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.

Personally I think we would have saved lives if we hadn’t had a single lockdown.
We just had Social Distancing and mask wearing.
We were going into summer and I think would have naturally fallen anyway. It rose again as we went into winter snd if anything it was starting to level off or fall in a lot of areas when we had the 2nd lockdown. This led to over crowded streets and stores and everyone trying to do their Christmas over a period of 2-3 weeks instead of about 7 weeks.
The lockdowns I think have led to more lives being lost
Instead of having a socially distant drink with your friends the pubs have shit so everyone is going round to peoples houses to have a drink and there is no social distancing.
I think we needed to open everything up and get on with life and whilst the death rate might have looked horrible. I think compared to what we will end up with it would have been so much less

@Rosehip10 I have no strong option about whether they are a car crash or not. But, I am bamboozled by the feeling in the media that ANY government has sufficient powers of predicting the future in such a way as to be able to get the response right every time. That it has become a political issue possibly says more about all of us than about the government itself. And, dare I say it, possibly says something about the opposition parties!

[quote whatintheheck]@RigaBalsam I'm not trying to defend anything. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but the reality is, no government, anywhere, can prepare for every unknown. And sadly, in the face of an emerging pandemic, the behaviour of large numbers of people, in a hitherto libertarian society, is very difficult to predict and control. The journalists baying for the governments blood now are the same ones who said Covid was an irrelevance back in January. My point is, no can get it right, because no one has dealt with covid before. I would far rather have the recent u turns than let it rage unchecked.[/quote]
As people keep telling you though. They did predict a pandemic could happen the nature of it exactly no. However their response to it has caused excess deaths.

89,243 people it's indefensible. Even shutting the borders would have saved lives.

@whatintheheck

precisely my thoughts. And whilst it is lovely to think the government could 'prepare for a pandemic' - this is such a nebulous idea...noone could predict what the virus would be and how it would behave.

This is not completely true. A coronavirus epidemic was one of the realistic disaster scenarios, based off the first SARS scare. There were a couple of alternatives too, from a new flu strain to a nipah virus.

Properties of pathogens that are likely to give rise to pandemics are well studied in epidemiology. So while no one knew about the exact type of virus that would cause the next big pandemic, we actually knew a lot about how it must behave in order to be successful on the global scale.

However I will add I think they are so far doing great with the vaccine roll out they can equally be praised as well as condemned.

Who is to blame for the NHS being chronically underfunded and stretched to breaking point every winter? It doesn’t matter if no health service in the world could have been prepared for a pandemic, but a decade of Tory policy doesn’t seem to have helped at all

Today 09:18 whatintheheck

@rigabalsam you have neatly emphasised my point! I note you haven't suggested what they could have done differently....

There is a very worrying strategy of ignoring advice until they are forced to act because the PM needs to be liked and doesn’t want to deliver bad news. Squaring up to his responsibilities to the public and making necessary decisions sooner would likely have resulted in a lower Covid death toll and more wriggle room in hospitals.

@SexTrainGlue I couldn't agree more! and can't help but feel that many of the people contributing to this thread haven't troubled themselves to look beyond the headlines at what is happening around the world!

@DenisetheMenace or maybe people could have taken the threat seriously and not have had to be told to stay at home more and cut back on social contacts??

[quote Orf1abc]@Londonnight Look up the Cygnus Report. In 2016 the government were told that we were not prepared for a pandemic, and were warned of the catastrophic effect if they failed to do anything about it. What did they do? Nothing.[/quote]
To be fair, I can remember 'pandemic' featuring on government risk registers right back in the 1980s, so I think plumping for one of the many reviews of contingency planning is a little unrepresentative.

Surely there is a balance to be struck between letting the govt off the hook entirely and blaming them for everything? It doesn’t have to be one or the other, but perhaps this is yet another thing where we have to be polarised

[quote whatintheheck]@SexTrainGlue I couldn't agree more! and can't help but feel that many of the people contributing to this thread haven't troubled themselves to look beyond the headlines at what is happening around the world![/quote]
That isn't true at all. I actually read the German and Danish news most day. People have said they have family in Australia. We have one of the highest death numbers! Why are you wilfully ignoring this! Lives could have been saved and I will say it again if it wasn't for the dither, delay and lack of clarity and leadership.

It seems you can't even look deeper at the British news let alone other countries. Funny that.

@whatintheheck well that’s not strictly true is it, they could have been more prepared, as operation Cygnus showed.

This obviously isn’t the governments fault. Not even I could blame Boris Johnson for creating the virus and the subsequent pandemic. But his handling of it and the resulting death rate should 100% be criticised.

Where do you start, going awol at the beginning and missing important sage meetings meaning he had no idea what the implications of the virus were. Or letting champions league matches with teams from already affected countries go ahead, with thousands of their supporters being able to pour in with no quarantine measures. Unrestricted travel from across the globe for months. Only now, almost a year into this colossal fuck up are we requiring a negative test to land in the UK. Schools, so many lessons to have been learned here but I direct you to last week where the PM was on tv on the Sunday saying schools were safe and would be open and no problems to be seen here. Monday comes and thousands of kids go back to school. Only for 24 hours later schools to be closed. So all those thousands of kids who hadn’t mixed for over 2 weeks over the Christmas holidays, spread their germs for one day and then back into their family homes 🙄. Patients not having negative tests before being punted into care homes. Lack of PPE. Not joining EU scheme for ventilators. Track and trace going to their mates and the utter disaster it has been since then. Dominic Cummings.

Come on. Not even the most hardened Tory can say they’ve done their best can they?

I am astounded by your comments actually. And the way YOU are calling people silly and naïve.

Of course Govt policies/failures have had an impact on our massively high death rate and our smashed economy. I find it quite bizarre that you don't accept that.

Last week, the Govt send over 3 million children back to school. They threatened schools that didn't open with fines.

Is that what you call good governance?

I think they’ve done a sterling job of having people blame their neighbours for having a cup of tea in the garden with their children/parents or going shopping for the rapid spread of the virus in an attempt to abdicate any responsibility for dithering about on decisions and a lack of focus. Things they could have done better include paying everyone an amount equivalent to being on furlough if they have to isolate due to contact with a positive person, having the virus or having symptoms & making it mandatory for employers to furlough staff with children under a certain age when schools are closed. A lot of focus in terms of financial support for business but less so for individuals and it’s individuals you need to follow the stay at home message.

Surely not even the most slow-witted can defend the Govt giving £20 BILLION in contracts to their friends (most famous for a data breach at Talk-Talk!) to set up a test and trace last March - in a system that still does not even begin to work.

Of course the Govt could have done things differently. Its absolutely absurd to say they couldn't have.

Come on. Not even the most hardened Tory can say they’ve done their best can they

Like i said even my dad is pissed off with aspects...

But the things that makes me smirk on these threads is anyone who complains about even a few aspects of what the government is doing ‘hasnt looked at what is happening in the world’ or is ‘bashing boris’, isnt being balanced etc

When the posters who think that boris is great or the government are doing a fab job dont have any complaints at all? Everything the government has done is spot on? Not even one teeeny little gripe?

Not particularly balanced

Scientists have been warning the world that we are due a pandemic because of our farming methods and over population for many years now. But no government is going to say stop reproducing & eating everything that moves. So we have been asleep at the wheel and coasted straight into this imo.

By saying things like "what could the government have done differently" you are absolving the current government of any responsibility, which is obviously never a good idea.

Yes, this is a global pandemic, but some governments absolutely have responded better than others. I would put the current UK government near the very bottom of the list. They basically lurch from missed opportunity to mistake, blunder to blunder, U-turn to U-turn. It's a shambles.

I will say the vaccine effort appears to be, thus far pretty well managed.

We have done atrociously in terms of deaths. Many of those deaths are because of systematic failures. That’s because of poor management.
A friend’s girlfriend arrived in Manchester last summer from Italy. She crossed several borders to get here. She said that at every other border there were obligatory temperature tests, masks etc but to get into the U.K., there was nothing. Why?

Are you kidding? I am astonished anyone would be so lacking in unsettling that they would think politics has nothing to do with how this is panning out. Also amazed you think people are saying they started the pandemic. Really, are you being deliberately obtuse or are you really that ignorant? Honestly, I'm genuinely confused by this op. Mumsnet can be so weird.

Understanding*

whatintheheck

“@DenisetheMenace or maybe people could have taken the threat seriously and not have had to be told to stay at home more and cut back on social contacts??”

Indeed, though most did. Millions have little option but to work outside of the home and the new variant is running rife through schools and workplaces.

There is no defence for the lamentable delays in critical decision making throughout.

We have done appallingly compared to other countries. www.movehub.com/blog/best-and-worst-covid-responses/