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.

@Haffiana and @CherryRoulade - you guys could just use Google, rather than giving out misinformation. Dyson didn't get paid because the order was cancelled when there were enough ventilators: www.forbes.com/sites/daviddawkins/2020/04/24/billionaire-james-dyson-told-thanks-but-no-thanksventilator-order-spiked-by-government-following-reports-of-pr-point-scoring/.

Why is the death rate so high?

Some poor decisions (but similar in other countries) but mainly its sheer bad luck that a mutation causing much higher transmission occurred in the Kent.

There's been mutations in other countries too, so still no excuse for such a high death rate in UK. Please people wake up and stop looking for reasons to excuse this extremely poor performing government. Hold them accountable and remember this all at the next election and do not vote Tory!

The UK variant has a higher rate of transmission. Higher transmission rate = higher death rate.

You cannot compare death rates between the UK and San Marino and Gibralter!
We are a country of 66million. San Marino and Gibralter are 34,000!
That's like talking about the town of Morecambe or Billericay with a big outbreak from an asymptomatic person.

We have done appallingly because this Govt listened to the Science when it suited them and ignored it when it didn't. And knee jerk reactions to every little bit of information passed to them.

And the population lost faith after Dominic Cummings.

And a million other reasons.

[quote onlychildandhamster]@Mamamia456 we are also responsible for keeping them in power for 10 years. That is our mistake.[/quote]
The public gets what the public wants. The public voted for a clown show because he was amusing and funny. Now the joke is on them and they don't like it.

@isitfridayyet1

There's been mutations in other countries too, so still no excuse for such a high death rate in UK. Please people wake up and stop looking for reasons to excuse this extremely poor performing government. Hold them accountable and remember this all at the next election and do not vote Tory!

Of course there have, just not ones that increased transission by 30-50%. That makes a massive difference when you already have a sizeable level of infections in the community. That's why other countries closed their borders to UK travellers. If it hadn't been for the new variant cases would most likely have continued to decline (as they did for the first 3 weeks of the Nov lockdown) and we would have carried on in the tier system until enough people had been vaccinated, presumably around Easter.

@feelingverylazytoday the UK variant has been found in other countries too so not just the UK, so this still doesn't not provide an explanation.

The UKs response has been extremely poor considering our resources. Let's face it the UK have had an embarrassing record so far and the government are hyping up this new variant to use as a distraction for that. If there had been proper measures in place to limit spread which were actually monitored property ( i.e. better than the woeful track and trace which hardly anyone has signed up for), this new variant wouldn't have the opportunity to spread as it has.

The UK being overcrowded is a myth. There isn't one city in the UK in the top 40 European cities for high population density.

@StepOutOfLine eh? We’re the 14th most densely populated country in the world!

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density

The mutation might be slightly down to luck, but it's mostly down to there being unchecked transmission in this country. Every time the virus transmits, there is a chance there will be a new variatiom. The less transmission, the less chance of new variations.

@Em777

The government is a function of the people, both are at fault.

The pandemic has shone a light on the individualistic culture that dominates here. Exceptionalism and fatalism have played their part too. I was amazed in early March when most people I knew thought C19 could not strike here (I used to joke about the “magic air”) and then the defeatist attitude early on of herd immunity.

I’m not that surprised about that being the attitude in March. In Europe, we’re not really used to dealing with those sorts of outbreaks. Within living memory, we’ve never been in the sort of situation where you have to get on top of a disease before it gets on top of you. The U.K. had a bit more warning having seen what happened in Italy & Spain, but I can kind of understand why people early on thought it wouldn’t be an issue here.

Still thinking that any time after the first wave is a bit surprising though. That’s not learning from your own mistakes not just other people’s.

Keeping Heathrow fully open throughout with no testing was beyond imagining stupid and reckless. We are an island FFS, it was relatively simple to control what was coming into the country. But no, 100, 000 dead on the alter of Tory capitalism, and counting...

@lunalucie

Given that we record our deaths differently to other countries I don't think it's a fair comparison. No other country is stupid enough to record any death within 60 days of a positive test as due to Covid.

It's interesting to see other countries getting back to normal and rebelling against their governments as well. Italy and Poland are the latest to open back up against government guidelines. The bbc report from Wuhan was an eye opener, life is normal there considering the videos that we saw back this time last year.

Italy hasn't opened back up.

@Foilball

The mutation might be slightly down to luck, but it's mostly down to there being unchecked transmission in this country. Every time the virus transmits, there is a chance there will be a new variatiom. The less transmission, the less chance of new variations.

Unchecked transmission? Where are you living?

Britain has been under restrictions of varying degress of severity for the past 10 months.

@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.

This!

The way Covid deaths are recorded varies hugely from country to country. Some only record those where Covid was definitely diagnosed, others where there was a positive test, with a varying timescale between test and death. Some include all deaths where the patient had had a positive test, some only those where doctors are certain that it was the Covid that caused the death, rather than something else but the patient also had Covid. In the UK we have a high rate of death from Covid at the moment, but low deaths from other causes.

It's impossible to draw up league tables. In a year or two we will be able to look at excess deaths for an idea of how much death the pandemic caused in each country, which may tell us more about the populations and health care in those countries than how the pandemic was handled.

Italy hasn't opened back up.

They have implemented zones. A bit like our tiers. Some of the country now has more minimal restrictions. So in effect, a lot has opened up

[quote MRex]**@Haffiana* and @CherryRoulade* - you guys could just use Google, rather than giving out misinformation. Dyson didn't get paid because the order was cancelled when there were enough ventilators: www.forbes.com/sites/daviddawkins/2020/04/24/billionaire-james-dyson-told-thanks-but-no-thanksventilator-order-spiked-by-government-following-reports-of-pr-point-scoring/.[/quote]
I could and then I could understand that the press and Dyson do not necessarily tell the whole story.

I expect you'll correct me around Meller, Hanbury Strategy, Public First, PPE Medpro Ltd, Randox, Dragontown Ltd, Globus (Shetland) Limited, Ocean Footprint too.

Can you explain the tendering process to me? Can you tell me the outputs?

No it doesn't. Italy is higher. I think the UK is sixth.

Ok - so we let our leaders/managers off the hook because they couldn't foresee illness, death, unemployment, worsening metal health, impact on health service, impact on working mothers, education etc etc for citizens. And then blame this on the naughty, fat and lazy victims when it comes to pass

So how do you explain that they could foresee transfer from already poor to already rich, the ability to claim the crisis was why they awarded lucrative contracts to chums, the opportunity to make profit, increase profit. They were pretty quick on the uptake then. And then play the victim when it all comes to naught - we did our best and look at the shiny baubles in my other hand.

All hail the vaccine (don't look at how we have only achieved high rates by ignoring manufacturers advice and definitely don't look at best practice in the rest of the world for treating the actually ill and hospitalised) - eyes on the prize!

I like the 'honesty' of the London mayor candidate. He clearly hasn't done PR 101. He oozes contempt. And Allegra the new super nanny. We don't need to worry our pretty stupid heads about things we don't need to worry about.

@Thefeep

No it doesn't. Italy is higher. I think the UK is sixth.

In the last week we do - i.e. current death rate, not overall death rate since the start of the pandemic

According to the Guardian:
"The UK had the highest Covid death toll in the world in the week to 17 January with 16.5 deaths per 1 million people on average, according to Our World in Data."

better than the woeful track and trace which hardly anyone has signed up for

Pretty much everyone has ditched their track and trace. It was another knee jerk reaction by all countries wanting to have something that everyone else had. An anonymous tracing app was never going to work, and hasn't worked in any other country.

Test and trace is effective at low numbers. It worked for Germany to being with, they now find they have not been able to keep up with increasing number of infections either.

Because our government went for herd immunity and that has been obvious from start. Even now with vaccines they aren't entertaining vaccinating anyone working age yet unless they are in top category. It's a live or die situation and you can die no matter what age you are, it isn't as rare as we are being led to believe. People younger in their 40s and 50s are dying and will continue too.

@lucywho123

Italy hasn't opened back up.

They have implemented zones. A bit like our tiers. Some of the country now has more minimal restrictions. So in effect, a lot has opened up

No. There are 2-3 yellow zones. That doesn't mean they are "open". Masks are still obligatory, there's still a curfew. There is still no travel between regions, and in orange and red zones there is no travel between towns.

@Wannabangbang
Because our government went for herd immunity and that has been obvious from start

I think you could be right.
They are letting out different groups at a time. Currently it is the young.