"He's done his best in a very difficult situation"...

[fatherbrianeno]

There's a narrative around that our spiralling Covid death rate is due partly to people not obeying the rules properly. Do people who believe this think that New Zealand has only had 25 deaths because their population is so well-behaved? While we head to 100,000 dead?

I think we need reminding that one person alone is to blame - the man whose earliest ambition was to be 'world king', Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Johnson locked down too late while seemingly following a herd immunity strategy.
www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/coronavirus-science-chief-defends-uk-measures-criticism-herd-immunity?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

After the public began independently locking down, forcing him to make it official, Johnson reopened the economy without a working test-and-trace system.
www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/21/outsourced-firms-miss-46-of-covid-test-contacts-in-englands-worst-hit-areas?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

All while allowing people to enter and leave the UK without testing. And giving out over £17 billion of public money in government contracts without tender to his pals.
www.ft.com/content/ee4f2220-9b22-4a4d-87c2-85e8034f8e8c

The blame for situations like this -
www.hsj.co.uk/acute-care/exclusive-london-will-be-overwhelmed-by-covid-in-a-fortnight-says-leaked-nhs-england-briefing/7029264.article

• should be laid at Johnson's door.

If you think "he's done his best in a tough situation", you've been had.

Can anyone name something - anything - that Johnson has done right, and on time?

Johnson locked down too late while seemingly following a herd immunity strategy.

This isn't true. We locked down (#1) at the same rate of infection as other European countries. Earlier than some. Locking down has to be done at the right time and it can be disadvantageous to lock down too early, as well as too late. We also did not follow a herd immunity strategy. Infact there was no mention of it by the government, that was the press

Comparing the UK to a country like NZ is pointless. NZ has a lower population than Yorkshire and a larger land mass than the UK. It is not in of one of the most densley populated places on earth, Western Europe.

The UK has done what most other European countries have done. We have taken a middle of road strategy.

Hindsight is also a wonderful thing OP

@Babyroobs

Ridiculous to compare Nz to the UK. They are a much more isolated Island, three hours of flight time away from Australia, very sparse population and only a couple of very large cities. Much easier to control a virus in these conditions.

Singapore? That’s more densely populated than NZ and managed OK. South Korea have done much better than we have too.

The U.K. have done horrendously badly by just about any measure. I think the media are partly to blame though. Better reporting of how well other countries are doing with comparative numbers would probably help hold the government to account.

If you report that country x is introducing some measures as cases are surging but fail to report that a ‘surge’ is 100 new cases a day in a population roughly the same size as the U.K. rather than 30,000 cases it gives a much rosier view of how the U.K. is doing compared to others.

@EreLongDoneDoDoesDid

Johnson is an incompetent, say-anything, do-anything morality-free wanker who hasn’t got the skills required to run a primary school, let alone a country. He’s clearly slow-witted in the sense that he can’t make quick, dynamic decisions and he’s surrounded by a cabinet of absolute clowns who are literally only there because they’re Yes Men or as duplicitous as he is. He dithers, he delays and he makes a hash of things at every turn.

I said in 2008 when the city I live in was stupid enough to vote this wolf in clown’s clothing as it’s mayor that we were starting something very ugly by elevating him to such high status. Even I didn’t foresee how disastrous it would end up.

Our country isn’t compatible to NZ in terms of its population, population density or transport links, and perhaps we would never have had a shot at having so few dead from Covid, but it could have been a lot less than it is had someone with more integrity and better leadership skills had been in charge.

As for the poster who said that they still thought that this display was better than what might have happened under Corbyn.... wake the fuck up. Corbyn has faults- as does anyone- but he is an empathetic and hardworking man who’d be looking for ways out of this for the benefit of the population at large, not just thinking of ways to slip his hedge fund bloody mates a few quid.

This 100%!! @EreLongDoneDoDoesDid I also believe Corbyn would have done a far better job. The British media would never have allowed it though.

Johnson, all dither and delay, incompetence and corruption.

Hindsight is also a wonderful thing OP

You don’t need hindsight really. You need to lockdown early and get ahead of the virus or it’ll get on top of you was being advised by experts outside the U.K. back at the start of last year. There aren’t many downsides to locking down too early. Hell of a lot to locking down to late and opening too early as we are finding out now.

Oh give it a rest. There's a cabinet and civil service behind Boris. It doesn't all rest with him. We've gone into this third lockdown after the CMO meeting last Monday. It's a fast-moving situation affecting the whole world.

If people choose to ignore the rules/break the law that's on them.

If people choose to ignore the rules/break the law that's on them.

Not entirely. When the public have been given inconsistent rules that don't often make any sense in terms of risk, then people will ignore them.
E.g. at one point you couldn't have more than 6 people around your dinner table but yet could go to a pub or a restaurant. You could have a cleaner in your house but not your mum for a cup of tea...the list goes on and on.

New Zealand is in the arse end of nowhere whereas London is a major world travel hub. New Zealand has approximately the population of London and the land mass of the UK. The comparison is so ludicrous it barely warrants a response, however we should do what we can to counter misinformation when we see it.

There were still flights coming in locally in December when we were banned from travelling to our nearest city..

In fact they are still flying.

You don’t need hindsight really. You need to lockdown early and get ahead of the virus or it’ll get on top of you was being advised by experts outside the U.K. back at the start of last year. There aren’t many downsides to locking down too early. Hell of a lot to locking down to late and opening too early as we are finding out now.

But we didn't lockdown late. We locked down at the same rate of infection as other European countries, not the date on the calender. You have to understand that different countries were at different points in their epidemics. Roughly speaking, we were about a week or 2 behind Italy, about a week behind Spain and just days behind France. So we locked down at that rate. Ireland was just behind us, so they locked down just after us

There wasn't much difference in lockdown strategy when you consider that

I'm not sure that many New Zealanders were in Austrian ski resorts in 2020 where much of the original spreading in Europe took place.

Couldn’t agree more OP. We’re a cautionary tale to the rest of the world. It’s an absolute disgrace.

Even more galling that we should’ve done much better than average, being an island ffs. What was it his Vote Leave pals used to bray about taking control of our borders? People have been flying in and out the whole time. It beggars belief.

By far the most introduced spread of the virus into the UK back in February, March was from Spain. There is a graph somewhere about it. That's not a criticism of those travellers or of Spain and the UK, because back then not as much was known how it was spread

We need to get away from the idea that science and government are all knowing or that they have some kind of magical crystal ball. It's a brand new virus and strategy changes as more is understood. Have mistakes been made, yes of course, but mistakes have been made by many governments across Europe. How do these governments even begin to plan shutting down for a lockdown. The logistics of it is mind boggling

@BlueBaubles12 Initially I felt the government were doing a good job in an unprecedented situation. However, it rapidly became clear that everything they do is too little, too late. The same pattern every time. The piss poor handling of the school closures was textbook Johnson

Exactly this ^ Late action on schools in light of the new strain was depressingly predictable.

As someone upthread said inconsistencies in messaging and frequent policy changes don’t help - examples:

my cleaner is still coming to my home this lockdown. She obviously has to work out the house to earn money and has a family to support and as self employed cannot be furloughed but it’s non essential and household mixing.

2. Johnson told us primary schools were safe last week but the rates were far far higher (Tier 4 here) than when he said, alas, it was unsafe for my DC to return in May.

3. Self isolation due to contact was 14 days but recently changed to 10 (presumably due to non-compliance) but if it needed to be 14days due to incubation period how was it safe to reduce this period?

4. eat out to help out / telling everyone to get back in the office in Aug /Sept despite SAGE encouraging caution

5. lockdown in Nov but at the same tine advising 3 households would be able to mix throughout the country for Christmas. We were in lockdown and hadn’t mixed households for months surely this was unwise to suggest!

Ok some people are deliberately ignoring the public health advice but others genuinely find it hard to keep up & make sense of!

@fatherbrianeno. Yes. Ejaculated during multiple ovulation windows, bang on time.

In terms of his actual job, no.

@Calmandmeasured1: that's called shareholders' return.

Thanks to all those pointing out NZ's low population density ( @EuroTrashed @SnowFields @Babyroobs @partyatthepalace @fallfallfall @Flaxmeadow @PinkTonic ). As @RafalsTheKingOfClay suggests, we could instead compare with Singapore. Another island, with a larger population density than even crowded old us - 8,357.6 compared to our 280.6 according to the UN:

population.un.org/wpp/Download/Files/1_Indicators%20(Standard)/EXCEL_FILES/1_Population/WPP2019_POP_F06_POPULATION_DENSITY.xlsx

In terms of density, Singapore is second only to tiny Monaco so must have a far higher death rate from Covid - but wait - they've only had twenty-nine! How is that possible?!

Singapore has done the right thing, and taken Covid seriously from the beginning: www.cntraveler.com/story/how-singapores-covid-19-response-has-been-a-model-for-others

As I believe Corbyn would have.

I agree we have been utterly incompetent in many areas of this pandemic.

But we aren't utterly incompetent because we didn't do what NZ did.

That's comparing apples and oranges.

It's because of what our government didn't do that would have been best for our country and how our country works.

oops, forgot to put that those numbers are per km²

Singapore has worn face masks for many many years.
I believe their seniors do no go into facility care.
I believe they may also be more resistant to Covid variants due to ongoing frequent exposure.
Population health might mean less diabetics or weight related illnesses.
Different community (hive) mindset, no possibly means no. MN seems to be full of speciality reasons why a person can’t follow rules.

We can come up with hundreds to things that should have been done differently. At the end of the day we have Boris because the UK elected him! He’s had to sort Brexit (cause Cameron quit) and deal with a completely unprecedented situation whilst balancing not only health but the economy! yes he’s messed up a lot but with something that the data changes on a daily basis he’s going to be changing things around in line with this hence the school,
saying people are not following the rules cause they’re unclear .... hands face space has been around since March! If you still not getting then I have no sympathy!

Don’t be ridiculous, of course this highly infectious novel virus isn’t down to Johnson 🙄.

He has without doubt made errors, (Cheltenham, schools being open on Monday...) some of which were clearly bad choices at the time, others wrong with the benefit of hindsight.

What is clear is that France, Italy, Spain, USA, Germany have all struggled too - and they are the countries most like us. I speak regularly to people in France & Spain and people there are saying exactly the same as people here about their governments.
We’re doing some things better too - vaccines!

Comparing us to small, sparsely populated, on-the-way-to-nowhere places like NZ is silly.
The problem is that there are NO good options in this situation.
Closing the borders - easy for NZ, tricky for a country with close links to the rest of W Europe & several massive international transport hubs.
They also have to factor in people’s behaviour (ie the fact that lots of people are selfish idiots). People taking the piss sending kids to school this week for eg. It’s in a large chunk of people’s mentality to stretch the rules - but the balancing act for the govt is that if they go to strong people will not tolerate it.
Not to mention the balance between deaths/the economy, young people’s education vs old people’s lives. I wouldn’t want to make those choices. And they are making them on incomplete and ever changing data.

NZs lockdown strategy is only going to work if they are able to use vaccines developed by other countries (including us!) or they will be locked down forever!
Would you have preferred we closed the borders, locked down in January, closed the schools and everyone just stayed at home till this summer - that’s 18 months!
I know in eg Singapore they test and attack and trace very efficiently and keep on top of things that way but 1) they are a city, 2) the population is accepting of authoritarian rule and very compliant 3) they had practice with SARS. Other countries have had really tough lockdowns - like really not allowed out at all / no mixing except in v strict circumstances with paperwork etc. Many people here would not accept that - even now people are insisting on meeting people for walks, having their support bubbles etc.

I'm interested that no one has mentioned Taiwan yet. Population density much higher than us, much closer to China, so the source of the original outbreak. 7 deaths.

They took very early, very effective action and haven't actually had to lockdown, from what I understand. They had a grip on it before community transmission started and have been very hot on isolating imported cases.

edition.cnn.com/2020/07/10/opinions/taiwan-covid-19-lesson-united-states-chen/index.html

It didn't have to be as bad as it is in this country. It is as bad as it is this country because Johnson is a ditherer, and that might work for some things in politics, but it doesn't work in a pandemic where the earlier you take action, the better.