"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



I suppose I was brought up to be polite, and that just doesn’t matter as much any more.

Yes, you are obviously far superior. Have a round of applause 👏 🙌 👌

Although you are a massive hypocrite Armi 🙄

You cannot stop a viral pandemic, all you can do is mitigate losses.

Blame helps no one.

On the upside the UK has vaccinated the world.

We stopped SARS in 2003.
Blame may not be helpful. Accountability is.
We have not vaccinated the world.

I remember watching that speech, open mouthed blissfully unaware that 3 weeks later I would become one of those families. I can't bring myself to re-watch it, the pain is too much to bear.

I’ve no words @trappedsincesundaymorn, your distress is palpable through your words

@Cornettoninja

I’ve no words *@trappedsincesundaymorn*, your distress is palpable through your words

Thankyou. I guess I'm feeling a bit raw what with this speech, Mother's Day tomorrow and mum's anniversary coming up.

@mac12

We stopped SARS in 2003. Blame may not be helpful. Accountability is. We have not vaccinated the world.

The Oxford vaccine is being used globally, so technically we are.

How about people, those in younger age groups take accountability for there own health. The virus is benign in 80% of people.

Boris took the pandemic as seriously as I did at the time. It was unprecedented. He actually asked people to stay at home and they all piled hard into the pubs.

He is not personally at fault for the virus behaving like a completely unknown and incredibly contagious virus and the British people loving pubs more than the predicted health crisis - most people were sceptical. The social movement and behaviours of the public are responsible for the spread of the virus.

Boris has done a lot of shite and should be held accountable for his mistakes but so should everyone else. If you haven’t been careful to not spread the virus then you too are responsible. Everyone is.

@CrabPuff - I agree that on an individual level BJ isn’t the architect of this disaster but he (ruthlessly and enthusiastically) chose to run as the leader and figurehead of our current cabinet fully aware of everything that goes with that.

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

Boris has control though. He could override any of his advisors

Honestly, people have complained throughout that he isn't following his scientific advisors to the letter yet when he does follow the scientific advise without question he is critisised for not ignoring them! The bloke can't win!

@trappedsincesundaymorn Your words have made me cry. I’m so sorry 💐

@MissyB1 Not NHS, but a teacher. I feel exactly the same about the Government’s stance on education. Public services have been cut year on year, and it’s the employees keeping them falling apart.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what people think about the governments response because when your living in the moment you don't have the benefit of hindsight. Its very easy for us all to sit at home proclaiming that we could have done a better job of it ourselves because we would have done this, that or the other instead.

Who knows whether responding with ABC rather than XYZ would have resulted in fewer deaths. We don't have the ability to travel back in time to put that theory to the test. Yes, we can theorise and make assumptions and plan based on what has happened/is happening around us but as the situation in each country differs (i.e., (population, geography, societal situations etc) you will never end up with the exact same result as each other.

Who knows whether responding with ABC rather than XYZ

Well we can see how other countries have managed and their results. I’d say that we have a clear indication that bad leadership is one facet of the reason there is such a gulf between our case and fatality numbers in comparison with other European countries and other comparable countries.

I will concede that we’re not at the end of the pandemic yet so who knows what might change, but the figures currently speak for themselves imho.

Who knows whether responding with ABC rather than XYZ

Well we can see how other countries have managed and their results

But countries aren't carbon copies of each other so you really can't say that our government has acted abismally just because we have more deaths. For example the UK has a massive obesity problem, more so than other places in Europe/world, and we are hearing that obesity plays a part in covid severity. Similarly, is the number of CEV people in our population comparable to others etc. There are so many factors that effect the end result so just because something on the face of it looks like it worked for one country doesn't mean the same could be said for here if we had adopted the same approach.

He is still elbow bumping. No one has two metre arms.

@pennylane83 I agree but even broadly speaking we’ve clearly been hit hard with no definite discernible factors other than timings of responses.

People are very quick to dismiss comparisons with other countries, and sometimes it’s valid (we were never going to be NZ) but on occasion it’s a good indicator of where policy has failed.

@Cornettoninja

Who knows whether responding with ABC rather than XYZ

Well we can see how other countries have managed and their results. I’d say that we have a clear indication that bad leadership is one facet of the reason there is such a gulf between our case and fatality numbers in comparison with other European countries and other comparable countries.

I will concede that we’re not at the end of the pandemic yet so who knows what might change, but the figures currently speak for themselves imho.

Yes, in the first wave. Those countries are now experiencing a potentially catastrophic second/third wave, with very much more information and mitigation to hand.

Personally, I think in the final analysis, most Western and US countries will end up in pretty much the same place with regards to case numbers and deaths.

I honestly don't think much would have been different with a week earlier lockdown, or any other superficial tweaking around the edges, and I say that as someone who lost 3 parents to Covid. All the mitigation in the end made no difference, and is now making no difference in France or Italy, or Germany, or Czechia or Slovakia.

Thank goodness we got vaccination right. Sadly it didn't save three parents, but to be honest, they were all victims of an ultimately pernicious virus which couldn't ultimately be kept from their care homes. All the mitigation in place didn't stop it from eventually arriving, and claiming lives. I blame the virus, not the response.

So much misinformation in this thread - largely due to the lack of accurate scientific coverage in the media.

The basis for everything the UK did last Feb/March was a misguided belief that we needed to achieve a kind of "natural" herd immunity. (This is scientifically implausible incidentally - see Manaus, Brazil).
That is why you had the talk of "too early to lockdown" - the plan was to let the infections BUILD UP until it reached a level the NHS could just about cope with, and THEN try to limit it rising further. In this way, the idea was that the virus would infect all the non-vulnerable as quickly as possible so the country could then open up again. NB, they also forgot when constructing this strategy to actually arrange protection for the vulnerable.

In short, it was just about the most unscientific based approach imaginable and entirely down to Whitty and Valance disregarding ALL the scientific reports flowing out of China (the nature of the threat had been known since late January and little has changed in the subsequent 14 months), disregarding the pleas from the WHO to test, test, test, isolate the infected and track contacts, and presumably assumed that British pluck would mean that our HC system would cope better than Italy's (actually superior) one had.

Many many scientists in the field of medicine were fully aware of the problem and we all believed that SAGE would have a responsible plan. It was the end of February before it became apparent that they didn't - I remember the shock I felt, the day they announced they were suspending community testing for the virus.

So yes, most of the UK's deaths could have easily been avoided. It would have necessitated a ban on unnecessary foreign travel - tests and quarantine for anyone returning home and actually putting a Test, Track and Trace system in place months before they did like Germany did. We'd still have had virus cases, but it would have been largely limited and aside from large events being banned, the rest of life could have been largely normal with the occasional short lockdown like they have had to do in Australia.

NB, Despite detesting Boris, I don't blame him for this - we EXPECT a government to follow the advice of their scientists - they did. SAGE were the ones who screwed up big time.

The decision to ignore established UK based suppliers and opt for handouts for chums for PPE supplies. The decision to rush the first lockdown exit to deflect attention from Cummings. The decision to completely ignore SAGE last September (which led to a huge second wave) - THAT's what's on Boris's head.

I thought there were no more deaths than usual year on year.
I'm sure I read there had been no increase.

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

When he said this the Government was still intending to pursue a policy of herd immunity and was not intending to lockdown. They weren't even considering banning large gatherings.

We are considering the question of banning major public events such as sporting fixtures. The scientific advice as we’ve said over the last couple of weeks is that banning such events will have little effect on the spread

Read the full speech.

www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-statement-on-coronavirus-12-march-2020

@allHmmph

To impose restrictions on the population to early would have backfired

This is horse manure - look at Australia - does it backfire there that they shut down a city if they find a single case?

The basis for NOT restricting in the UK was to allow time for the virus to spread more widely - there's an interview with Vallance on YT where he actually states this.

We are also a country very much about personal responsibility rather than state mandated rules. This was another issue in our response.

More manure - are you in Boris's press office by chance?
We swapped the chance to impose some marginal restrictions on people's lives, for some pretty enormous ones. We'd already seen what happened in Wuhan, then in Italy - it was totally obvious that delay would only mean a total lockdown was necessary. The UK has over the past 12 months imposed FAR FAR more restrictions on the population than ANY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD!

unknown virus

The virus wasn't unknown - there had been around 50 papers published on it by mid February - in fact we know almost nothing of consequence today that we didn't know at the end of Jan 2020.

They were following the science...

No - they were following the advice of their pet scientists that was based on a misguided notion that all the reports coming out of China and Italy were simply scare stories and actually this was just bad flu.

notrub I’m not sure Boris was doing what Sage told him is entirely correct. I suspect Sage were leant on heavily to say what he wanted to hear. Far too much Government interference in “the science”. By the Autumn Whitty etc were gaining more confidence and were determined to start telling it how it was - Boris decided to ignore them.
Otherwise you have summed everything up pretty well.
What happened in the UK was a fucking disaster.

@MissyB1

notrub I’m not sure Boris was doing what Sage told him is entirely correct. I suspect Sage were leant on heavily to say what he wanted to hear. Far too much Government interference in “the science”. By the Autumn Whitty etc were gaining more confidence and were determined to start telling it how it was - Boris decided to ignore them. Otherwise you have summed everything up pretty well. What happened in the UK was a fucking disaster.

A lot of people have said that presumably because they see the qualifications of SAGE members and think they couldn't possibly have been that dim...

I've seen the SAGE minutes, I've read the research that underpinned the official Flu epidemic strategy document, and I understand a little of how these things work. The problem is it's perfectly possible to have COLLECTIVE stupidity in a group of very smart people - particularly where you have something as multi-disciplinary as reacting to an epidemic is. Someone pulled out the "flu" plan and said right, we've got to implement this and nobody was in a position where they felt they could question this. People have a tendency to unquestioningly follow documented approaches because they know a lot of effort went into assembling them, without really every thinking, "is this the right approach for THIS problem?"

It all stems from research by Ferguson on flu that rejected the imposition of limited restrictions because the model showed they had no overall impact. When this work was done, obviously nobody contemplated the kind of restrictions countries have imposed over covid.... in their absence, closing down one avenue to the virus simply slows it down slightly as it has multiple other vectors. e.g. Close schools and children still get it from their parents who get it at work etc. But this ended up in a government strategy document as "You cannot stop an epidemic, you can only slow it down slightly."

This is where the confusion came from - confusion that still exists today among some of these scientists. The fact is you CAN stop an epidemic - ANY epidemic - it's just a question of cost/risk balancing.

So I don't think the advice was lacking due to undue pressure on them - that came later...