, very far removed from mine.
Glad you are happy where you are now though.

Fortunately, in Scotland, we have a First Minister who attends all the important meetings, shows up to work every single day and tells her people the truth about what is going on. She's rising to the challenge - I'm proud to be Scottish.

Yet she happily accepts the highest rate of DRDs in the whole of Europe even when the death rate continues to increase at an alarming rate annually.

@clavinova, thanks for that. That’s very disappointing to see him make such a bad call.

@Clavinova, however, thinking about it I think me saying he made a bad call there may well be incorrect. The UK were doing track and tracing initially, the mistake say some was that on 11 March we stopped whilst experts say even if the UK moved to mitigation tracking and tracing should not have stopped. And the govt should have been using the time to build up testing and tracing capacity.

Well, if you lived in the US you would be embarrassed by the Human Cheeto that we have as a President.

You had me at ‘Human Cheeto...’

God I miss them.