In order to promote compliance with the lockdown, we're on a 24/7 diet of bad news.
> British numbers are on par with other European nations when controlled by population.
According to [1], per capita the UK has 2x as many deaths as Germany, 3x as many as Canada and 33x as many as Japan. We've even got 20% more than America.
Admittedly part of that is differences in reporting standards, population ages, and the chance occurrence of new variants - but I don't think anyone will be taking the British response as a model in the future.
>According to [1], per capita the UK has 2x as many deaths as Germany, 3x as many as Canada and 33x as many as Japan. We've even got 20% more than America.
Are you cherry picking numbers that you like? Because you're cherry picking numbers that you like. UK is about average compared to developed countries. The per capita deaths are not out of line with the rest of the developed world. Yes, this also means there are countries that did better. There are countries that did worse.
You also ignored the vaccination rate, of which UK is a leading nation.
Why do people feel the need to be negative on this point and single out UK when every country is struggling with COVID. In the US, California has been under a near total lockout and is about the same or worse compared to states like Texas or Florida.
There are no easy answers, and I'm not sure if lockdowns are worth the cost, given the spread that we're seeing.
>Admittedly part of that is differences in reporting standards, population ages, and the chance occurrence of new variants
> Are you cherry picking numbers that you like? Because you're cherry picking numbers that you like.
Believe me, I would like nothing better than to report the UK's response had been good.
But if I'd quoted the reported death rates from China and Russia you'd have claimed they were dodgy numbers from dodgy governments; if I'd quoted numbers for Australia and New Zealand you'd have claimed I'd cherry picked remote island nations; if I'd quoted numbers for Taiwan and South Korea you'd have claimed I'd cherry picked countries with SARS experience, and if I'd quoted numbers for Kenya and Iraq you'd have claimed they have young populations and limited testing facilities.
Every single one of those countries has less than half the deaths per capita the UK has, according to that BBC map.
> Why do people feel the need to be negative
What you consider "being negative" is what I call acknowledging factual reality.
When you claim that British numbers are on par with other European nations per-capita, and you offer no citations, then I look at the numbers and I see that we've got twice the deaths per capita of Ireland and Germany, of course I disagree with you.
>I would like nothing better than to report the UK's response had been good
It's not about UK's response being good or bad. I'm not seeing evidence of any particular COVID strategy working wonders. Especially in the presence of confounding factors like different viral strains, climates, population densities and centers, age demographics, testing strategies, data gathering methodologies (e.g. how the dead are counted as 'COVID' cases), etc. etc. etc.
Are you sure you're doing an apples-to-apples comparison when you just read a number from some internet dashboard?
What is the magic answer to COVID? Masks and Lockdowns? California and New York have been at a mask mandate and full lockdown since March/April. Florida has been largely open throughout the entire time. Texas was somewhere in the middle (though more like Florida). For months Florida and Texas were beaten up by the press while New York and California were praised. I'm looking at their population-controlled case counts and death rates [1][2] and California, Texas and Florida are basically identical. New York has been under lockdown, and their death rate is through the roof most likely because they made one huge mistake in their retirement home policy early on.
It's going to take us years to figure out what happened.
>When you claim that British numbers are on par with other European nations per-capita, and you offer no citations
Come on, we're looking at the same numbers but that's not the point. You can't just do a straight numbers comparison. What I'm seeing is every country struggling with this in pretty much the same way. I'm sure some are doing something better than others. But AGAIN, hard to figure out what that is given its close to impossible to control for all kinds of variables. Talk to me 5 years after the pandemic is over - we'll have some good answers then.
> What is the magic answer to COVID? Masks and Lockdowns?
I can't claim to have a magic answer, but there are loads of things the government fumbled.
For example, in July the government was claiming to be surprised by asymptomatic carriers even though they'd been well known since the Diamond Princess, right at the start of the pandemic. Perhaps we could have had leadership who were on top of basic, well known facts?
The national track-and-trace system was a shambles - surprising no-one, as it was built by contractors with a long track record of failed projects, overseen by unqualified cronies.
Perhaps back in March, the decision not to covid test patients being discharged from hospitals into nursing homes wasn't such a smart move?
Perhaps we shouldn't have made the bizarre decision to reopen universities for in-person teaching, sending loads of students travelling up and down the country to live in cramped, shared accommodation.
Maybe it wasn't so smart to have that period between lockdown 1 and lockdown 2, when people were allowed to go on holiday to france and spain - then the government would announce a rules change with 24 hours notice, forcing holidaymakers to race back to the UK? That was some truly weird public policy.
Perhaps the government's announcement that they wanted people to stop working from home and go back to working in offices, a few weeks before the had to call for the second lockdown, wasn't such a smart move?
Maybe when we had a second lockdown we shouldn't have announced an end date for it up front, and ended it when the load on hospitals was clearly still rising. Maybe that way we wouldn't be in our third national lockdown right now.
Perhaps we shouldn't have waited nine months before we started testing truck drivers and others entering and leaving the country? And perhaps new arrivals' self isolation should be something more credible than them giving a pinkie promise?
In order to promote compliance with the lockdown, we're on a 24/7 diet of bad news.
> British numbers are on par with other European nations when controlled by population.
According to [1], per capita the UK has 2x as many deaths as Germany, 3x as many as Canada and 33x as many as Japan. We've even got 20% more than America.
Admittedly part of that is differences in reporting standards, population ages, and the chance occurrence of new variants - but I don't think anyone will be taking the British response as a model in the future.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-51235105