It seems like the U.K. may have a better Covid strategy after all

[Warhertisuff]

... at least since the emergence of Delta. I generally supported the restrictions before last summer, but thought that opening up in July was sensible. It's too early to tell
for sure, but at the moment it looks like the right call.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59378849

I don’t think the 1000 people a week who have died or are dying and their families would agree with you . Nor the tens of thousands of adults and kids who have long Covid . There have also been some child Covid deaths too which get ignored by the media or write them off as having a pre condition so who don’t matter because they are clearly have one foot in the grave anyway .Not those who have had their lives limited so much because they are clinically vulnerable or immuni compromised. . Have you seen the child hospital admission rates from Covid too ( BBC doesn’t report that either).
Also because of all the thousands of people who have been hospitalised or require treatment that is why we have the appalling situations with NHs waiting lists etc is getting worse .
I don’t want another lock down but there are some things we could and should have done to not make things as bad as they are . For example we could make schools a bit safer by supporting those with poor ventilation to improve it
The BBC reporting has been terrible on this pandemic . So I just don’t agree.

@anniegun

We have killed many more of our own people than almost any other country.

You sound like a 12 year old.

After all this time, a significant number of people still seem to think that death is optional and we can ward it off by wearing blue plasticky paper over our faces and "social distancing".

Read the analysis written by @RedToothBrush above and have a think about it.

@HoardingSamphireSaurus

The UK reaction has been out of step with some, in step with others, but that should always have been obvious, as a reaction the the specifics of the UK - inlcuding the word geography that seems to give us 'weather'

I agree. There are very few countries which are "identical". The British mainland is an Island, so very different to mainland Europe. But also very different to New Zealand which is also an Island. Simply because the British mainland is so close to mainland Europe we have massive amounts of people/freight movement in vehicles using the ferries and tunnel. By contrast, NZ has much less movement of people and freight etc is carried in containers/bulk rather than vans/lorries, so NZ was already set up to handle "contactless" import/export of goods, i.e. via containers and cranes, whereas the UK/Europe trade has significant "driver and cargo" movement meaning there'd always be hundreds/thousands of drivers crossing the channel every day as we simply couldn't have moved to "container" cargo quickly enough due to lack of container ships, lack of ports/cranes etc. That's just one example of geographical differences between countries.

@ancientgran
Part of the point of furlough was to ensure that businesses survived and were therefore around at the end of lockdown to provide viable employment. Let's say there was no furlough and you run a hotel. Your reception staff, chef, housekeeping, waitressing staff etc. all become redundant when hotels are shut. You can't afford to pay them for an indefinite period of time with no money coming in. As the hotel owner, you would have to pay redundancy pay unless the government subsidised this or allowed you not to pay it. This in itself may make you insolvent, particularly when combined with having to refund customers etc..

Your staff go onto job seekers and probably try to find other jobs (some will probably be successful but some won't be).

At that point a large part of your business has been destroyed - you don't have any staff so can't reopen easily even when restrictions are eased and certainly not on a few days notice.

If you still want to run a hotel business, you would wait until you were absolutely sure hotels could reopen long-term and be profitable because you don't want to find a whole new staff team, train them and then have to make them all redundant again. You are very unlikely to be able to hire exactly the same team back because people are going to have found new employment where they can or decided they don't want to work for you any more.

You may well decide, in that position, to sell off your hotel to be converted into housing. All the jobs in that hotel are then lost.

If you work through that scenario with other businesses across the economy as a whole, you can see how no furlough would have led to millions of job losses.

There may have been a different way to set up the scheme which would have worked better or been less expensive but I think it was one of the things we got right overall.

Not wantiong to challenge every word of that, I'll just say that the BBC has always reported on studies on, admissions of and the cahnges in information known about children and covid, hosiptalisations included.

And, as always, the ONS carries all that data, freely available, referenced here, on podium talks, in all reports - the source of every diagram etc.

Examples include:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57766717

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58766614

Just a note to all those referencing what the German health minister Jens Spahn said yesterday about everyone eventually being "recovered, vaccinated or dead". It loses a lot in the translation, and is actually more of a play on words than the harsh warning it comes across as. Germany has been using a "3G" system for entry into places like restaurants, concerts, salons etc. The 3Gs are "genesen, getestet, geimpft" - you have to prove you're recovered, tested, or vaccinated. Spahn was referring to a different 3G - genesen, geimpft, gestorben - recovered, vaccinated, or dead. Hopefully that clears it up a bit, and explains why it's not quite the doom-mongering, scary pronouncement it might first appear to be.

[He also probably wouldn't have said it if he wasn't clearing his desk in a couple of weeks, but that's a different point I guess.]

Is it just me or something doesn’t feel right with this sudden surge of cases in Europe? The reaction and concern coming from the leaders and WHO doesn’t feel quite right, almost like they expected a different situation.

BJ mentioned the storm clouds forming on the continent the other week, was that a hint?

@Awomanwalksintoabar

Just a note to all those referencing what the German health minister Jens Spahn said yesterday about everyone eventually being "recovered, vaccinated or dead". It loses a lot in the translation, and is actually more of a play on words than the harsh warning it comes across as. Germany has been using a "3G" system for entry into places like restaurants, concerts, salons etc. The 3Gs are "genesen, getestet, geimpft" - you have to prove you're recovered, tested, or vaccinated. Spahn was referring to a different 3G - genesen, geimpft, gestorben - recovered, vaccinated, or dead. Hopefully that clears it up a bit, and explains why it's not quite the doom-mongering, scary pronouncement it might first appear to be.

[He also probably wouldn't have said it if he wasn't clearing his desk in a couple of weeks, but that's a different point I guess.]

It's also kind of a meaningless thing to say as it's a truism. Everyone is going to catch covid at some point, many already have. Some of those people died from covid and some more will die and whoever does not die from covid recovers from covid, it's kind of an obvious thing to say. All of us fall in to one of the categories. It's like saying in 100 years time more or less everyone on this planet right now will be dead and gone. Eh yes, that's kind of the way life works.

@Thewiseoneincognito

Is it just me or something doesn’t feel right with this sudden surge of cases in Europe? The reaction and concern coming from the leaders and WHO doesn’t feel quite right, almost like they expected a different situation.

BJ mentioned the storm clouds forming on the continent the other week, was that a hint?

It’s quite simple. We were a few weeks ahead with getting vaccines rolled out, which are now wearing off. They’re now wearing off a few weeks later in mainland Europe.

Austria, actually, was quite quick off the mark compared to its neighbours, so they are getting hit now and the others will probably follow in the coming weeks if they don’t get boosters in arms quickly.

@ICouldHaveCheckedFirst

According to the Covid Worldometer, on the basis of deaths per 1M population (and where 1 is worst), UK is no 30, Austria is 62 and Germany is 70.

For Active cases (again, 1 is worst), UK is no 3, Germany is and Austria is 19.

So I'm not sure what the UK is doing right?

Again, you can't take any single line of data and get anything like a full picture of what is happening.

Take just your two data points.

Given we cannot contgrol the virus and its mutations that we currently have such a high infection rate would make the raised death toll seem likely. But then you look at a 3rd line of data - new cases or a 4th, new deaths, and you see Russia jump up.

There will be many reasons underlying any one of those staistics. Undertsanding them is far more complex than a bald number - even if that number is total death rate.

Ah yes, @Lilifer, but Spahn said "by the end of the winter" - so not quite the 100 year timeline you're referring to!

I guess if you are vaccinated and you wear a mask you have pretty good changes to be ok. I do not need a nanny government to tell me that. Masks are optional nobody ask you not to wear them.

Having the older and vulnerable vaccinated is the main difference. This is what the U.K. has and again we are lucky these demographics took the vaccines. The government made sure vaccines were available and now boosters.

@SecretKeeper1 I hope it is as simple as your explanation but it still seems they weren’t anticipating this particular outcome.

Is it really overly critical to conclude the British government hasn’t been world-beating in its handling of the pandemic?

I simply cannot see how a death rate running at around a thousand a week is evidence of a better Covid strategy.

I'm also seriously concerned that the hospitalisation rate is way up again, which means that yet again other urgent treatments will be postponed. The death and major impairment rate goes well beyond those who had Covid.

I beg your pardon, that last chart wasn’t adjusted for population, so obviously not a fair comparison. This one is.

@sourcherie

Is it really overly critical to conclude the British government hasn’t been world-beating in its handling of the pandemic?

Why does that look so different to excess deaths?

Here

www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker

Is there a strategy at all? The virus doesn't care. There is good vaccine take up and all else seems to be pretty ad hoc.

@Staryflight445

Whose actually enjoying their freedom though?

I hate being in shops etc atm, people don’t respect space.
I loved it when we had to separate ourselves and I didn’t have to smell anyone else’s BO or bad breath or having someone breathing down my neck.

Can’t get in a queue lately and leave a small space without someone getting in it.

It still exists, we should be able to take precautions. I’m pregnant and having 2 children at school atm is worrying.

Some of us are happy to lay low/ respect space and try and prevent spread and shouldn’t be put at risk by those who are happy to go back to normal ‘ whatever that means’.

There should be a bit more compromise IMO.

Me. Very much so.

As for the rest, what exactly do you have in mind? Because if you just mean people are being twats if they come and stand next to you in an otherwise empty shop then cough down your ear, that's fair enough. But if you want precautions that would have an economic cost, not so much. And this is a very busy time of year in retail. Being able to have sufficient personal space to make you feel happier is not necessarily practical or doable.

[quote Thewiseoneincognito]@SecretKeeper1 I hope it is as simple as your explanation but it still seems they weren’t anticipating this particular outcome.[/quote]
No they weren’t. But that’s mainly because they think we’re fuckwits who lost control and it wouldn’t happen to them. Was it Israel who vaccinated super early and then got clobbered again first? Then us, now other European countries will follow. Chronology.

The one thing we got right (by accident, I suspect) was letting this run through in the summer months. I’m hopeful things won’t get too horrendous over winter as we’re either jabbed, boostered, or have had Covid.

There’s a difference between “world-beating” and “got some things right”.

Uk massively cocked up on some things. Did pretty well on others, including others that were widely criticised as dangerous/irresponsible at the time (going it alone on vaccine procurement, 12 weeks between doses). England unlocking in July may turn out to be in the second category.

“but how can you say it’s WELL when people got ILL and DIED?” - because the thinking behind that decision was that unlocking will always cause illnesses and deaths, so better to have them coming steadily through summer and autumn rather than in a big NHS-overwhelming wave in winter.

@GoldenOmber

There’s a difference between “world-beating” and “got some things right”.

Uk massively cocked up on some things. Did pretty well on others, including others that were widely criticised as dangerous/irresponsible at the time (going it alone on vaccine procurement, 12 weeks between doses). England unlocking in July may turn out to be in the second category.

“but how can you say it’s WELL when people got ILL and DIED?” - because the thinking behind that decision was that unlocking will always cause illnesses and deaths, so better to have them coming steadily through summer and autumn rather than in a big NHS-overwhelming wave in winter.

Yup agreed

My current gripes are the lack of encouragement on mask wearing (thanks PM) and the issues with the 12-15 roll out. And the constant "LEAKED document shows blah blah blah" reported by the media, which just fuels anxiety and suspicion.

Hopefully we've done enough to prevent any harsh restrictions being needed over Winter

@Bagamoyo1

So am I imagining the conversations I’ve had with the coroner?

Some people in the stats died "with" not "of" Covid.... But based on ONS work, Covid was the principle cause of death for 92% of them. 8% isn't totally insignificant, but you're implying it's more like 80% and it's not.

www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathswherecovid19wasmentionedonthedeathcertificate

@Awomanwalksintoabar

Ah yes, *@Lilifer*, but Spahn said "by the end of the winter" - so not quite the 100 year timeline you're referring to!

Maybe you didn't understand that I wasn't comparing timelines but was illustrating that both statements are truisms.

Truism definition:
a statementt* that is so obviouslyy truee that it is almostt* not worthh* saying
Cambridge Dictionary

Hth