no it hasn't, it's kept him doing what he always does, wandering from tactical decision to tactical decision. the March lockdown only happened when public pressure became unbearable, he allowed the treasury to subsidise people eating in restaurants, he continues, in month nine, to hand large contracts to unqualified mates, both wasting money and reducing the ability to deal with the pandemic, and despite it being a once-in-a-century pandemic, did not ask for an extension on the disorganised negotiations with the EU, meaning that in the middle of December, it's still unclear how trade with EU, including...food and medicine, is meant to work in 12 days.
his entire career is just making the easy choice in the moment with no forethought.
yes, obviously things mutate, but all your other information in this comment is out of date - the current information is the strain they're talking about is 70% more infectious.
No other western country has actually been willing to do what NZ or Australia did - strict contact tracing, strict lockdowns, and a near-complete ban on entering the country, with those that do being picked up the police or military at their plane and driven to quarantine hotels where the doors lock from the outside.
I don't know why everyone keeps going on about other countries not getting the same results - no other rich country has even talked about trying, as far as I know.
In fact it’s worse, western nations have done the stupidest thing which is half measures. They’ve wrecked their own economies by taking measly half measures and not providing adequate relief. Wrecking people’s lives without actually achieving meaningful ends.
At risk of being labelled “anti-lockdown” or whatever, i’ll clarify my point is we should have done MORE. Strict lockdowns, tracing, etc... AND providing direct relief and freezes.
Led by the US with a president that would change his mind about COVID three times in two sentences. Somehow the rest of the "free" world decided that emulating this mess is a worthwhile venture.
The argument is not that the experts failed, but that the politicians did. In general the experts have argued for more "oppressive" approaches, because those are the only ones that have worked.
> Compliance with mask wearing on TFL is less than 50%
where? my counter-anecdote is I've taken to counting everyone on the carriage I'm on (between zone 2 and 1), and it's never more than 2-3 people without a mask, something like 90-95% compliance (seems down from a few months ago, though). in supermarkets it seems higher than that, to the extent I was quite weirded out to see a single person not wearing a mask last week.
TFL Rail, the Eastern half, Romford, Chadwell Heath etc. To be fair, it got better on the central line. This was mid day not commuter rush. I do think East London is pretty poor at compliance culturally...
This is my observation too. Compliance varies across different parts of London. I was quite surprised to be the only person wearing a mask in a busy Tesco Local in East London several weeks after they were first mandated. In comparison, in far South East London it's unusual to see someone without a mask shopping.
The train i catch in SE London is travelling from tier 3 (Kent) to tier 2 (tiers as of the last few weeks). Despite travel out of a tier 3 are being 'advised against', the train is busy, 1/3 of people not wearing a mask, 1/3 not wearing it correctly, all the windows closed because it's 'cold'.
It depends a lot on what time you take the train IME. At 8am it's nearly 100%, on a Friday evening it's closer to 20%.
And of course on the rare occasion a staff member challenges someone not wearing a mask, they claim they're exempt and don't have to provide any proof.
very serious, during the day and evening, between zone 1 and eastern zone 2, I see extremely high compliance. it appears to vary enormously by area, which is very surprising to me.
It's common knowledge that the US spends much more per capita on Healthcare, however the commonly offered explanation for this is that the private healthcare system in the US is less efficient than the public systems in Europe. But the graph in the provided link shows that US costs are split evenly between private spending and public spending.
This is confusing because the private system in the US covers twice as many people as the public system. Per the US Census Bureau: "in 2018, private health insurance coverage continued to be more prevalent than public coverage, covering 67.3 percent of the population and 34.4 percent of the population, respectively."[0] If the provided data are correct, this would indicate that US private spending is nearly twice as efficient as public spending.
The current laws restrict the government healthcare programs from negotiating on e.g. drug prices, so the manufacturers name whatever absurd prices they want and the US Gov just pays it. Just another corrupt government giveaway to the private sector.
people getting their groceries locally instead of driving in to the centre of a city is a good outcome, though perhaps not for all of the inner city supermarkets. I am deeply unconvinced this is a broader problem - e.g. Regent St or Oxford St are still global-level retail hubs even though driving there is a nightmare.
>people getting their groceries locally instead of driving in to the centre of a city is a good outcome,
No this is not. It limits competition (increases prices) raising the cost of living and reducing everyone's standard of living. When it gets so bad that the options for groceries start vanishing (because groceries are low margin) we call that a "food desert".
People shopping locally because the opportunity cost of shopping elsewhere is too high (as opposed to willingly doing it for the convenience factor) is very much not a good thing, regardless of the mode of transportation those people are using.
Does it though? Where I live there are probably three different supermarket chain stores within about 500m, so easy walking distance. If I expand that to 1km because I feel like biking a short way, there'd be dozens of more shops and probably a few more different brands. This isn't even including the multiple non-chain ones. There doesn't seem to be any risk of a food desert here.
> This is true but complex. It depends on the type of service you receive.
I feel this is never adequately priced into these discussions. everything about healthcare in the US is expensive and complicated, even if you "have insurance", even if you have expensive, seen-as-good-insurance.
