To think the U.K. should have just shut the boarders in March

[Lardlizard]

Surely that would have saved the country millions

Yes. Looking at how Australia and NZ are right now, absolutely yes.

I agree

Yes. I had assumed borders were closed as we were staying very local. I never imagined people would allowed into the country from abroad.

Yes, ...l said this to friends in Feb looking at news on Italy and everyone scoffed at me...

Yes, absolutely shocking they did not do this.

I said at the time the borders should be closed but as usual the UK government did fuck all.

Yes it was an obvious mistake not to enact some sort of border control.

Yes.

Not much we can do about it now though.

How does this help you now? I’d be using my energy worrying about the things I do have control over. No point vexing about things that can’t be changed

And yet they are still open..my husbands mental relatives coming home from US and Eastern Europe..why why why. They will end up quarantining by nature of their visit but no one is really going to check in on them are they?? It just seems so demoralising when people are making such sacrifices and yet the airports are wide open and this ridiculous government just ignore the risk.

Absolutely

There have never been effective border controls since the start of the pandemic. We’ve had to listen to people bang on about the borders for four and a half bloody years and we chose to leave them wide open and welcome the virus in with no effective track - and- trace.

My dad travelled back to the U.K. from the Philippines via a two week stay in a Hong Kong hospital and got back to Manchester airport in mid April and we were so pleased that he was finally coming home where he’d be safer from catching it. Mum went to pick him up fully masked up expecting all sorts of restrictions but there was nothing at all, not a test, temperature check, no isolating measure. Nothing. He stepped off the plane and was completely free to go about his business. He’d been pretty unwell since he got home with a bowel problem so was in and out of hospital most of this summer and actually ended up catching covid in hospital because the nurse used the same oxygen reader thing on all the patients being admitted without cleaning it in between. The incompetence of our governments handling of this pandemic is mind blowing.

I don't disagree - Ireland certainly should have done that - but can't see how either of our countries can decide to unilaterally shut the border tbh. Joint decision to close would have been best.

Didn't the goverenmemt try and then the airline industry complained and people 'needed' to go on holiday and the goverent capitulated.

A bit like the xmas fiasco

Yup, I and all my colleagues (epidemiologists) were saying this from February when it became clear what was happening in Italy :/

Economists and scientists have been saying from the very beginning it isn't a trade off between the economy and saving lives.. You get the virus under control, you protect both.

Absolute shambles!

For sure. It's not like they didn't have any warning, what with it unfolding in Asia and then other parts of Europe in the months preceding its arrival in the UK. They had a lot of opportunity to do an awful lot better, and now it's a gigantic mess with a long way to go.

I live in Asia and hordes of people with UK or EU passports escaped back to the UK in February and March, faced no barriers to walk straight in and I’m sure many of them were carrying Covid with them.

I think the MSM particularly left wing media have judged and called this really really badly. Guilt tripping and emotionally blackmailing ppl over Christmas while the super rich get to go off to Dubai , certain people dont have to quarantine,(Grant Shapps and his high value individuals) Im having a small Christmas with close family members from 2/3 households in a household in walking distance and media and Gov and Whitty moaning and saying" just because you can doesnt mean you should" while ppl can go sit on a plane with 200 others and not quarantine if they are high ranking businessmen or go to a Christmas party with 27 people. Start a thread about it though and it struggles to get to two pages, unlike threads about families wanting to see each other. I had Channel 4 news on and have yet to hear a mention of Tobias Ellwood. There seems to be an expectation that protecting the NHS is a job for the working classes. i havent had a holiday abroad since 1986. So our small family Christmases of six people max are what we have been looking forward to. There is a lot of anger growing because it is people lower down the scale being expected to make all the sacrifices.

I am in West Australia. The strict borders are shit in that I can't see my family on the other side of the world but for the most part we have a very normal day to day life. We can mix, the economy is booming etc We have watched with horror as our family follow all the guidelines and couldn't meet up with each other yet someone could stroll off a flight and go anywhere in the country.

We have watched with horror as our family follow all the guidelines and couldn't meet up with each other yet someone could stroll off a flight and go anywhere in the country

Yes and no...I’d have said compulsory quarantine for anyone returning and no inbound visitors in March.

But Donald Trump was criticised for trying to close borders, which I never understood.

Didn't the goverenmemt try and then the airline industry complained

No, it wasn't the airlines, the government had it's head up it's backside.

I know hindsight is 20/20 and many think it was obvious what was happening but it wasn't ..I was flying around as part of my job when this kicked off and even the likes of Singapore who are well clued up on this as a result of SAs, MERs took 6 - 8 weeks'ish to shift from simply running temperature checks on international arrivals (in early Feb) to locking down and not allowing non-nationals in (late March)....

However the penny should have really dropped with HMG once cases rose in Italy, they should have locked down as a result of that..and yes, turnitonagain is absolutely right that even in late March there were zero arrival checks on people arriving in the UK from Asia..but that was an HMG decision, not down to the airlines.

Yes. It should have been the first action the government took. We are an island but they have never made use of that advantage. Too keen on protecting the polluting aircraft industry.

This ‘argument’ is ridiculous. Australia is several times the size of Britain with barely a third of the population, and New Zealand, as its nearest major neighbour, is still a significant distance away. By contrast, the UK is small and densely populated, and part of a relatively small and very densely populated continent. London is within a two-hour flight of a dozen or more major European cities. Do you really think ‘If Australia can do it, why can’t Britain?’ is a sensible comparison?