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.

Unless / until we know exactly how many died OF covid, not with it - The figures are meaningless.

The butcher´s bill is shocking.

• Boris shaking hands with Covid patients.

• Didn't close borders before it got here.

• Too slow to lock down.

• 111 was a disaster: I remember the early days when they were only offering tests to those who had come from a Covid hot spot like Italy or China or if you had been in contact with someone. This carried on for weeks when it was obvious community transmission was a thing.

• Testing and tracing was then largely forgotten for a long time.

• Not enough PPE and supplies including ventilators for the NHS.

-Politicians like Cummings and Margaret Ferrier undermining the message and public trust.

• Weak legislation for police to work with. What is local? Still, the police could have been a lot better with cracking down. None of this wishy washy policing by consent nonsense.

-Then months of PR telling people masks were useless and could actually be dangerous (while the NHS struggled to get them).

• Later masks are now magically effective . Again, policing this is a joke.

-Took us ages to get anywhere near the testing capacity we needed.

-Still no proper checks at airports.

-Still no proper checks on self isolation. This could be fixed by putting up people in hotels and paying them to isolate like many other countries have done.

-Knowingly discharging old patients from hospitals to care homes without first testing them. Absolute disgrace.

The only good thing we've managed to do is the vaccine and we're hardly the only country having success with it.

As PPs have said, countries count their deaths from covid in different ways. Also, some countries lie about their stats. As PP said, Russia being a case in point.

www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4975

Yes, UK rates are crap but you really can't trust the stats of other countries. And, if we go by Worldometer, we aren't the worst, overall..yet!

Tbf, you can’t trust the U.K. ones either. We’ve undercounted by far more than we’ve overcounted.

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.

This. “Opened up”, lol - of course it hasn’t, don’t be silly.

Didn't close borders before it got here.

And if he had done that, he’d have been accused of being some Brexiteering isolationist mini Trump by plenty of posters on here.

40% of deaths are in care homes, hospital deaths[whatever that means exactly] are supposed to be 33%.
So only 27% outside of either of those two.
Are we perhaps not looking in the right places exactly, to find out what is going wrong?

@Lifeisabeach09 but you can trust UK figures?

It's not that easy to hide deaths, especially in countries with democratic governments

The biggest problem is Boris. He isn’t proactive and only takes action once it reaches crisis point. He treated it like a joke initially. Allowing people to go skiing for the February half term was stupid. We needed to stop flights and to quarantine and test returning citizens, similar to Australia. Then lock down quicker too. The whole washing hands thing was nonsense compared to wearing masks which took months to bring in. The slow response also led to chopping and changing the rules constantly. The rules are confusing and hard to keep up so people no longer take them seriously. And allowing untested patients to return to care homes from hospitals was an utter disgrace.

Boris promised schools would close last and pubs etc would be scarified first. Instead no action was taken at the right time and it was all shut around the same time. On Sunday morning school are safe. Monday evening schools must close.

We are a very individualistic society. Voting for brexit and the Tories. We want to pay less tax and don’t care about the single mums needing food banks etc, “we deserve our money” while the single mums (and their kids) “deserve their poverty”. We don’t invest in the future through healthcare and preventative measures. Tories have private education and healthcare anyway. They also trust in the private sector when they’ve proven to fail, time and time again. Not allowing Public Health England to lead on test and trace was a disaster.

The only good thing has been the vaccine roll out. But again it could have been better if we had bother to invest in our manufacturing sector and could produce more ourselves.

I blame Boris and his government for making cuts and preparing to sell on the NHS, which was all that was on his mind. Plus ignoring top scientists, not having any sort of plan for the very real possibility of a pandemic and and making knee jerk decisions without enough forward planning once the pandemic DID hit.

Lax governmental policy. Keeping the borders open for jollies / holidays for months and months when other countries closed

But when other countries closed borders they were called racists. Not that I care about him but Trump was heavily criticised when he put restrictions on travel from China (31st January) and as it turned out, he was absolutely right to do it. You can't win.

England is also the most densely populated country in Europe and no, don't deny it because it is and yes England is a "country".

Track and Trace and the Covid app was a good idea but only worked if people people got involved and did we? Not really

Italy and Spain have good health care systems and they have numbers similar to the UK but we don't see them battered around the head for it on these boards

On the 11th of March, our chancellor Rishi Sunak set out one of the most left wing budgets this country had ever seen. It was astounding really, when you go back and watch what he said

Should the Gov't be held to account, yes but the whining is off the scale. There was a topic recently with pages dedicated to criticising Boris's hair ffs.

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

The Government never once even mentioned "herd immunity", that was the press

The UK has taken a middle of the road approach all the way through and has not done things much differently to any other major European country

Patrick Vallance talked about it a lot at one point in particular.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54252272

But when other countries closed borders they were called racists. Not that I care about him but Trump was heavily criticised when he put restrictions on travel from China (31st January) and as it turned out, he was absolutely right to do it. You can't win.

Agree with this and everything else @Flaxmeadow said.

Too little too late. The government have made the same mistake over and over. A wait and see approach in a pandemic is deadly, as we are sadly now seeing. Unforgivable.

Test and trace app does work, people didn't and don't use it.

'remember the early days when they were only offering tests to those who had come from a Covid hot spot like Italy or China or if you had been in contact with someone. This carried on for weeks when it was obvious community transmission was a thing.'

You make it sound like they just couldn't be arsed. As the testing capacity was built, and it has been an extraordinary task from 1k a day to 500k a day, they had to target people with symptoms requiring hospitalisation or those who had been to a high risk area.

'Italy and Spain have good health care systems and they have numbers similar to the UK but we don't see them battered around the head for it on these boards'

Yes it is bizarre isn't it. Some on mn like to compare us to NZ, an isolated country miles away from anywhere with a tiny population yet Italy and Spain who are very similar to our infection rates and sad death rates get conveniently ignored.

IIRC it was a deliberate choice to restrict testing once out of containment phase as they didn’t think it was necessary. I think they admitted it was a mistake and apologised for it.

Not Boris obviously, either Vallance or Whitty.

'it was a deliberate choice to restrict testing once out of containment phase'

Target testing.

Just seen an interesting article by reuters

mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN29Q0OD?__twitter_impression=true
On Britain's COVID-19 frontline, medics and patients fight for life

Now we know that during the first wave there were more people over 80 who went to ICU. Now they don't because its generally felt they don't have a good chance of survival if they get to that stage.

So the following paragraphs are even more shocking in that context:

"This time around what we're finding is that patients aren't faring as well if they need to be invasively ventilated," he told Reuters.

"Our mortality probably in the first wave for patients coming onto intensive care was around 40%. This time around we find that the mortality is about 80%."

He explained that unlike in the first wave, all COVID-19 patients in the hospital now automatically receive remdesivir and dexamethasone after they were found to be effective.

That means that those who end up in ICU during the second wave of the pandemic are more likely to be the sickest patients, because they have not responded to those treatments.

Shamsuddin added that he did not know whether a highly transmissible new variant of the disease found in the UK also contributed to higher death rates.

He said intensive care staff, who have been boosted by medics and nurses from other wards during the pandemic to maintain one-on-one care, were not used to such high levels of death.

"At the moment we're just all keeping our heads down and just getting on with it," he said.

"Intensive care hospitals are meant to be a place where we treat patients and make them better. The difficulty here is that even though we try our best and we throw everything at the patients, it just doesn't seem to be working."

I would be really interested in knowing what was going on in other countries.

Those percentages are really bad.

Our mortality probably in the first wave for patients coming onto intensive care was around 40%. This time around we find that the mortality is about 80%.

He explained that unlike in the first wave, all COVID-19 patients in the hospital now automatically receive remdesivir and dexamethasone after they were found to be effective

That means that those who end up in ICU during the second wave of the pandemic are more likely to be the sickest patients, because they have not responded to those treatments

He explains why the percentage is higher now ----
That means that those who end up in ICU during the second wave of the pandemic are more likely to be the sickest patients
Those who end up in ICU now are the sickest patients, they have not responded to the medication, unlike last time where lots ended up in ICU not just the sickest.
We need to up the maths teaching in this country people are hopeless.

My maths is fine thanks.

These percentages are bad. Especially when you consider the sheer numbers involved.

It means that we have HUGE numbers numbers we can still do nothing for and we have no treatment for at all.

It doesn't answer whether more people are getting more sick either.

I am well aware they are only putting those who don't respond in ICU.

Are there more people not responding to the treatment etc etc.

Previously a lot of people in ICU were much older too.

Those percentages are horrendous. Could it show a positive that remdesivir and dexamethasoneare keeping half the patients out of ICU, which will improve their long-term recovery prospects, has stopped hospitals from becoming overwhelmed, and are saving lives? Or does it mean the expected higher viral loads of the new variant are making people more sick? If we compare relative percentages for hospital admission, ICU admissions and deaths for London in October and December, would that give an idea? I feel too frightened to look.

The Government’s repeatedly sluggish response when told by scientists (& by other countries/the WHO /by teachers) that timely intervention is necessary has been a major failing.

Outsourcing test and trace was a huge error - we see in the success of the roll out of the vaccine as it’s by health professionals locally - they know how to reach & communicate with their populations.

Borders remaining open has been a repeated failure and precursor to large new waves (Feb half term and summer we imported new cases that went straight into schools/communities) Shapps even abandoned his own Spanish holiday when he closed the ‘air corridor’ a day after travelling there

Schools - safe for a day?! Cherry picking years that return. Mutant algorithm. A summer of catch up that never materialised. Still no plan announced for how they will reopen more safely as many parents struggle to home school and work.

Announcing 3 household mixing for 5 days indoors for Christmas while in November lockdown. Just ludicrous

So much unnecessary spending (not investment in public services) Nightingale hospitals/ an expensive app costing far more than other countries (eg Ireland) / project Moonshite for unreliable testing In schools. Huge expenditure on the eat out to help out scheme - was subsidising people to eat McDonalds really a necessary strategy? That money could have gone into furlough which actually is a positive policy for job retention.

Of course the pandemic was unexpected (though the response would have been better if they had properly prepared).I wonder what it would actually take for some people to realise that the Government’s response has been the opposite of world beating? The highest death rate/ vast medium term economic deficit & educational crisis don’t seem to worry them as ‘Boris is doing his best’.