Anyone on here really think ‘the government did all it could’?

[BlackDogBlues]

Re covid and it’s response.

I entered the UK in September. Was asked to quarantine . Did so, but nobody checked on me. No app either. I could have been walking around infecting people.

In contrast, in my home country of India-dirt poor, 1 billion people- people who entered last year were inspected and checked up on to see if they were quarantining, fined if they were not. Nearly every country, even poor ones with no technology, did better than the UK.

They made many mistakes. Of course they did, it's a novel situation. Every government made mistakes, even NZ and Oz, that are usually much lauded here.

Hindsight makes many of the errors much more egregious. Some of them were deliberate policy founded in information we, the public, weren't privy to. Some were the outcome of global issues. Some of them turned out to be just plain wrong.

As was said in Monday, there are many lessons to be learned, but maybe not all of them right now!

And that applies globally. No government would/should say differently.

My friend working in a care home said back in early March if it got in her home there would be body bags on the lawn.
They had good gatekeepers and didn’t take anyone in from hospitals without a negative test and managed to remain Covid free. Another local home had 6 people die in one evening. Not quite body bags on the lawn but not something that should ever happen.

@Frequentflier

I entered the UK in September. Was asked to quarantine . Did so, but nobody checked on me. No app either. I could have been walking around infecting people.

In contrast, in my home country of India-dirt poor, 1 billion people- people who entered last year were inspected and checked up on to see if they were quarantining, fined if they were not. Nearly every country, even poor ones with no technology, did better than the UK.

Exactly. My dh returned from China in July and had the same experience.

@ShanghaiDiva I read your very sensible posts on another thread, where you ended up being virtually accused of being a communist agent. Sigh. I understand that the UK has different ways of doing things, but at some point somebody should have said "Never mind how we did things in the past, let's do this now".

True ofc that if the UK had closed borders, I would not have been able to enter, so maybe I should not criticise! I think there is a middle ground though.

I think some of their scientists seem pretty inept. I don't trust that Jenny Harries as far as I could throw her

No they haven't or, if they have done everything they could, they did it eventually and about 3/4 weeks behind when they actually should have so it was too little too late

Nope. I think they fucked it up at every turn.

I mean highest death rate in the world for a developed island nation is pretty much a summary of where we're at. And I do acknowledge it might not be true as other countries are fudging the numbers. But we'd still be pretty damn high on the rankings

Track and Trace

Enough said

It’s not just hindsight though, is it? Many other countries were making much better decisions than us, at the time.

Boris didn’t have to stick with his government of cronies. He could have admitted his limitations and formed a mixed-party government made up of competent people - they do exist. He could have actually followed the science - we know how many times SAGE and others were begging him to take action and he delayed.

They've made a lot of mistakes from the start. Anyone with an ounce of brain cells would know that face masks were a good idea and that crowded events should have been cancelled. I took my kids out of school at least ten days before they closed and remember feeling self conscious being the only person in the supermarket wearing a mask but even in those very early days it was obvious what was happening and I don't understand why the government didn't act quicker. I do think they are managing things a bit better now but it's a bit late, the outcome has been catastrophic and far from over.

I sat in bed listening to the first news of the virus in China at the end of January 2020 and thought "Thank goodness we are an island - we can just close our borders." Hmmmm.

And the handling of the pandemic by the UK government continued in the same hopeless vein from thereon in........culminating in the Christmas debacle - what can they have been thinking of?

I think common sense seems to have gone out of the window. The whole schools are safe rhetoric (until children are actually in them) is ludicrous, and to not put measures in place to prevent transmission is negligent. Plus DFE won't be recording staff who get a positive test while isolating from next week, it all smacks of manipu figures to fit their agenda.
I lost faith when Crufts and Cheltenham went ahead, bringing people from all over the world. In no way has this government handled things well. Supposedly following the science and then going against scientific advice has got us where we are.

Even my dyed in the wool Tory voting Dad thinks it’s a shit show.

Sure it’s not an easy task by any means, but they are always late to the party, give conflicting guidance, all the Uturns, PPE shortages, contracts for Tory donating mates, Dominic Cummings, wide open borders, inadequate testing, track and trace.
It seems like if there’s an opportunity to balls it up, they will.

Agree about Jennie Harries too, I want to throw something at the tv when she's yapping on.

@Mischance

I sat in bed listening to the first news of the virus in China at the end of January 2020 and thought "Thank goodness we are an island - we can just close our borders." Hmmmm.

And the handling of the pandemic by the UK government continued in the same hopeless vein from thereon in........culminating in the Christmas debacle - what can they have been thinking of?

Christmas mixing should have been cancelled everywhere not just in the areas in tier 4 at the time. I read a heartbreaking article today where four members of the same family in Derbyshire have died following Christmas mixing. When Whitty advised Londoners to unpack their bags that should have stood for the whole country especially when they new there was anew varient on the loose.

It still blows me away that Cheltenham week went ahead. No masks, no distancing.

If this was all they could do, then they are incompetent.

I think it will come around to this thinking eventually. If the vaccine roll out works out for them when it's finally complete.

You just have to glance at the thread about "×××× already vaccinated" on here to see that people are impressed that x amount of people have been "vaccinated" (rather than "recieved first dose".) The fact that this number is more other countries seems to placate many and creating praise.

If the larger gap between doses works out not to be a disadvantage, I think long term all will be forgiven (well, forgotten or just brushed aside). It will be an "the end justifies the means" situation.

@CherryValanc

I think it will come around to this thinking eventually. If the vaccine roll out works out for them when it's finally complete.

You just have to glance at the thread about "×××× already vaccinated" on here to see that people are impressed that x amount of people have been "vaccinated" (rather than "recieved first dose".) The fact that this number is more other countries seems to placate many and creating praise.

If the larger gap between doses works out not to be a disadvantage, I think long term all will be forgiven (well, forgotten or just brushed aside). It will be an "the end justifies the means" situation.

I just hope they will be looking after all those families who have lost a parent, traumatized, bereaved kids and putting adequate funding into charities, bereavement counselling etc.

If this was all they could do, then they were incompetent

^This. But there was corruption as well as incompetence.

Hindsight is 20/20

Back in March it wasn't as clear as people now make out, numbers were rising fast but as with now, there's huge negatives to lockdown. Sweden didn't and they fared no worse. The government tried a week earlier advising the vulnerable to stay home and to limit our contacts without laws needed, being British we ignored them and partied hard - I was running front of house at a concert on that Friday and it was full, plenty of on the door ticket sales too.

Of course things could have been done differently, locking the care homes down earlier in particular, stockpiling better ppe but in the main we, and most western governments were completely unprepared and struggled to reconcile our policy of free society with strict restrictions. Nothing is simple, even the path we took has affected kids education, deprived care home residents of seeing family, caused collateral damage in the form of late or undiagnosed cancer etc and I've got raging toothache and no dentist will take me on (I've moved) - the later just is really my problem only!

I'm no Boris fan but I seriously doubt that labour would have fared better because it's us that flout the rules since March

@MrsKingfisher

I think it's easy to point fingers and say how awful Boris is, hindsight is a wonderful thing. How do we know that any other prime minister would've handled things better/differently? We can't say for sure.

People blaming Boris for Christmas mixing but those who did are equally as culpable aren't they? They had a choice to mix or not no one forced them. Many many people looked at the risks despite Boris saying it was fine and decided the risks were to high and chose not to mix on Christmas Day.

Couldn't agree more. It's all too easy for people to criticize the government allowing Christmas mixing but nobody forced people to mix did they. Some of us looked at the risks and decided to stay at home without seeing families. Of course I'm sympathetic to anyone losing a loved one but people need to take responsibility for their own actions and decisions here.

I do think borders should have been closed long ago but at the same time it's obvious Boris was trying to protect the economy too. Whatever his decisions, somebody's always going to feel it's wrong. The media doesn't help either - I feel they're partly responsible for creating this attitude that it's ok to question the rules and do whatever you want.

Agree it's not just incompetence but corruption too. The vaccine roll out is going well because it is using our existing health departments and infrastructure. Test and trace should have used those too rather than paying out billions to mates. The funding for summer catch up went to their mates private tutoring companies hence it never happened.

Everything has been profit opportunities rather than trusting and giving the money to our public services and systems allowing them to target it intelligently and effectively.