Ben@Forest wrote:pwa wrote:The lockdown was the only tool in the bag at that time. We didn't have the testing capacity of some nations, notably Germany.
Waiting for a vaccine is not a strategy. I don't know why we aren't able to test the way other nations are but in the convoluted world of reporting statistics it's difficult to know what to believe.
Maybe, just maybe, it's got something to do with the way that the Johnson executive seemed to sit on its bum for about a month (not sure why - maybe in denial, maybe the "herd immunity" plan rumour is true) and then turned the testing system into a mess of outsourced national contracts with a party colleague in charge:
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheBrexitCom ... 56/photo/1Meanwhile, in Germany, public health was actually done at the regional level, with each state contracting in the testing labs that could serve it best. In the early days,
they didn't actually know how many tests were being done nationally - certainly no press conference and target headline numbers there.
Of course, in England, public health was theoretically done at county level - but I'd be surprised if any of the public thought it was actually done by the counties, so weak has been their response. All people notice is the national stuff, as Whitehall effectively restructures a chunk of the health service during the pandemic.
One news report today says that one third of UK Covid deaths in July or August were people who died principally because of other conditions. They could have easily died from pneumonia or the flu and no-one would have raised an eyebrow. And l heard a similar view from an NHS doctor months ago.
Well, duh. The principal cause of death is often not the actual illness that got you. I will probably be recorded as dying of a heart attack, same as the last two of my male ancestors. We will still have actually died as a result of an inherited liver disorder!
We are still acting with restraint. How many people in shops don't wear facemasks? How many have not clamoured for foreign holidays or open sports stadia? Whatever the right answer is it isn't more restrictions.
Most people are wearing facemasks and few are clamouring for foreign holidays and it's only a really tiny group who are begging to go play sardines in the football ground. I'm not sure what that's got to do with anything.
I'd agree that the right answer probably isn't more restrictions. It's probably different restrictions. But I don't think Johnson's government knows which restrictions help and which hurt, so they're using ideology instead of science, with traditionalism/revisionism and a paternalistic belief in things being mainly the fault of feckless working-class drunks driving the stupid reintroduction of national early pub closing time (which was abolished to reduce public disorder and crowding!) and table service that the ex-Bullingdon's posh wine bars will survive more easily than the Dog and Duck.