The UK may have got it right

[VioletRiemelt]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-57911032

Australians back in lockdown, while our restrictions are gone. Our exit wave could be over by September.

@SoOvethis where’s the research on this? Also I know someone who has had covid 3 times now..

@Mrstreehouse
There is lots of research on it. Studies out of US and also France had a relatively big one. You can google. Sorry am about to go to sleep so can’t do it now.
In the same way you know someone who has had covid 3 times - I know without exaggeration of dozens of people who has COVID last February and March and none of them have caught Covid again.
I now know and know of several fully vaccinated people who have recently had covid. And the ones I know have never caught Covid before.
Although good news is I don’t know anyone who has ended up in hospital so I am not for one minute saying the vaccines aren’t worth taking!

I can’t find any research on it but look forward to you posting some.

Lived experience means I have little faith in the Government knowing what's going on and acting accordingly as their fingers crossed approach to wave 1 & 2 went abysmally wrong.

This.

@FourTeaFallOut

By the 31/10/20 there were 1,003

Which is a problem, isn't it, when you have a completely unvaccinated population and you are weeks away from flu season and the Mexican wave of the usual winter illnesses and deaths?

Less so in July when practically all who are vulnerable and able have had a vaccine affording a much better chance of avoiding severe illness and deaths.

Let's just try to be realistic.

The numbers hospitalised now are a big concern. For example we are seeing other operations cancelled. This harms people.

We are expecting hospitalisations to keep rising, meaning our NHS will be forced to divert even more resources to Covid only.

We are in a pickle, and trying to spin it won't help us. We need to deal with it rationally - and step one is to assess status factually.

Every hospitalisation is also a huge cost burden ahead - many will not work for months, if not years.

Vaccines have changed things hugely for the better, but we are still in the midst of a very serious situation.

The fact that the delta variant is so transmissible has changed everything unfortunately. We are all going to catch it - vaccinated or not - but the vaccinated should be well protected. This means that those who are vulnerable to it will remain vulnerable, so restrictions may delay deaths but are unlikely to stop them.

If you can't compare UK/Australia then surely that means there is no one "right answer" for all countries.

Having said that, the UK government seem to have fucked it up 9/10 times through greed and indecision.

No one got it right, but no one could. Sorry you guys are locked down but it won't be for long. Hang in there

Sorry I'm crap, thought you were in Aus. Doh

@lifehappened

No one got it right, but no one could. Sorry you guys are locked down but it won't be for long. Hang in there

You’re right in that ever nation will have lessons to learn.

The problem is that attitude fails to want our own government held to account for their deliberate appalling mismanagement and corruption. There are thousands of avoidable excess deaths directly attributable to governmental decisions made in their own best interests.

Scrapping isolating
Having army on standby
Food shortages
No hospital beds and cancelled operations
Opening up everything as cases are rising

How have we got it right?

www.thesun.co.uk/news/15669246/army-standby-food-supplies-pingdemic/

But Lemon you can say we got lots of things wrong but also say we got lots of things right too which we have. Both things can be true.

Lots of politicians and indeed countries have criticised decisions made in the U.K. and then quietly followed them themselves. I’m thinking about the vaccine roll out, emergency approval, lengthening time between doses, working down the ages, using the military to help with logistics.
Many here and overseas were critical of all these decisions at the time but have been proved the right ones.
Scott Morrison in Australia has been highly critical of the U.K., “it’s not a race”, we’ll follow manufacture guidelines etc. Guess what, now extending gap between doses and apparently it is a race. Irish politicians openly laughed about extending the dose gap and one said they would never do that to their own citizens. Guess what, they’re doing it.
I can’t think of a single instance when Boris had commented negatively on what another country is doing?
I think had the zero Covid crowd been in charge here back in 2020, we’d be in exactly the situation Australia is in now and I’m very pleased we’re not.
But I also accept we did many things wrong, ppe and lack of testing at start are examples plus care homes too.
Most people I meet in real life take this nuanced view.

Has the UK govt got it right? No. They've made a shambolic mess of it. The only reason they've lifted restrictions is so they can all go off on their jollies without breaking those restrictions and the accompanying laws.

They've made mask wearing and distancing "personal responsiblity", so that each of us has to choose whether to protect ourselves and others, or not. For some reason they also allowed that to be called "freedom Day", as if covid had disappeared. It hasn't. It's not freedom for anyone. Except the Tories, perhaps, who are free to go off on holiday, and then blame "the people" for refusing to wear masks and distance when cases and deaths go up again.

Accountability and responsibility. A government who was accountable, and took responsiblity would be right. What the UK has is nothing of the sort.

Is Australia sitting on piles of AZ it won’t use?

The truly outstanding thing for me right now is that Johnson is a liar. He's lied to the Queen, to Parliament, to everyone. He's an absolute arse. So what happens to the person who points that out, and provides the evidence? Booted out of of Commons for citing his lies. Instead of him being booted out for lying.

His lies have cost people's lives. He insisted CV wasn't a problem, an went shaking hands with CV patients.

He didn't get it right, but no one could" Yes, they could. He didn't. he's the one responsible for leading this country. He needs to be held accountable.

I would argue though Doodle that asking people to take responsibility themselves has worked. Too early to know for sure of course but plenty of people wearing masks and behaving responsibly where I live. So we don’t necessarily need a government mandate.
And yes Aus has AZ , they make it there but have so completely stuffed up the messaging and roll out that people do not want it and prefer to wait for pfzier. The EU nonsense back in January has contributed to this. The health minister has openly told younger people to wait. It really is a “shit show “ over there with regards to the AZ vaccine.
Partly that too is a response to doing well in 2020, urgency left and the incentive to get vaccinated went too. Paradoxically Delta spreading at the moment might do wonders for their roll out as it helps concentrate the kind and changes the risk analysis!
Morrison saying it’s not a race has allied the conspiracy activists and anti Vaxers to get in there and cause mischief.
Morrison misunderstood that the race is not just necessarily against the virus ( although it is / was in the U.K.) it’s also against the bad faith actors and anti vaxers

I always think anyone that can’t acknowledge the good as well as the bad is just a political activist.
I was reading a thread on Twitter earlier by someone that gets on the TV and in the papers. Retweeting one of their mates claiming pfzier had run out. Turns out complete nonsense and they have had to back track. This sort of thing just undermines my confidence in their arguments and makes them look like an ideologue rather than a scientist and we can trust their opinions. It’s a shame as I did like to listen to what they have to say but I’ m realising they are just political now.

@sashagabadon agree with your balanced view and everything you say.

As my Dutch DH says. At least the U.K. have a plan and a reasoning behind the plan. The Dutch government don’t have a plan and are making it up as they go along. That is HIS unbiased view not mine as I don’t know enough about what is happening there.

Thanks Blessex
I am an optimist by nature so I’m aware that clouds my judgement. Hence I do like to see what the pessimists say too to balance me out.
One thing I have realised is that there is no penalty on line or in real life from making gloomier predictions and no public accountability when your gloomy predictions do not materialise despite the harm it might have caused if we had followed your advice.
Until that changes and the zero Covid crowd are made to account for their dire predictions that do not come true, they will keep on making those predictions.
It’s just as extreme as the anti lockdown crowd but the other side of the coin!

And yes Aus has AZ , they make it there but have so completely stuffed up the messaging and roll out that people do not want it and prefer to wait for pfzier. The EU nonsense back in January has contributed to this. The health minister has openly told younger people to wait. It really is a “shit show “ over there with regards to the AZ vaccine.

This is crazy. It didn’t matter so much a few months ago, but now the absolute best thing they could be doing is getting those jabs into arms.

I know keating. It’s really crazy and that the health ministers and politicians have encouraged it too.

That’s come back to bite them in the arse, big time.

@sashagabadon I am an optimist by nature so I’m aware that clouds my judgement. Hence I do like to see what the pessimists say too to balance me out.

Yep me too. I always love reading comments and other points of view too but it does drive me a little mad when it is extreme either way. Then I just switch off a bit because I know some people’s judgement is closed off to the other side. I try hard to see both even if an optimist by nature. I also have the happy situation of having a lot of family and friends living in other countries so try and get a balanced view from them too.

@TheKeatingFive yep. I have a mate in Sydney mid 40s and she says she is unable to get the AZ vaccine even if it is there. She asked what I had. I said AZ as did all my friends here. More chance of being run over by a bus on the way there then getting a blood clot!