how do people in countries other than the UK feel about their government?

[waterlane]

There is a general feeling here that our government have let this situation happen and people are very angry towards them. I wondered how citizens of other countries felt towards their government and if the sentiment is the same, particularly in countries such as Italy, France and Germany where the figures are similar

message from MNHQ - thread title amended, as requested by the OP

I have family in France & Ireland who are not that thrilled with some of their govs decisions.

A family friend is Italian & her parents are the worst affected part & she is very stressed about it.

Another Swedish friend disagrees with the original no lockdown stance.

It's all very dependent on people's individual views & situations.

I believe the British media have made the biggest difference for us. If you look at Le Monde, El Pais etc you see much calmer, matter of fact reporting rather than complete saturation on the situation.

I agree with this, you can look at the same paper and see the same stories next to each other "thousands dying", "hospitals are empty with spare beds", "why we need stricter lockdowns", "anti mask protest", etc. There are constant contradictions. There is no perfect solution.

I am very astonished if other Europeans are all delighted & calm about each government's response.

Why have we not invested properly in public health teams who know what the F they are doing

This is always an interesting line of argument. However, many of those ex public health and NHS people, now work in those very companies who have the consultancy contracts to do the work.

My dear old dad was a Public Health Inspector in the 60's/70's but from then, public health got better. Less diseases to control, better living and working conditions. The depts were, for all the right reasons at the time, run down. It's the continuing debate, do you keep people in post "in case' something happens, how long do you do that for, and at what cost?

I am in Italy and agree with SgtMajorMummy (I was thinking about you the other day- we were on early Coronavirus threads together, hope you are well)

I think in the spring the population was almost 100% behind the government. It did what it had to do. Total lockdown. No exemptions. Rule breakers were few and they were dealt with severely.

And it worked.

To the point that Italy had, apart from leaving your contact details in restaurants and wearing masks, a completely normal summer. Holidaymakers came, teenagers partied and went to clubs, Italians travelled.

The problem was nobody planned for social distancing on school transport etc.

So now schools have been generally closed or blended apart from some specific age groups but are due to open on the 7th.

People are tired of it now, because the govt did so well in March and everyone was behind them. We were the Petri dish of Europe. What's happening now didn't need to. I am in a province (made up of five towns) which had 31 positive cases and 6 deaths in the spring. All over 65s. Last week we had 185 cases in one day.

The regions should never have been opened up. The UK had eat out to help out, we had holiday vouchers. Each region should have opened things up as it saw fit but not to outsiders.

That said, I'm still happier to be here than I think I would be under Boris.

[smile]@TheSilentStars
The summer was a strange time, wasn’t it?
We managed a few days self catering near Lake Garda and the ferry zig-zagging between the deathly silent Veneto side and the bustling Trentino one is something I’ll never forget.
We feel as if the circle is inevitably closing in. People we know have had it (ex classmates, workers in the office next door) so it’s either get it or wait for your turn to be vaccinated...

@Randomschoolworker19

Manchester school worker here so effectively been in lockkdown throughout. Over 70,000 dead and counting and an economy in ruins. Its been an absolute shit show.

Boris Johnson shaking hands with Covid patients.

Herd immunity then not herd immunity.

Community testing (remember 111 in the early days?)

Lack of ventilators and PPE for the NHS.

Went into lockkdown too late, left it too early (especially in the North).

Ending Furlough then not. How are businesses meant to plan?

Not enough testing for a long time. Track and trace is still a disgrace.

Dominic Cummings.

Schools are safe. Lol

Just on your point there about the economy... You ate complaning about deaths and the economy.... In a cou try like ours it was a choice the economy or health.... Annoying both of these 2 things effect each other... If we had far less deaths the economy would be in a much much worse shape than it is now... Please don't compare us too newzealand or Australia as everyone knows they are not comparable atall...

I'm not saying the government hasn't made mistakes ( I think we can all admit aswell that a corbyn government would have made Mistakes aswell) but let's all remember the real culprit is a country that was off celebrating new year happily while the rest of the world Suffers.

Brit in France.

I don't have a great understanding of French politics, and I know that a lot of my French friends / colleagues complain about Macron. But my impression is that French ministers talk, speak and act like rational, sensible, grown-ups tbh and that they are motivated by a very high level of concern for the well-being of the population as a whole.
I think they are doing their best to juggle the needs of the economy and public health: they will never do enough to satisfy people at either end of the political spectrum but they don't have any ideological reason not to help financially (unlike the Tories).

I also think they are being quite pragmatic in some of the decisions they make, but I don't know how much of that is 'French-ness' or specific to this government. e.g. they know that social distancing is the best option, but they know it's just not possible in most schools, so they have made masks compulsory throughout schools. They are doing their damnedest to keep schools open because "egalité".
Also, they reduced the isolation period from 14 to 7 days early on: better to have more people isolating for a shorter period than fewer overall. This also helps schools stay open, as teachers only need to isolate for 1 week. There is nothing like the same level of school disruption here as in the UK. In old folk homes, people can visit their relatives face-to-face with masks, because life for the residents would be unbearable without family contact for months on end - another more pragmatic decision.

There have been some mis-steps along the way, but nothing on the scale of the Dominic Cummings debacle.

Weak points.. Like everyone else in Europe they threw caution to the wind over summer.

It's hard to compare France's figures to other countries (and make an assessment of how well the gouv have done or otherwise) because of one massive gaping hole in their toolbox: the government has never been able to prevent mixing in private homes as it is against the constitution. They can only advise. As a result, French people have continued to have family gatherings at home throughout, only stopped when we had a full lockdown, where we were required to stay at home unless we had a valid necessary reason for being out. But even that was poorly enforced and largely ignored second time round. Most French people I know will have mixed with family over the Christmas holidays, despite numerous "don't kill granny" ads.

I’m in Denmark and we’ve had much lower numbers of infections and deaths than the U.K.. generally people are not happy with the gov despite the low numbers as there has been some think they’ve made major mistakes. Lots and lots of people don’t think the mink should have been culled, it turned out it was illegal to do this, the gov later went back and put it into law, but only after the mink were culled. There has been some problems also with the disposal of the mink and the compensation for the farmers. This puts into perspective the different scale of the problems I think when the infection and deaths could be so much worse. I’ve not witnessed any rule bending or breaking. Everything is totally shut down now, I think people are pleased that there is a plan put forward - the lock down is total now and will ease in line with the vaccine taking effect. The first things (primary schools) will open on the 17th, then increase from there in line with the epidemiology.

Very interesting to hear different perspectives and opinions, thanks to those who have shared thus far