To wonder why people aren’t more angry?

[Rainbowb]

Throughout this whole crisis I have really been surprised by the level of acceptance from everyone in this country of the whole situation. I know we haven’t had much choice in the decisions made and we’re probably a very polite nation as a whole but we have been so quick to accept the arrival of a deadly virus and drastic changes to our lives, seemingly without complaint. Is no-one out there demanding to know how on earth this was all able to happen? We’ve faced the huge loss of human life worldwide and it is continuing, surely we are all entitled to get angry and demand answers? I see grieving families, children missing out on being with other children and not having an education, families being separated indefinitely, people’s mental health suffering and vulnerable people potentially at risk and I feel so frustrated and angry. If we got fired up about climate change, why not this??

China as a country needs to be held to account, and if they had any decency they would pay compensation to all those affected

See I don’t think that at all, completely the opposite in fact. I think the UN, world bank or the WHO should manage a quarantine fund for countries who find themselves identifying outbreaks. Let’s face it, the spread of covid was possible because of the sacred economy, if we could globally, collectively compensate a country to contain an infection scenarios like the one we find ourselves in could be avoided to a point.

Politics is a lot of bravado and propaganda but money talks.

re: the OP though, Ultimately though we will experience plagues/outbreaks because we exist. We have millennia of evidence of this and once it’s out there what on earth is protesting going to do? The real fight here is going on in laboratories we can squabble over the economy and the indulgences it facilitates at a later point.

This reminds me of when flight MH70 went missing, some people just couldn’t get their heads around why no one could find it and no matter how much it was explained they couldn’t comprehend how big the world actually is.

We’ve a skewed perspective on life these days. Science and engineering are amazing and we live in an amazing time with so many possibilities that weren’t even dreamed of 200 years ago but we can’t solve everything. When something like this happens it’s a sharp reminder how fragile our existence actually is.

Wet markets in China has been mentioned. They don’t have the same view on animals or people as we do. They don’t have animal welfare laws or human rights laws.

Who do we complain to, Mother Nature 🤷‍♀️

How was this “all able” to happen? We’re an animal species, sometimes whole species get sick.

Anger isn't always a futile emotion. If coupled with common sense and strategy it motivates us to change things. In this context though there are things that it is futile to be angry about. Raging against something that you can't change only causes stress. It isn't passive or sheepy sheepy to try to channel your energy into making the best of things. If people here were protesting about their loss of freedom in the streets as in America I would feel angry at them. There is nothing more annoying than someone who has a tantrum about their personal difficulties when other people are having a worse time. We can feel proud of the brave people working on the front line, sad for the people suffering illness and loss. We can question things but trying to fix the blame rather than improve things gets us nowhere. I am reminded of "Serenity to accept the things we can't change, Courage to change the things we can, Wisdom to discern the difference"

OP says "answers" but never states exactly what the questions are. Later they say "negligence" and "cover-ups": those statements mean OP is not open-minded, OP already decided what happened, now just want to find scapegoats.

"I must punish and blame someone!" is an attitude I find unproductive and tedious at best of times.

Cottonanimals - indeed. However, there is less taste for exotic, illegally imported, wild animals in Europe. Mixing wild animals from every continent on earth together in stressful, cramped, unsanitary conditions, and mixing living and dead animals, slaughtering living animals close to fresh meat - that’s just asking for viruses to jump between species.

Being angry is pointless, it doesn't help the situation and just makes you feel worse.
I think most people are just focusing on doing what they can to get through this.

This is an unprecedented situation and hindsight is 20/20

No its not, Pandemics have occurred many times before, even in many of our life times.
It has been presented to govts of all colours as the most likely risk to the country.

Yet Govt treated CV-19 with disdain and didn't take it seriously, despite seeing what happened in Italy.

I don't want hindsight either, i want foresight and planning.

@loobyloo1234
Yes that may be the description you get from wikipedia if you Google it but then click on images or videos and you will see the darker side of it all.
Animals killed in torturous ways while the rest watch trapped in cages some half starved, that's just the nicer version of what's going on i wouldn't want to go into detail on here as its sickening and very upsetting for anyone that cares for animals.
I'm not trying to make this all about that as theres many innocent people lost their lives and lots of families hurting I'm just saying this is where its started and the leaders of the world need to come together to prevent this happening again.

This thread is utterly depressing. I'm not angry with the virus or with the lockdown but I can't understand why people aren't angry with the lack of PPE and our atrocious death rate compared to other countries. I'm sick of this government's excuses whilst johnson talks about our successes. I'm also angry at the greed of people like Richard Branson. A lot of people should have a lot to answer when this all settles down.

There is always a time and a place for questions and answers
It’s easy to sit in judgement in an armchair.

Yes indeed, it seems that people want someone to blame. If they can find one person to direct their anger at, even better.

Sparkles I have been to China many times. They will not ban what you think are ‘wet markets’ - they sell fresh food other than live animals

They need improved food hygiene laws, and if they sell fresh meat it should be certified. That is what China should be pushed on. Not banning wet markets. That’s like saying ban Tesco in the UK

The problem with anger is it almost always over-simplifies complex situations in order to fuel itself. I am a bit fed up with angry, knee jerk reactions.

YANBU

I've lived in a number of places with wet markets and I never went into them for a reason. They are repulsive. This is also my 2nd lockdown with a respiratory disease caused by animal viruses jumping to humans as a result of poor hygiene and dodgy market practises as I was in the middle of SARs in HK in 2003.

This isn't the only thing going on. If you watch the Aussie news you will see that the Chinese government is trying to hoover up struggling companies brought to their knees by this. The are trying to buy Virgin in Australia, their 2nd largest carrier. So, unleash a virus on us, then try and buy off all our silverware on the cheap. Nice!

Our governments will do nothing about this as there is too much money at stake from the Chinese government and they have their fingers in too many of our pies already. Ian Duncan Smith is all over the news internationally slating them, but no one here is.

If it is the case that this has been caused by a wet market in China, a leak from a lab and covered up by them, then the only people that can do something about it is us. Our governments won't so it is up to us to stop them by not buying anything made in or from China. They are trying to buy up failing companies and will continue to do so with hey, guess what? The money we have spent on stuff, that is made in, or has parts made in China.

What's the point at the moment? People are trying to survive right now, I am sure there will be enquiries. It reminds us that we are human, no matter how much money we have, how artificial we make our towns and cities, we are still suseptible to things out of our control, that is biology.

Anger is pointless.

We live in a democracy. Like it or not the 'government' are there because they have been voted in. People need to be less passive and need to get involved in politics if they don't like what's going on.

Sitting back and moaning and getting angry is pointless.
Look at how many people can't even be bothered to vote.

I don't know what I think about how they have dealt with it. It certainly seems like they ignored the care home situation for way to long. I also think the government are coming across as very fake. It's like a big party political advert at times. Lots of self congratulation - Rishi Sunak is really bad for that. Lots of sweeping statements about how well he has done while making false promises. 🤮🤮

Hmm, maybe I am a bit angry after all 😂

@frangipani

You are absolutely right.

@JediJim
Wet markets in China has been mentioned. They don’t have the same view on animals or people as we do. They don’t have animal welfare laws or human rights laws.
Indeed not....many years ago , 2000? there was a programme about baby girls being left to die, as they weren't considered valuable, like a son. ''The dying rooms''....It was horrific.
Hopefully girls are now just as valued as boys.

• 06Theflushedzebra

It's a pandemic - "they" have known this has been coming for ages. We've had plans. We've had emergency training exercises that have not turned out well. We had a few false alarms - swine flu 2009 for example.

But the govt have always known that the biggest risk to the UK - the all time number one risk - was a pandemic. They thought it would be flu, but it's not, it's a SARS coronavirus. Which is even worse, because SARS is not flu. But I guess every govt never thought it would happen on their watch.

The fact that our govt pissed around celebrating brexit and then catching the virus themselves - rather than taking lessons from countries like Singapore and S Korea (who have experience of SARS) is something to be angry about. But I'm not sure how useful that anger is to anyone now.

I hope it all comes out in an Inquiry one day - how they watched the situation in Italy and Spain get worse and worse, but didn't act. Their horrific "herd immunity" plan. Allowing countless mass gatherings to happen, like the races, the football matches. The scandalous situation in care homes. So many scandals.

I'd like to be a New Zealander right now.*

This is how I feel too.

It was always going to happen at some point. The world is massively and dangerously overpopulated with humans who travel across it. Viruses can and will sweep though on a global scale.

Yet Govt treated CV-19 with disdain and didn't take it seriously, despite seeing what happened in Italy

This is an example of a point I won’t let get when things calm down.

We had the advantage of being behind Italy and could clearly see what was heading our way without action (along with South Korea, Singapore etc. although I think they may have given a false sense of security since no one was paying attention to the measures they took it seems). China was/is never a 100% reliable source but we could clearly see what was happening in Italy.

I will point out that it wasn’t just the government at that point, wider society was still dismissive of the possibility of it happening here and there was zero appetite to take measures then. I work in the NHS and asked my manager how I would be contacted (I wanted to make sure my details were up to date) if something developed on my non-working days that I needed to know about. She asked if I thought what was happening in Italy would happen here and laughed when I said yes. So no one was preparing even informally whilst very clear reports of the virus and it’s impact were coming out Italy at an alarming rate. This was the first week of March.

But the govt have always known that the biggest risk to the UK - the all time number one risk - was a pandemic. They thought it would be flu, but it's not, it's a SARS coronavirus. Which is even worse, because SARS is not flu. But I guess every govt never thought it would happen on their watch.
*
We have been 'due' a pandemic.... it seems they sweep the world every few decades, and always will...

I had faith that a really serious outbreak of any 'new' disease would be treated and contained in whatever Country it occurred in...

Very Naive.

Getting angry changes nothing. What are we supposed to do, go out into the streets and wave our fists

The correct answer is to solve the issue then prevent it occurring again, as far as possible

Ok so what are you doing to solve the problem? We all have to wait (passively) to be told what the solution is and to believe the narrative we are given.

The fist waving is exactly my point about the sneering attitude on here if you don’t like or agree about following the ‘heads down and don’t ask questions’ narrative.

There are so many questions to be answered but instead of people getting answers for these people are just encouraging other people to shut up and stay in.

Why wasn’t this taken seriously enough?
Why are people still coming in to the country with out having to be quarantined?
Why were thousands of holiday makers from Italy where it was developing allowed to come back and go straight in to schools?

Where’s the PPE?
Why don’t the know exactly where this came from?
Who are the people on the board that are over seeing the vaccine?
Who are the investors in to the trials of the vaccine
How did a vaccine miraculously appear when two days before Micheal Gove said on tv there might not ever be one?

Who is going to make a shit load of money of the back of this vaccine?
Will will be allowed to travel if we don’t have the vaccine?

These are just off the top of my head. But yet if we keep quiet - hopefully we will be told what to do

I suspect the Chinese might want compensation for the Opium Wars before paying anything out.

Not anger but a lot of frustration with the "Good Old Boris" crowd.

I agree with the op and anger. I’m not convinced it should be directed at China though. Mine is definitely directed at the uk, our numbers dead are appalling, the virus was coming but we did nothing. We have one of the highest death per million figures in the world.
The lack of ppe probably stemmed from planning for MERS, SARS, Ebola and swine flu all of which never impacted in a way they feared. The uk arrogantly assumed it would be the same with COVID resulting in an initial tardy response.
I’m angry that I know so many families who had symptoms of something in the middle of March, early April but we never got organised enough with testing so we’ll never know. We therefore have little idea of numbers infected, and therefore no idea of the severity of the disease. So we can not be guided by the science, because we don’t even have a clue what percentage of our population has/ has had it.
I can’t help feeling anger is only directed at China because they identified this new disease, successfully isolated and contained it. Something that lots of other countries have not managed to do, despite having been given a massive head start in this struggle by China.