UK Justice Forum 🇬🇧
UK and North American politics. => A look at British politics in the light of the decision to leave the EU. => Topic started by: faithlilly on January 27, 2021, 01:05:19 AM
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In March last year a poster wrote this
“These are already massively out of date, things have moved on at a pace since the weekend. You can cut and paste as many links as you like, at the end of the day the facts will speak for themselves. If the Government’s handling of this crisis is causing unavoidable deaths then the stats will reflect this. So far our death rate per head of population is well down compared to other EU countries, maybe that will change, maybe it won’t. Perhaps you’d like to give examples of governments doing a much better job at containing the virus? China perhaps? Are they socialists in your view?”
As we today reach more than 100,000 deaths in this country due to coronavirus, the largest death toll in the world, sadly my prediction that Johnson and his hideously incompetent government’s handing of this pandemic would lead to hundreds of thousands unnecessary deaths has proved correct. Every other country on this planet with the ability to collate the data has faired better than us....even China.
I once said that the British had a tendency to masochism and the fact the the Conservatives are still neck and neck with Labour in the polls seems to bear this out. How many of our citizens will have to die due to this government’s incompetence before we say enough is enough?
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The government had the foresight to order vaccine three months before the EU got round to it. Now the EU is trying to stop it being exported to the UK.
UK leads in total vaccination doses relative to its population compared to European countries
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-astrazeneca-boss-blames-glitches-for-vaccine-supply-delays-in-europe-12200035
Thank goodness they were able to act independently rather than being hampered by having to wait for the EU bureaucracy to creak into action.
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This thread has been started as a thinly veiled attempt by the OP to have another pop at me. I stand by every word I wrote in the post quoted. It is a highly complex issue and simply blaming the government for everything is taking the typical black and white approach of your average intelligence internet commentator - Torys = Bad, Labour = Good. As the OP refuses to engage with me anymore I shall not bother to comment any further, suffice it to say this crisis has been an absolute gift for the Tory Bashers and the Know-It-Alls and the Captain Hindsight brigade.
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This thread has been started as a thinly veiled attempt by the OP to have another pop at me. I stand by every word I wrote in the post quoted. It is a highly complex issue and simply blaming the government for everything is taking the typical black and white approach of your average intelligence internet commentator - Torys = Bad, Labour = Good. As the OP refuses to engage with me anymore I shall not bother to comment any further, suffice it to say this crisis has been an absolute gift for the Tory Bashers and the Know-It-Alls and the Captain Hindsight brigade.
It’s not complex. The government failed to heed the advice of its experts and locked down too late three times while also letting households mix at Christmas even though they knew that a new variant of the virus which was more virulent was infecting people. Eat out to help out also helped push numbers up. It really is rather simple why we have the highest death rate in the world, we had a woefully incompetent government.
As you appear to disagree with my conclusions why do you think that we have so many dead ?
For the record I think Labour’s record in opposition during the pandemic has also been woeful.
And as we are now engaging would it be too much to ask if we could try to debate without the insults?
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It’s not complex. The government failed to heed the advice of its experts and locked down too late three times while also letting households mix at Christmas even though they knew that a new variant of the virus which was more virulent was infecting people. Eat out to help out also helped push numbers up. It really is rather simple why we have the highest death rate in the world, we had a woefully incompetent government.
As you appear to disagree with my conclusions why do you think that we have so many dead ?
For the record I think Labour’s record in opposition during the pandemic has also been woeful.
And as we are now engaging would it be too much to ask if we could try to debate without the insults?
To blame our death rate solely on the actions of the government is overly simplistic and if that is your position then I don’t see any point in discussing what is a hugely complex issue any further. Nothing I say will change your mind and whilst I concede that the government has undoubtedly made numerous mistakes in the last year I refuse to join in with the online vitriol directed at those who are IMO trying their best in trying circumstances. They are the only government we’ve got so if you think they’re awful thrn vote them out in four years time. I can absolutely guarantee that the next bunch won’t be much better.
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UK Covid deaths: Why the 100,000 toll is so bad https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55757790 if you want to know why our death rate is so high. As I said, a complex issue. Just blaming the government won’t do and is a quite dangerous position to adopt IMO as it overlooks other important contributing factors.
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Meanwhile the situation in Portugal is currently dire - my heart goes out to the Portuguese who are in a terrible way atm. Undoubtedly their government has made mistakes but now is not the time to point fingers at their leaders and play politics. Now is the time to pull together and do what needs to be done as swiftly and as effectively as possible - IMO.
Oxygen is running out as Covid cases soar and Portugal confronts ‘catastrophe’
Isambard Wilkinson, Madrid | Oliver Moody, Berlin
Friday January 29 2021, 12.01am, The Times
Coronavirus
More than 20 ambulances wait outside Portugal’s largest hospital, the Santa Maria in Lisbon
More than 20 ambulances wait outside Portugal’s largest hospital, the Santa Maria in Lisbon
EPA/MARIO CRUZ
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Save
Portugal is struggling to contain its growing coronavirus outbreak, with overwhelmed hospitals running short of oxygen supplies as the country recorded the world’s highest seven-day average of new daily cases and deaths.
Yesterday afternoon the country announced the closure of its border with Spain from today for two weeks. Flights to and from the UK were banned from last weekend. Flights to and from Brazil, where another worrying variant has been detected, will be banned from Saturday. Germany has also announced a ban on flights to and from Portugal.
António Costa, the prime minister, said Portugal had entered a “terrible” stage. “There is no point in feeding the illusion that we are not facing the worst moment,” he added. “And we’ll face this worst moment for a few more weeks, that is for sure.” He said that had his government known about the British strain it would not have eased restrictions over Christmas. Infections began to soar in the new year and have not yet shown signs of coming down.
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Germany had promised military medical aid, but Mr Costa said: “In everything Portugal has asked for, unfortunately they have no availability, namely doctors, nurses. They have ventilators, but at the moment we don’t need it because we have enough.”
With more than 670,000 cases and 11,600 deaths — including a record 303 dead and 16,432 infections registered on Thursday — the country of ten million people has the world’s highest seven-day average of daily cases and deaths per million. These numbers are the official figures from the Portuguese government and higher than those recoded by the World Health Organisation.
Hospitals in Portugal, which, before the pandemic had the lowest number of critical care beds per 100,000 people in Europe, are using 830 beds out of a total 1,200 for Covid-19 patients. At present 783 Covid patients are in ICUs.
Since Tuesday night, when the oxygen network collapsed at Fernando Fonseca Hospital in Lisbon, more than 100 patients have been moved elsewhere. The Lusa news agency reported that a group of German military doctors had visited the hospital to assess its logistics and equipment needs.
Portugal had entered a “terrible” stage, according to the prime minister
Portugal had entered a “terrible” stage, according to the prime minister
EPA/MARIO CRUZ
TV news showed more than 20 ambulances outside Portugal’s largest hospital, the Santa Maria in Lisbon, waiting for beds. At least ten other hospitals have said they are in a “catastrophic situation”. The capital’s military hospital, which is taking patients from public hospitals, is turning its canteen into a 50-bed ward in three days, bringing its beds to 274, 80 per cent for Covid-19.
“Human resources are finite and that is where the most critical situation is,” said Carlos Robalo Cordeiro, a member of the crisis committee at Portugal’s national association of doctors. “Numbers [of patients] are overtaking the capacity of resources to respond.”
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The German decision to ban travel from Portugal was announced by Horst Seehofer, the interior minister, after online talks with his EU counterparts. “To protect our population, there should be no entry from regions where these variants of the virus are rampant,” he said.
The return of stringent border controls within Europe’s visa-free Schengen zone would be a significant setback for freedom of movement within the bloc. Last March, during the first wave of the pandemic, Germany shut its borders with France, Poland, Austria, Switzerland and Denmark, although there were exceptions for commuters and goods traffic. The controls were eased again from mid-May.
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Meanwhile the situation in Portugal is currently dire - my heart goes out to the Portuguese who are in a terrible way atm. Undoubtedly their government has made mistakes but now is not the time to point fingers at their leaders and play politics. Now is the time to pull together and do what needs to be done as swiftly and as effectively as possible - IMO.
Oxygen is running out as Covid cases soar and Portugal confronts ‘catastrophe’
Isambard Wilkinson, Madrid | Oliver Moody, Berlin
Friday January 29 2021, 12.01am, The Times
Coronavirus
More than 20 ambulances wait outside Portugal’s largest hospital, the Santa Maria in Lisbon
More than 20 ambulances wait outside Portugal’s largest hospital, the Santa Maria in Lisbon
EPA/MARIO CRUZ
Share
Save
Portugal is struggling to contain its growing coronavirus outbreak, with overwhelmed hospitals running short of oxygen supplies as the country recorded the world’s highest seven-day average of new daily cases and deaths.
Yesterday afternoon the country announced the closure of its border with Spain from today for two weeks. Flights to and from the UK were banned from last weekend. Flights to and from Brazil, where another worrying variant has been detected, will be banned from Saturday. Germany has also announced a ban on flights to and from Portugal.
António Costa, the prime minister, said Portugal had entered a “terrible” stage. “There is no point in feeding the illusion that we are not facing the worst moment,” he added. “And we’ll face this worst moment for a few more weeks, that is for sure.” He said that had his government known about the British strain it would not have eased restrictions over Christmas. Infections began to soar in the new year and have not yet shown signs of coming down.
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Germany had promised military medical aid, but Mr Costa said: “In everything Portugal has asked for, unfortunately they have no availability, namely doctors, nurses. They have ventilators, but at the moment we don’t need it because we have enough.”
With more than 670,000 cases and 11,600 deaths — including a record 303 dead and 16,432 infections registered on Thursday — the country of ten million people has the world’s highest seven-day average of daily cases and deaths per million. These numbers are the official figures from the Portuguese government and higher than those recoded by the World Health Organisation.
Hospitals in Portugal, which, before the pandemic had the lowest number of critical care beds per 100,000 people in Europe, are using 830 beds out of a total 1,200 for Covid-19 patients. At present 783 Covid patients are in ICUs.
Since Tuesday night, when the oxygen network collapsed at Fernando Fonseca Hospital in Lisbon, more than 100 patients have been moved elsewhere. The Lusa news agency reported that a group of German military doctors had visited the hospital to assess its logistics and equipment needs.
Portugal had entered a “terrible” stage, according to the prime minister
Portugal had entered a “terrible” stage, according to the prime minister
EPA/MARIO CRUZ
TV news showed more than 20 ambulances outside Portugal’s largest hospital, the Santa Maria in Lisbon, waiting for beds. At least ten other hospitals have said they are in a “catastrophic situation”. The capital’s military hospital, which is taking patients from public hospitals, is turning its canteen into a 50-bed ward in three days, bringing its beds to 274, 80 per cent for Covid-19.
“Human resources are finite and that is where the most critical situation is,” said Carlos Robalo Cordeiro, a member of the crisis committee at Portugal’s national association of doctors. “Numbers [of patients] are overtaking the capacity of resources to respond.”
SPONSORED
The German decision to ban travel from Portugal was announced by Horst Seehofer, the interior minister, after online talks with his EU counterparts. “To protect our population, there should be no entry from regions where these variants of the virus are rampant,” he said.
The return of stringent border controls within Europe’s visa-free Schengen zone would be a significant setback for freedom of movement within the bloc. Last March, during the first wave of the pandemic, Germany shut its borders with France, Poland, Austria, Switzerland and Denmark, although there were exceptions for commuters and goods traffic. The controls were eased again from mid-May.
Why do you think that the U.K. has the highest death rate in Europe....even Portugal?
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Why do you think that the U.K. has the highest death rate in Europe....even Portugal?
See my previous answer(s).
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Figures show there were 50.5 deaths per million in Scotland in the week to 15 November, compared to 40.6 in England
Does this mean that Nicola Sturgeon's government have handled the pandemic worse than Boris and his government?
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Meanwhile we are now the envy of Europe (or the Germans anyway). Who’da thunk?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9294521/Germanys-biggest-newspaper-praises-Britains-vaccine-success.html
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Figures show there were 50.5 deaths per million in Scotland in the week to 15 November, compared to 40.6 in England
Does this mean that Nicola Sturgeon's government have handled the pandemic worse than Boris and his government?
Yes! and she is using it as a party political broadcast to spew her hatred of the English- A total embarrassment to the Scottish people- especially the Scottish soldiers who stand shoulder to shoulder with English counterparts whos lives depend on each other.
Sturgeon is telling wee lies as it has been shown her stats which she spouts are different from the actual stats!
She also refused help from Bojo to speed up our vaccination roll out what disgrace she is to our country!
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For the benefit of readers here, this is the usual rant from a unionist who is really really worried about the rise of the vote for independence.
None of the above rant bears any semblance to the truth.
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For the benefit of readers here, this is the usual rant from a unionist who is really really worried about the rise of the vote for independence.
None of the above rant bears any semblance to the truth.
So what is the truth?
Will this independent Scotland have it's own currency, nuclear deterrent & armed forces or will there need to be some sort of union with England, Wales & N.I?
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So what is the truth?
Will this independent Scotland have it's own currency, nuclear deterrent & armed forces or will there need to be some sort of union with England, Wales & N.I?
The truth is that MI posts utter rubbish......ranting about spewing hatred for the English and the spouting lies and all the "whataboutery" about soldiers.
Nicola's broadcasts each day have been informative, honest, reassuring and non political.
We didn't need any help from Prime Minister Johnstone with vaccine roll out. We are well ahead of all the targets for the various cohort groups
Do you really care if Scotland has its own currency, nuclear deterrent and armed forces?
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For the benefit of readers here, this is the usual rant from a unionist who is really really worried about the rise of the vote for independence.
None of the above rant bears any semblance to the truth.
Nice to see you addressing your millions of followers there Erngarth, Must be great to be you, having all that power and using it wisely. (&^&
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UK Covid deaths: Why the 100,000 toll is so bad https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55757790 if you want to know why our death rate is so high. As I said, a complex issue. Just blaming the government won’t do and is a quite dangerous position to adopt IMO as it overlooks other important contributing factors.
I AM NOT A CONSPIRITORY THEORIST- However, A few things should be discussed and indeed investigated.
It has been suggested (I don't have evidence, yet, sorry) that the NHS Scotland was marking as' Covid Death' for anyone who died with flu like conditions. Many were never actually tested and some tested and covid blamed although it was not as a direct result of the covid virus. I believe that bumped up figures in stats.
The virus is real and CAN KILL some people, however the majority have survived which means It is containable, and the full lockdowns may not have been neccessary.
"The truth is that MI posts utter rubbish.....That is only YOUR truth.
.ranting about spewing hatred for the English and the spouting lies and all the "whataboutery" about soldiers. hahahaha really? trying to get brownie points from your many millions of followers?
Nicola's broadcasts each day have been informative, honest, reassuring and non political.
Nicola and honest in the same sentence ... really? lol
We didn't need any help from Prime Minister Johnstone with vaccine roll out. We are well ahead of all the targets for the various cohort groups"
OOps wee SNPEEE lies snuck in there for effect eh?
Such hatred from you is evidence of you and your ilk of being intolerant of others. how quaint.
xxx for your millions of followers! ^*&&
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I AM NOT A CONSPIRITORY THEORIST- However, A few things should be discussed and indeed investigated.
It has been suggested (I don't have evidence, yet, sorry) that the NHS Scotland was marking as' Covid Death' for anyone who died with flu like conditions. Many were never actually tested and some tested and covid blamed although it was not as a direct result of the covid virus. I believe that bumped up figures in stats.
The virus is real and CAN KILL some people, however the majority have survived which means It is containable, and the full lockdowns may not have been neccessary.
"The truth is that MI posts utter rubbish.....That is only YOUR truth.
.ranting about spewing hatred for the English and the spouting lies and all the "whataboutery" about soldiers. hahahaha really? trying to get brownie points from your many millions of followers?
Nicola's broadcasts each day have been informative, honest, reassuring and non political.
Nicola and honest in the same sentence ... really? lol
We didn't need any help from Prime Minister Johnstone with vaccine roll out. We are well ahead of all the targets for the various cohort groups"
OOps wee SNPEEE lies snuck in there for effect eh?
Such hatred from you is evidence of you and your ilk of being intolerant of others. how quaint.
xxx for your millions of followers! ^*&&
Erm...are you sure it was my post you meant to respond to? I know all us supporters look alike to you but really...
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Erm...are you sure it was my post you meant to respond to? I know all us supporters look alike to you but really...
um... well, did you type this?
"Figures show there were 50.5 deaths per million in Scotland in the week to 15 November, compared to 40.6 in England"
and this...
"Does this mean that Nicola Sturgeon's government have handled the pandemic worse than Boris and his government?"
If so, I was replying with suggestion that the figures are not accurate... and Getting in there any accusation of being a conspiracy theorist.. ya don't mind do ya? 8(>((
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um... well, did you type this?
"Figures show there were 50.5 deaths per million in Scotland in the week to 15 November, compared to 40.6 in England"
and this...
"Does this mean that Nicola Sturgeon's government have handled the pandemic worse than Boris and his government?"
If so, I was replying with suggestion that the figures are not accurate... and Getting in there any accusation of being a conspiracy theorist.. ya don't mind do ya? 8(>((
What was the second half of your post all about though? Not sure but it seemed like a rant directed at me, rather unfairly I thought.
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What was the second half of your post all about though? Not sure but it seemed like a rant directed at me, rather unfairly I thought.
My apologies VS. That wasn't my intention at all.
The last part was directed at Ergh. I was on the phone mid sentence and forgot to add a post script. :( Ooops
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It’s not complex. The government failed to heed the advice of its experts and locked down too late three times while also letting households mix at Christmas even though they knew that a new variant of the virus which was more virulent was infecting people. Eat out to help out also helped push numbers up. It really is rather simple why we have the highest death rate in the world, we had a woefully incompetent government.
As you appear to disagree with my conclusions why do you think that we have so many dead ?
For the record I think Labour’s record in opposition during the pandemic has also been woeful.
And as we are now engaging would it be too much to ask if we could try to debate without the insults?
- IMO, back in early March 2020 BoJo's attitude to Covid was hair-raising (e.g., saying on TV that he'd carry on shaking hands with everyone, and intimated that he'd already done so with Covid patients in a hospital (which wasn't true). A few weeks later, he could well have died from it. I totally agree that he should have listened (as opposed to just 'heard') what his experts were saying and been decisive. Perhaps even turned up to some of the COBRA meetings.
- Allowing some Xmas festivity (or other religious / festive events) was a hard decision for many governments, no doubt trying to juggle between political optics, economic fallout, behavioural psychology, and all the rest.
- I'm not sure where the idea that the UK had the highest death rate in the world comes from. At around this time last year - from memory - I'd found that it was indeed heading that way, but was below Belgium and Italy (and that's just in Europe).
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So what is the truth?
Will this independent Scotland have it's own currency, nuclear deterrent & armed forces or will there need to be some sort of union with England, Wales & N.I?
A hard border is order of the day.. long way to Europe- not having permission to go via England- air land or sea.. Hell of a journey. What will our pass ports lok like I wonder. Sturgeons face on the front cover?
Oh I am being called names and not a warning insight. a slanderous name at that as I am not a 'Unionist' I am a subject of the United a Kingdom. AND proud of that.
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I posted this in January this year.
“As we today reach more than 100,000 deaths in this country due to coronavirus, the largest death toll in the world, sadly my prediction that Johnson and his hideously incompetent government’s handing of this pandemic would lead to hundreds of thousands unnecessary deaths has proved correct. Every other country on this planet with the ability to collate the data has faired better than us....even China.
I once said that the British had a tendency to masochism and the fact the the Conservatives are still neck and neck with Labour in the polls seems to bear this out. How many of our citizens will have to die due to this government’s incompetence before we say enough is enough?”
Of course I was called a Tory basher and a naysayer. If only more had spoken up.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-serious-errors-by-ministers-and-scientific-advisers-cost-thousands-of-lives-during-pandemic-says-report-by-mps-12431778
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I posted this in January this year.
“As we today reach more than 100,000 deaths in this country due to coronavirus, the largest death toll in the world, sadly my prediction that Johnson and his hideously incompetent government’s handing of this pandemic would lead to hundreds of thousands unnecessary deaths has proved correct. Every other country on this planet with the ability to collate the data has faired better than us....even China.
I once said that the British had a tendency to masochism and the fact the the Conservatives are still neck and neck with Labour in the polls seems to bear this out. How many of our citizens will have to die due to this government’s incompetence before we say enough is enough?”
Of course I was called a Tory basher and a naysayer. If only more had spoken up.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-serious-errors-by-ministers-and-scientific-advisers-cost-thousands-of-lives-during-pandemic-says-report-by-mps-12431778
Are you kidding?! “If only more had spoken up”?! There was been wall-to-wall criticism of the government pretty much since day one and what has it achieved? Nothing. What must be incredibly galling for leftists like you is that the ordinary British people (who the likes of you clearly despise) are much more forgiving and understanding of this government’s actions (in-actions and mistakes as clearly many of them were) than you could ever possibly be, it must really hurt but that’s life.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/02/05/who-do-britons-hold-responsible-covid-19-deaths-uk
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Covid cases yesterday:
France: 1,120
Spain: 1,277
Italy: 1,561
Germany: 4,872
UK: 40,224
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Covid cases yesterday:
France: 1,120
Spain: 1,277
Italy: 1,561
Germany: 4,872
UK: 40,224
So what do you suggest? Another lockdown?
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- The initial UK vaccine rollout was impressive, but had nothing to do with EU restrictions as any EU country was free to make side deals (and the UK was still a member at the time).
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/covid-vaccine-decisions-brexit
- The current UK numbers do indeed seem very high compared to other western European countries. However, the number of cases can be misleading as it depends on the number of tests... which in turn can depend on whether tests are compulsory in order to work/ study / attend events / travel, or simply voluntary in the event of feeling unwell.
- As a centrist, I don't want to participate in Con/Lab spats. Any government has to work with the state of affairs that it has inherited and the competence of those in place to deal with situations / crises. Appointing people to key positions primarily on the basis of party loyalty (of whichever flavour) as opposed to competence does not, IMO, lead to a more efficient country.
- I've been to 3 EU countries recently. In two, masks were the only obligation in enclosed settings. In France,
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- The initial UK vaccine rollout was impressive, but had nothing to do with EU restrictions as any EU country was free to make side deals (and the UK was still a member at the time).
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/blog/covid-vaccine-decisions-brexit
- The current UK numbers do indeed seem very high compared to other western European countries. However, the number of cases can be misleading as it depends on the number of tests... which in turn can depend on whether tests are compulsory in order to work/ study / attend events / travel, or simply voluntary in the event of feeling unwell.
- As a centrist, I don't want to participate in Con/Lab spats. Any government has to work with the state of affairs that it has inherited and the competence of those in place to deal with situations / crises. Appointing people to key positions primarily on the basis of party loyalty (of whichever flavour) as opposed to competence does not, IMO, lead to a more efficient country.
- I've been to 3 EU countries recently. In two, masks were the only obligation in enclosed settings. In France,
I think that the Covid crisis has gone beyond partisan politics and while I appreciate your points on the collation of cases I don’t believe that that would skew the figures enough to explain the disparity in numbers.
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In March last year a poster wrote this
“These are already massively out of date, things have moved on at a pace since the weekend. You can cut and paste as many links as you like, at the end of the day the facts will speak for themselves. If the Government’s handling of this crisis is causing unavoidable deaths then the stats will reflect this. So far our death rate per head of population is well down compared to other EU countries, maybe that will change, maybe it won’t. Perhaps you’d like to give examples of governments doing a much better job at containing the virus? China perhaps? Are they socialists in your view?”
As we today reach more than 100,000 deaths in this country due to coronavirus, the largest death toll in the world, sadly my prediction that Johnson and his hideously incompetent government’s handing of this pandemic would lead to hundreds of thousands unnecessary deaths has proved correct. Every other country on this planet with the ability to collate the data has faired better than us....even China.
I once said that the British had a tendency to masochism and the fact the the Conservatives are still neck and neck with Labour in the polls seems to bear this out. How many of our citizens will have to die due to this government’s incompetence before we say enough is enough?
Bad news Faithlilly -
"Britain stood out for the apparent accuracy of its official figures. The government had estimated about 150,000 excess deaths and the WHO estimate was virtually the same. By contrast, the Indian government claims it has suffered fewer than 500,000 extra deaths. The WHO said yesterday that the real figure was nearly five million.
The WHO estimates that the UK had 109 excess deaths per 100,000 people per year over a two-year period. That compared with 133 for Italy, 116 in Germany and 111 in Spain".
In the league table of excess deaths Britain was 57th, so not the worst affected country by a long shot. Furthermore Sweden which did not pursue nearly the rigorous lockdown policy that we did in the UK had an excess death rate of around half ours, yet was criticised for its "irresponsible" policy at the time.
As I kept saying during the pandemic, rushing to judgement and blaming the government for its handling of the crisis was premature and unhelpful political point scoring, I also said that we wouldn't get a clear picture of exactly how we'd fared by comparison with other countries until the dust had settled. Looks like I was right again.
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As usual Matthew Syed in the Sunday Times gets it spot on - I doubt Faithlilly will bother to read it but she really should, and express some contrition for her propagandistic views and tasteless avatars during the pandemic:
Now we know our ministers did OK against Covid, but I hear no apologies
Matthew SyedMay 06 2022, 12.00am
At the time, we were all surrounded by a thick fog of uncertainty. Epidemiologists were frantically seeking to understand the properties of the virus, medics were estimating the length of time to a vaccine, economists were examining what different restrictions might mean for commerce and interdisciplinary teams were exploring the subtle relationships and feedback loops between these variables.
Last week marks a useful moment to look back at this surreal period of history after the publication of a report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that ranks nations on excess deaths. The UK is roughly in the middle of the bunch when compared with similar nations: we had 109 excess deaths a year per 100,000 people, compared with 133 in Italy, 116 in Germany and 111 in Spain. European nations that performed better include France and Ireland. The worst performers included Peru and Russia.
I suspect that these results will not much surprise the public. From the outset, the British people were willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt for errors in decision-making, recognising that ministers were facing a complex, fast-moving crisis while surrounded by the divergent opinions of experts. They also recognised that early reports of a seemingly higher death rate here than elsewhere were not a consequence of unique incompetence in Westminster but the deceptive nature of government statistics in other parts of the world.
This, by the way, is another thing that shines out of the new report. The WHO estimate of the number of UK excess deaths is almost precisely the same as that already produced by the National Audit Office. In India, by contrast, the WHO estimates five million excess deaths while the Indian government continues to pretend that it is closer to 500,000. To put it simply, the British authorities were rather more honest with the public, something that should make us proud.
But what strikes me most about the past two years is the abject, often irrational nature of public discourse. At times it was as if social media and some of its mainstream equivalents were observing an entirely different crisis. Far from a government doing its best in challenging circumstances, left-wing pundits glimpsed an evil cabal that failed to lock down early in March 2020 because it revelled in the mass deaths of the elderly and vulnerable and perhaps wanted to euthanise them. “Eugenics” trended so often that I almost lost count.
Consider this from The Guardian in the summer of 2020: “The Luftwaffe did not chalk up such a gruesome death toll.” Or a piece from the same period speaking of “a daily mortality rate far deadlier than the Nazi onslaught on British towns and cities between September 1940 and May 1941”. Others talked in lurid detail about the suffering of people on ventilators, juxtaposing it with character assassinations of conniving minsters. Even scientists such as those on Independent Sage got in on the act, making partisan points under the guise of objectivity.
On the other side were equally rabid critics who argued that, far from locking down too late, the government should never have locked down at all. There was no acknowledgment of the uncertainty faced by minsters; no recognition that it was possible for decent people to disagree in good faith. No, anyone who took a different position had to be stupid, and possibly evil. When minor restrictions were placed on the unvaccinated, Hitler was cited again; another confirmation of Godwin’s law. Websites such as Lockdown Sceptics rose up like cancers, metastasising across the internet, sucking rationality from the debate like intergalactic debris into a black hole.
In short, what the Covid era reveals is the shocking decline in the standard and probity of public discourse. It is hardly novel to place the social media at the centre of this malaise, but we perhaps fail to grasp how it has infected other areas of our lives. Think back to how television functioned during the pandemic — the constant attempts to ask “gotcha” questions rather than elicit information. This was not because interviewers were superficial but because they had an eye to how the clip might go viral later in the day.
A few days ago I came across a video that showed an interview of Harold Wilson after the 1970 general election, and it was almost shocking to behold probing questions and direct answers. David Dimbleby was actually seeking to extract information on behalf of viewers, and the prime minister was doing his best to oblige. Political discourse was by no means perfect back then, but a cursory glance at these fragments of history reveals the vivid contrast with the sewers we occupy today.
But let me suggest that it is no good blaming social media for the rise of the divisive and sensational. It is time for the public to take responsibility, too. I am talking about those who mindlessly retweeted “eugenics” hashtags; those who amplified the rants of mouthy radio presenters on the one hand and lockdown sceptics on the other; and those who danced on the graves of elected officials who succumbed to gotcha questions, revelling in their discomfort without a scrap of empathy.
It has become de rigueur to condemn the shiftiness and evasiveness of politicians, but can you blame them when they are beset with these elephant traps? Can you blame them when they see Twitter mobs circling, hoping for another kill? Can you blame them when they make difficult decisions in what they perceive to be the public interest only to be condemned as Nazis by one side and fascists by the other?
Honesty? Integrity? Yesterday I trawled the internet feeds of those who most aggressively attacked the government, particularly those on the left who condemned the “high” death rate. Do you think these fearless pursuers of truth acknowledged the new evidence from the WHO? Do you think they informed their followers that the UK wasn’t the worst performer in Europe after all? Did Independent Sage scientists revise their criticisms, too? Not a bit of it.
I disagree with many policies of this government, but that doesn’t mean I feel moved to disagree with everything. Like many, I have become weary of the bad-faith attacks, the inability to offer even a soupçon of credit for policy successes, the exhausting criticisms that do nothing for democracy and everything to inflame the cynicism that has become a democratic disease. The truth is that on the whole, and with only a few exceptions, ministers did their best in unenviable circumstances.
And to think otherwise is not a reflection of them, but a truly devastating one of us.
@MatthewSyed