I don’t think there’s any way of knowing specifics in terms of how many could have been saved, so saying half is incredibly harsh. The pandemic is also not over, with our vaccination programme being several times quicker/bigger, the difference in figures at the end may well be much shorter.I think it would be not unreasonable to expect our figures to be no worse than Germany's. They had the added disadvantage of being on a landmass containing 80% of the world's population with easy access to 500 million of those 80%. Our population density, at least in England is higher than Germany's yet there are areas of Germany with equivalent population densities such as the Rhine-Ruhr area, so overall population density shouldn't be a significant factor. The benefits of being an island nation and theoretically having better control of who arrives (although we chose not to) should more than have compensated for differences in population density. In summary I would say that the government have been responsible for the pandemic being twice as bad as it needed to have been in this country. No way to prove it one way or another - just an opinion.
I'm not sure which countries are stricter/less strict, but I'm not sure the 'within 29 days of a positive test' rule we use is used elsewhere. Also, it may be the case that normal flu/pneumonia deaths may be a lot lower this year due to covid precautions and therefore that may mask excess deaths in the overall figures.I don’t think there’s any way of knowing specifics in terms of how many could have been saved, so saying half is incredibly harsh. The pandemic is also not over, with our vaccination programme being several times quicker/bigger, the difference in figures at the end may well be much shorter.
Regarding Germany specifically, isn’t it true that they have also been stricter with their Covid death figures, in that there will be deaths there not counted, that would be here?
I believe Spain’s ‘within x days’ is smaller than ours and I am sure I read Germany’s was at least at one point?I'm not sure which countries are stricter/less strict, but I'm not sure the 'within 29 days of a positive test' rule we use is used elsewhere. Also, it may be the case that normal flu/pneumonia deaths may be a lot lower this year due to covid precautions and therefore that may mask excess deaths in the overall figures.
Not sure but it did occur to me if the 28 day thing is a cut off, many of those that spending a few weeks on ventilators then die may not be counted?I believe Spain’s ‘within x days’ is smaller than ours and I am sure I read Germany’s was at least at one point?
Wonder if anyone can clarify.
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.I don’t think there’s any way of knowing specifics in terms of how many could have been saved, so saying half is incredibly harsh. The pandemic is also not over, with our vaccination programme being several times quicker/bigger, the difference in figures at the end may well be much shorter.
Regarding Germany specifically, isn’t it true that they have also been stricter with their Covid death figures, in that there will be deaths there not counted, that would be here?
No argument with that. As you that sort of disparity in mortality can't be explained away just by the calculation method.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.
You could build in smoothing mechanisms, but Germany is close to the UK including culturally, unlike say France or Italy. In any crisis there has to be an investigation into what we did right and what we did wrong and how much errors contributed to deaths.
Every European country had a heads up on this virus and were still caught with their pants down. We had a heads up based on how it impacted Italy and still kept our pants down. We are an island which theoretically should have been an advantage in that it is easier to lock down sea borders than land and still ended up with the highest death rate.
Looking at the rights and wrongs and measuring that may be ‘macabre’, but better that then repeating our errors.
I’m just not sure you could ever get it to a place to say such and such performed better or worse they’ll always be someone saying “yes, but...”.
I fully agree we should review what we have done but that risks becoming politically toxic. The tories won’t admit to doing wrong and spin it to their view and labour will just spin it the other way, years of “you should have locked down a week earlier” beckon and help no one. Of course we will look at our reaction and build better strategies but equally important is we ask some fundamental questions like “should any care/nursing homes be private?” They seemed to want to be treated like the NHS (PPE etc) in a crisis so perhaps they should be an integrated part of our health care system (like council run care/nursing homes).
Who needs to travel internationally? (As distinct from airlines and tourism needing people to travel.)No idea. If we'd have stopped any international movement of people or goods and had a complete lockdown like wuhan with nobody allowed out at all for a month last March, and no international travel since then we might have saved nearly all of them. Its always a choice between killing people or killing the economy and I think all govt have tried to achieve an acceptable balance of both. For me our govt have stumbled through this compromise in a generally well meaning way but fucked up a few key things, and generally the things they have got right have been done too late.
No argument with that. As you that sort of disparity in mortality can't be explained away just by the calculation method.