So we are predicted to have the highest death toll in Europe, due to systemic errors made by this government. Do you trust the government to get us out of lock down safely?

[ssd]

I don't. They've f**d up too much. NHS managers are begging for PPE, NHS workers are dying.

This government have really really let us down.

We are predicted to have 40,000 deaths by the end of this.

The only silver lining is is that Labour might get its act together now Keir Starmer is in charge. Things can't get any worse.

And if any tory bots start saying 'at least it's not Corbyn'.. Well save your breath. No one could have made a bigger mess than Boris and Co.

(I probably didn't make my point very well Jasjas I didn't mean that the prime minister should follow public opinion, more that he needs to find the right way of getting it to line up with the right course of action)

A leader who follows public opinion is in my book a shit leader.
It means that lots of things will happen that that leader knows is shit and will make things worse.

@B1rdbra1n

Was answering your point that one week would have made a significant difference, its not an unknown.
What we had instead was advance notice of Pub closures... so what did folk do? predictably went out and got hammered, ignoring any form of social distancing... how many infections did that schoolboy error cause?

Even now, we let out prisoners under earlier release that shouldn't be.. this govt is a shambles... who is in charge? let alone leading!

We have a higher population than most other European countries (all except Germany, I believe) so it's not surprising that we are having more deaths.

So far, if you look at the number of deaths per million of population, we are behind Belgium, Spain, Italy and France. I know we are behind Italy and Spain in terms of timescales (not sure about Belgium and France), so we could overtake them at some point, but we don't know that yet. At the moment, Belgium's deaths per million of population is double that of the UK.

Hope this chart copies ok.



Is that Worldometers - yes we seem to be very similar to most of Europe

I guess the point would be we shouldnt be the same we should have used the time to prepare.

But a lot havent handled this well (and interestingly the ones who have done better have women in charge)

eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/04/17/coronavirus-women-world-leaders-praised-handling-crisis/5144421002/

But I just saw Russia on tv with ambulances queuing for hours.

Sorry. Chart hasn't copied.

But it's from the ourworldindata.org website. There are masses of different charts and you can choose which countries to compare.

I usually look at the deaths per million people one both the totals and new deaths per million in last 3 days.

Jas, maybe I'm just too scared to acknowledge how much of a shambles it is🤦🏼‍♀️

Quartz, I am totally down with the idea that women leaders have done a better job but there are probably other factors which contributed to their ability to do a better job?
The world needs to pool its resources, we need to learn from each other not compete with each other.

France is below the uk, they include care homes in their figures and this number is very high. France has around 11,000 hospital deaths whereas the uk has around 14,000. They also lockdowned before the uk.
Worldometers counts all of frances deaths so the number is much higher. Fifth i am not sure of your graph does but i imagine so.
The financial times ones is more accurate for france since it has taken out these out for those countries so the same comparision can be made.

www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

Ireland and belguim also count deaths in care homes with their figures so are also going to be higher.

Care home deaths have been extremely high and is awful to see.

I agree they need to be held accountable for thier failings. They wont be.

I think it's a disgrace the way they have dealt with it, encouraging handshaking early on, slow uptake on lockdown , PPE, we still had 75000 flights come into the country last week from coronavirus hotspots and the people are untested.
Missed testing targets

I cant believe thier is anyone who actually thinks this government is capable and fit for purpose. It's really is negligible how they have handled it.

The push seems to be to come out of lock down soon and accept lots more people will die.

we still had 75000 flights come into the country last week

Where did you get that figure from - seems high. Yes, there are flights still operating, people still trying to get home, to and from, and via the UK. EU citizens within Schengen are still technically allowed to travel. However most flights are grounded, many airports and terminals are shut, and the majority of flights are carrying large amounts of cargo instead of passengers. No-one is going on holiday!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52319575

Most of the flights still operating are cargo or repatriation flights. They certainly aren’t people entering for a holiday.

Some interesting data breakdown of deaths Italy vs England

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/

www.statista.com/statistics/1105061/coronavirus-deaths-by-region-in-italy/

and we havent fully included care homes. 5% in ITaly under 60 and England 8.5% the workforce isnt being hit as much

The push seems to be to come out of lock down soon and accept lots more people will die

What sort of logic is this? Yes, 'lots' more people are going to die, from coronavirus and other things alike, time to discuss it rationally like we used to back in the old days.

I heard the rationale for flights today on BBC R4 (I think that's what it was). The argument is that many/most are British citizens and they're going into lockdown (obviously) and that there's no evidence that it's contributing to coronavirus.

It makes far more sense to scrutinise the flights after the lockdown is lifted.

Please read this man knows what he's talking about

@Whu020

I started watching that video, but it's very long.

Please could you provide a summary of its key points?

It seemed interesting and relevant.

I've been thinking about Starmer pressing the govt on pressing the govt to show us their exit plans, and I have a kind of partially formed niggle.

Obviously, the govt should be sourcing tests, and working out how to use them most strategically, and get the most impact from them, and there is a whole load of logistics and modelling that they should be doing and aren't necessarily.

But I think to a certain extent, the correct exit plan at the moment is "We don't have one. We're going to wait and see what happens what other countries do, and if it looks effective, we're going to copy them."

The problem is, it doesn't lend itself to soundbite politics. And it's a bit kind of cowardly. No-one is going to say it out loud. But I do think it's the best option, given that we're a week or so behind Spain, France and Italy. I want to watch what they do, but make sure we're leaving about three weeks after them taking action before we do anything, so we can see how it pans out for them.

Hopefully our govt would at least be able to manage that much.

Perhaps do some research on Dr Buttar first.....

Sorry, I mangled that first sentence there. Hopefully it's decipherable.

Baaaaahhhh the figure came from matt Hancock saying they have 15000 people a day coming in through out airports.

We've seen today that there are estimated to be another 7500 deaths in care homes from covid 19. But, it looks as though there may be even more as Dr's have been discouraged from recording covid 19 on deaths certificates:

uk.news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-death-certificates-guidance-petition-095005492.html

They've done it again - the media have been publishing articles on the disproportionate deaths of BAME for some time now.
Today the government announced they're going to publish ethic origins with deaths. Yknow, because they care - not because of public outcry, no.

Omg, this is scathing/jaw-dropping/breath taking.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-38-days-when-britain-sleepwalked-into-disaster-hq3b9tlgh

Think the government is still trying its supposed hard immunity policy - ie eugenics for the old and sick - that Boris and Dominic Cummings favour except they are being more subtle about it. As suggestions it would kill half a million people were strangely unpopular.

So rather than officially doing nothing, the government now has official policies of eh lockdown, resting, providing PPE and ventilators etc, but is going out of the way to implement these as crappli as is humanly possible, to ensure that the disease spreads as quickly as possible.

That's my theory because I refuse to believe that Britain, even post-Brexit, is that much less competent than every other major developed country.

The only other country doing as badly, the US, is also being sabotaged by their so-called leader.