Cummings evidence today

[Dirtystreetpie]

Anyone listening?

We didn't need to lockdown in Feb - what we needed to do was start restricting/quarantining/testing international travellers as soon as the virus started to spread globally!

What would the EU have said back in Feb 2020 if they said this in May 2020?

the UK government has been warned by the [European] Commission that it could face legal action over its plans to impose a 14-day quarantine on people arriving in the UK. Ireland and France are exempt, but the EU says this is discriminatory to the other EU Member States.

www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/commission-launches-infringement-proceedings-against-uk-over-free-movement

Bojo was a heard immunity fan and didn't and still doesn't, like border controls

Yes. Which is why it is incorrect to call him a populist. He might have convinced some people he is one but he very clearly isn't.

The simple fact is that most people did not vote for him. They voted against Corbyn (and the legacy of Blair).

@Tealightsandd

Believe it or not, the ONLY strategy they listed was STOP the virus from leaving the origin country... like the UK has the power to force border control on another nation lol..

Errm, well except that we can... At least we could stop it coming in to our country. Which is what other more sensible countries did do.

I don't blame screw ups in early 2020, it was new and no one had much of an idea what to do.

Its is the fuck ups over lockdowns, border controls, xmas, schools etc in the following autumn/winter that i think Johnson should be held to account for..... but wont be.

Actually I would agree that the sort of lockdown we have had was not in the public health strategies (play book was lazy shorthand) that were accepted throughout the world. Hong Kong and Taiwan never had that sort of lockdown because the key to their strategies was effective testing tracing and isolating. In Hong Kong every case gets isolated in hospital wards and every contact gets quarantined. They can do that with low case numbers. Their economies stayed relatively open. Our failure to get that right, even now, was the reason for our high case numbers and the reason with such big waves of cases that we had to lockdown so deeply. In every case they were able to achieve that with public health resources - that ideological turning to the private sector was a major factor in our high case numbers and deep lockdowns

Honestly read the SAGE minutes if you think Johnson was leading it at that point against the advice

Germany is a better comparison as is all of Europe and we were hit early. You need to look at bed capacity pp though and also consider vaccine response to get whole picture.

[quote Clavinova]We didn't need to lockdown in Feb - what we needed to do was start restricting/quarantining/testing international travellers as soon as the virus started to spread globally!

What would the EU have said back in Feb 2020 if they said this in May 2020?

the UK government has been warned by the [European] Commission that it could face legal action over its plans to impose a 14-day quarantine on people arriving in the UK. Ireland and France are exempt, but the EU says this is discriminatory to the other EU Member States.

www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/commission-launches-infringement-proceedings-against-uk-over-free-movement[/quote]
Jesus Clav, you are scrapping the barrel now... are you now saying that our Govt is sooooo weak that we didn't lockdown because the EU said so.....

All of the data fits perfectly with the established timeline of the virus. Had it been here in 2019 as you claim

France, December 2019: www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52526554.amp

Italy, November 2019: www.google.co.uk/amp/s/newseu.cgtn.com/news/2020-12-13/Italy-s-search-for-first-COVID-19-case-leads-back-to-2019-WaHnweXMWI/share_amp.html

UK, January 2020: www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/04/daughter-calls-for-kent-man-to-be-recognised-as-uks-first-covid-victim

As it is you either have the absurd belief that a few isolated cases appeared, went away for a month or two, and then suddenly it was everywhere, or you accept that those few reports were due to contaminated samples.

It didn’t ‘go away’ for a month or two. It was there and growing, exponentially, the whole time. But the nature of exponential growth means that a small number of cases looks like not really much for a while, until suddenly it appears to be everywhere.

[quote Clavinova]We didn't need to lockdown in Feb - what we needed to do was start restricting/quarantining/testing international travellers as soon as the virus started to spread globally!

What would the EU have said back in Feb 2020 if they said this in May 2020?

the UK government has been warned by the [European] Commission that it could face legal action over its plans to impose a 14-day quarantine on people arriving in the UK. Ireland and France are exempt, but the EU says this is discriminatory to the other EU Member States.

www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/commission-launches-infringement-proceedings-against-uk-over-free-movement[/quote]
So? Just like the EU trying to sue AZ. Let them try but meanwhile get on with dealing with the immediate urgent here and now.

It's a once in one hundred years pandemic.

Prioritise saving the economy, lives, and health.

In the end EU countries had no qualms about barring entry to us (understandably given our failed containment).

SAGE Feb 2020

I can’t see anything here that suggests government were ignoring expert advice

It's like in an emergency where someone is badly injured, heavily bleeding, and the ambulance hasn't got there yet. A passer by rips up clothing to temporarily stem blood loss. Nevermind it might be a super expensive designer suit. You do what you have to at the time.

It's a crisis situation. You deal with the urgent needs first, and only later sort out the clean up.

In an emergency you do what is immediately required to save lives, health, and the economy.

Jesus Clav, you are scrapping the barrel now... are you now saying that our Govt is sooooo weak that we didn't lockdown because the EU said so.....

I'm saying it would have been very difficult to shut our borders completely back in Feb 2020 because of our freedom of movement obligations to the EU at the time -12 months later in Feb 2021;

The European Commission said Tuesday (23 February) it has formally warned six EU countries that their virus-related border curbs could undermine free movement within the bloc.

Letters sent on Monday to Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary and Sweden, highlight a risk of “fragmentation and disruptions to free movement and to supply chains,” commission spokesman Christian Wigand told journalists.

The EU executive is worried the measures go beyond recommendations adopted four months ago seeking a “proportional” balance between slowing the spread of the coronavirus and maintaining movement.

It has given the countries until late next week to respond, failing which it could, theoretically, start proceedings for breach of EU laws.

www.euractiv.com/section/justice-home-affairs/news/six-eu-countries-warned-over-border-restrictions/

@Tealightsandd

Tony Blair did some bad things but he also did a lot of good things

Erm - you started so well... The correct sentence is 'Tony Blair did some bad things'. Actually scrap that. More accurate to say 'Tony Blair did many bad things'.

You forgot to finish it off. 'Tony Blair did many bad things, that have been made to look trivial by the current government.'

I disagree. The EU frequently talks of sueing over all sorts of things. Not just against the UK. There's always EU talk of legal action against against one or more of the member countries. Often the countries just ignore and do what's needed regardless.

We could have done the same. Simply gone ahead and done what was required in an emergency situation.

In any case the decision was nothing to do with the EU. As others have said, it's because Boris doesn't want any kind of border control - pandemic be damned.

He prioritises international travel and his chums in the industry above all else. Above all other industries, above lives, above health, above the general economy.

You forgot to finish it off. 'Tony Blair did many bad things, that have been made to look trivial by the current government.'

No. Two wrongs don't make a right. Tony Blair was and continues to be very bad for the UK (still, he did well out of it for himself).

Tony Blair did many bad things, that have been made to look trivial by the current government.

Too damned right. If there were almost 130,000 unnecessary deaths on his watch it was kept bloody quiet.

I thought each country made their own decision about people and goods controls in the pandemic. Hence France considering one thing and Ireland another. Indeed, some EU member states suspending Schengen movement with other states without quarantine etc. as it was a crisis.

Was there a collective decision of common measures taken at EU level? Was it by the Council or by the Commission?

'Tony Blair did many bad things, that have been made to look trivial by the current government'

You think lying about weapons of mass destruction and the deaths of servicemen is trivial, you think allowing GPs just to opt out of out of hours care is trivial. Bollocks.

I'll ask again why is Johnson a villain and Sturgeon a hero on mn? Scotland have a small population yet have had a much worse outcome than other similarly sized countries. Also Nicola didn't attend early cobra meetings either yet mumsnettere don't get their knickers in a knot about that.

It has been a terrible time but please compare England to the other 3 nations and the rest of Europe stop this incessant 'but Taiwan' crap. There is research suggesting fewer cases in the far East may have been down to previous SARs exposure and possible immunity

I am not a Johnson cheerleader but he has done no worse than any other leader in similar sized countries with similar demographics.

Tony Blair allowed free entry of immigrants from former eastern bloc countries - other EU countries put in limits -_and hence we have BREXIT- thanks Tony

Tony Blair is directly responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths of disabled people. It was his government that started the dismantling of the welfare safety net particularly for the disabled. He set us on that road.

Then there's the wars he involved us in.

He's responsible for many deaths.

There can be more than one villain. It's often not a case of one being better than the other. Sometimes both are bad.

Hah! At the rush of of the Tory-bots onto comfortable ground! It's all Tony Blair's Fault! All of it!

Johnson's own handpicked advisor has just literally stated that "Tens of thousands of people died, who didn't need to die," under Johnson-Cummings' government.

But yep. All Tony Blair's fault.

(Oh, and I am one of those disabled people who has had to sit in front of an appeal tribunal deciding whether I got to stay alive or not. I despise Blair for kicking off the restructuring of the disability welfare system on false premises, but I can promise you it got a lot worse when the Tories got in and, under the guise of austerity, degraded it from "flawed" to "disastrous". I think it was Maria Miller who is recorded in Hansard saying part of the purpose of changing DLA to PIP was to effect a 40% cut.)

Jesus Clav, you are scrapping the barrel now.

Indeed. So much barrel scraping on this thread.

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

And please, refer to the above before anyone parrots 'the worse death toll' nonsense like Angela Rayner. As an aside how tf is she deputy leader of the opposition? There is footage of her bigging up her education etc 1996 when the Conservatives were in power

We need a decent opposition. Starmer with Rayner and people like Abbott, Nandy and Long Bailey are just toe curlingly bad. I quite enjoyed Penny Mordaunt making a tit out of Rayner in the HOC, though to be fair she manages to do that just fine by herself.

'Hah! At the rush of of the Tory-bots onto comfortable ground! It's all Tony Blair's Fault! All of it!'

Grow up 🙄. No one said it was all Blair's fault but your minimising is ridiculous.

Stop blaming the EU in any shape or form.

Mr Johnson is to blame, should be held to account. Thousands fewer would have died under an alternative Tory leader.

I don't view that as opinion, I consider it would be a fact. Sadly we will never find out.

'Johnson's own handpicked advisor has just literally stated that "Tens of thousands of people died, who didn't need to die,"

No one 'needed' to die. However in a pandemic that will sadly happen. Please refer to my helpful link to see how when looking at deaths per million we are similar to the rest of Europe.