Why are UK numbers so high?

[howdidwegetheremary]

Sorry if this has been asked on other threads.

The numbers of infections and deaths in the U.K., US, Italy, France, and Spain are far higher than anywhere else in the world and this really bothers me.

I know the U.K. was slower to lockdown, didn’t close borders, and is heavily populated but I can’t see how this adds up?

Don’t get me wrong I’m relieved that lots more places are not as heavily affected but how is this?

We are constantly told that the virus thrives through close contact but there are many other countries that are far more heavily populated and live in closer contact than the U.K., US, etc.

Any clue?

Many areas are densely populated.
Lots of homeless people without facilities
Huge hospitals and construction workers still working.
Borders aren’t closed and people still allowed in without checks.
Not enough testing as stations miles away.

The list goes on!

I would like to know this as well!

Many countries won't be counting at all. Some countries still have properly funded health services so are treating people before their lips turn blue

Wonder how long before Cheltenham gets a mention.

Who knows. The lockdown clearly isn’t tough enough. If you want lockdowns to work properly then you have to follow China’s approach of lock in! That’s if there figures are to be believed.

Which countries are you thinking of in your comparison

The US has massive areas of very low population density too, so their figures are skewed somewhat by that.

Didn’t seem as high as I was expecting really

I’m thinking of for example India, very densely populated and very close contact, look at their transport systems for example.

Even other countries within the EU have not seen the level of infection that has been seen in the U.K. , Italy, France, and Spain.

Population diversity & age?

London is a massive business hub that had international business travel on top of tourism and of course general commuting. Spain is a tourism hotspot as is Italy but Italy also had business links with China through their leather industry so they may have been infected with the virus very early on. Italy also had hotpots where hospitals were completely overrun and are a country where the young see/live the older generation much more closely.

Remember that some countries are still in the foothills of this virus. We are not going to know how this burns until much later in the year and then of course we’ll have another huge wave of it over winter alongside flu and colds.

Which countries do you mean?

For example in europe apart there are 6 countries more population dense - belgium, netherlands, malta, monaco, vatican and san marino. Belgium and san marino doing significantly worse in deaths/million, netherlands similar.

It might be something to do with climate, we locked down later than others and we are population dense. We have very population dense cities, uk cities have some of the smallest space/capita of any in europe. France/spain and italy all have very population dense cities

Germany is bucking the trend, they are quite population dense in general and have population dense cities. But generally countries that are similar to us are doing similar to us

I doubt that the death rate in India will ever be known, but I also think they looked down at a very low level of infection

Obvs when compared to other European countries not India obvs!

We locked down later than others so it was allowed to spread. Messaging from government and scientists has been inconsistent eg around the time of Cheltenham, they were saying large gatherings were 'low risk', now everyone needs to be at least 2 m apart. We've locked down but not as strict as some other countries. We are more population dense than countries such as Sweden who are taking a similar approach to our original one. Countries that maybe more densely populated than us have either locked down earlier or are at an earlier stage of the virus than we are.

Dense population, lots of travel throughout the country and internationally.

Reasonably thorough record keeping.

Possibly low vitamin d levels at this time of the year.

Why? high number of infection is probably because of density of population in larger cities, and to the fact that lock down was probably a week too late. Large football matches, concerts and other sporting events should have been cancelled a week before they were.

Public transport is a real killer I'm afraid. Look at the number of bus drivers that have been infected and died. Social distancing is near impossible on buses and underground/trains.

The lockdown in the UK was always only partial. Work from home IF you can, restaurants/pubs stayed open way too long.

Lack of PPE for staff on the front line is also an issue.

It is wrong to compare countries because of a number of variations that affect the spread .

I also do think that we have a large amount of people ignoring the rules .

I came across several people today who can’t measure 2m for a start .

Plus the virus has mutated in different countries , that has been widely reported .

Thanks for the responses, it’s interesting to hear your thoughts. I don’t have any particular idea myself but was getting really bothered after looking on the worldometer site.

I’m partly annoyed as I live in one of the areas hugely affected by a large event. Too scared to go out of the door due to the number of infections in my area.

I've not read anything about mutations in the virus leading to different rates of infection or death. Can anybody point to articles/reports/research that talks about this?

Some of the reasons for the high mortality rates seem to have been intentional - the UK government pursued a policy of herd immunity = a policy of people getting the virus asap to get it out of the way, so that the economy could reopen asap.

Although Trump has not referred to the policy behind his actions as herd immunity, it amounts to the same thing, of prioritising the economy over saving lives.

Charitably, you could argue this approach just 'frontloads' the deaths, ie if more people get the virus quicker, then more people die sooner too, but total numbers of deaths over many waves might even out.

Cynically, you might worry that a government led by known eugenicists just wouldn't care if the old/sick died?

Due possibly to the policy of herd immunity, the UK government took many steps that were directly contrary to WHO advice, eg:

• ending testing in early March but not locking down for nearly 2 weeks
• saying that people with symptoms only need to isolate for 7 days after symptoms start when the WHO say it should be 14 days after symptoms end
• failing to even try and get hold of sufficient PPE and ventilators until weeks/months after it was obvious these would be needed

Some other reasons probably relate to longstanding political decisions and policies in the UK and US - in the UK, the NHS has been starved of cash for many years due to 'austerity', so lacked the beds/equipment/staff to respond to the crisis as well as eg Germany. The US, meanwhile, is hamstrung by its lack of centralised public health provision, meaning states are (insanely) bidding against each other and pushing up the prices of essential medical supplies. No other developed economy is that insane.

Some reasons for the high mortality rates are probably due to cock up rather than conspiracy though, eg the US mess up of early testing. There certainly do seem to have been some quite poor decisions made in both countries around sourcing tests, PPE and equipment, but it's hard to know if that was down to anything more than poor planning.

And I guess other countries could be under reporting but my that much really?

We are large rich democratic countries with a high life expectancy (so old population) and free press. The question you should be asking is what is Germany doing differently (they locked down earlier and were testing more than anyone very early on so they tested more mild cases than we have).

Add belgium netherlands switzerland whos deaths per million are also similar, reporting in these countrys is probably a truer reflection than others, all these countrys have different nuances and have had different versions of lockdown etc but it is remarkable really how similar the end result looks like it will be and the thing that sticks out to me is the latitude/ climate similarities.

@Hairyfairy78

Fifth post?

Unless countries are all releasing figures of the same measures then they are meaningless.