Things go wrong in other countries, too

[avenueq]

I don't think it's helpful how irate people get about the UK government's failings. Yes there are plenty but this is a whole new situation and there are plenty of other countries making mistakes.
Before you ask - I'm not from the UK, but that means I have insight what happens elsewhere,
So to start -
The Eu has been slow in vaccine acquisition

In Austria, vaccinations could not start yet in some areas as not enogh needles (!) had been ordered

Countries with the most severe lockdown did not necessarily solve the Problem (Spain)

Countries who had supposedly excellent track and trace also had a second wave (Germany)

Anyone got other examples?

Nice to see Australian premier say we rushed out our vaccine approval and
"They're not testing batches of vaccines before they're disseminated across the population, is my understanding," Morrison said, insisting Australia would carry out such testing".

I hope he is asked to retract in the same way NYT was asked to retract it's statement that we are mix and matching vaccines, which is also untrue. So much bullshit being reported as fact.

@BigWoollyJumpers

Nice to see Australian premier say we rushed out our vaccine approval and "They're not testing batches of vaccines before they're disseminated across the population, is my understanding," Morrison said, insisting Australia would carry out such testing".

I hope he is asked to retract in the same way NYT was asked to retract it's statement that we are mix and matching vaccines, which is also untrue. So much bullshit being reported as fact.

He’s saying that to cover himself as Australia doesn’t start vaccinating until March!!

MedicineHat

Thanks. I agree population density may play a part but there are some places with higher population density than the UK who seem to have done better both in terms of infection rates and deaths. It'll be interesting to see how important (or not) population density is as the data is analysed in the years ahead.

China sentenced a woman to four years in prison LAST WEEK, following a closed trial, for the crime of uploading some clips to youtube in February of interviews with Wuhan residents. For contradicting the official Chinese government narrative that the virus was mild and under control, she was accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. There's an article about it here if you want to read more.

China had at least two previous close calls with potential pandemics originating from wet markets, in SARS and bird flu, and scientists had been warning about the prevalence of bat coronaviruses in the markets for over ten years. It was an entirely foreseeable problem, and the government's response was to... do absolutely nothing. Then for the first few months of the pandemic they knowingly covered up the severity of the disease and their own failure to contain it, imprisoning and 'disappearing' the first people to speak out about it, which doubtless led to many preventable deaths among Chinese citizens and may have contributed to its spread beyond their own borders.

Regardless of your position on stricter lockdowns (and I would hope that however much you support tougher measures, no-one would be in favour of forcibly removing sick toddlers from their parents or letting children starve to death while their parents beg for help on social media), this rewriting of events to suggest that the Chinese authorities were a model for how to handle a pandemic is disgusting and needs to stop. Chinese citizens gave up their lives and freedom to get the truth out - the people whose only response is to praise their government should be fucking ashamed of yourselves, and maybe pay a bit more attention to the rest of the world instead of assuming the entire planet revolves around Britain and Boris Johnson.

Interesting articles Pyscho. Yes no matter how we might criticise the U.K. or any other western / EU country for what they have or haven’t done, none of them have done things like that to their citizens

I'm not interested in other countries, neither their vaccination rates nor whether they're laughing at us or not.

In this country our PM, when people were dying of Covid already, told his citizens to carry on shaking hands as that what he was going to do.

@psychomath

China sentenced a woman to four years in prison LAST WEEK, following a closed trial, for the crime of uploading some clips to youtube in February of interviews with Wuhan residents. For contradicting the official Chinese government narrative that the virus was mild and under control, she was accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. There's an article about it here if you want to read more.

China had at least two previous close calls with potential pandemics originating from wet markets, in SARS and bird flu, and scientists had been warning about the prevalence of bat coronaviruses in the markets for over ten years. It was an entirely foreseeable problem, and the government's response was to... do absolutely nothing. Then for the first few months of the pandemic they knowingly covered up the severity of the disease and their own failure to contain it, imprisoning and 'disappearing' the first people to speak out about it, which doubtless led to many preventable deaths among Chinese citizens and may have contributed to its spread beyond their own borders.

Regardless of your position on stricter lockdowns (and I would hope that however much you support tougher measures, no-one would be in favour of forcibly removing sick toddlers from their parents or letting children starve to death while their parents beg for help on social media), this rewriting of events to suggest that the Chinese authorities were a model for how to handle a pandemic is disgusting and needs to stop. Chinese citizens gave up their lives and freedom to get the truth out - the people whose only response is to praise their government should be fucking ashamed of yourselves, and maybe pay a bit more attention to the rest of the world instead of assuming the entire planet revolves around Britain and Boris Johnson.

Well said

@blalalala

They do but it does not defend the government's actions. I believe if Michael Gove or Jeremy Hunt had become Tory leader, there would not have been the delays in responses in March, September and December that have cost many lives.

That is true they don't mind the public hating them or their actions. They would just do what they thought was needed.

Boris and co seem to want to be liked and please everyone. Which is mad as their constant unwillingness to upset public has exactly the opposite affect.

What? We approved it first but have been so slow to roll it out

Slow? 1 million people have been vaccinated already and that has included the Christmas period and using the more complex Pfizer vaccine. Meanwhile in the EU...

“EU countries in blame game over sluggish vaccine rollout”

www.ft.com/content/f2646ac5-aedd-4542-a211-9be83c465c6e

This is a very interesting thread but it didnt take long for the usual suspects to come out claiming all sorts. We are certainly not a laughing stock. If anyone wants to live in a government state in order for the rates to go down - you do realise that you will have to adhere to very strict criteria. No stating you cannot wear a mask because of xx reason, no saying your MH isnt good and you just MUST meet with various people. No bleating that you cannot contain your children when they go off to meet their friends. Be prepared to show papers and certificates in order to do things.

No, I didnt think so.

There is so much rudeness on MN. Keyboard warriors making the most outlandish claims about Boris murdering people.

Both Spain and Germany had very severe lockdowns and still it didnt end up changing very much in the end.

I do hope that the vaccine is rolled out quickly. I dont think the NHS is the right part of government to do this. Much too slow, dont want to make a decision in cse it all goes wrong so lets have another meeting and invite a few other people so that we can ALL have fingers pointed at us if it goes wrong.

We need some strong in industry to lead this (maybe Andy Street) or perhaps Hunt. He has proved to say sensible things but the lefties hate him. I wonder though what Corbyn, Mcdonnell and Abbott would have done?

@sashagabadon Australia won't start vaccinating until March as there is no mechanism by which to speed up approval of the vaccines like the emergency use approach in the UK. Australia has to wait until all the info is available before it is approved (or not). They have also said it would not be in the interests of the population to rush the approval given the current low numbers and potential to have less trust and therefore take up. If they can begin in March and complete by October I'll still be happy with that!

I personally think the anger area from the fact the government, when Jeremy Hunt was health security ran a "mock" disaster situation to see how well the NHS would cope, in 2016, called the Cygnus Report (available on Google).
In that, it concluded that without higher funding, and better resources, the NHS would not cope at all.
Instead of immediately acting on it as you would expect, like other countries who ran similar mock disaster situations, they sat on the result and actually cut funding.
Hence why when this did start to be a bigger problem than Boris first thought, there was a lack of working in date PPE, lack of beds, lack of clinical and other staff, lack of everything, due to the lack of investment and improvement over the previous Tory governments including both coalitions.
I also think Boris ignoring scientists, ignoring when Cummings had his "eye test to Barnard Castle" and ignoring the original COBRA meetings, plus the failed track and trace costing billions, private contracts given to their mates resulting in nothing but costing millions, the lack of support for many self employed individuals, and the promises to ring fence the elderly being a total lie didn't help.
Whilst other countries are struggling, the EU has had financial help for member states which we couldn't have access to due to Brexit, they certainly didn't go for a daft scheme like Eat Out To Help Out either.

UK and European Government's problem is that they haven't sufficiently analysed why many other countries have had miniscule death rates.

Countries with low serum vitamin d3 deficiency due to sunlight, diet or government dietary supplementation have fared much much better.

Here's a graphic of the UK's major spikes in local authorities versus dates. I think it's sorted for latitude, but you wouldn't have guessed it because the virus has behaved just as a seasonal virus should.

The more northerly the latitude the sooner the UV levels decrease to stop vitamin D3 assimilation, the sooner the coronavirus spikes.

If every UK adult supplemented with daily 4000IU vit d3 tomorrow, the lockdown would probably be called off in 4 weeks - the time required to raise serum levels.

Here's a similar effect on a European scale.

European covid 19 cases overlayed with the angle of the sun over horizon and UV intensity

Mother nature leaves her tracks. We can either choose to ignore them, disbelieve and doubt them or actually use them to help us

Db lives in Japan and we communicate regularly on family zoom so I have heard a lot about what has been going on there.
Their ‘eat out to help out’ scheme was even better than ours (if you’re a covid virus) because it included a ‘travel to help out’ scheme to encourage people to get back on public transport.

Back in the spring the Japanese shortage of ppe was such that people were being asked to donate waterproof clothing to make it from.

However the thing he is bemused about re the UK’s approach is how little emphasis we have on ventilation with ‘hands face space’ instead of the Three Cs which has been the message there for a very long time now.

I find it astonishing actually that so many people can just shrug off this government's ineptitude, which is much greater than all countries making mistakes. Locking down too late, not closing borders,, not understanding the spread in care homes are all understandable the first time.

Inexcusable is the amount of money thrown at PPE, where companies do not exist, and are cronies of the government.
Inexcusable is the amount of money thrown at setting up Nightingale Hospitals as a PR exercise which they knew they could never staff
Inexcusable is the amount of money thrown at a bungled track & trace system when we need one which works.

I could go on and of course there are good things. Vaccinations, fingers crossed. The furlough scheme, although it exists all over the works.

However this government has deliberately wasted billions of our money, billions, when it won't give nurses a pay rise & when it took a footballer to feed hungry children.

However this government has deliberately wasted billions of our money, billions, when it won't give nurses a pay rise & when it took a footballer to feed hungry children
public money is 'spaffed up the wall' and for an encore they piss on nurses and hungry children

@Yohoheaveho

However this government has deliberately wasted billions of our money, billions, when it won't give nurses a pay rise & when it took a footballer to feed hungry children public money is 'spaffed up the wall' and for an encore they piss on nurses and hungry children

I think that pretty much sums up the anger yes

Another thing is how the tories have used this crisis as a way to handout multi-million-pound contracts of public money to their friends and acquaintances, and how they somehow get away with it.

The more I think about it the worse it gets. But hey, all governments are bad right, so let's not give good ol' Boris too much of a hard time. It's not his fault there's a global pandemic!

I sense the anger but remember when the dust finally settles in say 2022 etc there will be the obligatory over priced (paid by all of us!) public enquiry taking years and years and costing millions only to conclude....lessons need to be learnt! Eyes will roll but nobody will be held accountable as the untouchable gather round to save each other and then get knighted for services to whatever etc etc. Predictably!

Anyone guess anything different?

Both Spain and Germany had very severe lockdowns and still it didnt end up changing very much in the end

Thats rubbish, check out their infection rates.

I do hope that the vaccine is rolled out quickly. I dont think the NHS is the right part of government to do this. Much too slow, dont want to make a decision in cse it all goes wrong so lets have another meeting and invite a few other people so that we can ALL have fingers pointed at us if it goes wrong
We need some strong in industry to lead this (maybe Andy Street) or perhaps Hunt. He has proved to say sensible things but the lefties hate him

Jeez how much fucking time do you think we have? that will take too much time to reorganize
and talking of planning why the fuck does a retired GP have to fill out 21 forms inc ones of fire, building safety and radicalisation before they can administer a vaccine?
Hunt has no credibility in the NHS, he is responsible for many years of underfunding.
Street ran a supermarket, how does that qualify him to run a vaccination program? or is it because he is a tory?

I wonder though what Corbyn, Mcdonnell and Abbott would have done?

Better than Johnson, a man who can't even manage basic contraception.

www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/germany-extends-lockdown-until-january-31-and-tightens-restrictions?fbclid=IwAR1M30BbJvBiFDUyEYQ_VdNsmgI3rp-aiuMBAEWOBKLHD45ir8koY-dYVZo

Here's a summary of how Germany are handling extended lockdown. Measures including an additional 10 days paid leave per parent (20 for a single parent) and published step plan of how schools would return.

Speaking as a 'leftie' - horrible condescending term by the way - I would walk over hot coals currently to have Jeremy Hunt in charge. Words I never thought I'd say.

To compare the number of vaccinations in the UK and Germany properly, you'd have to compare the same time period, as the first vaccinations are going to take place at a different speed compared with later vaccinations due to the long run-up time prior to the first day of vaccinating, during which plenty of appointments could be arranged with less haste.

So, taking the first 10 days after the first vaccination:

No. of reported vaccinations in Germany between 27.12.2020 and 05.01.2021 - 316,962 www.rtl.de/cms/corona-impfung-in-deutschland-zahlen-nach-bundeslaendern-so-viele-menschen-sind-schon-geimpft-4678222.html

No. of reported vaccinations in UK between 08.12.2020 and 19.12.2020 (also first 10 days) = 350,000
news.sky.com/story/covid-19-350-000-people-in-uk-receive-first-coronavirus-jab-prime-minister-says-12167480

Divided by 10 days = 31,696 a day in Germany and 35,000 a day in the UK, in the first 10 days after vaccinations were introduced.

As the German population is 25% larger than the UK's, Germany would actually need to vaccinate 25% more people than the UK per day if it wanted to keep up.

To be fair, if you’d read the Guardian over the past year, you’d probably be like many of these posters. It has been comically dramatic and loves slagging off anything British. It’s like misery porn for leftie intelligentsia.