How come US have such low Covid cases...

[Mimosafortea]

US aren’t really distancing anymore are they...?
I have a friend who lives there and says her life
is pretty much back to normal.

How come? Why are the cases rising again in the UK?

Are we ever honestly going to go back to living
normally?

The UK does a CRAZY amount of testing. Every UK adult is urged to take two lateral flow tests per week, every secondary school DC is urged to do the same. The US is not doing this. Don't be fooled by one country's numbers vs. another country's numbers. The UK is the most assiduous country for testing, has the best gene sequencing capability of any country (hence why we keep identifying new mutations/variants), and we count deaths as anyone who has tested +ve for Covid within the last 28 days, regardless of whether that person died of cancer, heart disease, dementia or a car accident. We're too bloody honest for our own good! Remember when Trump said 'Stop testing, it's making us look bad'? Well, we test a shitload, which means we uncover many, many cases that would otherwise not be known. Whether that's good or bad depends on your POV.

@zafferana

The UK does a CRAZY amount of testing. Every UK adult is urged to take two lateral flow tests per week, every secondary school DC is urged to do the same. The US is not doing this. Don't be fooled by one country's numbers vs. another country's numbers. The UK is the most assiduous country for testing, has the best gene sequencing capability of any country (hence why we keep identifying new mutations/variants), and we count deaths as anyone who has tested +ve for Covid within the last 28 days, regardless of whether that person died of cancer, heart disease, dementia or a car accident. We're too bloody honest for our own good! Remember when Trump said 'Stop testing, it's making us look bad'? Well, we test a shitload, which means we uncover many, many cases that would otherwise not be known. Whether that's good or bad depends on your POV.

True 1 positive LFT just triggered 100s of PCR tests here

Repeated everywhere

Yes but all this science and testing doesn't seem to be doing us much good does it!

So we should look at hospitalisation and deaths.

Both are currently low, will see what happens

@Bryonyshcmyony

Yes but all this science and testing doesn't seem to be doing us much good does it!

Well, again that depends on your POV. No doubt the govt and scientists would say that all this testing is helping the UK to control and monitor its epidemic. Because we always know where it is, we can surge test when it pops up, quickly identify how far it has spread, flood that area with support, etc. Other countries take the 'ignorance is bliss' route, which is largely what the US have done since the start.

@zafferana

The UK does a CRAZY amount of testing. Every UK adult is urged to take two lateral flow tests per week, every secondary school DC is urged to do the same. The US is not doing this. Don't be fooled by one country's numbers vs. another country's numbers. The UK is the most assiduous country for testing, has the best gene sequencing capability of any country (hence why we keep identifying new mutations/variants), and we count deaths as anyone who has tested +ve for Covid within the last 28 days, regardless of whether that person died of cancer, heart disease, dementia or a car accident. We're too bloody honest for our own good! Remember when Trump said 'Stop testing, it's making us look bad'? Well, we test a shitload, which means we uncover many, many cases that would otherwise not be known. Whether that's good or bad depends on your POV.

Exactly. Great post.

@Bryonyshcmyony

Yes but all this science and testing doesn't seem to be doing us much good does it!

I always think better the devil you know!

It should allow us to react quicker but then we are up against it with an extremely corrupt and incompetent government.

But still our knowledge does probably mean they do still react quicker than they would do without that knowledge.

If you three a competent government into the pot with all the good things that do happen in the UK then we would be laughing

That’s all very but other countries are penalising the UK for our high numbers, yet we were only penalising countries who have high numbers even though they aren’t testing the same, look at India, it’s ridiculous.

@Baileysforchristmas

That’s all very but other countries are penalising the UK for our high numbers, yet we were only penalising countries who have high numbers even though they aren’t testing the same, look at India, it’s ridiculous.

I have no issues with other countries penalising the UK!

The less people travelling the better. I know its not ideal, especially you have family abroad but its travellers who have seeded yhe Delta variant.

It's travellers who brought it back in from the continent last year.

The government have been shockingly bad on our borders.

If other countries chose to penalise us then hopefully it helps prevent the dangerous travel that our government seems determined to allow.

Yes, that's the downside of our all our honesty @Baileysforchristmas. We have become a global pariah twice now, simply because we identify new strains (and in one instance, claim it as having originated here when there are good reasons to doubt that), and are scrupulously honest about letting the entire world know how many cases we have. Literally no other country is doing that, unless they have tiny numbers, like Aus and NZ. Cases in France, Italy, Spain the US, you name it are much higher than they've ever wanted to know, so they don't test widely and claim there's nothing to see here. And THE ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD BELIEVES THEM!!

@Wakeupin2022 it’s not just holidays though is it? Look what happened at Christmas, France stopping all lorries, the UK having to test every lorry driver, absolute chaos caused around Kent.

[quote Baileysforchristmas]@Wakeupin2022 it’s not just holidays though is it? Look what happened at Christmas, France stopping all lorries, the UK having to test every lorry driver, absolute chaos caused around Kent.[/quote]
If you believe that was really about Covid then fair enough.

If you think it was really the French sending the UK a message just before the transition period ended you realise its unlikely to happen again.

Ok fair enough but what if we have to go in lockdown again while let’s say Europe open up, they can go on holiday, carry on their lives as normal, fly into the uk but we all have to stay in lockdown? This happened with India, while we were in lockdown 900 people a day were flying backwards and forwards for weddings and religious cceremonies, where there were no restrictions. This is what makes a mockery of the whole thing.

@Baileysforchristmas

how do you know that during UK lockdown "900 people a day were flying backwards and forwards for weddings and religious ceremonies" between UK & India?

Do you mean each & everyone was travelling for those purposes, or just at least 2 persons/day were known for absolute certain to have travelled for those reasons? Do you mean 3 jets arrived daily with at least 300 persons on board, or just 3 jets arrived/day, of unknown occupancy? Was this from 5 January to mid May 2021 daily or just for a few weeks in April 2021.

Very intrigued to find out who has such detailed & specific data about travellers!

It was reported in the Guardian

According to the Civil Aviation Authority, about 50,000 people travelled between India and the UK in February, nearly 900 a day in each direction. On 13 May, Public Health England found nearly half of Delta variant cases in England were travellers

@zafferana

Yes, that's the downside of our all our honesty *@Baileysforchristmas*. We have become a global pariah twice now, simply because we identify new strains (and in one instance, claim it as having originated here when there are good reasons to doubt that), and are scrupulously honest about letting the entire world know how many cases we have. Literally no other country is doing that, unless they have tiny numbers, like Aus and NZ. Cases in France, Italy, Spain the US, you name it are much higher than they've ever wanted to know, so they don't test widely and claim there's nothing to see here. And THE ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD BELIEVES THEM!!

Italy releases daily figures of hospitalisations, positive cases, tests administered, -/+ from the previous day etc. On a national, regional, and local level. The serious media outlets (nationally) also publish pages and pages of these stats every day and there's still a daily news conference from either the scientific advisors, or the head of the Civil Protection who are overseeing the Covid response nationally.

Yeah, but how many tests are they doing every day @Geamhradh? Are all adult Italians and secondary school pupils being asked to do twice weekly LFTs?

I'm not saying that other countries aren't be transparent with their numbers, I'm just saying that the UK is doing waaaaaay more testing than they are and counting deaths that may or may not be attibutable to Covid, when other countries aren't.

That's why all these figures are like comparing apples with oranges - each country is testing and counting differently, so to compare them is misleading and frequently makes the UK look bad, when with our level of vaccination we're almost certainly not doing worse than other countries with lower levels and fewer restrictions.

The US has not had the Delta variant (yet)

Actually it was identified there in March, and it's reported that the CDC have just classified it as a Variant of Concern since it makes up about 10% of current cases

www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/variant.html

LFTs aren't accepted in many places tbh. I had some students last week who had had contact with a case and were due to take exams on Monday so all rushed off for a "test rapido" (LFT) on Saturday (all negative) but the exam centre wouldn't accept that anyway. They only accept "molecolari" (CPRs).

People are only doing tests if they have had contact and/or are symptomatic. 220,000 yesterday (CPR).

I do appreciate each country is handling Covid/tests/vaccinations/opening up differently, but the figures here are more than transparent. It's not a question of not testing to hide the figures. It's (possibly) not testing because people aren't coming into contact with cases. There are 67 active cases in my town. Obviously, there are going to be more, but it's not looking at all bad from where I'm looking at it.

All teachers in my region were vaccinated in March and are now double dipped. The over 12s are now booking. Again, in my region, depending on where you want to go for the Vax, they are getting round to the teens as of 21/6.

Of course, there's not as yet, much talk of Delta. Remains to be seen what will happen when we can travel freely within the EU after 1/7.

Doesn't say reasons why they travelled. Not listed.

I seem to recall advance planning groups from India for G7 have been coming back & forth for months.

India had fewer covid infections than UK in February (per head of population), as I recall.

India wasn’t testing the same as the UK so we don’t know how many cases they had, we don’t know how many deaths they’ve had as they don’t record every death even before Covid , 5 million children under 5 don’t have a birth certificate or recorded. That’s the hypocrisy of the whole thing.

It was on the Guardian article but I can’t find it now. I don’t think 900 people a day were all from the G7, that was just February, it could be more or less for January to April.

India had fewer covid infections than UK in February (per head of population), as I recall.

India has fewer confirmed cases of Covid in February. That's a very different thing. The U.K. 's testing infrastructure may not be perfect but it is enormously more comprehensive than India's.

India has such a huge population and a large amount that can’t easily be reached so I think the true numbers are unknown.

All those poor people who live in the slums and small villages won’t be getting tested or treated or counted in the numbers surely

I think this confusion with facts and figures from all over the world is proof enough that this whole thing is all a load of bollocks.