Why now and why the U.K.?

[Whipituntilitpeaks]

Probably being completely thick here but is it simply because it’s winter, that cases are higher? How does that explain Brazil though?
Also, why has the U.K. been so badly hit?

I have no scientific knowledge or background so the below is simply my assumption based on the reading I have done..... Therefore to be taken with a pinch of salt.

I'm guessing population density is one factor, for a highly transmissible disease, higher population densities will allow a decent spread of the virus.

Regional mobility (ie someone works 15 miles south of their home, their colleague lives 15 miles south of their work, that persons husband works 15 miles south of their home etc etc means that there is a lot of regional mobility to spread the virus).

Also, lack of sunlight and vitamin D deficiencies may be a contributing factor.

Ageing population meaning we have higher numbers of those in the more vulnerable categories.

Also as others have mentioned, our health care system means we may have higher rates of more vulnerable individuals, in countries with less developed health care systems perhaps they would not have survived to start with in order to be available to succumb to covid.

High levels of obesity.

The above is all pure opinion and none of it is fact...... It will be interesting to learn more about all this as time goes on.

I think it is a mixture of all of the above. I also think that @THisbackwithavengeance has summed it up very nicely in the last paragraph.

Our numbers are a mix of us, how we live and our science, the genome sequencing, number of tests etc

In about 5 years time, when all the facts and figures are more completely known, we will know the comparative death rates more accurately.

Anything published now retains the same ambiguities it did at the beginning of the pandemic. As the way deaths are counted has changed, will probably change again as more is known, systems get better, the data will change.

Currently it is, for us the general public, only really useful as an indicator of the pattern of infection and death rates. It is Iive data, that always carries this ambiguity.

I suppose I should add that "us, how we live" means our geography, societal norms, etc. Not us as individuals.

I would say there were a lot of varying reasons, data collection/public attitudes/population density etc. But you really do have to include mismanagement. My BIL was travelling when it all kicked off, straight away every country put measures in place and he said you just strolled into the UK like nothing was happening. We looked at what was happening in Italy and absolutely nothing was put into place here. Things could have been different if as a nation we had heeded that warning.

There's your answer. Eradicating a virus requires the erosion of civil rights and this country isn't at this stage (yet)

Realy? can't socialise, can't see friends, can't see family, can't see a dying relative.....can't leave the house... i think civil rights have been hit v hard for what would appear to be little gain....

Too little too late sums up the UK's response and indeed many other countries.

We eased restrictions too quickly in the summer and too slow to reimpose them in the autumn/winter.

The 5 days of xmas was utter stupidity, only changed at the very last minute, so people carried on with their plans.

Lets all hope and pray the vaccine rollout is a success, not just here but across the world.

Combination of poor decision making, and demographics.

Opening schools with pathetic 'mitigation' measures, meaning asymptomatic children carried it home to families. The schools are safe rubbish that the government spouts is disgraceful.

@Weebitawks

My BIL was travelling when it all kicked off, straight away every country put measures in place and he said you just strolled into the UK like nothing was happening.

There's no doubt the UK was pretty much last at the party when it came to putting any border measures in place but it's not the case that everybody else in the world started putting in measures to check or control individuals "straight away".

I was travelling a lot in Jan/Feb/early March last year (essential worker, transport industry...) and from what I saw some countries in the Far East started putting measures in place (some minor, some major) in place early>mid Feb. OTOH, China flights restrictions aside, it was possible to arrive and enter the likes of States in mid to late Feb with no health checks and the same was the case for some countries in Western Europe.

FWIW during the February crews of flights into the UK were told to report to the Port Health authorities if any passengers on board were displaying Covid symptoms but your BIL is absolutely right in saying that even in early March once aircraft doors opened passengers could walk into the UK without any individual Health Checks.

I suspect the uncomfortable truth is that there is huge transmission within areas which we simply can't close...hospitals, schools (for key workers), supermarkets, factories, postal sorting offices, public transport...

Unpleasant as it is when those around us don't obey the rules, I doubt meeting friends individually and individual playdates in breach of the rules are a big contributor. Studies show that most people seem to be complying.

Students moving back home for Christmas was a huge contributor to spread, apparently.

I also suspect the vaccination centres are a big cause of spread amongst the over-80s. Difficult to know what to do about that one.

Almost as bad as those COVID deniers on Twitter saying my mates got a mate whos got a second cousin twice removed who works for the nhs and they said the wards are empty so it’s a scam hmm

And my Covidiot DSS who says that most of the people who have died of Covid in hospitals were in hospital anyway and that's how they caught it!

He's not SD and he's still socialising. His lodger is a paramedic in London, too, so potentially has a lot of contact with Covid patients.

Shutting borders in March would have been too late anyway. There have been cases identified posthumously where people died with Covid caught in the community in Jan 2020/ Dec 2019. That's only identified where you have appropriate samples retained for analysis. Cases in the community will have been much higher, concealed by normal respiritory illness, lack of testing and not even looking. It was already in the UK long before there was adequate cause for alarm to justify isolating the UK internationally.

• Because the UK tests more accurately and more frequently than most countries in the world

• Because a significant number of covid deaths in the UK occur in care homes in the over 80 -s the average age of covid death in the uk is higher than average life expectancy, which in turn is higher than in many countries itself. ie in other countries, this age group would simply not be alive to die from covid.

• Because of the recording in the UK of any death within 28 days of a positive test being recorded as a death from covid.

By way of balancing the figures out, it should be remembered that the average covid age of death in the UK is just over 81 years of age and that out of a population of 66.6 million, only 38,000 are in hospital being treated for covid.

The UK did not actually lock down that late compared to other countries, it locked down around the same time as The Netherlands and only a few days after Germany and Finland. But it has stayed in a strict lockdown much longer than most European countries. And it is one of the few European countries to impose an internal travel ban on its citizens. Its actually quite strict here when compared on a pan European level.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-52103747

It's easy to point at countries like Thailand and say they lockdown fast and hard and they did really well, but if you start looking at other countries it doesn't quite correlate.
Most large European countries have been similarly affected despite varying strictness of lockdowns - Italy, Spain, France and UK. Germany was initially praised, and indeed they haven't been as badly affected as UK, but they haven't got zero covid like NZ.
And some middle eastern and african countries have had very lacklustre lockdowns and are barely affected, which doesn't make sense to me.

We're moving this thread over to our Coronavirus topic.

As regards the mutant strain, I wouldn’t mind betting that it’s mutated the same (or very similarly) elsewhere - it’s what viruses do - but particularly within the EU ATM, it’s popular to blame it on the U.K.

Yeah, Eat-out... is that why we haven't seen much of Rishi since??

Seems like he is busy printing money

I came on to write exactly what Foxythefox put so eloquently, it is down to 10 years of this government

Because the UK tests more accurately and more frequently than most countries in the world

Yep British exceptionalism.... figures show just 17% get a test when they have symptoms... many carry on going to work.

Folk simply cannot afford to risk no pay and self isolation.

Because a significant number of covid deaths in the UK occur in care homes in the over 80 -s the average age of covid death in the uk is higher than average life expectancy, which in turn is higher than in many countries itself. ie in other countries, this age group would simply not be alive to die from covid

that doesn't explain why we have, by far, the worst excess deaths in europe, which also has high life expectancy etc.

38k people being treated in hospital from ONE disease is horrific.

@BogRollBOGOF

Shutting borders in March would have been too late anyway. There have been cases identified posthumously where people died with Covid caught in the community in Jan 2020/ Dec 2019. That's only identified where you have appropriate samples retained for analysis. Cases in the community will have been much higher, concealed by normal respiritory illness, lack of testing and not even looking. It was already in the UK long before there was adequate cause for alarm to justify isolating the UK internationally

I think similarly. While the uk could (should?) have implemented lockdown a week or 2 earlier in March, despite a lot of MN insisting they knew, and we should have closed borders in January, actually there wasnt a lot of talk of it outside China in January. I think Lockdown happened in Italy the first weekend of March, and a Pandemic was declared on 19th March. That was the day NZ closed all borders and, while they took far stricter and more decisive action, it would always have been more manageable with smaller numbers (for them) and the fact it was already here and circulating (without neccessarily being recognised) long before it was declared a pandemic

@RandomMess

Brazil because huge pockets of poverty incorporating cramped living accommodation etc. Poor provision of healthcare relative to other countries.

And an idiot reactionary denier for a President.

Perfect storm⛈️

...although obviously (a lot) more mistakes have been made since then. Whilst the Government can and should be held accountable for their actions, I dont believe 100% of blame lies with them.
(Btw I didnt vote for them and am very unlikely to in future)

The scientific community that have genome sequenced the 'UK' variant has highlighted that it most likely came from migrant farm workers in Spain, but hey, keep pumping out these facebook theories instead of actually looking for the actual more reliable facts.

Maybe check the facts yourself before being so unnecessarily hostile towards other posters, the new variant @Pluckedpencil is referring to is B.1.1.7 and both hypotheses they mentioned are considered likely reasons for its emergence by scientists, they are not 'facebook theories'. It's an earlier variant ( 20A.EU1 ) which may have been linked to farm workers in Spain.
www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-and-research/scientific-brief-emerging-variants.html
www.cogconsortium.uk/news_item/the-new-sars-cov-2-variant-and-other-mutations-under-review-by-cog-uk/

20A.EU1 most probably rose in frequency in multiple countries due to travel and difference in SARS-CoV-2 prevalence. There is no evidence that it spreads faster.
20A.EU1 is not the cause of the European 'second wave.'
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.25.20219063v2
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33269368/
nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/20A.EU1