Has Boris and the government done a good job of handling the pandemic?

[Skymonster]

A few weeks ago, there were posts on social media supporting Boris and suggesting he and his team deserved support for all the work they’d put in to handle the COVID-19 pandemic.

I contend he’ and his cabinet have done an abysmal job, and offer the following as evidence:

* Many experts believe the UK lock down came two to three weeks too late.
* Scientists said 20,000 deaths in the UK would be a good result. We are now edging towards two and a half times that number.
* The recovery rate among those who test positive in the UK is among the worst in the world.
* Incalculable numbers suffering (and may die) through undiagnosed illness, missed treatment, mental health problems and even suicide.
* There has been a refusal to condemn officials, who should have been setting good examples but instead have ignored guidelines.
* Britain has the second highest number of COVID deaths per capita globally (below only Belgium).
* Unemployment has surpassed 3m, 9.1m workers are furloughed (some of which may lose their jobs when the scheme ends)
* UK economy shrank by more than 20% in April.
* OECD suggests the UK economy will suffer the worst damage of any country in the industrialised world.

I would be interested to read other views.

 

[Jonny]

It would have been even better if one of the arguments for not locking down - natural herd immunity - had not been shot down by the press.

 

[MikeWM]

No, not at all.

Started fine - I was reassured and pleased by the 12th March press conference (the 'herd immunity' one), and thought we were on the right track.

Over the following weekend however the government tried to change direction, and we have been spiralling downwards ever since.

 

[Starmill]

I would say that I give the government a solid 0/10 on all areas of crisis management, from healthcare to communications to reassurance to leadership - with one exception: I will award to the Treasury a 3/10 for their overall fairly weak, hole-filled, but at least extremely rapid job retention measures. Far, far more ought have been announced five months into this, but at least they got something, unlike almost all other government departments.

 

[Ianno87]

No, not at all.

Started fine - I was reassured and pleased by the 12th March press conference (the 'herd immunity' one), and thought we were on the right track.

Over the following weekend however the government tried to change direction, and we have been spiralling downwards ever since.

I think the reason *why* we locked down has never been clear and has been commonly misunderstood. It has never been to try and eliminate the virus - it has always been to manage the demand on the NHS and prevent as many deaths as possible.

Now they're trying to please the people who think we're trying to get infections to zero, so prolonging measures longer than necessary.

 

[Huntergreed]

The UK government's handling of this crisis has been absolutely pathetic. They clearly went into lockdown far too late, couldn't follow their own rules, and they're now risking the economy and the social culture of the country to simply try and please everyone. Sturgeon and Drakeford, in particular, are doing themselves proud by managing to completely destroy their economy and the mental wellbeing of their effective devolved areas in order to try and please the crowd. It's like watching a high school popularity contest, only the prize for the winner is economic collapse, and so far Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting the loudest cheers. We need to, as a nation, grow up and start taking things seriously.

 

[brad465]

I contend he’ and his cabinet have done an abysmal job, and offer the following as evidence:

* The recovery rate among those who test positive in the UK is among the worst in the world.

Is that because we don't seem to report the total recoveries at all, or is there evidence that the rate of recovery here is generally poor?

It would have been even better if one of the arguments for not locking down - natural herd immunity - had not been shot down by the press.

It's impossible to know what the economic impact would have been with that approach, but chances are 250-500k excess deaths this year would have incapacitated the economy from a surge of: sick leave, bereavement leave, loss of tax revenue that would have been paid by the excess deceased from retail, travel and other sectors that the whole population, working or retired, pay.


One of the big failures I think has to be the failure to implement any form of quarantine and/or testing of arrivals from abroad until 3 months too late, with the consequences clear in the following article:

Coronavirus came to UK 'on at least 1,300 separate occasions'

There was no one 'patient zero' that started the UK epidemic, research shows.

www.bbc.co.uk

Coronavirus was brought into the UK on at least 1,300 separate occasions, a major analysis of the genetics of the virus shows.

The study, by the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium (Cog-UK), completely quashes the idea that a single "patient zero" started the whole UK outbreak.

The analysis also finds China, where the pandemic started, had a negligible impact on cases in the UK.

Instead those initial cases came mostly from European countries.

 

[Starmill]

They clearly went into lockdown far too late, couldn't follow their own rules, and they're now risking the economy and the social culture of the country to simply try and please everyone.

To be fair, this is pretty much bob on a description of the platform they were elected on. People were happy then.

 

[philosopher]

The problem with the UK government’s response is that they switched from a ‘herd immunity’ to a suppression approach in the middle of March. As a result the UK seems to have got the worse of both worlds. If they had tried to suppress the pandemic with an earlier lockdown the death toll would have been less. If they had stuck to their original approach, the damage to the economy would have been less.

It will be interesting to see what the conclusions are from the inevitable public inquiry on this.

 

[Huntergreed]

The problem with the UK government’s response is that they switched from a ‘herd immunity’ to a suppression approach in the middle of March. As a result the UK seems to have got the worse of both worlds. If they had tried to suppress the pandemic with an earlier lockdown the death toll would have been less. If they had stuck to their original approach, the damage to the economy would have been less.

It will be interesting to see what the conclusions are from the inevitable public inquiry on this.

Indeed. I think it's starting to become clear that, due to both our late lockdown and the fact that our economy is now in such a poor state, we're in an awkward position between the two of them, and as we can no longer eliminate the virus (we can't, no matter what Hancock or Sturgeon think), our only viable option is herd immunity, so we have arguably placed the population under statutory house arrest and destroyed our economy for no real purpose when all we had to do was go through with the 'shielding' as we have done and perhaps advised the elderly to stay in their homes as much as possible, as well as cut off care homes.

 

[Skymonster]

I’ll add to my list of accusations / evidence for believing the government has done an abysmal job:

* I’ll advised approach to and failed delivery of track-and-trace.
* Inconsistan approach to quarantine.

 

[ashkeba]

* Britain has the second highest number of COVID deaths per capita globally (below only Belgium)

And that is only because Belgium has been reporting as accurately as it could. We can't accuse Boris's government of being too accurate!

 

[takno]

* Scientists said 20,000 deaths in the UK would be a good result. We are now edging towards two and a half times that number.

Obviously the UK governments have made a terrible mess of the whole thing. This one really annoys me though. A single scientist said, rather off the cuff, that 20,000 would be a good result. I took that to clearly mean that we were expecting significantly more than that, and if we were really lucky it might just be at that level. It was, to me, clearly a way of getting people to understand that we were looking at tens of thousands of deaths whatever happened. As it turns out we weren't really lucky, and instead are sitting around the lower level of actual likely estimates.

From the way that 20k has been constantly thrown back in their faces I'm starting to worry that nobody in this country gets nuance at all, which is worrying

 

[Richard Scott]

And that is only because Belgium has been reporting as accurately as it could. We can't accuse Boris's government of being too accurate!

No, a lot of reasons they are inaccurate is that a number of deaths were put down as Covid 19, when it has nothing to do with it making our figures even worse. I know that's the case from someone who works in NHS.

 

[Huntergreed]

No, a lot of reasons they are inaccurate is that a number of deaths were put down as Covid 19, when it has nothing to do with it making our figures even worse. I know that's the case from someone who works in NHS.

I thought the daily deaths that are reported are those confirmed through a test as having it, although this doesn't necessarily mean they died from it, simply with it in their system.

 

[Jozhua]

Personally, I think that Lockdown was not a suitable policy for what we were dealing with in the UK.

I think "Herd Immunity" was poorly phrased, but I believe ultimately a softer, more sustainable policy, such as that proposed initially, would have been just as effective. "Herd Immunity" should have been an incidental by-product, not a goal.

Furthermore the Lockdown policy, that I have disagreements with, was implemented poorly. It came in too late to eliminate transmission completely, at least not in a reasonable time period. This wasn't the inital goal though, it was to buy some time to build healthcare & testing capacity. After the first month or so, these goals were seemingly fufilled, yet the lockdown continues. The goal posts seem to constantly move, with limited information as to what will be an acceptable point to ease restrictions.

Then you have the fact low risk individuals were locked in their homes while elderly people were shoved out of hospitals into care homes without tests, accelerating spread there. Meanwhile, thousands of beds laid empty at the Nightingale Emergency Hospitals as those with severe Coronavirus cases typically had other conditions that required the wider range of facilities in more standard hospitals. I think what would have been useful in this case would to have "bridging wards" where patients who were ready to be sent home could isolate until a test became available, or those who are medically stable but need some assistance with day to day activities could stay in a less infectious environment. These could have been set up in hotels, where bathroom facilities are not shared and walls seperate patients. Voluntary nurses could have helped delivering food and everyday tasks, working with smaller numbers of patients, with some fully trained medical staff on standby, in case of an emergency.

Rules like Face Coverings on Public Transport and Two Week Quarantine (especially the latter) should have been introduced three months ago and be releasing now. Why the hell they weren't quarantining people from badly affected countries I have no idea. If we'd quarantined arrivals from Italy as they lost control of Lombardy, and brought in Quarantine from other countries which have over 'X' number of cases, I think we'd of easily been able to avoid this lockdown and the number of deaths. At the least, it would have brought us more time to properly test, etc.

With the numbers coming back from ski-holidays, etc it would have been a big operation, but I think it would have been do-able. Repurposing hotels (or asking people to stay at home, with some legal weight behind it) +, processing at risk flights seperately at the border, offering advice and giving priority for testing would seem sensible.

It would have been even better if one of the arguments for not locking down - natural herd immunity - had not been shot down by the press.

It was poorly phrased, but ultimately I don't think it was an awful idea, especially considering the very specific at risk demographics.

No, not at all.

Started fine - I was reassured and pleased by the 12th March press conference (the 'herd immunity' one), and thought we were on the right track.

Over the following weekend however the government tried to change direction, and we have been spiralling downwards ever since.

Yep, I bricked it when lockdown came on. I knew this would go on for a couple months, possibly longer.

I think the reason *why* we locked down has never been clear and has been commonly misunderstood. It has never been to try and eliminate the virus - it has always been to manage the demand on the NHS and prevent as many deaths as possible.

Now they're trying to please the people who think we're trying to get infections to zero, so prolonging measures longer than necessary.

I think you're right, a lot of people seem to be unable to accept a realistic outcome.

The UK government's handling of this crisis has been absolutely pathetic. They clearly went into lockdown far too late, couldn't follow their own rules, and they're now risking the economy and the social culture of the country to simply try and please everyone. Sturgeon and Drakeford, in particular, are doing themselves proud by managing to completely destroy their economy and the mental wellbeing of their effective devolved areas in order to try and please the crowd. It's like watching a high school popularity contest, only the prize for the winner is economic collapse, and so far Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting the loudest cheers. We need to, as a nation, grow up and start taking things seriously.

You know, the funny thing about Scotland and Wales is that they have been doing worse than England throughout this whole thing, statistically.

Wether that's just down to better testing, I don't know (doubt it), but doesn't seem to prove much about the merits of stricter lockdown.

The problem with the UK government’s response is that they switched from a ‘herd immunity’ to a suppression approach in the middle of March. As a result the UK seems to have got the worse of both worlds. If they had tried to suppress the pandemic with an earlier lockdown the death toll would have been less. If they had stuck to their original approach, the damage to the economy would have been less.

It will be interesting to see what the conclusions are from the inevitable public inquiry on this.

Yeah I think you're right, 'worst of both worlds' also seems to come to mind when discussing the rail franchising system, as well as many things in the UK.

I’ll add to my list of accusations / evidence for believing the government has done an abysmal job:

* I’ll advised approach to and failed delivery of track-and-trace.

Oh yeah, totally. An off the shelf system was available, but they've been wasting all this time going it alone and not just switching to the other system while it doesn't appear to work.

 

[ashkeba]

No, a lot of reasons they are inaccurate is that a number of deaths were put down as Covid 19, when it has nothing to do with it making our figures even worse. I know that's the case from someone who works in NHS.

The Euromomo (European mortality monitoring) analysis disagrees with your friend. Is someone any less dead if a death was from covid directly or due to covid precautions delaying other activity such as cancer treatment?

 

[Scrotnig]

The recovery rate among those who test positive in the UK is among the worst in the world.

It isn't. We don't publish the figures for recoveries.

 

[takno]

The Euromomo (European mortality monitoring) analysis disagrees with your friend. Is someone any less dead if a death was from covid directly or due to covid precautions delaying other activity such as cancer treatment?

They are dead either way, but it clearly has a bearing on whether lockdown was simply a sad failure or actually a murderous and catastrophically bad failure

 

[Butts]

If only Jeremy and Momentum had been at the wheel, all would have been well

Personally I feel David Cameron would have made a decent fist of it, especially if Clegg had still been in tow.

Also it's worth mentioning it's not over yet, who knows what else lies ahead, perhaps we should reserve judgement ?

 

[Bantamzen]

Personally, I think that Lockdown was not a suitable policy for what we were dealing with in the UK.

I think "Herd Immunity" was poorly phrased, but I believe ultimately a softer, more sustainable policy, such as that proposed initially, would have been just as effective. "Herd Immunity" should have been an incidental by-product, not a goal.

Furthermore the Lockdown policy, that I have disagreements with, was implemented poorly. It came in too late to eliminate transmission completely, at least not in a reasonable time period. This wasn't the inital goal though, it was to buy some time to build healthcare & testing capacity. After the first month or so, these goals were seemingly fufilled, yet the lockdown continues. The goal posts seem to constantly move, with limited information as to what will be an acceptable point to ease restrictions.

Then you have the fact low risk individuals were locked in their homes while elderly people were shoved out of hospitals into care homes without tests, accelerating spread there. Meanwhile, thousands of beds laid empty at the Nightingale Emergency Hospitals as those with severe Coronavirus cases typically had other conditions that required the wider range of facilities in more standard hospitals. I think what would have been useful in this case would to have "bridging wards" where patients who were ready to be sent home could isolate until a test became available, or those who are medically stable but need some assistance with day to day activities could stay in a less infectious environment. These could have been set up in hotels, where bathroom facilities are not shared and walls seperate patients. Voluntary nurses could have helped delivering food and everyday tasks, working with smaller numbers of patients, with some fully trained medical staff on standby, in case of an emergency.

Rules like Face Coverings on Public Transport and Two Week Quarantine (especially the latter) should have been introduced three months ago and be releasing now. Why the hell they weren't quarantining people from badly affected countries I have no idea. If we'd quarantined arrivals from Italy as they lost control of Lombardy, and brought in Quarantine from other countries which have over 'X' number of cases, I think we'd of easily been able to avoid this lockdown and the number of deaths. At the least, it would have brought us more time to properly test, etc.

With the numbers coming back from ski-holidays, etc it would have been a big operation, but I think it would have been do-able. Repurposing hotels (or asking people to stay at home, with some legal weight behind it) +, processing at risk flights seperately at the border, offering advice and giving priority for testing would seem sensible.

I pretty much agree with most of what you have said here.

In terms of a lockdown, its clear that this when implemented was way too late and very poorly targeted. I take no pleasure in saying that it was my opinion very early on that we should have focused on those that were most at risk, i.e. people in health & care environments already & those with pre-existing conditions that might worsen their chances if they caught the virus. And it did seem that for a few days at least this was going to happen. Unfortunately the locktivists where determined for the UK to follow the route of other countries, and as started by the authoritarian China, and the pressure told very quickly. So we ended up with the worst of both worlds, by starting out trying to sensibly manage the virus but panicking early on and moving to measures that were already too late.

As for herd immunity, well it is a principle locked in reality. Its what's been happening for millions of years in fact. Locking a population away from themselves in order to kill it will only work if the entire globe did it all at the same time (never going to happen), or if you accept that your borders may have to be shut for many years. Places like New Zealand & Australia have kind of gone down this latter route. The problem is that whilst it has been effective there, they are now faced with the dilemma that opening up risks them being exposed to a world which has not only seen a lot more of the virus, but that is much further down the herd immunity path. Countries like these have healthy tourist industries, as well as very mobile populations who are not going to be happy being locked away for years. So once they inevitably start to allow movement again, they are more at risk of a second wave and further lockdowns than we might be here.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I think it is starting to become very clear that the fear & panic route many governments took have simply made the problem worse, risked the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people worldwide, and perhaps in some countries even just delayed the inevitable. I'd like to think that lessons will be learned for the next time a new virus pops into existence. Sadly that same fear & panic I refer to has left deep scars across the planet, and I personally fear that every time is happens in the future the reactions will become more and more extreme as the public will demand through social media even more cotton wool & bubble wrap ideas to keep them "safe". A dangerous, and possibly irreversible precedent has been set.

If I were a dictator-in-waiting, I would now have all the knowledge I would ever need to plan for total Orwellian-style domination. Now, where did I put my draft manifesto....

 

[Jamiescott1]

The governments policy has been based on receiving positive headlines and good poll ratings. They have been lead by what tracey on Facebook thinks. I think this has been shown in the amount of u turns they have done

 

[Bantamzen]

The governments policy has been based on receiving positive headlines and good poll ratings. They have been lead by what tracey on Facebook thinks. I think this has been shown in the amount of u turns they have done

Indeed, there is sod all about the decision making that is actually based on sound policies & rational thinking. Just pandering to those people either to scared to go out, or people having a jolly-up whilst furloughed.

 

[Skymonster]

It isn't. We don't publish the figures for recoveries.

Ok, I misworded that. In the UK, a greater proportion of people who test positive subsequently die than do in most other countries.

 

[Richard Scott]

They are dead either way, but it clearly has a bearing on whether lockdown was simply a sad failure or actually a murderous and catastrophically bad failure

No the point was that some deaths are recorded as Covid when the person hasn't even had it and died from something not related to Covid and they haven't tested positive.

 

[Domh245]

I can't help but agree with pretty much everything posted so far. I'd love to hear from the 2 people (so far) who think they have done a good job?!

 

[jfollows]

I have my own bias, as we all do, but I start from the position that Boris is a liar, a coward and a fantasist. With a cabinet of people appointed for their sycophancy rather than their ability. I don't believe a word from any of them; not to say that they're always wrong but I come to my own conclusions and generally when my conclusions concur with the government's I get there first.

But the original question implies that any government would have made mistakes, and I agree with this premise. Any government would probably have gone along with NHSX in its pig-headed insistence of developing its own contact tracing "app", because the mentality of attempting to collect and retain large volumes of data "just in case" is entrenched in government, not just a Boris thing.

But I think that the waffle, piffle, and vagueness which has characterised this government's stance from the start has been because of Boris and his acolytes, and has led to confusion, doubt and uncertainty in many, ultimately leading to more people to follow their own desires and instincts rather than taking direction from government.

I also think that it's increasingly clear that Boris isn't capable of doing the job he has. He wanted to become prime minister, and he wants to have been prime minister, but the bit in the middle he's not very good at. I think that any of his predecessors of either party back to 1979 at least would have done a much better job.

But he's clearly driven by opinion polls, and in those he's not losing me because he never had me.

 

[takno]

Ok, I misworded that. In the UK, a greater proportion of people who test positive subsequently die than do in most other countries.

Is that related to the way we count any death with coronavirus in the stats, where other countries prefer to look for at least evidence that the death was anything to do with the coronavirus before counting it

 

[Bletchleyite]

Is that related to the way we count any death with coronavirus in the stats, where other countries prefer to look for at least evidence that the death was anything to do with the coronavirus before counting it

It could well be - our stats are "died with a positive test", which with increasing testing is going to catch a lot of people whose death was in fact nothing to do with coronavirus, but who happened to have an asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic case in conjunction with whatever killed them. Or alternatively, the complex workings of coronavirus on the blood may be causing things like heart attacks and strokes in people vulnerable to them, but other countries are just calling them heart attacks and strokes? (My last remaining great aunt, in her 90s, sadly died of a stroke in April, this was not put down as a COVID death but it could have been if she had it and it made clotting a tiny bit more likely, as indeed it does - she wasn't tested, though, as this was during the period when hardly anyone was being tested).

 

[Skymonster]

Is that related to the way we count any death with coronavirus in the stats, where other countries prefer to look for at least evidence that the death was anything to do with the coronavirus before counting it

Maybe it is. I like to believe that we have world-class medical facilities and therefore we should be able to assist people who test positive as effectively as anywhere else. But the statistic comes from a pessimistic way means of calculation, then [and bringing this back to the question raised in this topic] clearly the UK government's approach to counting is doing us no favours as it is shedding us in a worse light than other countries.