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.

@Reginabambina

According to this, the adult obesity rate in the UK and Australia is identical and Australia had a higher percentage of deaths linked to obesity:
ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-who-are-overweight

I don’t think anyone would have argued with the cancellation of huge events. People were looking for direction then.

Quartz not the end of the world, but the end of our lives before this started absolutely. I pray and hope I am totally utterly wrong on this I really do, I would love for you all to mock me and say you daft sod in six months time when we’re all back to normal. 🙏🏻

The lack of preparedness is unforgiveable, as well as the dithering and stumbling way the crisis has been handled. The lack of ppe for frontline staff is nothing short of a scandal. Unbelievable in our affluent and well provisioned country (relative to many others). This crisis is an indictment of our totally useless politicians, not just the current ones but those in charge of health and public safety some years ago who did nothing to prepare for an emergency such as this.
I don't know what to do with my anger about it. But I try to channel light rather than negativity.

Source of data:
gamapserver.who.int/gho/interactive_charts/ncd/risk_factors/overweight/tablet/atlas.html

you’re right, what’s a few hundred thousand dead as long as you can count all the coins you’ve been able to make.

No there were only 774 deaths from SARS wettham. But you think it would have been appropriate to have caused thousand of deaths by locking down for that too? It has been suggested that the austerity of the last decade caused 130,000 deaths and yet that is as nothing to the austerity that will arise out of this crisis. You want to be darn sure it is not going to be a repeat of SARS before you do that.

Are the schools in the UK still open? I'm in Ireland so not entirely sure what measures have been taken in the UK.

www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/some-thoughts-on-the-british-response-to-coronavirus-essay-alexander-van-tulleken

This is a great article by Xand van Tulleken. He’s not a fan of the government but explains the rationale well

Very good article indeed. Doubt if any of the screaming mob on here will bother their barneys to read it.

Yes OP you are scaremongering. Feel angry at home without spouting it on a forum.

What have you contributed to helping save our nation? I expect nothing.

Ultimately the lockdown is not about preventing deaths, but about delaying them so the NHS can cope. Is it possible that countries that locked down later may not have more deaths (% population) overall (by the time we have a vaccine), they'll just have seen them in a shorter space of time?

I think we should be angry at the media. They have blown this crisis out of proportion making people anxious and scared. They report without checking facts and numbers to get headlines.
It is easy to manipulate scared people and get them agree to anything without critical thinking.

Just another point, how many scientists and medics are spouting off here?

I would say because of our inaction and how this scenario will spiral out of control we can expect a breakdown of society as lockdown is maintained indefinitely. We are only a few weeks in and already the cracks are showing, many at their wits end, many without money, many struggling to get by.

I'm confused I thought you were advocating for an earlier lockdown? Now your saying lockdown will be maintained indefinitely?

@buttermilkwaffles the population is much smaller though so you get fewer obese people overall iyswim. People are also much more aware of it so you don’t tend to get people in a size 16 thinking that they’re healthy.

Obviously the above assumes that health services cope with numbers throughout the pandemic. Any health service that is overwhelmed will sadly see more deaths.

As a nation, we chose to completely ignore the warnings and arrogantly disregarded anyone who expressed concern.

Ultimately the lockdown is not about preventing deaths, but about delaying them so the NHS can cope.

This is my understanding.

I have to say, I think some "higher ups" are so entrenched in everything being normal and successful that they must have blocked out all thoughts of what was about to happen.

I work for a huge travel company and for many weeks before shit kicked off, bookings were reducing, countries were introducing travel bans and our share price was falling off a cliff. Yet everything sort of just carried on as normal, we even had some deals promoting river cruises. The day the FCO advised against all but essential travel, they sent out a shocked email saying "Last week, no-one could have seen this coming". Really??? In that case please pay me half a million pounds a year or whatever the Board get paid, because I bloody saw it coming back in Jan/Feb along with the rest of Mumsnet.

Horrible sounding virus in China requiring lockdowns + 1000's of flights every day + other European countries starting to shut down = business as usual????

@Lunar567 absolutely, especially the Daily Mail. I’ve been going on their wed site just to see what alarmist bullshit they’ve been putting on there.

we are not going to go back to normal because normal was thinking we were indestrucible and we could somehow cheat death and live forever and not pay attention to the world in which we live in. And that is a good thing because we were becoming selfish

But this isnt the first pandemic and it isnt the last. It will I think make us remember that the only certain thing about life is death and we will have to live with that over us I think for the shorter term future

But we wont have an indefinite lockdown - once this peak is over they will want life to go back on the understanding that we have to live with the idea that we might get it

Or quite a lot of us might have had it - certainly this week my family has had classic symptoms of it. Testing is the way out at the moment

@wettham have you always catastrophied. This was always going to become pandemic and people are going to die but we will get through it

Aesop if I recall China didn’t quarantine massive chunks of its populace for SARS so that argument is more or less irrelevant. Of course the WHO were hesitant to proclaim a Pandemic after jumping the gun with SARS. If they had declared a pandemic and it fizzled out they would have looked rather silly.

BUT it was evident by the murky reporting from China that their numbers were being faked because it was a lot worse than originally thought. This was back in early Feb. Remember President Xi declaring it a Devil virus? That was end of Jan. Meanwhile the UK did nothing.

Is it possible that countries that locked down later may not have more deaths

It’s also possible the ones who locked down sooner will see a second spike in cases when opened up.

The fact is this is a unique situation, which nobody can claim they could have predicted, or prevented. To say “I told you so” doesn’t mean you had some specialist knowledge, it’s just your brand of panic happened to reflect what eventually happened. The same type of “we’re all doomed” reactions happened during SARS and bird flu and even Ebola, which barely touched us. It’s a case of even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

If we had shut down in January, we’d likely still be shut down, or facing a second one.

what’s to come will make draconian measures seem like a holiday

That made me laugh anyway.

@AlpineSnow I think that was a minority going completely going overboard, I don’t know anyone who has done that. Most people are just carrying on as normal within whichever guidelines or rules their state has issued. They certainly haven’t gone mental baying for schools to be closed of snitching on their neighbours for going out to exercise. The actions taken by the government are also far more measured and pragmatic. The atmosphere is very different here.

If they had declared a pandemic and it fizzled out they would have looked rather silly.

You realise declaring pandemic is a numbers game, not a matter of opinion?