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

Italy didn't actually do that much.

My exh took the kids to southern Italy on 2nd March. No one was checked on the way in. The came home on March 8th. It was locked down a couple of days later.

When they locked down the North, they didn't anticipate, the fairly obvious problem. That people moved south to family or second homes.

There was lots italy didnt do.

And now they have started reducing restrictions, who know what will happen. There could be a horrific surge in case in Italy in 2 weeks.

There were photos of people meeting up with boyfriends and girlfriends, parents etc Wearing masks and then pulling them down to kiss. Not great mask hygine.

No one knows how well anyone has handled it. We won't know for a few years.

@Flaxmeadow I loved your post totally hit the nail on the head

I think people outside the UK feel about the UK CV19 situation the way they feel about the USA-

They really don't

@peggysgettingcrazy we won’t know indeed for a long time. And in the end nobody will be a ‘winner’ or ‘loser’ in a pandemic. We are all losers. But that isn’t stopping people here grasping at any titbit they can possibly find to fit their narrative that the UK always does things the worst. The thing about care homes that @Hagisonthehill mentioned upstream hadn’t even occurred to me. The majority are indeed privately owned and should have their own stash of PPE. Why aren’t we then looking at why that was the case. But seems to me it is now being touted as a government responsibility. Could you even imagine the media if we had had people lying unattended in hospital corridors like Italy and China. We haven’t. So we have to find other things to beat ourselves up about. Of course things have not been perfect. Of course they haven’t. But they haven’t been perfect anywhere! Even in countries who are patting themselves on the back - I am looking at with interest at the next year. I think this has taken everybody by surprise - the scale of this thing.

Before everyone starts bashing the UK or any other government have a look at the October bulletin released by WHO regarding actions recommended for pandemics and epidemics. It’s interesting that testing and contact tracing is NOT recommended. This was issued to member countries a month before the first cases were identified.
WHO always looked flustered and panicked when interviewed. The broadcast where they said “Test, test, test” was very Hollywoodesque.

We love "othering " people in this country. Other people are a problem and obviously worse than us. We are brilliant.
We've already started assuming that seniors and "the vulnerable " can sit at home while we go out and pretend it's all gone away.

@rosie1959 I agree! It’s the best post I have read for a while because it absolutely hits the nail on the head. And so it deserves being said again because it is so bloody true.

Other countries aren't talking about the UK but MN is rammed with very middle class UK liberal progressives, who think they are being talked about and who can't stand this country and never miss a chance to put it down. It's because of this paranoia, and also a romanticised view of the continent, that they feel the need to join in some imaginary hatred of the UK from abroad. It's all in their heads

@Prontoe

I'm yet to see a post anywhere of someone accusing Whitty, Harries, Vallance et al of fucking up

They're advisors. Not the PM.
Obviously the PM makes the final decision but he would be very stupid to ignore the advice of the team of around 50 scientists.

Govt will obviously heed their advice.

@oralengineer because in October last year we absolutely knew how this was going to play out

I agree that the WHO has made massive problems but the actual real life evidence of South Korea seems to indicate that contact tracing can work.

Fascinating oralengineer. Do you by any chance have a link to the bulletin or is it all on the Who website (sorry to be lazy!)?

@bellinisurge have you seen what they do in South Korea to make it work? Have you studied how they manage it. It is an abuse of civil liberty and whilst many may want that here the vast majority won’t.

Our NHS was not overwhelmed.
If that is the case, and I’m not sure it is, it is because virtually everything else the NHS does has been stopped to make way for it. There is no National Health Service now. It’s a National Covid Centre.

@Bool I totally agree. My best friend works in a care home. She knwo exactly where the blame lies for the lack of ppe. The owners.

I have been appalled that non of the media have mentioned that most of these are private buisnesses. There waa a an owner if a private home having a go because the NHS get PPE vat free and wanting that applied to care homes. Its a private business why would they?

The staff need protectkng, buts that not the government who are wrong there.

And yes I really wish people would stop the 'oh this country is better'. Because we don't know.

Every country reports differently. Every country has different population figures. Every country has different population spread, against its land mass.
Every country has a different culture

And whats happening now, isnt an indicator of what things will look like in 2 years.

And of course looking at my social media on here and on here. Lots of 'social distancing Street parties' ended up as just a free for all normal street party as people got drunk.

If numbers go up in 14-21 days, will peolle be blaming the Government for that? Or remember the people, who had a night of from social distancing, last night.

@bellinisurge I worry sometimes that this desperate need to be non- discriminatory has and will lead to more deaths. We know that this virus discriminates. It discriminates against people who are older. It also discriminates against the BAME community. Also people who have BMI over 30. I would like to see MORE discrimination in our response to this so that we can balance protecting people from the virus with protecting people by stopping the economy tanking (the economy tanking will also cost lives).

@bellinisurge I don’t think most people are saying that we are brilliant and better than others. However I do think that some people in the UK get fed up with the constant propaganda that gets fed into these threads and that is exacerbated by our media here. So we like to rebalance that a little with the actual facts of the matter. That’s all.

fromlittleacorns It was taken off another scientific forum so may not be accessible .
There are some very logical posts on this thread but also some very typical narcissistic “somebody is to blame “ posts.
My own views are that we are probably ahead of the rest of the world on deaths but it it likely that others will catch up and overtake us as this situation pans out. This is due to our fantastic NHS which has successfully given many of our elderly far more years of life than they would have had elsewhere.
Our sensible attitude to not extending life, there are probably many people throughout Europe currently being maintained on ventilators who may never come off them. Along with having a robust approach to DNR. It may not be a popular view but keeping people alive for longer produces a vulnerable population.
The government have acted rapidly to increase capacity and we haven’t yet exceeded it.
Do we really care what’s happening everywhere else? We did when it wasn’t us but like every other country we are now focussed on what is happening here. Do they give a shit what’s happening here? No. Embarrassment is a very British preoccupation.
Who cares if we are the laughing stock of Europe it’s a bloody Global crisis not a party where you’ve arrived in fancy dress by mistake !

@oralengineer yep and indeed we are not the laughing stock of Europe. There is no data to suggest we should be and as you say everybody is too busy looking at their own countries response to care about the UK.

I'm yet to see a post anywhere of someone accusing Whitty, Harries, Vallance et al of fucking up

They're advisors. Not the PM.
Obviously the PM makes the final decision but he would be very stupid to ignore the advice of the team of around 50 scientists.

Govt will obviously heed their advice.

To be honest, I wouldn’t be so sure. I’m a scientist (different field), I’ve worked for a different gov department for 15 years and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been told that my advice was politically inconvenient, and then ignored.

twitter.com/politicsjoe_uk/status/1251458390028664832?s=21

Boris Johnson's speech on 3rd Feb tells you all you need to know. While watching Italy and China our govt was positioning to be an economic "superhero", staying open, making economic advances while the rest of the world locked down.

He only really changed his mind when he fell ill. We've seen him what? Once since then?

Why does everyone on MN think that other countries are constantly talking about the UK?

The worldwide media are widely talking about the UK government's poor handling of the affair. Even the Daily Mail have reported on it, with newspaper headlines from around the world. German and Austrian press refer to the UK as "the problem child of Europe" in regards to its handling of the crisis.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8295929/The-world-asks-did-Britain-wrong-coronavirus.html

The NY Times ran a leading opinion article on it (and they've already got plenty of material with Trump).
www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/opinion/boris-johnson-coronavirus-uk.html

And in Australia:
www.smh.com.au/world/europe/biggest-failure-in-a-generation-where-did-britain-go-wrong-20200428-p54o2d.html

My family don't live in uk. They are very laidback - don't worry easily.

They are now very concerned about us living in uk and begging us to "move home".

The world is aghast at how the virus is playing out in uk. The only country with more deaths has over 4 times our population and a known idiot for a leader. Our govt couldn't have fucked this up more if they tried.

"Agree that Italy was taken completely by surprise, no time to prepare"

What do you mean Italy had no time to prepare?

The (UK) Government is constantly criticised in the press for not preparing for this pandemic two or three years ago. Why didn't Italy have a pandemic plan 'ready to go' as one journalist has phrased it criticising us? Surely the Italian Government had a secret warehouse stuffed with PPE and ventilators ready to mobilse at short notice?

We sat watching and even said that people coming back from half term holidays skiing in Italy were fine, no need to quarantine, unless you'd been to a few tiny areas. What a bunch of utter morons. But you know what - most people in the uk were quite happy with that approach at the time. No point crying over spilt milk now.

The NY Times ran a leading opinion article on it (and they've already got plenty of material with Trump).

Written by a British journalist -

"Jenni Russell is a British journalist and broadcaster. She is a columnist for The Times, a contributing writer for The New York Times, and a book reviewer for The Sunday Times. She has been a columnist for The Guardian and written the political column for London Evening Standard."

@Bool
I wasn't necessarily thinking of people outside the UK, but more of people living in the UK