Do you feel sorry for Boris?

[User133847]

Seeing the headlines in the papers today and there seems a lot of sympathy for him. The front pages see him looking really forlorn and sorrow regarding the death toll.

When you think a year ago he was planning on ushering in what he deemed as a golden age of Britain. Now 12 months later it's in tatters.

I can understand the sympathy, but wonder whether a Labour PM would be offered the same.

I don’t think everything has to be a comparison with China. I am not suggesting anyone should be locked in.
My friend was self isolating in Australia and police phoned her at home to check she was there. I don’t see that violates human rights. In China before quarantine became mandatory, police would check you were self isolating and also help with any issues regarding delivery of food etc.
Given what was happening in many other counties in January and Feb I think the govt had plenty of notice to ramp things up. From 23 rd January we knew the virus was spreading outside Hubei province. This was two months prior to lockdown here. Why was two months not enough time to plan?

[quote derxa]They eradicated it last summer. Well there must be a second wave there too unless Worldometers is giving false information.
www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/[/quote]
There is a second wave, it began when they reopened their borders. They went weeks without a single case last summer. Not that this is doing anything but distracting from the abysmal job the UK government is doing.

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/malta/

Not just England @IncludeWomenInTheSequel. A goodly number of cases came in from holiday makers returning from Spain.

Yes but they apparently found the majority came from England.

@GetOffYourHighHorse

'Here we go again, now we’re “silly”'

You're missing the all important context again. My comment was in response to 'This is verging into the territory ofTrump being able to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and it not bothering his supporters...'

Which is indeed silly.

'why does anyone in England have to answer for sturgeon? She isn’t our leader what does it prove to compare to another country that has also managed this pandemic abysmally? Is it for commiserations sake'

Oh no thank god we don't answer to Sturgeon but my point was when all around us are in the same/similar position then there comes a time when surely one of you may understand that things like population density, demographics, compliance and culture are the issues Or, just carry on waving your pitchforks chanting 'we hate Boris!'. Whatever.

You’re deflecting and minimising. You’re basically relying on finger pointing and crying ‘but they’ve done badly too’. We should be looking at countries that have handled this well and learning from it (Japan if you want a credible like for like comparison - a densely populated island with an ageing population)

I can happily accept that this government have got some things right (furlough, business grants/loans, prioritising education, early investment in vaccinations, writing off NHS debt, rolling over unused annual leave), why can’t you accept what they’ve got wrong?

Not just England @IncludeWomenInTheSequel. A goodly number of cases came in from holiday makers returning from Spain. And the holiday makers who went to Blackpool. Nicola warned them but they didn't listen. I remember being so hopeful in the summer when deaths were 0 for many days in the summer in Scotland. Some days cases for our health local board areas were sometimes in single digits.

'your defence of Boris Johnson & the govt seems to be centred on the fact that other nations have done just as badly, if not worse,'

It isn't a defence it is a fact. The problem is the virus, not Boris Johnson. All western leaders have had similar tragic deaths and infections rates. All of Europe have restrictions.

They've chucked massive resources at the NHS to manage surges and the nhs has coped, just, no one has been ventilated in corridors like we saw in Italy in the early days. There's furlough, the massive testing capacity and vaccine procurement, ppe now 80% domestically produced. They’ve done a lot well. I do think flights from China should've been stopped when we first heard about it in Jan and stricter controls from any other country thereafter but PHE reckon it would have been futile as it was endemic by March.

I forgot about the nightingales - nice idea and impressively executed, shame about the lack of qualified staff. There is literally nothing they could do about that.

@Defenbaker that was portraying in many places in the press and on here as NS being anti-English. No clue that she actually might have access to info that causes her to say certain things.

Still no comment on this @GetOffYourHighHorse?

Just imagine if we had:

Closed our borders
Not allowed the Cheltenham Festival
Locked down at the beginning of March
Had enough PPE
Not flooded care homes with untested hospital patients
Not spent £££££ on Nightingale hospitals we couldn’t staff
Had an efficient test and track system
Not paid people to eat out
Not allowed schools to go back for one day after Christmas

I meant portrayed and to tag @derxa

Sorry!

'Not just England IncludeWomenInTheSequel. A goodly number of cases came in from holiday makers returning from Spain.'

The nats blame the English for everything. Yes I mean, did no one leave Scotland and return at all 🙄. There's that covid spreader Margaret Ferrier for starters..

@GetOffYourHighHorse

'your defence of Boris Johnson & the govt seems to be centred on the fact that other nations have done just as badly, if not worse,'

It isn't a defence it is a fact. The problem is the virus, not Boris Johnson. All western leaders have had similar tragic deaths and infections rates. All of Europe have restrictions.

They've chucked massive resources at the NHS to manage surges and the nhs has coped, just, no one has been ventilated in corridors like we saw in Italy in the early days. There's furlough, the massive testing capacity and vaccine procurement, ppe now 80% domestically produced. They’ve done a lot well. I do think flights from China should've been stopped when we first heard about it in Jan and stricter controls from any other country thereafter but PHE reckon it would have been futile as it was endemic by March.

The NHS survived because they sacrificed the elderly and vulnerable in care homes. It was totally shameful and I hope there is a reckoning when this is over.

The NHS survived because they sacrificed the elderly and vulnerable in care homes. It was totally shameful and I hope there is a reckoning when this is over.

Apparently all those deaths were the fault of care home management. At least according to @GetOffYourHighHorse.

@GetOffYourHighHorse

'Not just England IncludeWomenInTheSequel. A goodly number of cases came in from holiday makers returning from Spain.'

The nats blame the English for everything. Yes I mean, did no one leave Scotland and return at all 🙄. There's that covid spreader Margaret Ferrier for starters..

It was a university study, not a fucking page out of Nicola Sturgeon's diary.

The problem is the virus, not Boris.

How? If this were true the situation would be the same in every country. The action we take/don’t take is key here.

@VinylDetective

The NHS survived because they sacrificed the elderly and vulnerable in care homes. It was totally shameful and I hope there is a reckoning when this is over.

Apparently all those deaths were the fault of care home management. At least according to @GetOffYourHighHorse.

I work in a care home that managed to keep the virus out until December, since then we have had between 60 and 70% of our residents and about 40% of our staff going down with it. I think it is 8 weeks since the vaccine roll out started, care homes were the top priority. Our home still doesn't even have a date for vaccinations. It has been a difficult 12 months and I think the manager deserves a medal.

The action we take/don’t take is key here.

Do you include learning from conditions that arise to a virus spreading across the world in this?

@Preg19

Yes i do there are so many people who would of done it differently but it's only using hindsight! It would be interesting to see if anyone else would of done better. Are people forgetting how successful the vaccine roll out is too?

How is it hindsight? I remember people demanding they stop the Cheltenham Festival, stop all big sporting events, urging lockdown in September, saying the easing of restrictions in December was going to cause exactly what happened in January. Were they all time travellers or something?

[quote IncludeWomenInTheSequel]@Defenbaker that was portraying in many places in the press and on here as NS being anti-English. No clue that she actually might have access to info that causes her to say certain things.

[/quote]
I don't know what you mean. I have watched almost all the daily briefings and NS warned Scots not to go to Blackpool where cases were high but they didn't listen. Covid was brought back into Glasgow and Lanarkshire.

@ShanghaiDiva

The problem is the virus, not Boris.

How? If this were true the situation would be the same in every country. The action we take/don’t take is key here.

Absolutely agree @ShanghaiDiva

The NHS is barely coping. The rapid scale up of ITU took longer/more resource as we’d had years of cuts and underfunded hospitals so we’re starting from a lower baseline.
Operation Cygnus showed the NHS was poorly prepared for a viral pandemic but safeguards were not put in place.
So much routine care has been postponed or cancelled, the fallout will take years to sort. Not ventilating patients in corridors really isn’t the benchmark of success.

Also I agree, just cutting off flights from China wouldn’t have been fully effective as the virus had spread by them. But we didn’t close our borders like countries who’ve managed this successfully have. We allowed mass travel from Europe which we know seeded the UK pandemic. They saw what was happening in Italy and didn’t limit travel at all. And they’re making the same mistake all over again by only insisting on quarantine from “hotspots”. We don’t know what the next hotspot or country with a significant variant will be until it’s too late, so this half arsed policy is just making all the same mistakes again

5th worse Covid death statistics in the world, says it all imo.

@Jellykat

5th worse Covid death statistics in the world, says it all imo.

Worst in the world per capita. Fifth in the world overall.

@GetOffYourHighHorse

The problem is the virus, not Boris Johnson. All western leaders have had similar tragic deaths and infections rates. All of Europe have restrictions

Exactly. However, it's convenient for some to pretend they don't understand this