Can anyone see anything positive that covid has done in response to covid ?

[helpmehelpmetoday]

So much bashing of tories on here.. does anyone see anything good that Boris and the gov have done in their response to covid ?

Genuinely curious !

@helpmehelpmetoday

I'm pro vaccine, massively. But I'm also hugely against authoritarian government.

I'm for people making choices with their lives and not being baby sat by the state.

Look at what's happening in a lot of other countries. It's really extreme. You can't go into a restaurant without some sort of proof that you're vaccinated. People can't work and are fined for not being vaccinated.

Perpetual lockdowns and fear mongering over a few cases of a relatively mild disease ( which is what omicron is for the vaccinated ).

I would rather live in an open society like ours. And whilst I don't agree with everything the tories do and I have never voted for them myself - I do think that it's Boris and his libertarianism that play a part in this.

I know a lot of people in other countries and they're having a really rough time of it. Their governments are still stopping life. At least we are some what less restricted here. I don't think we will introduce vaccine passports domestically for every day things and I think that's right.

And yes you'll all flame me for saying this, I know. I am deluded you'll say.

Agree.

No, nothing that someone/anyone else couldn't have done sooner and more effectively.

Anything positive that has come about has been in spite of Boris, not because of him.

Hong Kong Flu pandemic was in 1968. No measures introduced to stop the spread. My Dad talks about it. They all still went to school.

I think he is fundamentally crap.

However being libertarian is possibly better at the end of this crisis where it was a liability at the start. That's as generous as o can be.

As I can be.

No, nothing. The initial vaccine rollout went pretty well. But that wasn't Boris's doing, think zahawi had most of the responsibility for that? When he got moved the vaccination program lost momentum. They should've offered it to 11-15 yo from the start of the summer, leaving it til after they went back was stupid.

Boris has dithered and procrastinated, and not made a single decision until his hand had been forced. Diabolical leadership and a total lack of comprehension of maths, statistics and basic science. And now he's making decisions just to distract from partygate.

And it's nothing to do with party allegiance - I'm pretty right wing and have voted tory since I was 18. Never again though, but I still wouldn't vote for any of the other parties either.

Vaccine funding at the beginning was a good move. I think Oxford Astrazeneca is a success story in fighting hospitalisations but we'll see more later perhaps.
Also vaccine rollout has used mostly NHS resources redirected.
Everything they have tried themselves : track and trace, reinventing the procurement of PPE: absolute effing disgrace/ possible fraud imo.

Diabolical leadership is well put. The devil, if you believe in such a notion, certainly uses selfish daftness to cause chaos as much as wickedness.

@lljkk

tbh, as someone who has discovered Libertarian tendancies that I never would have believed I could hold, I feel a lot more comfortable with the social restrictions coming from Tories than I would the lefties. At least I can find moments when I actually believe Tories when they say these are temporary measures.

If lefties were in charge I'd be expecting a lot of unnecessary controls, ZeroCovid craziness, more vaccine mandates (Biden pushed for all employers with at least 100 employees; Austrians & Germans will fine you if no vacc), covid passes to go to a pub (Scotland) or most shopping centres (Israel), Schools closed completely for 12 months (California), 2-5 yr olds in masks (Illinois), severe travel restrictions (NZ), etc. I despair of BJ & all the reborn Brexiters. Tories aren't highly competent, but thank fuck they aren't doing the worst of the Covid control mania.

I came on to say basically this. I think Boris personally is a charlatan and can't be trusted but I've ended up glad he's in charge because despite all the lockdowns I think he does lean towards personal freedom letting adults, you know, be adults and not nannied children.

I'm so glad we didn't have Labour in charge in England during this time or we'd be like NZ, USA, Scotland, Wales right now. I also think Boris should resign but don't trust the other front runners to respect personal freedom. Javid wants vaccine mandates. Gove wants mandates and lockdowns. Not sure what Truss and Sunak really think about anything. It's a rock and a hard place situation!

@lljkk I 99% agree although I live in Scotland and you don't need a covid pass to go to the pub! Some large venues ask to see them -- sports games, music gigs, that kind of thing. But not pubs, cafes or restaurants.

I don't like the additional layer of authoritarian we've got here but I think Sturgeon is being pushed into an increasingly tight corner politically so something will give fairly soon I think.

@Givemepickles and @lljkk I agree with you. I’ve always been pretty left wing but this pandemic has confused me, and I realise I have much stronger libertarian leanings than I suspected!

I still strongly believe that a more left wing govt and society (with better funded NHS, less poverty & inequality, better housing and job conditions etc) would’ve been much better in terms of initially tackling the pandemic. For example in first lockdown those on precarious zero hours contracts would have isolated better, less poverty would’ve better population entering pandemic in better state of health etc.

But in terms of managing these (hopefully!) final pandemic stages and the transition to endemic covid I’m all for the libertarian approach we currently have.

I’m very glad we didn’t follow NS and MW with extra restrictions for omicron, which haven’t done much but cost freedoms and money

No, I have nothing positive to say. See you in 2024.

@HeddaGarbled

Furlough was good, IMO, and the financial support for businesses. Don’t know whether Johnson had any or much input there.

It was good although largely copied from other countries and not as generous.

@helpmehelpmetoday

OK. So do you think labour would have done a better job ?

Oh here we go. Let's have a fantasy Labour government & pretend we know what they would have done.

@saltedBubbly

Yes i think Labour would have done a better job - because the Welsh Labour government have. They have been much more cautious and followed that scientific advice rather than headline grabbing and flip flopping policy to suit their popularity ratings

And they made a coalition government when they had no need to.

@DolphinFC

ThIs kind of sloppy thinking is rife on MN.

If the vaccination programme had gone badly you would have blamed Boris.

But that's exactly what these Tories do. NHS Test and Trace. Nope that was Serco. Government vaccine rollout out. Nope that was the NHS.

I really don’t get why people are pleased we aren’t New Zealand. Most of the last two years they have had normal lives. At least all my family have. Maybe it’s because they didn’t do much international travel anyway so those restrictions haven’t affected them at all. But they aren’t mourning thousands of people who have died. Yes, they have had patches of measures but for nowhere near as long as us. And as the vaccines are rolled out the necessity for any restrictions will ease.
They will have achieved their freedom without the extensive lockdowns and without thousand of people dying alone.

@MarshaBradyo

I’m very glad we didn’t follow NS and MW with extra restrictions for omicron, which haven’t done much but cost freedoms and money

I agree.

Yes. They have helped more people see just how corrupt, selfish and power hungry people running countries truly are.
So many people hang on their every word like it's gospel and they can't be wrong because they're government. They have shown thats not the case.

As someone who works in a care home, when I think back to how covid was handled in the early days I am filled with rage

When/what were the other two?

My maths isn't that great but

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957%E2%80%931958_influenza_pandemic

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu

Both killed up to (but possibly more) than 4m people globally

All I mean is that pandemics are by no means a once in a lifetime event, anyone 40 now could reasonably expect to live through another 2

@babybythesea

I really don’t get why people are pleased we aren’t New Zealand. Most of the last two years they have had normal lives. At least all my family have. Maybe it’s because they didn’t do much international travel anyway so those restrictions haven’t affected them at all. But they aren’t mourning thousands of people who have died. Yes, they have had patches of measures but for nowhere near as long as us. And as the vaccines are rolled out the necessity for any restrictions will ease. They will have achieved their freedom without the extensive lockdowns and without thousand of people dying alone.

NZ is a far more "isolated" country in the first place, so closing borders wasn't really that big a deal and they could, more or less, carry on normal life.

I.e. they didn't have hundreds/thousands of lorries/drivers every day bringing in their essential goods (food etc) from a different country. They get their imports/exports mostly from containers which can be handled remotely by cranes etc. The UK doesn't have enough ships nor ports capable of taking over the hundreds/thousands of vans/lorries every day. So at the very least, we needed to keep the tunnel, ferries, and ports open as normal to get our essential supplies, and that means drivers and vehicles.

Just look at that outbreak in Isle of Man about a year ago because a ferry worker had covid and took it onto the Island where it spread to hundreds of people in just a few days.

Then, of course, we have huge movement of people between the UK and Europe, not just holidays, but family/friends, even people commuting for work. NZ doesn't have the same volume of passenger traffic in/out of their country every day.

Closing the borders in the UK would have been absolutely disastrous. People seem to lazily think it's just holidays/leisure, but our entire infrastructure relies on the drive on/drive off nature of the ferries/tunnel, and huge numbers of people "commute" for work.

We really, really can't compare the UK with NZ.