Why are more people not raising this issue?

[Mozfan]

That the government failed to put London into a tier 3 after the November lockdown, despite rising infection rates, possibly even higher than those who were put into a tier 3, like my area of the North West for example.

I very much doubt we’d be in such a mess now if they’d acted then and moved them into a 3.

Oh well if that’s what you think should have happened...

Look, the government has a ton of advisors as well as the costs and benefits of keeping the economy going vs going into lockdown. This is all quite new, there is no road map and ‘lockdown’ is easy if you think someone else will pay for it.

I am glad that the government did lock down. But I am very worried about the financial impact of lockdown. Surely you can see that it isn’t a precise science?

This is the thing about being in government. You can’t just appease Mozfan from Mumsnet and do what she thinks should happen based on her view of what she sees happening in her street; you’ve got to consider the wider population, the economy, the impact on business, the impact on morale, the effect of lockdown fatigue and whether locking down too early would likely result in it right when it was most important to have greatest lockdown compliance; you have to follow the advice of policy advisors, health advisors, behavioural analysts - not all of whom agree on the best course of action - and you have to make decisions which your government and the opposition are likely to support.

Whilst some people seem to think it’s just Boris up there pulling random ideas out of his hat and getting it spectacularly wrong, there’s far more to it than that.

They took (another) chance, it went wrong (again).

The government get advice, but it is clear they are not really listening to it.

I agree with you OP. This govt have never been ahead of the virus, they’re always too late to lock down them too early to open up things (eat out to help out).
Also if they’d locked down completely before Xmas instead of afterwards the hospitals would now not be overwhelmed and my MIL wouldn’t have had her very urgent cancer operation cancelled last week. Their stupid decisions have lead to thousands upon thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Because not everyone agrees with you

www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4798

Agree. It was so predictable

But if you said it at the time (which I did many times) you got accused of being a bitter northerner

And Liverpool too. Should have been put in tier 3 much sooner but govt was clearly “rewarding” them by allowing their pubs to remain open in the run up to Christmas

At the time I was angry that my area remained in tier 3. Now I am thankful as I think being in tier 3 during December has stopped our rates from rocketing.

Why are more people not raising this? Are you joking? It’s on here every day!

Because it was months ago now and Most of us have moved on with our lives 🤦‍♀️

@Heyahun

Because it was months ago now and Most of us have moved on with our lives 🤦‍♀️

Well, yes, except all the businesses who worked hard to meet govt covid secure crap and were made to close anyway, with no evidence pointing to hospitality as a problematic source of infection.

Join the queue of too little too late with this government.

I think they’ve had a massive job, constant changing goalposts etc

Despite it all they’ve just been utterly incompetent

Agree OP. We seem to wait until the fire is rampaging before we do anything, making a bigger overall detrimental impact on health, education and economy. It's a virus and will do its thing but ffs, we could fight it more effectively than we have done. It's sickening.

When Kent was put straight into Tier 3 and then 4 I expected London and Essex to be too, given that they were starting to spike alongside us. This has led to thousands of souls unnecessarily losing their lives. The pictures of Oxford street packed for Xmas shopping have not aged well.

@Heyahun

Because it was months ago now and Most of us have moved on with our lives 🤦‍♀️

Not sure I would call being locked down again with schools shut, the NHS teetering on the brink and deaths the highest ever 'moving on with our lives'.

We are all in a much worse situation today - especially schools having had to close - because of the bad decisions before and around Christmas.

We weren't allowed to mix over Christmas in the south east though. So theoretically London hospitals should have reached their peak of covid patients if everyone just did as they were asked. How about a thread where we don't pit London against the north? I live in London but come from the north west and feel really despondent to hear Northerners berating Londoners . Most of us don't have a pot to piss in either, loads of us voted labour not the Tories. It's not the public living in London who have created more of a north south divide during this pandemic. Infact if you are looking to play the blame game look to those typical labour voting areas that voted Tory last time.

Yeah, racists fucks voted for Brexit and Boris Johnson. You made your choice and now you are complaining.

Ho hum. Go cuddle your blue passport. It was worth it eh?

We are not bashing Londoners. Londoners did not decide what tier they were in during December

It’s the govt that made that decision

We hear about advisors and listening to the science....but they can't only listen to science. From a scientist /Virologists point of view the best thing to minimise the spread and contain the virus would probably be for everyone to stay indoors and not go out....except that wouldnt work because a certain amount of critical workers are needed to keep the country functioning at a very basic level. (A lot of MN seem unaware of this while they wfh) ...and a lot of the most critical workers are public sector jobs...so then you have to consider whether some other jobs are low enough risk to continue so that taxes get paid...and suddenly it's not just scientists but economists they have to listen to as well.

I'm not defending the Government , I think they made some massive mistakes (no proper quarantining being one) and think that whilst they had furlough already in place and set up they could potentially have started a lockdown earlier, or at least made a decision on schools. By waiting they probably/possibly necessitated a longer lockdown and thus cost businesses more money. But it's a balancing act of getting some money into the economy while massively spending on restrictions.

I think people aren't 'raising it' because they've moved on to be dealing with what needs to be done now that London has declared a major incident.

Yes, we'll need to go over decision making, not just for London, but for all restrictions and the impact they made. In the hope that in any future pandemics, we can make better decisions.

But when that involves pretty much the same people as those currently working in front line (actually, or in planning and modelling what comes next), then it is not going to have the same priority as current issues.

Because as someone else has said not everyone agrees I certainly don’t agree.