This government is deadly

[Haplap]

I mean very literally here given the 60 000 excess deaths. Not to mention the recent events with Dominic Cummings' version of reasonable and truthful and the Prime Minister's inability to sack him. I'm scared for what this means for the second wave.

I'm shielding and have two young children. I'm 37 and otherwise and fit and well. I'd rather not just pop off in to the statistics with 'underlining health conditions'.

My worry is, incredibly, people voted in this government for four years.

Are there any options available to replace them? Even just the terrible cabinet?

Highest excess death rate per capita in the world. Incompetent, shambles of a government. Completely agree OP. We all want and need this government to succeed, but all they do is spin and lie. It is utterly heartbreaking at best and criminally negligent at worst.

And why are you shielding if you're fit and well?

Not everyone on the shielding list are severally ill - it's just some could become seriously ill if they caught CV19.

Even less who are clinically vulnerable (but not shielded) would class themselves as ill- most would consider themselves as generally fir and well, despite having underlying health condition.

If we'd locked down quicker we wouldn't have had to lockdown longer because we'd have got a hold on it quicker.

We were lucky that it hadn't cut us unawares like Italy and then Spain via Madrid. British exceptionalism mindset thought oh we'll be fine. We're recording way high numbers of infections than Italy and Spain now still.

The decision not to lockdown (While all of Europe looked on wondering what we were thinking) was deadly to the tune of 10s of thousands. There was always going to be some deaths but if not for ludicruously poor decisions (and reality of austerity and cuts) then we'd be about where Germany are.

This sums it up

Saw this article recently from the times. Made for scary reading.

" The last nine days while Johnson wrestled over the decision on when and how to go for lockdown were particularly brutal. By the time the lockdown was announced on Monday, March 23, such large numbers were doubling over such a short period that infections are estimated to have soared to 1.5 million.

According to the data, no other large European country allowed infections to sky-rocket to such a high level before finally deciding to go into lockdown. Those 20 days of government delay are the single most important reason why the UK has the second highest number of deaths from the coronavirus in the world."

Later lockdown led to excess deaths. Evidence was requested.

You can do a rough and ready calculation using the public data

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

This is using just the hospital figures , excludes the care homes , total currently under 38,000

The peak occurred around 8th arpil at which point we had 8,500 deaths in total with 1043 deaths that day

If we had locked down a week earlier, then the peak would have been a week earlier 1 April, at that point we had 3095 deaths total and 670 on that day

So at peak we would have half the deaths that we actually had on peak, so that's 4000 excess deaths

Then you need to look at how those numbers go down..again as a rough calculation

By the time we were back to 670 deaths per day , so around 6th May , we were on 30,000 deaths. If our peak had been at 670 deaths we would not have had those additional 20,200 deaths either

That's a lot of excess deaths that could have been avoided , about half

( Double checked with a quick google and you get to a quarter of the deaths if you locked down 2 weeks earlier, I think I originally said 1/4 for 1 week delay )

If they'd have locked down one week earlier you'd be on here slagging the government off for that. What would Labour have done differently out of interest? I'm guessing everything perfectly. Sigh.

Hindsight and second guessing is wonderful.

Well I was locked down early and sent DH to work with an ultimatum of him working from home or resigning, so he was also working from home more than a week ahead of official lockdown

so no I don't think I would have complained about early lockdown

www.ft.com/content/6b4c784e-c259-4ca4-9a82-648ffde71bf0

UK suffers highest death rate from coronavirus | Free to read

FT analysis of data from 19 countries finds Britain hit hardest, ahead of US, Italy, Spain and Belgium

Lockdown doesn't simply cut off the flow of new infections, though, not least because the people working with the most vulnerable are still at work. And people had already drastically changed their behaviour in the week before lockdown - footfall and public transport usage were both sharply down. It's a lot more complicated than just assuming that new infections stop the day lockdown starts and that things would have happened the exact same way, but just a week earlier.

Decisions are based on who is able to make money from any crisis not on the good of the country. As long as they, their cronies or their donors can make money they will go for it

People have short memories.
Look at all the headlines about heavy handed police - that lasted best part of a week with lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth, criticism of policing. Now everyone's complaining that we didn't lock down enough.
Sweden hasn't locked down and has much higher numbers of deaths than other similar countries but their experts state that in the end numbers will be similar. The Swedes seem to accept that.
People are too quick to whinge and complain in the UK.
Anyway - - The problem is the economy. That is going to take MUCH longer to fix. That WILL cause bleating and wailing. People need to start thinking about that, especially our government - however they aren't getting much chance to at present.

I'm a government supporter, however I've jumped to the bottom of the thread to say that I agree with OP facts.

1. Excess deaths is the best official measure of how many deaths should be directly or indirectly attributed to COVID. It is how many more people than normal have died in a time-period, and it was about 60,000 when I last looked.
2. There would have been massively fewer deaths if we had locked down only a little sooner. (I calculated the other day that there would have been virtually none if we'd locked down three or four weeks earlier.) This calculation is very easy to do, just look at the rolling average in a deaths graph, find the peak, subtract the number of days/weeks you have in mind, go back to that point in the graph, and imagine that was the peak.
3. I'll even pile on and say the UK has the worst death-rate in the world, in terms of deaths per million. Though the USA looks like it would quite like to take that record from us.

Having said that, I don't blame the government. They made a mistake, but I don't believe they were negligent or stupid. They were just following the wrong plan, an existing plan for a flue pandemic, until they realised COVID was so different the plan wasn't going to work.

Of course most people don't think the same way as I do, and won't agree with me. They believe in judging by desirability of results rather than justifiability of actions. I'm a fan of Nicholas Taleb, the author of "Fooled by Randomness", who preached that you should never judge decision-making under uncertainty by the outcome. You should judge by the actions taken based on the information available at the time. (Of course the government could be proved lacking on that measure too, but we'll have to wait for a full enquiry to judge that. Or rather, I will.)

It's a lot more complicated than just assuming that new infections stop the day lockdown starts and that things would have happened the exact same way, but just a week earlier.

I disagree. The time between infection and death is about the same as the time between lockdown and the peak in deaths. You really can just subtract a given number of days/weeks from the peak of deaths and say that would have been the peak if we'd locked down that much earlier.

The lockdown caused the peak in deaths. (Without it the peak would have been much later and higher.) Earlier lockdown means earlier and much lower peak.

Allowing Cheltenham etc to go ahead wasn't a decision, it was sticking to a pandemic plan made in 2011. The purpose of plans is to get better decisions than seat-of-the-pants ones you might otherwise have to make in an emergency. Unfortunately, a bad plan is worse than no plan, and that's what went wrong.

By the time anyone thought UK airports should be closed, it was too late for it to make any difference. Even now, it makes no difference. It's only when the very very few people are infected that it makes a difference.

Are you comparing predicted deaths from covid with actual deaths? You know that Neil Ferguson's modelling predicted 100,000 deaths? Comparing actual deaths with that model, there have actually been 60,000 FEWER deaths. (Every death is a tragedy, they aren't just statistics).

Sorry not read through thread. SuckingDieselFella, this is incorrect. I read Ferguson’s report, he predicted 20,000 deaths with lockdown, and by the end of 2 years if no vaccine or therapeutics developed 250,000 deaths with partial lockdown measures (just people over 70 in lockdown etc) and 500,000 deaths with zero measures.

All governments are deadly.

Sweden hasn't locked down and has much higher numbers of deaths than other similar countries but their experts state that in the end numbers will be similar. The Swedes seem to accept that.

Similar to countries like ours, yes, not to neighbouring countries whose deaths are low after locking down when death rates were still v low.

I get it OP. You hate Tories. You hate Boris. You hate the government. You hate Brexit. You hate Cummings. You think that anyone who disagrees with you is either thick or doesn't understand. Truly I do get it.

You actually believe this virus is the fault of the Conservative Party? How uneducated you are.

I’m more concerned with the prime ministers inability to string together one coherent sentence.

For me personally, I judge what’s in front of me.
I’m not into party politics and believe all people,should be represented.
I’m not left or right, remain or leave.

If I have an opinion of current government, what would that make me?

If he could just speak properly and relate to the average persons concerns he’d be much More popular.
I’m not a fan of Boris or recent Tory behaviour, but I didn’t think he was doing too bad a job until this.

If I’m not following a political,party, does that mean I can’t have an opinion on Dominic c?

Am I an alien with 4 heads? I am maybe zaphod beeblebrox ......

I’m not a Tory or a labour or a remainer or a leaver.
BUT
I do wonder why the entire press turned on him so suddenly after a lot of support for boris since December.
I wonder why the media chose this time to exacerbate such an issue when the country was already upset, scared and possibly angry.
It has added fuel to a fire, and I doubt it was accidental.

What does this mean?
I have no idea, no horse in this race, but I do care about the people.
It such a pity party politics ruins discussion And trust. Always.

You actually believe this virus is the fault of the Conservative Party? How uneducated you are.

And anyone with any analytical sense would realise that this is not about the virus in isolation, it's about how it's handled in specific contexts, and that involves specific political decisions by specific political parties. The decisions that the Conservative Party leadership has made and will go on to make will impact on overall death rates and on future survival rates. How can anyone not be concerned when doctors are holding vigils outside Downing Street because they still don't have sufficient resources? When Sir Patrick Vallance suggested today that only 6.78% of people have been infected, and yet out of that small percentage thousands have died. How can anyone even those with shaky maths not be concerned about what that death rate will rise to when 20% have been infected, 40%, 80% and so on...How can anyone fully trust in a government whose PM put his own personal, political affiliations before shoring up and reinforcing crucial public health advice and by extension the wellbeing of the nation he purports to lead?