[throwawayinfo]

Could this have been prevented? China was only able to act fast because of the authoritarianism (bolting people indoors) and the global supply chain is sat in their backyard, not necessarily because they're making the right investment upfront.

[mytailorisrich]

Taiwan and Korea also managed.

In mainland China authoritarianism played a part but people made a lot of efforts by themselves, not out of fear, like in Taiwan and Korea.

I think that's one of the main problems we're having in the UK. Too many people have zero civic sense and complain about their "freedoms being infringed" instead seeing the big picture that in an epidemic everyone must act together for the group at the cost of individual sacrifices.

[throwawayinfo]

But those are vastly different countries, there are far too many variables to unpack before making a conclusive decision.

Freedoms are being infringed, but I do understand the need to sacrifice. We're not being asked for a lot compared to previous generations.

What we do need is real leadership though and lack of leadership is causing people to check out of caring about the virus. People would care a lot more if they believed their government had a plan.

[mytailorisrich]

They are only vastly different compared to us in the sense that they had a plan and that they implemented it early and decisively as one.

> Freedoms are being infringed, but I do understand the need to sacrifice.

That's the point, isn't it? To understand that individual freedoms, and individualism, are not absolute and can be reduced temporarily when necessary.

[throwawayinfo]

> That's the point, isn't it? To understand that individual freedoms, and individualism, are not absolute and can be reduced temporarily when necessary.

Yes and no.

An individual right/freedom is immutable. It's not something "granted" to us by government, and not something they should be able to take away.

I understand the need for emergency measures, but in my opinion the government should've gotten consent before continuing this for months on end. There is a balance to be had here.

It's not a sacrifice if it's not a choice.

We now know the government doesn't have an exit strategy, so we could be stuck in this state for many more months to come. This is espet alarming when you consider people are missing NHS appointments (e.g. cancer diagnosis) or the serious economic issues. Serious fallout is coming.

[singemonkey]

> Could this have been prevented

Yes, tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented.

South Korea has a population of a similar size to the UK (51 vs 65 million), and have had approximately 400 deaths due to Covid compared to 40,000 in the UK.

[2T1Qka0rEiPr]

I know that it's really appealing to compare countries, but it seems to me that it's simply really difficult to do that in a constructive way, without accounting for all the differences between them. I would imagine (though I couldn't easily find statistics on this) that the UK has far more people flying in and out of, thus making it more susceptible. Conversely, S Korea has a far higher (average, and perhaps clusters are the real issue) population density. The economic and political setup will naturally have a big impact (e.g. federal vs. non, market economy vs. planned etc.) on a country's ability to react. And finally, the statistics are calculated differently, and so we're not comparing two of the same measures.

None of this is to say that I believe the UK has performed well.

[detritus]

Yes, this is very much what I think too - the UK is a 'nexus' country with saturated and dense global and continental links.

So clearly the 'solution' would have been to very early on close the borders and lock everyone down for two weeks. Done and dusted!

But can you imagine that EVER having come to pass pre-March?

Our populace has no contemporary history or understanding of the implications of a pandemic and would have reacted with furore. Perhaps in future people will be a little more open to such practise, but certainly not prior to now.

[dijit]

I appreciate you taking the time to comment in these threads, especially as people who see that you're a tory person will probably disavow the things you say on the face of it.

That said, I hope you don't take it as a rebuttal for the sake of it if I disagree.

The "solution" that our government suggested was to do nothing, not just to not to lock down at all but to quite literally do nothing.

This could have been the right thing to do and indeed was based on a pandemic model that had been created before. But was widely criticised at the time because the pandemic model which was used in the model had a significantly lower unmitigated R value.

It's possible for some to conclude that "they did the best with the information that they had at the time" owing to the fact that typically we always operate with an uncertain future, and looking back on passed decisions can be done with the clarity and certainty that only living with consequences can grant: but that does not apply here. Boris and co. intentionally downplayed the pandemic, intentionally killed off PPE plans and intentionally prevented the roll out of testing where needed.

This is before we even _think_ about lock-downs.

Lock-downs are not a panacea and they do nothing to stop a pandemic, they merely slow it while we work on a vaccine or until the population is sufficiently immune (without overwhelming healthcare).

The key thing for the current government is, then: do not overwhelm healthcare.

Which is harder to do when your party has chronically underfunded it for over a decade.

[detritus]

I'm not a Tory. You're perhaps conflating me with the first responder who admitted as much. That said, I can't stand ANY of our political masters and think party politics is mostly dysfunctional and inefficient.

Do I think Labour or the LibDems would have done any better, given they'd likely end up relying on much the same scientific input? Nope.

[dijit]

yes I think I'm confusing you two, my bad.

I do think that the conservatives have done worse than the others would have, but that's not really supported with any evidence other than it couldn't have been handled much worse.

The real fact I'm trying to bring home is that the healthcare capacity is one of the most important things and it is one of those things that has been in atrophied for many years.

The current governments approach, while quite slow, miscommunicated and contradictory: would have worked better if we had a working and well funded healthcare system.