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Coronavirus - how is it/has it affected you?

I'm not a supporter of this or any previous government, however, post #18,878 is a little lopsided.

The medical experts at PHE, WHO and whoever else advised the government have had a fairly thin portfolio in respect of this crisis - minimise COVID deaths.

The various governments of the world have had to minimise COVID deaths while ensuring economic stability, safeguarding jobs, maintaining national security, maintaining future trade, keeping the lights on, etc. A substantially wider portfolio, not all strands of which pull in the same direction and have had to be managed against one another.
 
RichA said:
I'm not a supporter of this or any previous government, however, post #18,878 is a little lopsided.

The medical experts at PHE, WHO and whoever else advised the government have had a fairly thin portfolio in respect of this crisis - minimise COVID deaths.

The various governments of the world have had to minimise COVID deaths while ensuring economic stability, safeguarding jobs, maintaining national security, maintaining future trade, keeping the lights on, etc. A substantially wider portfolio, not all strands of which pull in the same direction and have had to be managed against one another.
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The basic principles of managing contagion have been known since the middle ages. In simple terms, this one is not any different. The people at PHE and WHO know quite well how to deal with this. One of the most basic principles of public health is the precautionary principle. If you don't know the scale of something, assume the worst and act accordingly. Much easier to back off from there than from the other end. A medical student could tell you all this after their public health modules.

One of the other principles known only since the Spanish flu is that failing to deal with the health issues causes worse economic harm. This two pull in exactly the same direction. Those who have set one against the other have made both worse.

Be sure to advise Australia and New Zealand how badly conceived their policies have been.
 
Are Australia and NZ global hubs for international travel, trade and the financial and service industries or is their nature such that shutting the borders has slightly less impact than it does here?
Comparing them and the UK is less apples v oranges and more apples v chickens.
 
RichA said:
Are Australia and NZ global hubs for international travel, trade and the financial and service industries or is their nature such that shutting the borders has slightly less impact than it does here?
Comparing them and the UK is less apples v oranges and more apples v chickens.
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It's really not. Could have stopped holidays

Should have introduced quarantines sooner

When you give people few days to get back without quarantine it defeats objective

Say look you have to go to a hotel

But the gov will pay

Cheaper than another lockdown and surge testing
 
RichA said:
Are Australia and NZ global hubs for international travel, trade and the financial and service industries or is their nature such that shutting the borders has slightly less impact than it does here?
Comparing them and the UK is less apples v oranges and more apples v chickens.
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All the more reason the UK should have shut down hard and fast. Financial services can use computers these days, I hear.
 
There is no way any government in this country could have won.

We are a nation who by nature rebel against anything that is seen as to authoritarian. Sighting countries like Australia & N Zeland who have strick boarder controls prior to the pandemic doesn't work for me nor are they major travel hubs.

We can't even agree on compulsory vaccinating of our citizens, we are even to frightened to call out ethnic minorities for ignoring vaccine advice in fear of being called racist.

There have been areas where its been a cluster muck and other areas where the government where successful.
 
Old Skier said:
There is no way any government in this country could have won.

We are a nation who by nature rebel against anything that is seen as to authoritarian. Sighting countries like Australia & N Zeland who have strick boarder controls prior to the pandemic doesn't work for me nor are they major travel hubs.

We can't even agree on compulsory vaccinating of our citizens, we are even to frightened to call out ethnic minorities for ignoring vaccine advice in fear of being called racist.

There have been areas where its been a cluster muck and other areas where the government where successful.
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Arguably the most successful thing is the vaccine drive

No coincidence that it was when the NHS and the military were brought in rather than private companies
 
I believe it is assumed that most countries are going to have to live with a low, background ‘acceptable’ level of COVID infections, hospitalisations and sadly deaths. Most nations are hoping to get their metrics down to this ‘acceptable’ level. However there are two outliers that are different from almost everywhere else in the world, down to geography I.e. Aus and NZ who have successfully adopted a zero COVID policy by fundamentally sealing themselves off early.
Instead of getting their metrics down to an acceptable global level, they are going to have to allow them to rise to that ‘level’ when they eventually lower the drawbridge. I am fascinated to know how they are going to achieve this.
 
pauljames87 said:
Arguably the most successful thing is the vaccine drive

No coincidence that it was when the NHS and the military were brought in rather than private companies
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Military were bought in due to the poor organisation skills within the monster that is a poorly organised NHS.

Not a fan of privatisation but I'm not sure that some areas in the NHS will come out of this well.
 
D-S said:
I believe it is assumed that most countries are going to have to live with a low, background ‘acceptable’ level of COVID infections, hospitalisations and sadly deaths. Most nations are hoping to get their metrics down to this ‘acceptable’ level. However there are two outliers that are different from almost everywhere else in the world, down to geography I.e. Aus and NZ who have successfully adopted a zero COVID policy by fundamentally sealing themselves off early.
Instead of getting their metrics down to an acceptable global level, they are going to have to allow them to rise to that ‘level’ when they eventually lower the drawbridge. I am fascinated to know how they are going to achieve this.
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Aus and NZ also banned there own citizens to return.
 
Keeping out of this as if I’d posted any of the above even suggesting things could have been done differently or that uncertainty or conflicts in directives leaves a void that many of the public will fill with whatever best suits them...well...anyway - one day the chickens will come home to roost.
 
pauljames87 said:
Sorry 37 billion Divided by 66 million is 500k no?
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One big point that very few people are picking up on is that Test and Trace hasn't cost £37 billion. That figure is the total budget for the first two years of the project not what has actually been spent. Up to the end of November 2020 the total cost was £5.7 billion. And 85% of the money spent on Test and Trace is being spent on testing. There are people complaining that the government haven't spent enough on testing while at the same time claiming that they have spent £37 billion on Test and Trace, of which 85% or approx £31.5 billion would have been spent on testing if their figures were correct. Yes there has been money wasted in the Test and Trace system on expensive consultants and other unnecessary costs but the £37 billion figure is clearly being used as a political tool to attack the government.

https://fullfact.org/online/37bn-test-trace-spending/
 
SwingsitlikeHogan said:
Keeping out of this as if I’d posted any of the above even suggesting things could have been done differently or that uncertainty or conflicts in directives leaves a void that many of the public will fill with whatever best suits them...well...anyway - one day the chickens will come home to roost.
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Keeping out of it by replying to the thread and using subtext to make it clear your feelings about how the government have handled things?
 
ColchesterFC said:
One big point that very few people are picking up on is that Test and Trace hasn't cost £37 billion. That figure is the total budget for the first two years of the project not what has actually been spent. Up to the end of November 2020 the total cost was £5.7 billion. And 85% of the money spent on Test and Trace is being spent on testing. There are people complaining that the government haven't spent enough on testing while at the same time claiming that they have spent £37 billion on Test and Trace, of which 85% or approx £31.5 billion would have been spent on testing if their figures were correct. Yes there has been money wasted in the Test and Trace system on expensive consultants and other unnecessary costs but the £37 billion figure is clearly being used as a political tool to attack the government.

https://fullfact.org/online/37bn-test-trace-spending/
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Your analysis contains quite a few elements that need unpacking, but it really isn't worth the effort.
 
Ethan said:
All the more reason the UK should have shut down hard and fast. Financial services can use computers these days, I hear.
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Whilst like many on here I value your obvious professional expertise on this thread, is it too much to ask just occasionally you could disagree with someone without being condescending?
 
What will be interesting is when this whole thing is finally over worldwide, or at least 'lived with', where will we be on the global scale? We've been told many times how badly we've dealt with it, and how our death rates are the worst in europe or whatever. But it seems at the moment our vaccine rollout has been so successful we are now way ahead of the curve compared to other countries that seemed to be coping far better than us in the earlier stages of the pandemic
 
SaintHacker said:
Whilst like many on here I value your obvious professional expertise on this thread, is it too much to ask just occasionally you could disagree with someone without being condescending?
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Go back and read the post to which I was responding, snowflake. Right back atcha.

But as you wish: With respect, I think that your point about closing borders being detrimental to financial services is not really pertinent since so much of that stuff is now done electronically. Not to mention much of that market has moved out of the UK due to another disastrous Governmental decision whose name I can't recall, but about which they were also warned.
 
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