Is the management of Covid a teensy bit racist?

[QualityChecked]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59428398

I can't help thinking that if the new variant was in America or Western Europe, the action would have been less extreme.

Or is it just sensible management of the situation, as it's in a continent that will have less economic impact on UK?

No, absolutely not.

WOW

Ridiculous OP 🙄

I don't think the varients care where they originate ,it's a virus it's doing what virus,s do ,remember the so called Kent variant and all the travel upset that caused ?

I also argue that something either is or isn’t racist - “a little bit” racist doesn’t exist!

Ffs why does everything have to be racist now ?? The government are doing what they should have done in the first place and shut our borders immediately.

Because everything has to be filtered through the lens of racism.

Do I think economic impact of the restriction has been considered and weighed up - yes, but I don’t consider that racist I consider that to be part of the governments responsibility to weigh up the cost-benefit balance of a restriction. I do also think lessons have been learned from previous.

Unbelievable. I really have fucking heard it all now. Im very far from someone that wants restrictions, I think we should have opened up fully far sooner than we did, but even I can see that a temporary travel ban, until we know the full details of this new variant, is sensible ffs.

Shitting borders is the right thing to do.

However this is a good example of how nobody is vaccinated until everyone is. Vaccinating the UK population while allowing Covid to circulate in the developing world is not only selfish and immoral, it’s also shooting ourselves in the foot as the more cases, the more variants.

Oh god. Shutting the shitting borders, obviously.

We've prevented the whole world from coming to the UK for months, and other countries have done likewise.

It's not racist, it's common sense.

It is expected that vaccines will be effective against this variant
In fact, I think the opposite is very much true. There is growing concern that the vaccines won't be as effective against this new variant.

No

It would
Only be racist if they stopped flights for all non-white people but continued to allow white people to travel. As lots of white people who also live in South Africa are also banned from coming to the UK it’s hard to see your argument.

Ffs grow up

The cases in Europe are a delta. We’ve had high delta for ages. Travel restrictions from Europe are pretty pointless given how we’ve been running hot with it for pretty much months.

The Nu variant is brand new. We don’t know much about it but what we do know looks bad. Why wouldn’t we try to delay it getting established here? 380,000 people had a booster yesterday. That’s over 2.5million people a week if that rate continues. Every day we delay it more people will be better protected.

@Aposterhasnoname

Unbelievable. I really have fucking heard it all now. Im very far from someone that wants restrictions, I think we should have opened up fully far sooner than we did, but even I can see that a temporary travel ban, until we know the full details of this new variant, is sensible ffs.

I'm with you @Aposterhasnoname - it's precisely because I don't support further restrictions that I want to them to act in the most sensible to way to try to give the chance for the vast vast majority of people in the UK to continue with life without further lockdowns etc.

They can't expect compliance with any future restrictions if they've made no attempt to take sensible steps that could help avoid them.

It's not racist- it won't be just black people who lose money and are inconvenienced by the travel ban.

I am relieved that Johnson has acted quickly for a change. If a new variant emerged in Berlin or Baltimore, I'd expect him to act this quickly too. Travel bans are better than domestic restrictions- I know it inconveniences people with family overseas but that is my opinion.

@QualityChecked

So we would imeadiately shut down flights from, say, Berlin in the same situation?

Yes although it would be far harder to slow the spread to the uk due to germany having open borders on all sides.

Nobody is going to accept domestic restrictions this Christmas and we don't want Jan 2022 to be like Jan 2021 in hospitals.

A lot of European countries closed their border to the UK when the Kent variant kicked off. That was despite the impact of stopping UK/EU travel, which probably affects more people than stopping UK/SA travel (more trade with Europe than with southern Africa, more families living across borders unable to see each other for Christmas, etc).

Hopefully this variant isn’t as bad as it could be and vaccines will work fine and no need for panic but I don’t think there’s anything to gain by not putting a quick (and hopefully temporary!) travel ban in place while more is investigated. Then when we know more, good or bad, we re-assess.

Plenty of countries put in travel bans against the U.K. due to alpha and then when we had high levels of delta didn’t they?

No it is not! It's called learning from mistakes!

@QualityChecked - we don't know if the vaccine will be successful with this variant

We most likely would have shut the boarders to India sooner had we not had a trade deal to negotiate.

Plus, Boris cannot chance being the Grinch for a second year in a row. Especially when he knows that compliance will most likely be very low.

Shutting the boarders this time causes the least amount of damage and buys him a bit more time.

It’s the less of two evils really.