The UK's Handling of the Pandemic

[Dominic]

Here's an interesting read from a British journalist not known for his hyperbole.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1340 ... 88865.html

You really need to read the article itself, so I won't post huge chunks here. It basically doesn't praise the UK, but points out it is doing no worse than anybody else.

[Jimgym]

Thank you for sharing that link Dominic. A very interesting and informative read. Makes a change to read a non sensationalist, balanced and reasoned article.

[ast]

Interesting read, but wait for it Mr Authority on everything will be ready to cast it aside with one swipe. its coming.

But of course we all have our right to express an opinion.

[Jimgward]

I have to completely disagree with the assumption that the UK did as well as others. The UK is an island, that had to have some contact with Europe, with lorries bringing in an average of 50% of our needs. However, even now, we don't temperature check anyone, we never banned flights from any country, we didn't and still don't temperature check airports, we have ended up with the worst EU figures, if we use the ONS ones.

I cannot see much that the government did right, the moving of older people with covid,(known) into care homes was a travesty and caused around 25,000 deaths in that sector - much directly attributable to that decision.

The seesaw lockdown situation has been political in many ways, almost ignoring anything outside London and the South, in terms of support, but as soon as the London figures rose, they would bring in more financial support for businesses etc.

I honestly believe that the chancellor support, is about the only thing the UK got close to right. I say close, as in the Germany, as an example, 100% of salary was paid on furlough and isolation.

Our track and trace has been an absolute disaster and the quite frankly corruption over £15bn and counting of contracts given illegally and the waste, is unbelievable.

So, in summary, I cannot support the UK's handling at all. We have far more deaths than any island should have. If we compare with Cyprus, NZ and Australia, we had examples to follow in terms of proper lock-down etc.

I read a statistic recently as well, regarding the handing out of fines in the UK for serious breaches, such as parties. Most have not been paid and around 40% of the people fined have reoffended. The control of the lockdown situation was within the remit o government and was again miss-handled.

The UK is now in an almost complete lockdown, yet the 'opening' over Xmas was still allowed and just 2 days before the final decision of lockdown based on the 'new' variant of the disease, Boris was still refusing to move on the 5 day Xmas window that would have been a disaster.

I believe there are new variants. That has been known about since late Spring, yet this announcement on Saturday all seems far too political, allowing a change of decision all of a sudden, on a variant they had apparently being tracking since summer and had full science on!

[Jim B]

At the end of the day it's only the journalists opinion and as ast wrote, we're all entitled to one.
There's more unsaid than said in the article, not just about the virus but the incompetence and corruption that's gone with it.

Jim

[2QuarterPints]

Personally, I think that our government has done well in a very difficult time, and I agree with some of what Jimgward has said, particularly about London and the South. However, despite us being an island as well, I don't think we should be compared to Cyprus, New Zealand and Australia. Their combined, and very spread out populations, are less than half the total of the numbers packed into the UK, and don't have large sectors of their populations that are particularly susceptible to the spread of infections.