Italy v England. Why the different levels of sympathy?

[Whatsthis1515]

I am noticing that people feel sorry for Italy regarding their death toll but for the UK, people are scathing and pointing fingers. Why is this? I know Italy was supposed to be a lesson to us, but surely in that case, they didn't do the right thing either?

Interested to know what you all think.

Thanks

@Headbangersandmash I thought the sage committee names were real eased the other day

As imperfect as the UK response has been I’m not convinced Labour would have handled this any better.

Jon Ashworth’s comments the other day saying Labour would have locked down earlier? I don’t remember them saying that at the time? Seems to me to be a retrospective assessment. Lot easier in opposition where you aren’t judged by actual deeds than it is in government eh Jon.

Im not sure because there have always been similarities between Italy and the UK (especially England)
Similar populations
Mixture of densely populated areas with some rural areas
The first confirmed cases were on the same day (31st January), in York and Rome.

The UK and Italy locked down at about the same time. By that I don't just mean the dates but at around the same amount of cases and deaths. Infact the UK locked down at a lower number of deaths than Italy did

I think Italy had a steeper more sudden rise in cases. Bergamo, which was heavily hit, has an international airport which I think was a contributory factor

The news media was reporting Italy because it was the first big outbreak in Europe. Also more cameras were allowed in than in the UK and other countries

As for sympathy

There is certain kind of left wing progressive in the UK that likes to constantly whine about the UK and put it down but at the same time has a bizarre misty eyed view of everything on the continent. So if you're from the UK you won't get half as much sympathy anyway

It’s really more England who have been viewed as unpopular, due to their brexit results.

I've spent a considerable amount of time in Italy over the years, I have family and friends there, and believe me the Italians are no fans of the EU and I'd say about 75% of Italians I've met and discussed brexit with have congratulated me for being from the UK and how great it is that we voted to leave.

A lot of Italians, especially the younger crowd, are also very fond of English youth culture, music and fashions and not just recent culture but historic too. Mods, punks etc

The government cannot win

The government should not have publicly congratulated itself for being well prepared (this is such a Trump move) This is not the time for party politics- they need to admit mistakes and rectify them.
So with issues like testing if they said "we've been slow off the mark and missed out target of testing 100k people a day but you can see that we've increased numbers quickly and hope to hit 100k in 2 weeks" then people would have been more forgiving.
Boris owes his cabinet colleagues thanks for managing the country and should be thanking key workers and public for their compliance. I read that our compliance levels were the highest in Europe which is obviously something to be proud of.

@Flaxmeadow I agree I work with a lot of European people and plenty aren't big eu fans either probably a similar mix to the UK kind of 50/50
Some see the ru as a positive some as a negative and some just don't even think about it

You're right- the SAGE names have been released (I read that only some had been revealed)

I believe that the government are due to release more info about their work.

I agree with Flaxmeadow on Brexit. It's very mixed but certainly I've known many people from across Europe who aren't fans of the EU. Of course plenty are but the average man or woman in the street didn't laugh at us over it. Some were horrified, others envied us.

But when it comes to our (mis)handling of Covid we certainly are a laughing stock. Or less laughs and more a horror movie. And not just of Europe. The whole world is shocked at how badly we've cocked it up.

I don't see how it's political to say that. Countries worldwide both left and right wing have almost all handled it far better than we have.

@ToffeeYoghurt but Spain and Italy haven't fared much better than us or Belgium and Netherlands if you look at per million capita rate
Some European countries have done well so far but we still don't know the long term picture for anyone yet

You're right Easily thats true.
I happen to think they locked down too late too and they were also slack with their borders. I think Australia and New Zealand did the right thing. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States and Israel acted fast too. It's not just Europe we should look at.

We had more warning than some countries. We saw what was happening in Italy and continued to hold large gatherings, encourage people into crowded public transport, shake hands with ill Covid patients.

But yes we don't yet know how things will go for other countries.

I suspect Germany will continue to handle it well. I've been very impressed with what they've done.

We had more warning than some countries.

Not much more warning. It all happened so fast. March was crazy across Europe

Last week in February, Italy surge in cases
3rd of March, Spain surge in cases
5th first death in the UK
9th Italy lockdown
11th WHO declares pandemic
12th US travel ban
15th Spain lockdown
15th UK over 70s to isolate
17th France lockdown
21st pubs, gyms, clubs UK to close
23rd UK lockdown

The UK, France, Spain, Italy were about a week all behind each other in rises in cases and all locked down at around the same stages in cases. We were just a few days behind France . The UK actually locked down at less deaths (335) than Italy did (463)

We saw what was happening in Italy and continued to hold large gatherings, encourage people into crowded public transport, shake hands with ill Covid patients

Some of this was back in February though, before, or about the same time as, the surge in cases in Italy at the end of that month.

The Cheltenham festival though was the 10th of March, before Spain and France had locked down, but yes that should have been stopped

"Not much more warning. It all happened so fast. March was crazy across Europe"

It was literally in China in mid January and when Taiwan shut their borders and Korea started getting hundreds of cases a couple of weeks later, Europe should have taken notice.

They had over a month.

It was pure arrogance and thinking that this was an Asian problem.

Not only did our government insanely close its eyes to what it could learn from Italy and Spain, its representatives are now going around claiming that people envy us. It's absolutely shameful.

My first thought was that Brexit might play a role as far as it concerns the media coverage in EU countries. There might be some feelings of resentment lingering.

I think becuase the feeling is or was that italy were the first country outside china to get seriously affected and there was a sense of them having to scramble to deal with it. At the time lots of papers would comment that lockdown would not be accepted which is why i think italy went for a partial lockdown but then had to go full lockdown when it didn't work.

In the UK we had the benefit of being able to learn from their experiences. This obviously helped ib terms of restructing hospiral services etc.

What didnt help was comments on herd immunity just washing hands etc. I remember feeling at the time this made catching it inevitable and was just hoping youd be in the majority that survived.

It wasnt until 2 weeks before lockdown i followed the number threads on here i began to realise the deaths etc this would mean.

Now i know that sars mers and swine flu to a lesser extent burned themselves oit and didnt really blow up like corona has and normalcy bias meant you put it to the back of your mind and got on with things. This is understandable for a lay person

For the government with significant extra information and access to experts to prepare so badly was shocking. We did lockdown later than we should and it fet like the government was forced into it by schools not having enough staff soporys events and retailers proactively closing

Now we have the highest deaths in europe despite being 2 weeks behind italy and all the government is saying is well you cant really compare and it is per capita that matters. Their focus seemed to be the economy and making sure brexit happens and not realising the deaths that would result. This gave the impression of having no real plan priorites being all wrong and deaths being much higher than they needed to be.

I am sure there are many Tories who are equally shocked and saddened. Turning this into a political issue is a red herring and undermining tactic.

(Those people who have been trying to do that on this thread I mean)

With regard to Cheltenham and football matches etc - people have to take some responsibility for their own actions IMO. When I saw the crowds at Cheltenham I couldn't believe my eyes, there is not a chance I would have gone, even if I had had a ticket.

(For context, I had already told my kids by then that we would not be taking the flights that were booked for the Easter holidays and I was prepared to lose the cost of them, which was considerable)

Just to clarify, I am Irish.

But I am so amazed by how much hate is aimed at the English on here and people are proud of it

A post saying 'oh yeah we hate indians' would be accepted

As an aside. This is a long game. Absolutely no one can say how well a country has done.

The countries that do 'well' will be the ones, in 2 years that have a covid death toll that is about average. But also has a decent economy, and the death toll from that being small to average.

It was literally in China in mid January and when Taiwan shut their borders and Korea started getting hundreds of cases a couple of weeks later, Europe should have taken notice.

But SARS1, and other Asian epidemics, had been largely contained in the past

They had over a month.

But in mid January, the 14th to be precise, the WHO was still saying that there was "no clear evidence of human to human transmission"

It was pure arrogance and thinking that this was an Asian problem.

On February 12th the WHO said the situation in China was "stabilised". This was one week before the huge surge in cases in Lombardy.

The arrogance was the WHO.

Peggysgettingcrazy

Just to clarify, I am Irish...

I'm English and just want to say thank you Peggy. What you said means a lot right now.

We will never know WHY we have such a high death toll, because they will never tell us the truth.

They won't tell us if it is because of PPE, or because they wouldn't close the borders, or because we went into lockdown too late. They won't tell us if it is because some groups cannot absorb VitD, or because we are a nation of overweight, unhealthy crunch potatoes. They won't tell us if it is because 11 million people working in central London spend 1-2 hours commuting on overcrowded trains or in other cities they are just as overcrowded on rubbish transport that takes longer than it should.

crunch potatoes of course.

Also, they won't tell us that whilst they roll out singers to give us a night of lovely singing on VE Day, we as a country don't actually give a damn about our elderly and are quite happy to have them out of sight in care homes so we don't have to do anything for them.

We watched Italy. We had a crystal ball, a gift that Italy did not have. We had a powerful letter to the media from a medic in Italy, begging us not to make the same mistakes.

We squandered it.

My friends in other countries were absolutely gobsmacked by our lack of response.

The main Italian newspaper ran a piece about our lack of inaction and the PM's 'priorities'. It said "Boris Johnson is literally washing his hands of Covid 19."

My Italian colleague hot footed it out of the UK back in March and returned to Italy at the height of the pandemic there because he was so concerned at how our government was reacting.