Why are people not more angry about the government's handling of the crisis?

[jobhunter7]

Or are the newspaper not giving an accurate picture of people's feelings?

33,186 deaths recorded so far.

Surely plenty of these people had families and friends?

I suppose they can't really march at the moment.

Johnson’s mate Cameron had, like Johnson, no political vision whatsoever. But he was at least competent, showed up on time, looked smart, read his brief etc. A 1/2 rather Johnson’s 0/2.

"Otherwise your healthcare professionals are up shit creek."
Only if theres a pandemic. And think of the awful waste if its not used, are you saying we should be stockpiling excess ppe in its millions every year, then burning it into the atmosphere!!

"And a six month expired medical gown that might be in 90% condition rather 100% is I’m sure preferable to a school apron."

They wont be allowed to use it full stop if it's out of date or slightly faulty.

What's to be angry about? People didn't do what they were told to in the weeks leading up to the lockdown that could have helped reduce the spread. People need to start taking personal responsibility for things within their control and stop all this reliance on other people looking after them.

Would being angry help me right now

No

I can’t eat anger, I can’t ride to work on anger, it won’t cure an illness.

Id rather focus on getting everyone I care about through this. I have a vote. I can use it come the next election. Though tbh, I don’t think they are doing too bad a job so far... better than America; worse than New Zealand.

Because most people are adults who realise that a pandemic that has devastated the world in a matter of months isn’t something that could have been stopped, even with perfect hindsight?

"And a six month expired medical gown that might be in 90% condition rather 100% is I’m sure preferable to a school apron."

Pretty sure the unions wouldn't allow it!

A lot of people in France, Spain, Italy, Sweden and the US are angry and disappointed too about their governments' response to the crisis and they have responded very differently.

As a government with a libertarian philosophy the Conservatives instinctively wanted to follow the Sweden model and not interfere in how people choose to live their lives but Ferguson's Imperial model scared them into lockdown. The reality is his model overstated first wave deaths as it did in the BSE disaster. Because of Brexit the government had been ignoring disaster planning - PPE and testing requirements - and when they got to it stocks were stuck or committed in other countries. They also woefully focused on ICU needs at the expense of social care impacts. 1) Because they made assumptions based on Italy - who incubated far more patients than the UK have done (we may have learnt from their mistakes or that might be a more nuanced clinical approach - sound in my view) 2) successive governments of both hues have focused on the NHS to the detriment of social care - Labour have no better record on this. Corbyn and MCDonell barely let the phrase social care pass their lips given their NHS fixation. The only person who did try to propose a fix (apart from Norman Lamb and other out of power Tories and Labourites), was Theresa May whose comms at the election buried it in the too toxic pile. The government's messaging at the weekend signalled a return to their more libertarian ethos to let citizens start to make their own, hopefully, intelligent choices. Some people round prefer more authoritarian instruction, others less. A relief no doubt for the govt after having to wade into huge interventionist public spending on employment, furloughs, benefits and other bail-outs which are instinctively way outside a libertarian comfort zone. The scale of these interventions were actually pretty generous compared with other countries.

As the WHO said today it's perfectly possible that there will never be either a vaccine or that Covid will die out and that we might have to learn to live with it as we do HIV.

I think we can best explain the public's response in terms of the Kubler Ross stages of grief, which include disbelief, anger, shock, grief and sadness before we reach acceptance. For all parts of society this has been an immense shock - government, business, health and care and as individuals. We will take some time to get used to living with Covid.

In the meantime it's hard to really assess how well the government have done across a range of measures. Preparedness was poor, emergency medicine good, rehabilitation poor and social care inadequate. But other interventions on lockdown and economic and benefits measures good, better than many. But in my mind it's way too early to say. We are at the moment of the first seismic shocks and eruption being felt, we have not yet experienced the tidal waves, further eruptions and after shocks. Hold on! It's going to be a bumpy ride and we will all react differently.

Why is you your anger not directed at the negligent Chinese government who covered up the outbreak until it was too late?
China alerted the world to the pandemic potential of Covid 19 at the end of January (Ajn 24th to be precise, and arguably before), with an in-depth study, printed in English, in the Lancet explicitly warning of it’s pandemic potential.
The British government did basically nothing till mid March.
Don’t try to rewrite history.

@CendrillonSings
Plenty of countries, both developed and developing, have managed single digit or low double digit deaths/per million of population. The U.K. is heading toward 500. Nothing to do with “stopping it in its tracks”. Just a question of competence.

I don't think anyone signed up to be PM during a pandemic. No one has the answers. Other countries aren't counting care home and excess deaths. Not saying Boris is amazing but what purpose is getting angry?

hina alerted the world to the pandemic potential of Covid 19 at the end of January (Ajn 24th to be precise, and arguably before), with an in-depth study, printed in English, in the Lancet explicitly warning of it’s pandemic potential.
The British government did basically nothing till mid March.
Don’t try to rewrite history.

Even when there’s overwhelming evidence that the virus that originated in China can be traced back as far as October 2019? And that’s the start...don’t re-write history? You have no clue of the history clearly.

Where is the government counting excess deaths? Have not seen these on the charts. Would love to see this announced.

My view is the handling of PPE provision and testing is piss poor.

Beyond that I can't help think people aren't more angry because if you read many threads on here:

• people are fed up of lockdown, fair enough, although like to bend the rules to how they think it applies to them
• don't want any contact tracing as consider it a violation of privacy
• wouldn't take a vaccine if offered anyway as it's been 'rushed' and 'not tested properly'
• don't want to participate in the randomised testing as swabbing is unpleasant and body autonomy is more important
• think it's not that bad anyway and/or the economy is more important and they need to work

So in those circumstances you're going to have these daily numbers.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing!
I do not think you can blame the CURRENT Gov for not being prepared, when they had only been in Gov since December.
You CAN blame the Gov for actions taken or not taken as the pandemic grew.
You CAN blame the previous Tory Gov for a lack of action after the 2016 simulation. What actions were recommended, and what were taken, by each department.
According to one newspaper article PPE was not mentioned in the cygnus report.

I am probably against a Lockdown as such, because I think the economic damamge is too severe, and will take years to recover. However, the Gov had no choice because there was a lot of media pressure, and some parents were already removing their children from school.
That said, I would prefer what is known as a 'smart' lockdown. There were certainly questions over the large gatherings, such as Cheltenham, and some football match, that maybe these could have been cancelled, eg gatherings over 50 people.
So, I think the Gov made a mistake in not cancelling large gatherings.

The lack of testing. This has been credited with a lack of materials; the reagent (whatever that is), and swabs, etc. But that said, testing does not cure the virus, so am not sure how it actually works.

There have been problems with PPE, but I am not sure whether this was actually the Gov or NHS, and it also highlights the ridiculous situation of all disposable PPE, which has to be discarded and detroyed after being worn for 2-3 hours.
There have definitely been problems with the procuement of PPE, and we can see that some items arrived that have not been up to standard.
So going forward, we have to have the ability to manaufacture this in the UK, rather than rely on imports.

A lot of deaths have occurred in Care Homes, but whose decision was it to send them out from hospital? Was this a decision made by the Gov, the NHS, individual Trusts? From what I understand the NHS were following the usual protocols that had been developed for a flu pandemic. It also suggests the virus was circulating in hospitals before we were aware of it.

The daily briefing which states the number of deaths. This gives the impression of people dying around me, but frankly I know of no one who has had the virus.
So, I am inclined to think that any alternative Gov we would probably be in a similar position.

I think if people want to be angry at something, be angry at covid, not the Government.

@Bouledeneige
A lot of people in France, Spain, Italy, Sweden and the US are angry and disappointed too about their governments' response to the crisis and they have responded very differently.
All these governments have indeed fared poorly. Among them, Italy was perhaps the most unfortunate as it has such an elderly population, and was the first wave to hit Europe, owing I believe in part to a high concentration of Chinese-Italian trade, flying directly from China’s second most affected city, straight into Northern regions of Italy. Yes, arguably they should have seen it coming also.

@TabbyMumz
Honestly, the fact that Johnson was boasting of shaking hands with Covid patients at the beginning of March sums it up really. He’s not a serious man and I suspect he thought he could bumble and bluster Britain through, what he imagined, would be a bit of fuss over nothing. And this is where we are today.

Anger just makes me feel bad and doesn't solve anything, so I stay positive. Even when things are bad.

ALso, I think the Gov could have banned inward flights (passengers), but the WHO criticised Trump heavily, when he did so in Feb

What does being angry at things we can't change actually achieve?

We don’t have the army or police to enforce anything,we were told to stay home but a lot of people didn’t listen,we should have stopped all flights

Cam, it didnt bother me in the slightest about the hand shaking, why does it bother you. You can find fault in anything if you look for it. I think hes just very personable and wanted to show people he was shaking their hand and grateful for what they are doing. If he hadnt done that people would be moaning and saying hes too snobby to shake hands.

Because hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Because no country has come out of this looking good

Because being angry at something we can’t change will achieve what?

Soft lockdown was the right call for England, we don’t have the army on our streets telling us to get back inside and not to Asda. I don’t want to live in we country that would treat citizens like that. No not everyone stayed home but the majority did and that stopped are nhs being over whelmed- which was are aim.

It’s a pandemic, people were going to die...people will continue to die. That’s how pandemics work

@howdidwegetheremary
There might be evidence that it “might” date back to October. There is also evidence suggesting it might have already arrived in Europe at the end of December. There are thousands of viruses going round at any one time. You honestly think the Chinese could have identified and catalogued a totally new virus, with symptoms similar to a hundred other diseases “just like that”. “easy peasy”. You haven’t a clue. Yes, the local government dithered a week or two in December once they’ were already pretty sure they were dealing with something new, and then arguably the central government dithered another week.
but the whole world knew as much as China did about this since mid January - if they had they cared to listen and, of course, act.
The likes of Britain didn’t act until Mid March.
No more excuses, please.

I agree. The lack outrage is baffling. We have the highest death rate in Europe. We had all the same resources, even more in most cases and we had more lead time. We watched what was unfolding in Italy and still did fucking nothing. It's gross.