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

[Lardlizard]

Surely that would have saved the country millions

Yes. Most people I know who were traveling through airports in early 2020 caught COVID.

@Nameoff

At least 5 polish girls from work visited home in Poland. Were able to go out clubbing and so on. Get on a flight come back to the uk, then straight back to work. While we were in a lockdown. Totally unreal 😡

If they did that while we were in lockdown they broke the law.

@DecemberDiana

I hope people are taking their vitamin D this winter. That's something that could be done today.

And losing weight. In fact people have had since March to lose weight (or whenever it became clear that covid and obesity aren't good bedfellows). People can reduce their own risk.

I do wonder about next time. I got round on for commenting that next time you’d hear borders shut from space so fast it would be. Back then people thought the Who could do no wrong. But if we can detect a virus fast enough from the country of origin no way will people let them in.
You should never let rock bands decide health policy.

I said to shut borders in early March. Then all the billions we have spent could have been focused on the few industries that needed it rather than firefighting with all industries and being in constant lockdown.

We are an island! We had the perfect opportunity I do this. No it wouldn't have been popular and only now would we be seeing the difference. But what a huge difference it would have made to the well-being of our people and our economy.

What we needed was a strong woman in charge.

Yes boarding schools have been rife with it. YANBU

planningahead I said to shut borders in early March

How unfortunate that you too are not one of the unelected team of advisors that the government depends upon...

@GreenlandTheMovie

planningahead I said to shut borders in early March

How unfortunate that you too are not one of the unelected team of advisors that the government depends upon...

There is that. And for any other advisors on here.

@Namenic Singapore closed the border with Malaysia. the government had to rearrange new trade deals to buy food from other countries all over the world. Singaporeans were greeted with weird signs like 'Eggs from Chile' in their supermarket when all the eggs previously were from malaysia. A lot of service workers from singapore actually commute daily from malaysia so the government had to arrange hotels/temporary accommodation for them.

I can't imagine the devastation that some Malaysian cities like Johor Bahru are facing now; they always seemed to be reliant on singapore tourism-a lot of singaporeans do their weekly shop/day out in malaysia.

@planningaheadtoday

I said to shut borders in early March. Then all the billions we have spent could have been focused on the few industries that needed it rather than firefighting with all industries and being in constant lockdown.

We are an island! We had the perfect opportunity I do this. No it wouldn't have been popular and only now would we be seeing the difference. But what a huge difference it would have made to the well-being of our people and our economy.

What we needed was a strong woman in charge.

Well congratulations - would you like a medal? - but the evidence is clear that it was spreading widely in the community in early March so unfortunately you'd already have missed your chance to be a strong woman in charge, though you could have done a spectacular job of closing the door after the horse had bolted I'm sure

I still stand by this. If we had closed borders early we could have concentrated effectively on tracing and isolating as other successful countries have.
And yes, those countries with success in fighting covid have predominantly had strong female leadership.

Hoping - the point is that yes it is hard to re-arrange things like freight routes, commuting, support for income loss. However it is possible. I think building the nightingales in the short timescale and expanding track and trace are equivalently hard problems (though in different ways). The govt expects small hospitality businesses and schools to just adapt to the new situation - why doesn’t it also tackle the hard, important problems?

Eng123

@Nameoff
If the rates were low enough for clubs to be open in Poland and they didn't require quarantine when they arrived then I don't see a problem other than jealousy.
Bookmark

Haha my clubbing days are over with thank you very much, no jealousy involved. Just worried about my health as I had to work with them when they returned. Prat

The virus was already here in March. Since then there has been very little air traffic compared to normal years. I live under a Heathrow flight path and although there was more activity in the summer I haven't seen a plane in months. Inbound and outbound traffic is hugely reduced.

The big issue has been community spread once it was here, not hordes of infected people entering the country throughout the year. That being said, the quarantine process is woefully lacking. I had a friend come to visit from a high risk country. She quarantined for 14 days but there were no checks made.

I'm in London and know several people who caught Covid in Feb/March. I haven't known anyone who has had it since then, until the last few weeks when I've heard of a few more.

Just worried about my health as I had to work with them when they returned

I don't understand how they were allowed to go. There were strict reasons to leave your home and going clubbing in Poland wasn't one of them. There were hardly any flights, either. I am assuming this was the spring lockdown.

Agree.100%

Yawn

@Angel2702

March was too late, the February half term trips were a disaster with so many flocking to Italy and not being quarantined. Someone in my son’s class had a relative stay with them from an affected area of Italy for half term. He then was in school with a horrendous cough but testing wasn’t available at that time so no idea if it was COVID or not.

Similar happened to me - a work colleague spent half term skiing in a Italy. She came back feeling a bit unwell but still came to work. A week later I was floored by a horrendous cough and fatigue (as was my boss) then a week after that my husband came down with the same thing plus a fever. We all recovered in due course but I’d say it took me a month or so to feel right again.

No testing of course so no idea what it was, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was COVID.

I'm convinced my work colleague had it in January, she went to her GP who said I think your have a bug and a couple of viruses go home and rest.

When the covid symptoms list came out she ticked more than half the boxes.

@planningaheadtoday well you’d have made as big a fuck up as the government then. March was way too late, it needed to be as soon as the virus was announced which was New Years Eve. However the WHo spent the first half of January minimising, not confirming human to human transmission until jan 15th. Most of the blood for this lies on their hands as they didn’t set the appropriate scene for governments to take it seriously.The UKs first covid death is now thought to be January 19th, on a mathematical basis that means we must have had 100s cases by then.

[quote Hollyhead]@planningaheadtoday well you’d have made as big a fuck up as the government then. March was way too late, it needed to be as soon as the virus was announced which was New Years Eve. However the WHo spent the first half of January minimising, not confirming human to human transmission until jan 15th. Most of the blood for this lies on their hands as they didn’t set the appropriate scene for governments to take it seriously.The UKs first covid death is now thought to be January 19th, on a mathematical basis that means we must have had 100s cases by then.[/quote]
Finally a date. For all those asking for strident leadership. U.K. was meant to know everything in January. Ridiculous.

100 cases in NZ was March. More than enough time to take notice rest of world situation. Not huge insight.

Sertchgi123 To be fair insiad this from the start

I said

We should have (with hindsight) closed borders and monitored clusters in mid-Feb.

There’s no way closing borders would have worked politically but being clinical about it, it would have worked.

With the benefit of hindsight, probably as early as January. March was already far too late.