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Re: Britain's Covid daily death toll is one of the worst in the world. What went wrong?

By: Cactus Flower in ALEA | Recommend this post (0)
Sat, 23 Jan 21 7:43 PM | 41 view(s)
Boardmark this board | The Trust Matrix 		Msg. 40784 of 54959
(This msg. is a reply to 40783 by clo)
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I think there are a couple of errors here, clo.

1. Johnson's attitude changed like nearly everyone's when the numbers became more worrying and he realised the volume of cases could overwhelm the health service.

At first, with little data to work with, he and his advisors thought that herd immunity would work. So that was a mistake, which he quickly rectified. It was the risk to the NHS which defined his change of mind. He realised they didn't have the capacity to deal with a tsunami of new cases. He tried to flatten the curve and increase capacity so that the NHS could cope with the number of people that were sick. [ie it wasn't getting sick which converted him - it was case data and capacity figures]. So I don't see a strike against him here.

2. Christmas was cancelled across most of the UK. I remember because Christmas was cancelled for me! The places that it wasn't were the places where infection rates were low. The rates were high for the vast majority of the country (something like 85-90% had Christmas cancelled). So it wasn't even close to "tens of millions" having Christmas together.

The initial steep rise in cases came earlier, during late November. That's why Christmas was cancelled late.

For me, the mistake occurred at that point - ie in late November. Wales locked down much sooner than England when it became clear there was a second wave. At the time, I thought the Welsh got it right [only to reopen too early]. So maybe a strike there. But these are judgement calls made without the benefit of hindsight.

Actually, for several weeks, the UK looked like it was doing better than France, Italy and Spain during the second wave.

But yes, we have a version of the virus which is certainly very contagious and possibly more deadly [the usual arguments]. And that has meant it is harder to eradicate. I don't see it as a political issue, so much as the virus variant in the UK which folks said was contagious is contagious.




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The above is a reply to the following message:
Britain's Covid daily death toll is one of the worst in the world. What went wrong?
By: clo in ALEA
Sat, 23 Jan 21 6:34 PM 		Msg. 40783 of 54959

He started out like Trump, a lot of denial about how bad this would get.

After he suffered with it & nearly died, he turned around. In that regard he was much better than Trump.

Yet, for the holidays he was lax & that was (more) fatal.

That's two strikes.

Britain's Covid daily death toll is one of the worst in the world. What went wrong?
"Allowing people to mix at Christmas was just… just madness really," one expert said.

Jan. 22, 2021, 7:50 AM EST
By Alexander Smith
LONDON — The United Kingdom is one of the coronavirus death capitals of the world.

On Wednesday, the country saw its number of recorded Covid-19 fatalities rise by 1,820, and on Thursday by 1,290 again. In total that's twice as many lives lost as in the sinking of RMS Titanic, comparable to ten Boeing 777s crashing all at once.

And until Thursday the U.K. had the highest per-capita daily death toll of any other country in the world — around twice that of the United States — according to rolling analysis by Oxford University.

Its daily per-capita deaths are currently second only to Portugal, but in terms of major powers right now the U.K. is an outlier, boasting as it does the world's fifth-largest economy and vast, publicly funded National Health Service.

So what went so wrong? In trying to explain the unfolding daily tragedy, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is quick to point to a new, highly transmissible variant of the virus that appears to have originated in southeast England.

But plenty of experts say that, while Johnson may have been dealt a bad hand, he has played it poorly. For them, the key misstep was the decision to allow tens of millions of people to travel and mix on Christmas Day — while knowing the new variant was rampant.

"We shouldn't have allowed the cases to continue rising up as we approached Christmas," Nicola Stonehouse, a professor in molecular virology at the University of Leeds, said. "And then allowing people to mix at Christmas was just… just madness really," she added, pausing to find the right words to describe that policy decision.

more:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/britain-s-covid-daily-death-toll-one-worst-world-what-n1255261?cid=eml_nbn_20210123

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