"I must level with you, level with the British public, many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time."

[PrincessNutNuts]

One year ago today. He was right, wasn't he?

143, 259 up to February 26th

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths



If he'd started lockdown on the same day, he might have saved thousands.

Boris has blood on his hands.

I mean we're literally just starting large scale testing this week and the borders have been closed for less than a month. One year later!

I guess at least he wasn't lying about lots of us losing loved ones. The incompetent, lazy sack of shit. I wouldn't piss in his ear if his brain was on fire.

He didn't "level" with us that he would also spaff away tens of billions on corrupt contracts to his chums. So if you could add corruption and buggering the economy for a generation to come to the charges please.

@Bluewavescrashing

Boris has blood on his hands.

Ridiculous.

SAGE were telling the Gov not to lockdown at this stage. If you want to arbitrarily blame people it would have to be Vallance and Whitty. They however were just following the Pandemic response that had been formulated over decades.

He's a posh boy Tory though so he probably thought all that went without saying.

Boris has control though. He could override any of his advisors. He was still shaking hands with people in hospitals at this stage.

He didn't close the borders immediately which was a massive mistake. His rich mates have been jetting about willy nilly for the last year with no good reason. Absolute shambles. The dfe guidance for schools does fuck all to mitigate risk but makes life incredibly hard for teachers. Who are at risk and still held accountable for children's progress (linked to pay progression) despite many of those children not being in the building for the last 3 months. Public opinion of teachers is in the ditch. Workload in schools is sky high. An absolute disgrace all round.

The incompetent, lazy sack of shit. I wouldn't piss in his ear if his brain was on fire.

Oh I would. He'd be on fire AND covered in piss.

SAGE were telling the Gov not to lockdown at this stage. If you want to arbitrarily blame people it would have to be Vallance and Whitty. They however were just following the Pandemic response that had been formulated over decades.

Yes and no.

It was SAGE that initially advised the government not to lockdown and they were following an INFLUENZA response plan.
Vallance actually told Boris that the virus was nothing to worry about as it wasn't a serious illness. You'd have thought that WHO shouting the opposite MIGHT have been worthy of consideration, but nope.

So round 1 was entirely SAGE's fault - at least the SAGE members who should have known better! If SAGE minutes had been published, things could have been very different as most scientists assumed things were under control. By the time it became apparent that SAGE had completely misjudged things, it was too late.

The government didn't really start ballsing things up until the summer when in an effort to deflect attention from what Cummings had been up to, they raced the exit from lockdown.

This government failed to act on advice, to follow what was happening in other countries and handed out contracts worth billions to incompetent friends.

The PM wanted to be seen as the good guy so failed to act to save lives.

Yes. He and the Tories absolutely have blood on their hands.

@Bluewavescrashing

Boris has control though. He could override any of his advisors. He was still shaking hands with people in hospitals at this stage.

7th March 2020 Boris and his pregnant fiancee attended Twickenham with 80,000 other people for a 6 nations match. Not the actions of someone taking the global pandemic seriously, maybe if he'd attended some of the early COBRA meetings he would have realised the gravity of the situation.

Exactly.

Taking holidays instead of attending COBRA meetings is unacceptable.

That press conference is etched in my brain. I'll always remember where I was when I saw it, it felt like you could hear a pin drop, and I remember vividly what it felt like at the time watching it, turning to my husband and us both looking at each other and saying nothing but meaning a lot.

My condolences to all who've lost loved ones. We deserve(d) a better, competent, more serious Prime Minister and government.

@Bluewavescrashing

Boris has blood on his hands.

But he’s carrying on. Herd immunity in kids now and he seems to be getting away with it.

The depressing, soul destroying thing though is:

This government will get away with this.

People will forget the deaths and the Tories not acting.

This government of not investing in the NHS will continue and people will selfishly vote Tory.

Honestly. It's so utterly depressing.

I think he and his girlfriend were more bothered about baby showers at that stage too.

Boris was so right. What a prophetic speech that will go down in history.

This was his 'we'll fight them on the beaches' moment.

People will forget the deaths and the Tories not acting

I won’t but then I’ve never been persuaded to cast my vote in favour of the tories so don’t have the burden of consequences of my choices on this one.

I won’t easily forget the very public rebuking from the WHO and other quarters when our official stance was made clear.

@User133847

Boris was so right. What a prophetic speech that will go down in history.

This was his 'we'll fight them on the beaches' moment.

Strange - I don't recall Churchill proposing a do nothing approach.... Chamberlain did the whole ask nicely and hope the bad thing goes away, but I thought Churchill was a bit more clued up.

I also don't remember the bit in that speech where Churchill said he'd keep the RAF grounded, disarm the troops and let the Germans invade, while apologizing for all those who'd be shot, tortured or imprisoned as a result of the forthcoming occupation.

What struck me is that on the day pandemic was declared, anniversary just 2 days ago?, someone said on BBC news (clip was being replayed) that "the (single digit number) person had died in UK of novel coronavirus".

The number was tiny, anyway. it all seemed so surreal that this could actually turn into something big.

@lljkk

What struck me is that on the day pandemic was declared, anniversary just 2 days ago?, someone said on BBC news (clip was being replayed) that "the (single digit number) person had died in UK of novel coronavirus".

The number was tiny, anyway. it all seemed so surreal that this could actually turn into something big.

The pubs were still open for another week.

@Bordois

The incompetent, lazy sack of shit. I wouldn't piss in his ear if his brain was on fire.

Oh I would. He'd be on fire AND covered in piss.

Why do people have to talk like this about other people? I dislike Boris intensely, but I find the level of public discourse these days truly reprehensible. I suppose I was brought up to be polite, and that just doesn’t matter as much any more.

For whatever reason they wrongly thought we were 4 weeks behind Italy at that stage. The number of cases in the UK and the time it had been spreading was a lot higher than they thought.

To impose restrictions on the population to early would have backfired. People wouldn’t have obeyed them. Look at the calls to open everything up now because cases are falling and deaths are low and they huge numbers of people currently breaking the law. And look at the calls to open everything back up ASAP last summer. If we have tried to lockdown early and numbers had been suppressed, the lockdown would have been short lived as people would have assumed it wasn’t necessary and we would have still have had the deaths.

We are also a country very much about personal responsibility rather than state mandated rules. This was another issue in our response. Cheltenham went ahead because the government didn’t ban it, but it was the personal choice of the thousands who went to attend- it was obvious it wasn’t a good idea.

It was a combination of unknown virus + more cases than thought + trying to time the measures correctly. They were following the science... including Psychology.

The government have made A LOT of very very bad mistakes since which have caused a lot of additional deaths. But the ones I don’t blame them for are last March.

@Stellaris22

The depressing, soul destroying thing though is:

This government will get away with this.

People will forget the deaths and the Tories not acting.

This government of not investing in the NHS will continue and people will selfishly vote Tory.

Honestly. It's so utterly depressing.

Yes this! My dh is an NHS Dr and he is in total despair because he knows nothing is going to get any better and we are stuck with this bunch of self serving cockwombles in charge for the foreseeable future. He says years of Tory underfunding also contributed to deaths. I’m actually very worried for dh’s mental and physical health. He feels totally demoralised. He says this Government are very adept at turning the public against NHS staff when it suits them. I don’t think that’s melodramatic or paranoid, you only have to read the threads on this forum to see its true