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>I would like nothing better than to report the UK's response had been good It's not about UK's response being good or bad. I'm not seeing evidence of any part

>I would like nothing better than to report the UK's response had been good It's not about UK's response being good or bad. I'm not seeing evidence of any particular COVID strategy working wonders. Especially in the presence of confounding factors like different viral strains, climates, population densities and centers, age demographics, testing strategies, data gathering methodologies (e.g. how the dead are counted as 'COVID' cases), etc. etc. etc. Are you sure you're doing an apples-to-apples comparison when you just read a number from some internet dashboard? What is the magic answer to COVID? Masks and Lockdowns? California and New York have been at a mask mandate and full lockdown since March/April. Florida has been largely open throughout the entire time. Texas was somewhere in the middle (though more like Florida). For months Florida and Texas were beaten up by the press while New York and California were praised. I'm looking at their population-controlled case counts and death rates [1][2] and California, Texas and Florida are basically identical. New York has been under lockdown, and their death rate is through the roof most likely because they made one huge mistake in their retirement home policy early on. It's going to take us years to figure out what happened. >When you claim that British numbers are on par with other European nations per-capita, and you offer no citations Come on, we're looking at the same numbers but that's not the point. You can't just do a straight numbers comparison. What I'm seeing is every country struggling with this in pretty much the same way. I'm sure some are doing something better than others. But AGAIN, hard to figure out what that is given its close to impossible to control for all kinds of variables. Talk to me 5 years after the pandemic is over - we'll have some good answers then. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109004/coronavirus-covid19-cases-rate-us-americans-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109004/coronavirus-covi... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...

michaelt 6y ago
> What is the magic answer to COVID? Masks and Lockdowns? I can't claim to have a magic answer, but there are loads of things the government fumbled. For example, in July the government was claiming to be surprised by asymptomatic carriers even though they'd been well known since the Diamond Princess, right at the start of the pandemic. Perhaps we could have had leadership who were on top of basic, well known facts? The national track-and-trace system was a shambles - surprising no-one, as it was built by contractors with a long track record of failed projects, overseen by unqualified cronies. Perhaps back in March, the decision not to covid test patients being discharged from hospitals into nursing homes wasn't such a smart move? Perhaps we shouldn't have made the bizarre decision to reopen universities for in-person teaching, sending loads of students travelling up and down the country to live in cramped, shared accommodation. Maybe it wasn't so smart to have that period between lockdown 1 and lockdown 2, when people were allowed to go on holiday to france and spain - then the government would announce a rules change with 24 hours notice, forcing holidaymakers to race back to the UK? That was some truly weird public policy. Perhaps the government's announcement that they wanted people to stop working from home and go back to working in offices, a few weeks before the had to call for the second lockdown, wasn't such a smart move? Maybe when we had a second lockdown we shouldn't have announced an end date for it up front, and ended it when the load on hospitals was clearly still rising. Maybe that way we wouldn't be in our third national lockdown right now. Perhaps we shouldn't have waited nine months before we started testing truck drivers and others entering and leaving the country? And perhaps new arrivals' self isolation should be something more credible than them giving a pinkie promise?

michaelt 6y ago

> What is the magic answer to COVID? Masks and Lockdowns? I can't claim to have a magic answer, but there are loads of things the government fumbled. For example, in July the government was claiming to be surprised by asymptomatic carriers even though they'd been well known since the Diamond Princess, right at the start of the pandemic. Perhaps we could have had leadership who were on top of basic, well known facts? The national track-and-trace system was a shambles - surprising no-one, as it was built by contractors with a long track record of failed projects, overseen by unqualified cronies. Perhaps back in March, the decision not to covid test patients being discharged from hospitals into nursing homes wasn't such a smart move? Perhaps we shouldn't have made the bizarre decision to reopen universities for in-person teaching, sending loads of students travelling up and down the country to live in cramped, shared accommodation. Maybe it wasn't so smart to have that period between lockdown 1 and lockdown 2, when people were allowed to go on holiday to france and spain - then the government would announce a rules change with 24 hours notice, forcing holidaymakers to race back to the UK? That was some truly weird public policy. Perhaps the government's announcement that they wanted people to stop working from home and go back to working in offices, a few weeks before the had to call for the second lockdown, wasn't such a smart move? Maybe when we had a second lockdown we shouldn't have announced an end date for it up front, and ended it when the load on hospitals was clearly still rising. Maybe that way we wouldn't be in our third national lockdown right now. Perhaps we shouldn't have waited nine months before we started testing truck drivers and others entering and leaving the country? And perhaps new arrivals' self isolation should be something more credible than them giving a pinkie promise?