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I think the thing is, as you go up the list from the UK, you can come up with lots of extenuating circumstances. Italy had it first, so had less warning. Easter

I think the thing is, as you go up the list from the UK, you can come up with lots of extenuating circumstances. Italy had it first, so had less warning. Eastern european countries and Belgium are poorer. If you compare the UK to the countries you normally compare it to: France, Germany, maybe Holland, the UK is the worst. It's average for eastern europe. It's not average for nations with its GDP in europe, let alone the rest of the world. I'm not sure what you're referring to in regards with tradeoffs. Surely you're supposed to gain something in a tradeoff? What have the UK concretely gained? Honestly, Boris Johnson is just not the man for thoughtful, reasoned strategy. Dominic Cummings has been posting his 'insider's view' of the catastrophe as it unfolded, and frankly, it fits the figures. It fits the personalities involved. It fits the death toll. Why would you expect a really smart strategy from these people, and why would you believe there was a really smart strategy 'behind the scenes', as it were, with these results? EDIT: PS: check out the scatter chart for deaths per 100,000, you can clearly see that the UK is leading the pack for nations with a similar population.

IMTDb 5y ago
FYI, GDP per capita of belgium is higher than UK (and than France), do not make the mistake of considering it "close to eastern european countries" [1]. Belgium COVID death rate is also higher than the UK. Overall, the total death rate is nearly the same, and the economic impact is as well. But no one is condeming Belgium for "crazy policies", because...they weren't. I live in Belgium, and our policies were extremely close to what France and the Netherlands were doing (even quicker to respond than the Netherlands, who also somehow tried the herd immunity stuff for a few weeks). UK next door, despite being poorer, got overall less measures (got some friends living in London, so we loved to compare), and a slightly lower death rate. That's a nice tradeoff there. Note that the sight difference in death rate can almost certainly be explained by the general density of the population and other similar factors. But the fact that we try to explain these number differences with local/cultural/demographic details shows that in the grand scheme of things, the outcome of the policies were largely similar. And in terms of measure, we largely got the same calendar as well, again with a slight advantage for the UK. As a consequence, you can't just call UK measures "completely crazy" and praise western Europe handling of things. They overall got the same results. The sole reason those measures are being condemned is because of people general disdain for BoJo. I honestly am not a fan either, but if you look at the measures themselves and their effect, they are on the OK-ish side, with a bit more focus on saving the economy and societal impact than on direct impact on COVID patient count and death. Nothing more, nothing less. [1]: https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/belgium/uk?sc=XE15 https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/belgium/uk?sc=X...
- pasabagi 5y ago
  I think you've moderated my view a little. I guess my opinions on the UK handling came from watching the graphs, sometimes on a daily basis, then comparing where we were on the graphs to where we were on policy, and often tearing my hair out over the disconnect. This deep fear and frustration, combined with my awareness of what british politics is like (The Thick of It is considered fairly realistic), and having so much skin in the game made me frankly very frustrated, scared, and angry. I wasn't doing the same in regards to Belgium - so I didn't have the really powerful opinion-forming experiences of doing stuff like trying to convince my immuno-compromised mother to not attend a choral evensong(!) when the graphs were ascending vertically and there were 30000 new cases every day. Learning in retrospect that Boris Johnson was saying 'I should have been the mayor from Jaws', and 'get covid, live longer', makes my blood boil - because it totally makes sense. That's the only conversation people could have been having behind the scenes that leads to the second lockdown being called so late, or COVID patients being sent directly back to care homes, or all the rest of it. My feeling would be, instead of calling the UK normal, why not ask, what went wrong in Belgium? We know, more or less, what went wrong in Italy, for instance. I think that COVID is one of the clearest policy-to-outcomes phenomena we've seen, because specific policies ('non-pharmaceutical interventions') could be watched, on the graphs (in terms of R0, GDP, etc), in real time. Policy failures are not only visible, but also visible as quantities, and often directly comparable across nations.

IMTDb 5y ago

FYI, GDP per capita of belgium is higher than UK (and than France), do not make the mistake of considering it "close to eastern european countries" [1]. Belgium COVID death rate is also higher than the UK. Overall, the total death rate is nearly the same, and the economic impact is as well. But no one is condeming Belgium for "crazy policies", because...they weren't. I live in Belgium, and our policies were extremely close to what France and the Netherlands were doing (even quicker to respond than the Netherlands, who also somehow tried the herd immunity stuff for a few weeks). UK next door, despite being poorer, got overall less measures (got some friends living in London, so we loved to compare), and a slightly lower death rate. That's a nice tradeoff there. Note that the sight difference in death rate can almost certainly be explained by the general density of the population and other similar factors. But the fact that we try to explain these number differences with local/cultural/demographic details shows that in the grand scheme of things, the outcome of the policies were largely similar. And in terms of measure, we largely got the same calendar as well, again with a slight advantage for the UK. As a consequence, you can't just call UK measures "completely crazy" and praise western Europe handling of things. They overall got the same results. The sole reason those measures are being condemned is because of people general disdain for BoJo. I honestly am not a fan either, but if you look at the measures themselves and their effect, they are on the OK-ish side, with a bit more focus on saving the economy and societal impact than on direct impact on COVID patient count and death. Nothing more, nothing less. [1]: https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/belgium/uk?sc=XE15 https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/belgium/uk?sc=X...

pasabagi 5y ago
I think you've moderated my view a little. I guess my opinions on the UK handling came from watching the graphs, sometimes on a daily basis, then comparing where we were on the graphs to where we were on policy, and often tearing my hair out over the disconnect. This deep fear and frustration, combined with my awareness of what british politics is like (The Thick of It is considered fairly realistic), and having so much skin in the game made me frankly very frustrated, scared, and angry. I wasn't doing the same in regards to Belgium - so I didn't have the really powerful opinion-forming experiences of doing stuff like trying to convince my immuno-compromised mother to not attend a choral evensong(!) when the graphs were ascending vertically and there were 30000 new cases every day. Learning in retrospect that Boris Johnson was saying 'I should have been the mayor from Jaws', and 'get covid, live longer', makes my blood boil - because it totally makes sense. That's the only conversation people could have been having behind the scenes that leads to the second lockdown being called so late, or COVID patients being sent directly back to care homes, or all the rest of it. My feeling would be, instead of calling the UK normal, why not ask, what went wrong in Belgium? We know, more or less, what went wrong in Italy, for instance. I think that COVID is one of the clearest policy-to-outcomes phenomena we've seen, because specific policies ('non-pharmaceutical interventions') could be watched, on the graphs (in terms of R0, GDP, etc), in real time. Policy failures are not only visible, but also visible as quantities, and often directly comparable across nations.