To be very concerned that Boris Johnson said this

[Worriedmum54321]

From the Guardian:
Responding to the argument that a more stringent lockdown should have been imposed sooner, he said: “Don’t forget, it’s a very very demanding thing to ask a population to do – very tough – and so I think it was completely right to make our period of lockdown coincide as far as possible with the peak of the epidemic.”

Sadly it should have coincided with the three weeks before that period

And watched other countries shut down harder and faster

Not sure if you are joking tomorrow but the peak was always going to be 3 weeks after the start of lockdown..
I agree it would have been better to impose it earlier though

I meant he should have imposed it possibly two or three weeks before

Does he find things in the last place he looks, too...

Completely agree with you there

Alot of what's being said is worrying me atm. We are living under a soft fascist government and no one seems too bothered. In fact many are encouraging it

Hmmm. I guess lack of sleep/recuperation is hitting. I hope someone is looking over his shoulder and advising.

I am relieved they didn't lockdown sooner.
The lockdown causes huge harms, too.
I can't agree with anyone who thinks this situation meant simple decisions.

I expect he meant it in a different context to how you are reading it.

Absolutely no idea as to why anyone would be 'concerned'

I was even more concerned when he said we were over the peak,which seems to contradict what was being said just a day ago when we were told we were going through the peak and would be for some time.

In fact, every fucking thing he says concerns, repulses or enrages me. Awful man and atrocious PM.

I agree with him. If they’d closed down earlier there would still have been a peak.Like there was in Italy, in Spain, and people would have been refusing to stick to the rules right about when the virus peaked rather than waiting until we’d come over the peak.

Germany went into lockdown,came out and are now talking about going back into lockdown because cases have spiked just days after.

Singapore has a second wave now,

Italy and Spain are only just starting to relax measures,we’re three weeks behind them and already people in the UK are saying that we need to come out of lockdown now.

you only have to look at these boards to see that he’s absolutely right in that putting restrictions on people was never going to be an easy thing to do.

And they were by no means as strict as they could have been. They could have banned all exercise,banned children from going outside, required proof to go to the shops/the doctors.

Spain did those things and their death rate to date has been higher than ours.

It is bizarre, isn't it? The very act of locking down causes the peak. So if he had left it 3 weeks later we would also have locked down for the peak - but it would have been higher. Just as locking down earlier would have caused a lower peak.

I mean, I don't know all the rights and wrongs etc, but I do understand how the basic getting infected/stopping infections thing works. Maybe he doesn't?

Because the timing of the peak is directly related to when lockdown was imposed. The peak would always occur 2-3 weeks after lockdown started. If lockdown had been imposed 3 weeks earlier, the peak would have occurred 3 weeks earlier, but been much lower, hence we could have avoided nearly all the deaths!

I find it concerning that the man who is in charge of our country doesn't seem to realise this!

Of course I know that the lock down is very detrimental but that is completely unrelated to my point

I agree with him too. I think if they had tried to lock down earlier, people would have either not taken it seriously, or would have indignantly refused to co-operate.
They were taking the psyche of the general British public into account when they decided on the timing.

He is fairly obviously trying to justify what they did in the light of what has happened.

You do realise that he also stated that we went into lockdown earlier in the cycle than most other European countries? Forgot to mention that one OP? I don't mind debate, but selection of the facts with a pre-baked agenda helps no-one.

Tbh we already risk another peak in a few weeks anyhow as more and more ppl are out and about now

How do you know that the deaths would have been less. Italy locked down three weeks before us and their death rate currently is higher than ours.

In fact three weeks before we locked down our death rate was negligible, in fact we’d had just a couple of hundred deaths. Do you really think the country would have tolerated obliterating the economy on that basis?

And he’s right when he says that we can’t possibly know who will have the highest death rates until we’re through all this. Because we don’t yet know which countries will open up too soon and have second waves for instance vs those which don’t, etc.

Exactly, @Oakmaiden .
He seems to be taking credit for somehow getting the timing right! Kind of similar to how he was trying to pretend herd immunity was a great strategy a few weeks ago.
@AlternativePerspective we aren't better off than Germany in that sense though, a second peak is equally likely here unless we either get vaccinated or implement better testing and quarantining. More people dying in the first peak means slightly fewer left to die later I guess, but that can't be seen as a good thing

@Leafyhouse

Eh? That's not even remotely true.

Tbh if we’d have locked down earlier they would have been less spread due to asymptomatic cases.

I wonder what they were thinking when they didn't prevent Cheltenham taking place.

Will Johnson get asked this question?

I think it might be a coded way of saying “be grateful I didn’t do this earlier”.

There was also marathons just before lockdown with potential of huge spread