Check the date-
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp....f-defends-uk-measures-criticism-herd-immunity
This is exactly why I don’t blame them for taking 2 weeks to lockdown in the first wave.
He was essentially putting through the most authoritarian piece of legislation in the history of our country, which by the way will have ramifications in the future, even if we can’t see that now, whilst being told the alternative was a good plan.
The care homes were the major cock up in wave one, that was truly the main disgrace.
Wave 2 they were accused of going too early and they flattened the curve very well and wave 3 they were far too slow, that’s the only lockdown I blame them for reacting too slow for. Although the new variant caught them off guard with the exponential rise in cases, I still think we could all see how fucked London was in December.
The borders mistake was the number 1 issue for me.
I know it’s easy to say this knowing what we know now and what we knew even within a few days of the virus getting into the country (even that early on it was still hindsight), but we really should have closed our borders, kept them shut, had them remained shut all the way through to well after we had herd immunity through vaccination.
Any UK nationals abroad at the time should have been quarantined in a secure place somewhere upon return until they knew they were safe to be let home.
Everything that came after this was a result of this.
Now we know, we can learn from it. Scientists think that pandemics will become more common in the future and we will have learnt a lot from this one. As bad as 15% excess deaths to our usual death figures is (and it is awful!), there could be something that comes along with much greater death numbers, or something that’s deadly for our children.
But even as far back as February last year, that nice Dr fella on YouTube (sorry, forget his name), was calling for us to close our borders. But we even allowed flights to come in from Wuhan and Lombardy when their outbreaks were spreading.
Inept doesn’t cover it. Even Priti Patel said last week she was asking for border closures at the time. An investigation should go into why it didn’t happen.
I’ll be fair to them though, that in some instances, whatever they decided to do or not do, they’d be damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. And in most instances MPs from across the board voted in favour of legislation as they happened.
But they’ve been far too reactionary instead of proactive, and the borders one will stick with me long after this has passed.