Is anyone else angry and embarrassed right now ?

[Sapphiresunrise]

For the developed and resourced country that we are, we are potentially going to be overtaking Italy and Spain by the looks of things.
Australia and other nations have death rates in double figures. They were smart to close borders and even close regions. Canada the same. Denmark, etc. The list goes on. South Korea have the situation under control.
We were warned about this. I feel like majority of those deaths could have been avoided.

Ok, so those who hold the same view as the OP, why can't you answer this question that people keep putting to you:

Let's say you were in charge in Jan/Feb. You close the borders and quarantine all re-pats for 2 weeks. You go full on lock down/ close schools, etc, by putting through emergency laws taking away most liberties - so that would have had to have been done using the police plus the army, because lets not forget that most people at that time didn't believe it was serious. If you've managed to avoid any civil unrest at this point, well done. Lock down would have to have been for a month minimum to ensure no new cases, time for symptoms to show. But is a month enough because you can't actually shut down a country - absolutely essential key workers might still spread the virus, especially those who are asymptomatic - so let's say 2 months. So you've managed 2 months of lockdown, without any civil unrest - bearing in mind that there's now been no, or very few, deaths, and if this was done in Jan/Feb we would have only just seen Italy/Iran with growing rates. But it's the law so everyone just accepted it and stayed home - or faced the police/army.

So the question no one has still answered on here: Now what? (In this imaginary UK) We keep our borders closed? We have a country with no immunity and we know testing at borders won't work because of the time before symptoms show. NOTHING can be imported. Any business that trades globally is bankrupt. A vaccine MAY be commercially available in a couple of years - so you're saying that the UK will sit for two years with NOONE travelling in and out?

Why is no one here answering if this is what they think should have happened?

UYSCuti
It’s been quite the rollercoaster...
I haven’t seen dh for nearly two months and with the Chinese border now closed dd and I are stuck here living out of two suitcases in my mum’s spare room.

@floooopy I've been waited for answers since yesterday but I guess it's much easier to just criticise & point the finger.

Managed to avoid any civil unrest
I think this bears repeating, we often forget that the government has to balance the need to do do the most expedient thing to do with regards to the virus against the need to avoid civil unrest
I'm so sorry Shanghai☹️ I hope your husband is ok 🙏💙

Floopy I’m in Australia where the borders have been closed and strict quarantine introduced, monitored by Police and the army. I’m resigned to the fact that I may indeed not be able to travel outside the country for up to 2 years. In fact right now I can’t even travel outside my state and that may be the case for around 6 months.

Hi Wehttam
Who knows what the true numbers are? I do believe that the tough action in China saved lives, but as Wuhan was locked down so comprehensively (both in terms of movement and knowledge of what was really happening) who knows what happened there.
What is happening in my teeny tiny part of China now indicates that the situation is under control and that cases coming from outside are now considered the real threat hence closing the border last week.
When I say under control, things are in no way ‘normal’ but dd’s School is open albeit with social distancing measures in operation.

Floopy If that had happened the numbers of infected would be far lower, more manageable for the NHS, effectively we have been mixing it around the population since that time. If we had locked down early Feb then the travel to Italy for ski trips would not have happened, we would have realised Italy was a catastrophe and dodged a Big bullet. Large events such as the champions league games which had thousands of supporters attend from Europe, concerts (stereophonics) crufts, Cheltenham races, all that wouldn’t have happened.

So essentially we would have really cut how many infected who may be asymptomatic we have, these are the ones passing it unknowingly to the elderly and immunodeficient. Obviously it will get into the populace but we could have had a significantly lower first wave on our shores.

The economic arguments are mute because what we are faced with now is far worse than what an early intervention would have brought.

I’ll add once that was over we have a relatively safe population and we wait out the vaccine, which is what we are doing now only with a far larger number of infected and a big mess to deal with. We could have been isolated as an island nation and had much fewer fatalities as we wait for the storm to pass.

That big shoulda woulda coulda was only to act a month earlier. When we knew it was coming and it would be bad. Yet we burried our heads in the sand.

floopy
As China has done most of the things listed in your post and closed its border to foreigners it will be interesting to see what happens next.

@Floooopy Then we quarantine anyone from outside coming into the country and things internally get back to normal until we have a vaccine. Goods can still go in and out of the country. Yes it would have some economic impact, but less than our current strategy.

The UK government wanted/wants most people to get the virus before there is a vaccine. And are prepared for a lot of people to die. This is their strategy. We will have far more deaths than we should have.

And it is the same people on this thread that were on far earlier ones, defending the government at all costs. They were the ones saying cheltenham was fine to go ahead because they had hand sanitiser on site. The government only had to listen to what WHO were advising. They totally ignored WHO again and again. And we will all pay the price.

Everything Wehttam says. It would have been preventative action. So acting before it got bad to prevent it ever getting that bad. As for civil unrest? That's where the media could've played a role. Rather than the downplaying othering message of "it's only the elderly and frail" we could have had very clear stark messages emphasising the risk and the high death rate. Footage - and lots of it - from China, and later Italy.

Thank you Wehttam for a response that lots don't want to give. I appreciate that people will have different opinions, but I think it important that if people are going to jump on a threat slamming the UK's actions then they should be able to back it up with what they think would have been a better solution and how it would have played out. For you that would have been a complete police state at a time when the majority of the UK would have been against lockdown, so cities with militery patrols and the very strong possibility of riots - particularly with groups of teens/early twenties/ gangs- in built up areas where everyone is locked down in their homes, followed by 2 years of closed borders with no international trade. I appreciate that you feel that to be better than the current situation, but others don't.

allout it’s funny how the defence of the strategy is so strong from some people isn’t it. How questioning the narrative or simply implying things could be done differently with better effect actually invokes sneering. Funny that.

It’s almost like dejavu from when everyone was shutting us down for suggesting Italy was fully infected with the virus or that we would be the next Italy. I’d love to know their agenda.

Also all that stuff about how some people don't want to follow lock down so you have to time when it happens? What that actually means is Boris is a coward who won't do anything until lots of the public are clamouring for it to happen.
Schools were only closed to most kids when parents like me had already taken their kids out and teachers were phoning in sick because they were self isolating. He was forced into it.

Boris is a total coward and that is at the root of what has gone wrong. He did not want to tell his friends that no they could not go to Cheltenham for example. It is a total lack of leadership.
We self isolated as a family a week before lock down. With hindsight I would have tried to do it sooner. But I had to get work to agree to let me work from home and talk to my teenagers about it and explain why when all their friends were still going to school and socialising.

That’s quite the leap from banning huge public events and having quarantine measures to a full police state...

Flooopy not really a military rule, if the masses were informed properly on why we had to take this approach then I am certain the compliance would have been much greater than it is now. If we had rallied around like the war effort with the YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU TO STAY IN posters I think people would have been onboard.

Instead the government has confused those who take a casual interest in the daily goings on from the offset, they don’t understand why they have to stay in now because only the other week they were saying schools will stay open and just wash your hands.

@Wehttam I know it is deja vu. We were being sneered at only 3/4 weeks ago for being frustrated that the government were not even encouraging working from home. And when I said I was taking my kids out of school, I got masses of comments about how OTT I was being, and was I going to take them out for a year and isolate them from everyone else.
I am well aware of the agenda.

@Wehttam,you should be a screen writer,you talk absolute drivel,every night about the same time.

Looting,riots!!! You are going to be so disappointed when all these things don’t happen.

@ShanghaiDiva As you know it has been like this all along. It is always presented as the government does nothing, or it has a full police state.

In reality there are lots of actions you can do in between. I still can't believe that the government did not even do the minimal of saying - we advise employers let staff work from home where that is possible. There were people on threads at the time saying their boss would only let them work from home if it was advised by the government. This would have been so easy to do.

The government should also have said it advised against all but essential travel abroad at a much earlier stage. Then we would not have all those British people stuck abroad. So much could have been avoided.

480 I am so Glad you read my drivel, nightly. I hope to god I am disappointed I was so wrong on this, you have no idea how RELIEVED I will be that we managed to dodge such a hideous calamity. But you and I both know that chances of that are slim.

@wehttam - you saidwe'd be protected as an island nation but the vast majority of people access this island by train and plane!!!!!

I'll need to do some digging. I don't doubt that lettong Cheltenam going ahead was a mistake, Crufts too.

But I haven't actually heard much chatter locally about infections.

I am not saying they didn't happen but I live in a neighbouring county for both and i haven't seen much. I may just have missed it.

(I.do suspect that there will be a non negligible amount of infections from Cheltenham)

@Random18 Why do you suspect that about Cheltenham. And I thought the point was that lots of people travelled from all around the country to attend it. This spreads the infection.