Do people really think Covid is a problem caused by Boris and his government?

[whatintheheck]

I am astounded by some of the comments on here and in the wider press and social media that seem to imply that the situation in the UK is somehow the government's fault. Are people really silly/naive enough to think that? Perhaps a glance at pretty much every other country in the world might give a hint that there are no easy answers. I would love to hear what people think our government could do or have done differently....surely the answer lies in the population adjusting its behaviour until the vaccine is rolled out???? There is always the NZ option of literally shutting the doors, but this has killed their economy. Difficult choices.

@Blessex

I'm not saying we shouldn't have had lockdowns, but we shouldn't be in this position now in the second wave.

Germany has a population of 83million to our 40 million - yet has had 2 million cases, (to our 3.3 million) It has had 50,000 deaths to our 70,000 - which on a population level equates to 561 per million to our 1073 per million.

They had a better test and trace system up and running quickly.

What about the football match in Liverpool in March where 3000 Spanish fans flew over to join 10,000 UK ones and the horse racing event with 60,000 spectators?

They were two spectacularly the wrong decisions that really got the virus spreading in the early days.

And even this lockdown - it's patently not hard enough. The numbers have started to grow more slowly but R is still estimated at 1.3-1.6.

If you're going to destroy your economy by locking down (and the only other choice is for hundreds of thousands of deaths) then do it properly. Do it fast, hard and short. Dithering around the edges means high deaths and economic erosion.

No, but I do think it’s a problem that has been exacerbated by the government, and particularly Boris’s last minute u-turns. The last few weeks in particular have shown that

But it's an ongoing changing situation. A few weeks ago no one knew the increased risk of the new (UK) variant, a few days ago no one knew much about the Brazilian variant either. Just as back in March and April the emphasis was on fomite transmission, door handles etc, but now we have instructions to wear masks.

Policy changes as knowledge about the virus, and how it spreads, changes.

@MrsFrisbyMouse but if we are going to make comparisons then at least we need to get the numbers right.

The U.K. population is 67m and Germany is 83m. And as Chris Whitty has even said - it is not possible to make these direct comparisons because there are so many factors at play. Germany count their deaths differently from the U.K. With Covid vs from Covid, in hospital vs in home/care homes etc. Remember the big Italian restate of numbers when they included care homes. We also need to factor in the severity of the flu season in previous years - this is why Belgium’s numbers are potentially so high. It is not a simple black and white thing.

@madroid

What about the football match in Liverpool in March where 3000 Spanish fans flew over to join 10,000 UK ones and the horse racing event with 60,000 spectators?

They were two spectacularly the wrong decisions that really got the virus spreading in the early days.

And even this lockdown - it's patently not hard enough. The numbers have started to grow more slowly but R is still estimated at 1.3-1.6.

If you're going to destroy your economy by locking down (and the only other choice is for hundreds of thousands of deaths) then do it properly. Do it fast, hard and short. Dithering around the edges means high deaths and economic erosion.

Oh yes I'd forgotten about the football match, the Cheltenham races and the rugby . There was also the decision to do Eat Out to Help Out, and then open up workplaces and schools simultaneously, making it much harder to work out how / why is was spreading and then putting measures in to prevent this.

I completely understand that the government can't just implement everything that SAGE and other scientists have advised because they do have to protect jobs and the economy, and the well being of those outside of issues caused directly by COVID. But, they have made some spectacularly stupid choices over the course of the last year, that are very hard to understand and justify.

Not caused, entirely. But their choices have made some things a lot worse. They need to listen to SAGE esp Whitty and Van Tam (and not Gupta and Heneghan and VIner) and follow the science.

The vaccine roll out is comparing well to many other countries though, and well done to the scientists for developing it!

@Blessex
Yes, sorry I made a mistake about the population of the UK. And I know that the comparisons aren't the total story right now but you mentioned Germany specifically as somewhere else that was in lockdown.

Regardless, I am intrigued why you want to defend the government so much. The fact is that the test and trace system was not fit for purpose. We didn't even start mass testing until far too late into the pandemic.

Over the summer the levels of covid dropped to fairly manageable levels across the country- due in huge part to the amazing efforts of the country during the lockdown and the continued efforts of everyone to follow the constantly evolving rules.

Then came the end of the summer, cases started to rise and the schools went back (which I fully supported). But test and trace (despite having now had months to prepare and get up to speed), was not able to cope with the increased demand. Any delays in test and trace lead to increased rates of infection. People are contagious c.5 days after exposure - and with a natural R rate of 3, doesn't really need that many delays in the system to increase community infections. This in turn quickly leads to exponential growth, and suddenly once infections are increasing rapidly - test and trace stops working as a suppression method. Leading to the Northern Lockdowns and then to the November lockdown.

We had a chance to get on top of this at the end of the Summer - they missed that by a huge mile.

I presume the Op doesn't work for the NHS and isn't aware that the NHS was directed by the DoH to ONLY get PPE through them as a government block contract was set up.

The same happened for other public services. That's when it came to light that the govt bought sub par PPE.

And re over paid NHS chief execs- if only we valued jobs that did things rather than just pushed money around, like banking. The NHS is highly complex, dealing with multiple professions and one of the jobs where you can be personally prosecuted for the actions of your staff. Given the risk they manage, the complexity and expectations, I don't understand why anyone would want to so it.

@MrsFrisbyMouse it’s not that I enjoy defending the government. I didn’t vote for them last time and won’t be voting for them next time. They have also made mistakes. It’s just that I don’t think looking at other countries with rose tinted specs is right either. I have an ex from a European country and my DH is from another. Lots of colleagues from all over Europe. So I know what is going on in a lot of these countries and it ain’t all rosy there. I just think we are very harsh on ourselves and think that we are shit and other countries are amazing. And that simply isn’t the case. The WHO stipulate that only Covid cases in hospitals need to be counted. So you can bet your life that is what other countries are doing. I am not saying all. But it is not as simple as making these direct comparisons and saying how shit we are. I am just trying to bring a little bit of balance back in. We have this new strain - but the reality is that there will be loads of new strains around the world. It is just that we have world leading genome sequencing in this country so we quickly identify new strains. Our vaccine programme is one of the best in the world. The government have ordered one of the greatest amounts of vaccine per person and have hedged their bets and got a range of many. I don’t know - my way of coping in a total shit situation is to try and find the good things and the positives. It just brings me down more and more to keep reading how shit we are. Yes there have been mistakes. But believe me all countries have their mistakes. I know because I follow them closely. We also have our wins - and at the moment more than some other countries.

twitter.com/justinmadders/status/1347921963881259008?s=19

Detailed explanation of how the government contributed to this mess

[quote Blessex]@ShanghaiDiva you are right. Of course we should have been tougher sooner. But that is so easy to say now in hindsight. The WHO ignored Taiwan’s alarm. Do you really think the U.K. government would go against WHO advice? It’s interesting we hear very little now from the WHO. They have been discredited. Next time maybe we will ignore them and listen to countries like Taiwan.[/quote]
But we did go against the WHO advice. They very publicly condemned the UK’s response in March.

I’ve no love for the WHO nor their refusal to recognise Taiwan, but early on the government absolutely ignored their advice.