[teestub]

I thought that article was interesting, in case it hasn’t made it into one of the 27 Covid threads https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/30/coronavirus-deaths-how-does-britain-compare-with-other-countries

[petejh]

That kind of thing won’t do Teestub. This forum’s posters demand blame to be ascribed. Never mind strength or evidence. Blame!

[ali k]

Teestub - yes, that’s the article that Patrick Vallance recommended people read in yesterday’s press conference.

Pete - as an oft defender of this government but also a critic of comparing deaths with other countries when the facts aren’t known, what’s your opinion on why the government’s top scientific advisers have chosen to include a graph of global death comparisons as part of their daily slides up until the point we start looking a bit shoddy compared with other countries, at which point they spend a considerable amount of time rubbishing any comparison?

[TobyD]

I'm not defending the government but I think Pete has a pretty good point. Much of this discussion seems to have ceased and become one sided criticism of the conservative party.

[teestub]

That kind of thing won’t do Teestub. This forum’s posters demand blame to be ascribed. Never mind strength or evidence. Blame!

Well it was obviously written by some paid up member of the Oxbridge boys club, edited by Dom, attempting to obfuscate the horrendous performance of the government. Or something.

[ali k]

Much of this discussion seems to have ceased and become one sided criticism of the conservative party.

Well they are the ones in power and making all the decisions. Or have I woken up in 2025 and missed an election?

[Somebody's Fool]

I thought this was quite an interesting read. Essentially the government are making it up as they go along, but that's not really the fault of any individual actors, more a systemic failure because of what the role of the state has become after 40 years of neoliberalism.

https://www.thefullbrexit.com/covid19-state-failure

[spidermonkey09]

I thought everyone had a good point here. Thats a good piece Stubs, thanks for the link. Trouble is, the call not to use comparisons is doomed to failure as everyone is using them to try amd illistrate their own point. The Times editorial today feautured a comparison with Sweden which seemed to be implying that they had nailed it and we havent. Cant have it both ways surely! Ali is also right to point out that the government was very keen to show off their graphs until very recently when they stopped looking so clever. Thats worthy of comment too.

[TobyD]

Much of this discussion seems to have ceased and become one sided criticism of the conservative party.

Well they are the ones in power and making all the decisions. Or have I woken up in 2025 and missed an election?

No obviously not, they have made mistakes but no government hasn't been criticized on their virus response, except perhaps New Zealand although they must have one of the easiest jobs to do in minimising impact. The government has also done a lot right. It's true that many ministers have been pretty ineffective, for which they deserve criticism but ideological soap boxing about austerity endlessly helps noone. Arguably, reducing the defecit was one of the most valuable pieces of preparation they did actually do.

I thought this was quite an interesting read. Essentially the government are making it up as they go along, but that's not really the fault of any individual actors, more a systemic failure because of what the role of the state has become after 40 years of neoliberalism.
https://www.thefullbrexit.com/covid19-state-failure

So if we had a socialist utopia we'd have a great plan of action for every pathogen pandemic, asteroid impact, terrorist strike, and nuclear war?

[ali k]

Trouble is, the call not to use comparisons is doomed to failure as everyone is using them to try amd illistrate their own point. The Times editorial today feautured a comparison with Sweden which seemed to be implying that they had nailed it and we havent. Cant have it both ways surely!

Johnson was guilty of this in yesterday’s press conference. He was simultaneously dismissing any comparison with other countries in death rates or strategy and also bragging that the UK had imposed the lockdown earlier in the epidemic timeline than other countries.

[petejh]

Teestub - yes, that’s the article that Patrick Vallance recommended people read in yesterday’s press conference.

Pete - as an oft defender of this government but also a critic of comparing deaths with other countries when the facts aren’t known, what’s your opinion on why the government’s top scientific advisers have chosen to include a graph of global death comparisons as part of their daily slides up until the point we start looking a bit shoddy compared with other countries, at which point they spend a considerable amount of time rubbishing any comparison?

That’s an easy question to answer!
Just look at the last 6 weeks of posting history here and scale that up to national level - do you really think the people and media wouldn’t be howling in self-righteous protest if the government had chosen NOT to put up some arbitrary graph comparing us to other countries?! No matter how inaccurate that comparison really is?

Some on here would have been saying that the gov not showing comparisons was yet more evidence of them not being transparent.
Yet if the government had truly been transparent and told the people that they weren’t showing comparisons because the graphs were apple-to-pear bullshit, the howls of outrage would then be about incompetence instead and the media would, without any shadow of doubt, have published their own comparison graphs instead. Which the more idiotic in the population would take as hard evidence because they’d seen their idiot media interrogating ministers about why their latest bullshit graph showed xyz.

So basically the self-serving attitude of much of our media, and people being wilfully ignorant of the fact that there isn’t really the evidence right now, puts the government into a position between howls of complaint about transparency or howls of complaint about competency.

TLDR: populations get the gov’s they deserve.

[Will Hunt]

I don't think it's entirely fair to say that UKB can't assess situations impartially or rationally. It's certainly true of some posters  but I can remember TT (Labour party member) saying that he begrudgingly thought the govt had done a good job at the start. His opinion has developed over time.

[ali k]

ideological soap boxing about austerity endlessly helps noone. Arguably, reducing the defecit was one of the most valuable pieces of preparation they did actually do.

Is this a joke Toby? So running down public services (including NHS capacity), slashing funding to local government infrastructure which is now vital in contact tracing, avoiding stockpiling PPE for this exact scenario due to costings etc is valuable preparation?

Having a reduced deficit is unarguably a good thing. Achieving that by imposing a decade of reduced funding to vital public services (which just happens to align with your ideological aim of a reduced state) is quite another.

[petejh]

I agree Will and of course I’m generalising. I did say population, not population of ukb.

[Nigel]

ideological soap boxing about austerity endlessly helps noone. Arguably, reducing the defecit was one of the most valuable pieces of preparation they did actually do.

Will also chip in - that argument is at best not necessarily true, and arguably totally false.

Reducing the deficit hasn't given us any more money to play with (the deficit and national debt still exists). A large sum of the "coronavirus money" is effectively being printed by the Bank of England. They would still be able to do this regardless of what the deficit was. See the "Finance...." thread.

As Ali rightly says reducing the deficit had many negative effects on the public realm, the chickens of which are now coming home to roost.

[TobyD]

ideological soap boxing about austerity endlessly helps noone. Arguably, reducing the defecit was one of the most valuable pieces of preparation they did actually do.

Is this a joke Toby? So running down public services (including NHS capacity), slashing funding to local government infrastructure which is now vital in contact tracing, avoiding stockpiling PPE for this exact scenario due to costings etc is valuable preparation?

Having a reduced deficit is unarguably a good thing. Achieving that by imposing a decade of reduced funding to vital public services (which just happens to align with your ideological aim of a reduced state) is quite another.

It's certainly been pretty negative in some ways, but if the government didn't have a large financial buffer then the furlough scheme wouldn't be possible, and you'd already have had redundancies on a huge scale. It's possible that they're delaying the inevitable but the treasury has done pretty well in supporting people in what must be an unimaginably complicated situation.

[Nigel]

It's certainly been pretty negative in some ways, but if the government didn't have a large financial buffer then the furlough scheme wouldn't be possible

There is no large financial buffer though - see the national deficit and debt. The furlough scheme would still be possible via money printing regardless. Which is in large part how they are doing it anyway.

[Bonjoy]

So if we had a socialist utopia we'd have a great plan of action for every pathogen pandemic, asteroid impact, terrorist strike, and nuclear war?

Any government of any colour should have had a plan for the inevitable pandemic. The risk which had been identified by the government itself as THE NUMBER ONE THREAT (excuse the caps) to the UK, above war, above terrorism and above your other hypotheticals. There is no excuse. The government found the resources to put bags of money into the other much lower risk threats. The cost of prepping for a pandemic would have been peanuts compared to for instance Trident renewal.

[ali k]

...if the government didn't have a large financial buffer then the furlough scheme wouldn't be possible, and you'd already have had redundancies on a huge scale.

That sounds like a quote from Phillip Hammond and is a false argument/political spin defending the last decade of cuts. 10 years of austerity has had absolutely zero impact on whether or not the furlough scheme would have been enacted, but has had a HUGE impact on our preparedness for this epidemic and ability to cope with it.

Printing money is something you can do as easily as turning on a light switch. Reversing a decade of public service decimation when the shit hits the fan - not so easy.

[Johnny Brown]

What they said ^. This ongoing assumption that the national economy must somehow be managed like a household must be one of the tories' most successful bullshits. Likewise their ability to manage it better than the others.

[spidermonkey09]

ideological soap boxing about austerity endlessly helps noone. Arguably, reducing the defecit was one of the most valuable pieces of preparation they did actually do.

Is this a joke Toby? So running down public services (including NHS capacity), slashing funding to local government infrastructure which is now vital in contact tracing, avoiding stockpiling PPE for this exact scenario due to costings etc is valuable preparation?

Having a reduced deficit is unarguably a good thing. Achieving that by imposing a decade of reduced funding to vital public services (which just happens to align with your ideological aim of a reduced state) is quite another.

It's certainly been pretty negative in some ways, but if the government didn't have a large financial buffer then the furlough scheme wouldn't be possible, and you'd already have had redundancies on a huge scale. It's possible that they're delaying the inevitable but the treasury has done pretty well in supporting people in what must be an unimaginably complicated situation.

Thats a spectacular misreading of the economics in my view. The furlough scheme has naff all to do with the deficit. I agree the treasury have done well to roll out the furlough scheme but saying it wouldnt have been possible without austerity is total bollocks.

[mrjonathanr]

The furlough scheme would still be possible via money printing regardless. Which is in large part how they are doing it anyway.

^^
Toby, this (Tory) government had a plan, they just didn't follow it. Any sitting administration would have had exactly the same.

[teestub]

This ongoing assumption that the national economy must somehow be managed like a household must be one of the tories' most successful bullshits.

💯

[Nigel]

This ongoing assumption that the national economy must somehow be managed like a household must be one of the tories' most successful bullshits.

If you get yourself a decent quality printing press then any household can do it.

[Nigel]

That kind of thing won’t do Teestub. This forum’s posters demand blame to be ascribed. Never mind strength or evidence. Blame!

Pete I think you are being slightly unfair to "this forum's posters" there by folding several issues into  the "lack of evidence" category.

The main concerns I have read (and posted) on here have been:

Lack of PPE
Slow on testing
Lack of clarity from the government on strategy and actions
Care homes

I would say those are pretty well evidenced, and internal UK matters, and therefore people should be held to account for it. Regardless of any data inconsistencies in deaths between countries, which is a totally separate and unrelated issue. It may be seen by some as being terribly unfair on the poor old party in charge but I'll live with that.

On international comparisons, I will freely admit that overall no-one knows what the right strategy long term is. Who knows, maybe "herd immunity" was right all along once we take into account repeated waves? Perhaps those countries like New Zealand who have aced it in terms of deaths so far will be storing up epic problems for the future? This will become clear in the fullness of time, but it doesn't negate the fact that if you concentrate solely on the UK there have been definite deficiencies in the response. E.g. not implementing the recommendations of Operation Cygnus (nb not yet published - "maximum transparency"?). Not to mention that the UK response changed 180 degrees at one point, which seems to suggest a lack of preparation and muddled thinking despite the forewarnings. I could go on. If we had been better prepared as a nation then we might not need to be in lockdown.

It seems an odd bit of fatalism to just say lets leave it to play out for a couple of years and come back to it when we know a bit more. But if that's what the government would rather we do as a nation i.e. nothing, then they should tell us soon, showing their reasoning.