UK currently has highest coronavirus death rate in the world.

[bevelino]

COVID-19: UK currently has highest coronavirus death rate in the world, researchers say. The U.K. is a developed country with first class scientists and resources. Why is the death rate so high? Furthermore, why does the government continually boast everyday about how well they are doing tackling covid?

The government need to be held more accountable because their handling of covid is a complete disaster.

I’m not necessarily attributing Portugal’s lower death rate to this, I suspect temperatures and sun March to May played a part, infection rates are much higher this winter.
I sure infection rate comparisons are still unreliable between countries, death rates per 100,00 population will be more indicative, although not perfect.
I’m just observing that the difference in compliance is startling. Ideas of “the British” being compliant and stoical are due a revision.

Police refused to enforce the Law on face coverings so public indoor spaces became virus hotspots. Hopefully that is changing now.

Where was this do you have link to the police refusing?

I think Portuguese police are armed. Might help persuade people.

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay

It’s happened in all the lockdowns. The three points at which cases have started to fall in the last year are just after lockdowns are introduced. They start to rise again when restrictions are released. In the case of the latest one, it looks like cases start falling in line with when the restrictions were tightened up on the 26th Dec, before the start of the official national lockdown.

There’s nothing that suggests that non-compliance plays a huge part in driving death rates.

The areas that were the latest to come out of tier 2 a few days after the 26th saw the sharpest rises around the new year period.

Restrictions and lockdowns work to get the cases down and then as you say when they're released they go up again. If we'd kept the November measures through December we would not be in this mess through January. That's where the new variant and people not following rules are used as a crutch to absolve the government.

So this is the world's highest death rate for this week, based on each country's own method of recording, which for the Uk is to have died within 28 days of a positive test, and is very different for countries around the world. So it doesn't take into account a more accurate comparison of excess deaths, as that needs to be averaged out over a longer period, and is still not hugely accurate due to variations and reliability around the world in recording excess deaths.

I mean, it's not great at all, but as we are just at the peak of hospital admissions and just starting on a downward trend on new case numbers, it's not completely suprising that we have a very high death rate and is actually much less shocking than the newspaper headlines (and the OP's title) actual suggest.

@FunkBus

"The UK are notoriously non compliant"

Are we? The UK just sit back and let the government do whatever they feel like, moan continuously and then vote the same people in again. There are more protests against the government in supposedly compliant Asian countries than I ever see in the UK.

Sadly in the UK, many people believe propaganda and the Daily Mail headlines; just look at the fishing industry and Brexit.

In terms of the virus, it is clear that most people do adhere to the regulations - or consider risk quite well. When we lockdown, the R rate falls significantly quite quickly.

The government failings are multiple and significant.

I think you can potentially hold the government to account for not reacting fast enough last year, and with the benefit of hindsight we could have worked together with Ireland, closed borders and kept it out. And continued to do so over the summer and only allowed essential travel.

But I don't think this second wave is their fault except for opening up too soon in the summer.

Unfortunately we had a Brexit-focused government and they had no idea what to do. Had we had David Cameron's government in charge they might have worked more effectively.

But the elephant in the room is the fact that so many British people are too fat, which raises the risk of complications in the younger age groups. It's all very well blaming the government, but people need to take responsibility for themselves.

@PinkyParrot

I think Portuguese police are armed. Might help persuade people.

It's not about being armed it's about tough measures to enforce the law. The police in this country are great at picking off women in 1's and 2's who are sitting on a bench or walking in a field, but when it comes to dealing with groups and anti-social behaviour they're far less willing to step in.

And it was previous Tory governments that cut the police to the bone which has contributed to this.

The police are far less cowardly outside the UK. People are no less compliant here than anywhere else, you just get away with a lot more here.

When it comes to Brits complaining i'd agree this is an issue. The constant whinging over masks, when other countries just get on with it.

My husband and I both had to travel back to the U.K. during this period, separately and at different times. It was a huge shock to experience the difference. I felt so unsafe

Last April? When we were in strict lockdown? Erm yeah right. It was probably at its safest at that point.

I don't think you can blame the population for this - it's poor, indecisive unenforceable government policy. We're an embarrassment given the wealth and resources we have

It's not about being armed it's about tough measures to enforce the law

They are fining people - what laws do you want - I suspect it would take a change to our legal system, which probably would take months/years of law lords wrangling, to allow arresting, imprisoning and prosecuting for not wearing a facemask- I don't know but suspect the human rights act affects this too.

Demographics are completely different in the different countries. Unfortunately people love to visit and travel to the UK allowing rapid spread. Care home numbers are much higher than in many countries. Population density is different. Mask wearing was resisted initially, unlike many Asian countries. However testing was very late, and schools badly managed although everyone with school age children saw virtually no distancing outside schools and teens have mostly carried on as usual, so yes, covidiots have contributed to the spread.

Until it is over and statisticians can work on all the variables we won't know what could have been done better. Vaccine development and rollout has been the best in the world, but please don't mention that, we like it all to be negative 🤦‍♀️

Absolutely agree that if Labour and Corbyn had been in charge, the press would have been calling for his resignation, Daily Mail etc would have been screaming blue murder about the horrendous death rate, much more emotional coverage designed to stoke up dissent and anger, discussion of their ineptitude day in day out.
I think the coverage has been low key considering. Look at the passionate discussions on here about lockdown and how it's impacting on peoples' lives (understandably), but very little groundswell of anger about the number of deaths. Bbc derided as gloomongers when they've discussed death figures, victims of covid othered as being frail, elderly, on their way out....pretty sure if the msm had shown more indignation people would gave taken it more seriously.

We also have quite an older population demographic than some developing nations

@GingerandTilly

Every country has covidiots but most have governments setting policies to mitigate this and control the virus. Whereas our own government seem to be a bunch of covidiots.

Sending kids back to school for one day before lock down,
Preventing teachers and kids wearing masks in classrooms (World Health Health Organisation recommends from 6+)
Repeatedly leaving it too late to lockdown costing thousands of lives,
Questionable procurement practices for PPE etc.,
Sending infected people back into care homes,
Encouraging people to eat out help out in the middle of a pandemic,
Forcing ecv and cv back to work,
Fining parents for keeping their kids out of school even if they have health issues,
Not controlling the spread via our boarders,
Not providing sufficient furlough support forcing people back to work because they haven’t got adequate financial support,
Not setting up efficient track and tracing systems,
Ignoring scientific advice about schools,
Ignoring scientific advice about Christmas mixing,
Ignoring scientific advice about circuit breakers in autumn.

Absolutely spot on. Imagine thinking it's just the UK that have people breaking rules. The accountability lies with those in charge. No one else. Sick of people defending them when so many mistakes have been made and so many people have lost their lives

@samanthawashington the best in the world for vaccine rollout is israel- 20% of the population. Israel is a very polarized country, but even they managed that.

We don't have the oldest population - not even in the top 10 countries in term of proportion of old people.

We aren't the most densely populated- asian cities are far more densely populated, singapore is twice as densely populated as london.

London isn't the most visited city in the world, that honour belongs to Paris.We aren't part of schengen.

We have failed and if we continue to believe that we have done well, thousands more people would die. We would then be forced to go for 4th and 5th lockdowns, and the vaccine in itself doesn't guarantee that the virus can't be spread. We could be in on and off lockdowns for the next year, are you looking forward to that?

@redsquirrelfan

My husband and I both had to travel back to the U.K. during this period, separately and at different times. It was a huge shock to experience the difference. I felt so unsafe

Last April? When we were in strict lockdown? Erm yeah right. It was probably at its safest at that point.

The UK was never in strict lockdown and flights continued to come in

GingerandTilly nailed it as above.

And...
the way this has been handled has been a disgrace. Ignoring scientists until the last minute, giving contracts and positions to well-connected but not competent or experienced, only now requiring negative tests from incoming travellers

This Government are beyond pathetic. They flip flop all over the place and have knee jerk reactions purely down to public opinion and then the public have no idea what they're supposed to be doing.

And where the hell is Dido Harding? She's Boris's and Little Matty Hancock's mate, where is she? The 'world beating' (world beating according to Boris) cost £10 BILLION, and she is nowhere to be seen because it doesn't work.
I know people who downloaded it, and were in contact with someone diagnosed with covid who had also downloaded it... not a peep from this world beating system. Boris and his crew are no doubt hoping we will forget this, and focus on vaccines. Well... I won't be forgetting

All I can wish for is... when this is all over, there is a proper enquiry into the shambles of a Government who are responsible for us having this world beating death rate.

@Lanzo

We have a lot of overweight, unhealthy people. We have an older population. These things are the main risk factors when it comes to dying of covid. Our health service is also not as good as some health services in other wealthy nations.

This..

People will analyse data from covid for years. Lockdowns, population age and existing health, crowding, compliance with hygiene, compliance with SI, support for SI.
Support for all sectors, inc self employed, etc

Capacity of existing health services, crowding in schools, how close cities are together communting between areas.

It won't be one factor they'll be lots of that's that could have been done better and worse.

But long term stuff needs to be taken into account economy, economic recovery, knock on effect of treatments being slowed down, and MH.

@onlychildandhamster I didn't say we were top of all those issues, just that they were high on our list of issues, and the demographics need to be taken into account when looking at the death rate. There are multiple issues involved in death rates, not least the new variant which developed in this country. It is simplistic and not statistically reasonable to just look at death rates without taking all other factors into account. Even time of year and climate are factors.

I did say we could have done things better, for sure.

I'd rather look at real statistics than shit on the internet personally.

They mean the current rate, not overall
We're at, or about to hit our peak, other countries are behind or ahead of us on their curve. This pattern has happened throughout the pandemic

That makes sense, but as PPs have said there are also issues of how deaths are counted and the differing demographics
Some kind of "baseline" where everyone was doing the same just isn't possible, so while there's no doubt we're doing pretty badly a lot of it's the usual scamper for the most alarming headline

Nothing new there then

Why do people not want to take responsibility for their own actions? Why is it always someone else's fault?

The government have been shameful in their handling of the pandemic but you cannot put all the blame on them. Look at all the people who crowded into the pubs for one last night of drinking before they were closed. All the people during lockdown who decided to go to beaches and parks so they ended up overcrowded, and not forgetting the idiots who think the coronavirus is a conspiracy and go on group protest marches.

We are all responsible for our own actions.

@Mamamia456 we are also responsible for keeping them in power for 10 years. That is our mistake.

The U.K. has a perfect storm of lots of factors which can increase covid deaths.

It’s the combination of all of these together rather than pointing out that other countries are more vulnerable on individual risk factors which will give the true bigger picture of cause and effect.

Government
Cultural attitudes eg skepticism
General risk taking attitude
Lack of utalitarianism
Tabloid press
Global hub airport
Densely populated capital city with high degree of global connectedness
Climate/vitamin D deficiency
General poor health
Elderly population
Use of care homes rather than care at home culture
Lack of heath service funding
High degree of centralisation of services/ decision making
Neoliberal ideology influencing policy making
Economy already struggling
Political instability prior to crisis
Pre-occupation with Brexit
High level of obesity in population
High degree of income inequality
Corruption
Culture of low intervention government/ideological objection to police state/surveillance state
Culture of long commutes to work
Hospitality a bigger chunk of the economy than other countries
Dominic’s trip
Confusion over rules
Smaller house sizes so staying home harder
Smaller households so isolation harder so more likely to break rules
Culture of men esp not seeking medical treatment early compared to other cultures
Big supermarkets compared to smaller local shop culture
Big schools from big areas rather than local so more mixing
Shopping as leisure
High use of public transport
General lack of cleanliness
Method of death recording
Cold weather makes ventilating indoor space less appealing
Cold weather makes meeting outdoors less appealing
Sedentary lifestyles
BAME population more vulnerable
British people very annual foreign holiday focussed
Culture of living away at university
Culture of dual income families so more mixing of potential exposure
Low oily fish consumption
Culture of passive aggressive rebellion
PM not fit for the job