To think the Government have done a reasonable job of handling this pandemic?

[EmbarrassedButIAdmitIt]

I’ve actually just voted Conservative in my local elections because of it . Not for Boris I might add who I cannot stand but the people actually doing the work behind him.

Considering we have not had a worldwide pandemic in over a hundred years, and the world has changed beyond recognition in terms of people movement since then, obviously it has been a massive learning curve, but I think on the whole we have been pretty well looked after with furlough, self employed support. top up benefits, vaccine production and rollout, etc.

I know there’s been ‘jobs for the boys’ but I don’t think any other political party would have been any different sadly.

We have had a higher death rate than other European countries but TBF we are a small overcrowded island populated by people who don’t like following rules and are stupid enough to believe hysterical conspiracy theories.

I am so grateful that I live in the UK and not somewhere like India, Brazil or even the US.

So AIBU?

@UrAWizHarry

The government have got 1 thing right - the vaccine rollout, and that was more by luck than judgement.

Other than that - no, are you taking the piss? They've been a shitshow.

Why do you say luck?

Do you discount expertise of KB etc

@emilyfrost

And you find the huge number of deaths acceptable? I don’t.

@ShanghaiDiva It’s a pandemic. I find them inevitable.

New Zealand says hello.

I say luck because they basically chucked a shitload of money at any and all companies making vaccines and were lucky that some of them worked. There was no judgement there, just blind faith that vaccines would come to the rescue.

It's the ONE thing they've got right, and even today they are doing their best to undo that with their pathetic attempts at border controls.

Nah they've been rubbish, we're only doing so well now becuase of vaccinating which is largely the nhs doing well (although well done government for buying so much vaccine I guess, one thing thing did right!). It seems a lot of the public agree though as it's looking like conservatives will be doing we out of this election. I am confident labour would have done less "jobs for the boys" as they are more interested in appearing more fair and less corrupt (they still are a bit but not as bad)

People forget the success of the vaccination rollout, how we are testing by far the most people in the world everyday, the success of the furlough scheme was all thanks to the government. I honestly doubt any other government would have done a better job. I suspect the reason why our death rate is so high is because of how much we have tested compared to other countries. France has conducted half the amount of tests compared to us, for example.

While we didn’t do the best to start off with, we are now ahead of our European counterparts (who are still in a midst of a lockdown) and our economy is supposed to grow the fastest in Europe thanks to our vaccine rollout. So no you’re not being unreasonable.

@UrAWizHarry

I say luck because they basically chucked a shitload of money at any and all companies making vaccines and were lucky that some of them worked. There was no judgement there, just blind faith that vaccines would come to the rescue.

It's the ONE thing they've got right, and even today they are doing their best to undo that with their pathetic attempts at border controls.

You don’t think a range was a good strategy in itself?

Imagine if we’d stuck to Sanofi, Merck and that’s before we actually developed AZ too.

The issue is people with little understanding don’t get the expertise needed to make those good decisions. Far too easy to criticise.

'Look at the figures for Vietnam, a less developed country, how do they compare? Much, much lower. Look at Japan, Taiwan, Singapore...'

Japan did nothing! putting their low rates down to a superior mentality or something ridiculous. There is suggestion that previous exposure to SARS has provided some immunity throughout the far east.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-53188847

OP agree.

Mistakes were always going to be made... you can only work with what you have. The gov have done some things exceptionally well, some not so well. I certainly haven't seen anyone in a similar country do better.

This morning it's starting to appear the majority of this country think they're doing well enough to carry on.

@Hairbrush123

People forget the success of the vaccination rollout, how we are testing by far the most people in the world everyday, the success of the furlough scheme was all thanks to the government. I honestly doubt any other government would have done a better job. I suspect the reason why our death rate is so high is because of how much we have tested compared to other countries. France has conducted half the amount of tests compared to us, for example.

While we didn’t do the best to start off with, we are now ahead of our European counterparts (who are still in a midst of a lockdown) and our economy is supposed to grow the fastest in Europe thanks to our vaccine rollout. So no you’re not being unreasonable.

Are you taking the piss on testing?

Seriously, look at how long it took the UK to get to a decent place in testing. How for the longest time they were completely misrepresenting the number of tests being carried out and how much money spent on the track and trace scheme has just vanished into private hands.

I despair, I really do.

I don’t think relatives of the 127k+ dead people will agree with you OP. They’ve handled it appallingly. They sent children back to school for 1 day in January and Boris was on the Andrew Marr show the day before saying how safe school was then we entered into a national lockdown the following day. He let cases rise to 70k + a day before entering into lockdown. Let’s also not forget how slow he was to call the first lockdown despite scientists pleading with him to. He’s ignored the experts right throughout and we have a ridiculously high death rate as a result. Let the bodies pile up indeed... Those ‘bodies’ were someone’s Mum/Dad/sibling/spouse/friend.

I certainly haven't seen anyone in a similar country do better.

I have, Scandinavian countries, NZ, Australia. Need I go on?

@Thatisnotwhatisaid

I certainly haven't seen anyone in a similar country do better.

I have, Scandinavian countries, NZ, Australia. Need I go on?

You’re better off looking close by geographically to EU or other international hub like NYC

Not the countries you list.

@LemonRoses Test and Trace is run by Deloitte not Serco (they run 119 and the various government CV helplines) but the test of your post is spot on.

The people of Hartlepool obviously think they are doing a good job despite the pandemic and the death tolls.
It's all I hear around here as well.
The vaccine roll out really has saved their face and their bacon!

You don’t need hindsight to know that when you need PPE, ventilators, etc, you should approach your local trusted suppliers/manufacturers to upscale first. It’s extremely bad business sense to spend millions on trying to invent new machinery when the old is just fine, even more so in a fast moving pandemic.

They made this mistake over and over again. They ignored the existing infrastructure of testing in the NHS, to build a few super labs staffed by inexperienced students. Their blind ideology of privatising the NHS drove them to waste an unaccountable 22 BILLION on setting up test and trace.

Imagine if the NHS and local authorities shared that 22 BILLION - divided equally that would have given every NHS trust and every local authority at least 30 MILLION each. They’d be no creaming off the top for SERCO consultants and shareholders.

To say ‘haven’t they done well considering the circumstances’ is babying. It’s like congratulating your partner on putting their dirty pants in the wash rather than leaving them in the floor.

@Thatisnotwhatisaid

I certainly haven't seen anyone in a similar country do better.

I have, Scandinavian countries, NZ, Australia. Need I go on?

You think Australia and NZ are similar?!

I think there were good points and low points. obv the rollout of the vaccines has been phenomenal and support through furlough was great but there have been a lot of mistakes and continue to be so including:

• not locking down early enough to start with
• Christmas was just a fiasco and anyone could tell him that was not a good idea and led to thousands of deaths in January. Then cancelling it at last minute for lots of people who just went on to ignore him as they'd made plans
• continuing to let flights in with no checks or giving people like a week to get back from hotspots before quarantine was put in place meaning they brought a lot of it back with them
• the track and trace system was just....awful

We are an island nation, it should have been much easier to control the spread if the government had simply closed the borders. Look at the death rate in NZ and Australia, then tell me we couldn't keep the deaths down.

Maybe the government felt the mood of the nation and that's why they delayed lockdown. People here would never have accepted the Oz and NZ stance of borders closed, no coming, no going. It was hard enough getting people to accept the initial lockdowns without complaining about restriction of rights.

I'm believe that if the government had authorised a hard lockdown, closed all borders and restricted all travel, then our numbers would match that of Australia and we would have returned to something that resembled normality much sooner. But they would have had to keep the borders closed.

The vaccine rollout has been a success, but that's in spite of our government's overall handling of the pandemic, not because of it.

I think that there are two separate issues here really.

Have there been questionable decisions here which need to be answered? Absolutely. Track and trace for instance.

But have they handled the pandemic well? Well tbh I don’t think there is any such thing as having handled the pandemic well. Not one government in the world has handled this pandemic in a way which means that they have been untouched. Because a pandemic is unprecedented, we haven’t had one on this scale since the Spanish flu, so there is literally no-one who has this experience.

And peoples perception of what is right and wrong differ so you’re never going to get a definitive answer. On one hand we have people saying we didn’t lock down soon or hard enough, on the other we have people saying that there were too many lockdowns, and that the vulnerable should just have been protected while everyone else got on with their lives.

Our vaccine rollout is unquestionable, and the result of that is that we’re miles ahead of Europe in terms of infection rates and also in terms of re-opening. Countries like Germany were praised in the beginning for their response to COVID and now they’ve fallen way behind.

And there is literally no comparison to be made between a country of 60 million residence and one with only 5 million spread out over a larger area. Added to which, Australia and New Zealand have been slow to roll out the vaccines and there is a low take-up because people have become complacent, thinking that there is essentially no COVID there. So the real risk is that they will be the next countries to be hard hit. Alternatively the only other answer will be for them to leave the. Borders closed which will have a detrimental impact on their economy.

At the end of the day, it’s very easy for someone to say that “they got it wrong” when that person was never in a position to have got it right so will never have to prove that they would have been better and potentially fail doing so.

'I have, Scandinavian countries, NZ, Australia. Need I go on?'

But we live near Wales, NI, Scotland and Europe with similar stats! Do you understand demographics? We're a very obese nation for starters and we knew obesity increases severity of symptoms.

Also population density is very relevant. You see the more folk you have the greater the transmission. NZ is tiny with 5m pop and is also an isolated country.

@ConfessionsOfAChocoholic

We are an island nation, it should have been much easier to control the spread if the government had simply closed the borders. Look at the death rate in NZ and Australia, then tell me we couldn't keep the deaths down.

Maybe the government felt the mood of the nation and that's why they delayed lockdown. People here would never have accepted the Oz and NZ stance of borders closed, no coming, no going. It was hard enough getting people to accept the initial lockdowns without complaining about restriction of rights.

I'm believe that if the government had authorised a hard lockdown, closed all borders and restricted all travel, then our numbers would match that of Australia and we would have returned to something that resembled normality much sooner. But they would have had to keep the borders closed.

The vaccine rollout has been a success, but that's in spite of our government's overall handling of the pandemic, not because of it.

How would you deal with road freight?

"At the end of the day, it’s very easy for someone to say that “they got it wrong” when that person was never in a position to have got it right so will never have to prove that they would have been better and potentially fail doing so."

So let's just give up holding the government to any sort of account, shall we?

YABU and have pitifully low standards for what amounts to an adequate response.

Btw when did Ardern order lockdown? it wasn’t early it was just early for them on the curve.

Apart from the vaccine roll out, it’s been absolutely awful.

Lockdowns all too late, and reactive rather than proactive.