It’s been vaguely amusing to spar about numbers of deaths resulting from government incompetence. I have sympathy for Ban and Mazz who are both persuaded that there have been some deaths without wanting to be drawn on the figures, and hope they’ll both forgive some gentle teasing.
The point that was going through my mind is that we’ve all got our own opinions about how many actual people have died, which is likely to be measurable in the tens of thousands, as a result of this government’s failures to act where it should, and it’s mistakes when it did act. PPE, lack of testing in the initial period, discharging patients into care homes without testing, spunking billions on track and trace Aps that don’t work, failure to act swiftly enough to enter lockdown, failure to discipline Cummings and so on and so on.
Every single death is the most serious dereliction of duty of the most fundamental obligation of government- as Rascal said, the duty to protect its citizens.
The numbers don’t matter, in a way. One is too many. But sobering to reflect that basically we have lost, as a result of said incompetence, the population of an entire town. All dead.
The only real dispute is the size of the town.
That said, special shout out to metalblue who doesn’t think that there has been a single death as a result of government incompetence.
Not on the end of your revolution mateJacob Rees Mogg and the Tory morons will be right at home.
I do agree with you regarding government failure. In terms of the numbers, if you just restrict a view to near neighbours, the Uk's confirmed deaths are just under 1500 per million of population, its not the worse as Belgium stands at 1800 per million, France 1100, Spain 1200, Holland, 770, Germany 630.It’s been vaguely amusing to spar about numbers of deaths resulting from government incompetence. I have sympathy for Ban and Mazz who are both persuaded that there have been some deaths without wanting to be drawn on the figures, and hope they’ll both forgive some gentle teasing.
The point that was going through my mind is that we’ve all got our own opinions about how many actual people have died, which is likely to be measurable in the tens of thousands, as a result of this government’s failures to act where it should, and it’s mistakes when it did act. PPE, lack of testing in the initial period, discharging patients into care homes without testing, spunking billions on track and trace Aps that don’t work, failure to act swiftly enough to enter lockdown, failure to discipline Cummings and so on and so on.
Every single death is the most serious dereliction of duty of the most fundamental obligation of government- as Rascal said, the duty to protect its citizens.
The numbers don’t matter, in a way. One is too many.
Special shout out to metalblue who doesn’t think that there has been a single death as a result of government incompetence.
Bang on. 1 death is 1 too many.It’s been vaguely amusing to spar about numbers of deaths resulting from government incompetence. I have sympathy for Ban and Mazz who are both persuaded that there have been some deaths without wanting to be drawn on the figures, and hope they’ll both forgive some gentle teasing.
The point that was going through my mind is that we’ve all got our own opinions about how many actual people have died, which is likely to be measurable in the tens of thousands, as a result of this government’s failures to act where it should, and it’s mistakes when it did act. PPE, lack of testing in the initial period, discharging patients into care homes without testing, spunking billions on track and trace Aps that don’t work, failure to act swiftly enough to enter lockdown, failure to discipline Cummings and so on and so on.
Every single death is the most serious dereliction of duty of the most fundamental obligation of government- as Rascal said, the duty to protect its citizens.
The numbers don’t matter, in a way. One is too many. But sobering to reflect that basically we have lost, as a result of said incompetence, the population of an entire town. All dead.
The only real dispute is the size of the town.
That said, special shout out to metalblue who doesn’t think that there has been a single death as a result of government incompetence.
Just been on ONS. The latest data is from 8 Jan which shows 80,589 excess deaths since the start of 2020 for England and Wales only. The published Covid figure which adds up the four nations' NHS figures for that day was 79,833. Of that figure around 6000 relate to Scotland and NI leaving around 73,000 Covid deaths reported for England & Wales, roughly 10% under the excess deaths figure. The excess deaths compared to Covid has reduced over the winter presumably due to there being less flu deaths because Covid measures are helping with the spread of flu as well.
Bang on. 1 death is 1 too many.
You misrepresent me my good sir. My premise is that had the government not done any of the things it had done there would have been many MORE deaths. There could have been different decisions to reduce our death toll as I said.
Appreciate the special shout out thou ;)
No. I would agree with the basic premise that government decisions have saved tens of thousands of lives and quite probably hundreds of thousands of lives. If we were to analyse these decisions and say could more lives have been saved then the answer is probably yes.
For example a policy in the first week of closing all borders and shooting anyone who either had the virus or came into contact with them (probably the Chinese approach) then we’d have looked like world beaters. Crazy policy which the government clearly decided against so I guess that’s blood on their hands. Flippant example but was used for the purposes of the fallacy of criticising decisions based on what ifs and (whether subconsciously) applying hindsight.
Not true. Generally govts love inquiries (especially if they are to blame) as they usually ensure said inquiry is chaired by an established elderly one of their own and the blame is spread thin and wide. They also take a very long time.
Chillcott, Grenfell, Hillsborough - all examples of how crap inquiries are. The only crapper one I can think of is the non existent FA one into the dippers hacking us. All inquiries generally end with a report that reads like a Sir Humphrey monologue from yes minister.Depends on the type of inquiry. In this particular example, I think they could forced into it being one they don’t want.
So when I asked
“Do you agree with the basic premise that government errors have cost people’s lives?”
and you replied
I misrepresented you when I said
“ That said, special shout out to metalblue who doesn’t think that there has been a single death as a result of government incompetence.”?
Okay.
Good lord it’s like pulling teeth
“No. I would agree with the basic premise that government decisions have saved tens of thousands of lives and quite probably hundreds of thousands of lives. If we were to analyse these decisions and say could more lives have been saved then the answer is probably yes”
So you’re starting from the position that the government are fucking incompetent and have killed people unnecessarily. I am starting from the position that had the government done fuck all and just sat back a lot more people would have died.
I equally acknowledge (underlined) that some of the decisions made would have probably resulted in avoidable deaths.
Chillcott, Grenfell, Hillsborough - all examples of how crap inquiries are. The only crapper one I can think of is the non existent FA one into the dippers hacking us. All inquiries generally end with a report that reads like a Sir Humphrey monologue from yes minister.
Good lord it’s like pulling teeth
“No. I would agree with the basic premise that government decisions have saved tens of thousands of lives and quite probably hundreds of thousands of lives. If we were to analyse these decisions and say could more lives have been saved then the answer is probably yes”
So you’re starting from the position that the government are fucking incompetent and have killed people unnecessarily. I am starting from the position that had the government done fuck all and just sat back a lot more people would have died.
I equally acknowledge (underlined) that some of the decisions made would have probably resulted in avoidable deaths.
....unless of course it's instigated by one of BJ's own that's after his job. Can't see it though as it's as likely to topple the govt as BJ.And Chilcott and Hillsborough are prime examples of ones that show why the government don’t like inquiries - they delayed them starting or being done properly for as long as possible.
I guarantee the government won’t want an inquiry into the pandemic response and will delay it starting for as long as possible. There will be a huge clamour for it to be public too.
....unless of course it's instigated by one of BJ's own that's after his job. Can't see it though as it's as likely to topple the govt as BJ.
Depends on the type of inquiry. In this particular example, I think they could forced into it being one they don’t want.
So when you said “No” what you meant was “Yes”?
Got it
To return to my point, how many?
That is a slightly odd starting position to be fair, I can imagine Matt Hancock framing it like that though!
Well I would just bring you back to my original post you quoted, in that the government must take a lot of criticism but at the same time, blaming them for the majority of deaths is inaccurate and unfair.Yes there's no way to prove what might have been or what the best case would have been, but it's been clear from February onwards that the government have made a series of mistakes that has made our death rate more than twice as bad as Germany's (1447 v 631 per million). That might be partially explainable by different methods of counting but that's not going to make that much difference. I'll say again that the fact we're an island outside Schengen should have made it easier for us to control our borders but we didn't implement anything at all. That advantage alone should have more than offset any disadvantages in relation to our population density and all the other excuses.
But you can’t just say they’ve caused x death’s without looking at those lives they have saved. I appreciate that goes against the narrative of many on here.