I dont doubt for one minute that we would have not had any deaths but I think we’ll disagree on the form of the comparison with New Zealand, Australia etc. While I agree that we cant really compare numbers we can compare the actions these countries took and that for me, is where any real comparison should focus on to start with.
Those nations took positive and proactive action. It saved lives and cash. The UK took a reactive approach, ignored the science, threw care homes under a speeding train and allowed people to travel with zero restrictions. It also employed a policy of U-turns.
What is very noticeable is that the UK has basically given no first doses of Pfizer pretty much for the whole of March, those impressive vaccination rates have all been driven by AstraZeneca.
As at 28 February there had been 10.7million Pfizer first doses and 9.7million AstraZeneca.
In the 4 weeks since there have been a further 0.2 million Pfizer first doses compared with 9.8 million AstraZeneca.
The governments original aim was to keep under 20,000 deaths. Let’s accept that was optimistic, and double it. Maybe 40,000 is still optimistic. 60k?
But 130,000. That’s too many, by a very, very long way.
When you look at the government’s performance (late locking down, early releasing, rinse and repeat, fucking up PPE roll out, fucking up test and trace, confusing messaging, messing about with schools, messing about with Christmas, eat out to help out, Dominic Cummings etc etc) you have to conclude that many thousands of people are dead as a result of this Governments failures.
So no, I don’t think there was a chance of coming through this with no deaths, even with competent leadership. Thousands of people were obviously going to die.
But I think a sizeable proportion of the 130,000 were completely avoidable. Maybe 70-80k could be laid at the Governments door? We’ll probably never know. I was hoping for an inquiry, but we’ve just learned a little about this Government’s approach to such things with the Sewell Report.
*** I was obviously making a joke, but I can see how my original post looked like I was saying that the Government were responsible for every death. I obviously don’t think that.
Absolutely this. I don’t envy any government having to make fast decisions on the fly in a pandemic, but using a public health crisis to funnel millions to their corporate mates is appalling, and has cost thousands of lives.
One of the big challenges we’ve had is that in pretty much every country there was a significant population of people who were on the continuum towards Covid-denialism. In some cases it can be as simple as “but what about the economy…business need to be open”, but there were lots of just outright anti-science positions being held. There was always going to be a degree of that, but I do wonder whether the internet age has given a more global conversation such that people in other countries were impacted by the bullshit coming out of the whitehouse. If Hillary had been President and had a non-political Department of Health of Human Services run by qualified people and taken things seriously, would the likes of Macron and Merkel been under less pressure from their own citizens?
Sure, that was always going to be out there, but I just dont think Sweden has the same impact on the global conversation. I think the decisions they took were amplified precisely because it aligned with a lot of what Trump was saying. There also then wouldnt have been a cottage industry in this country desperately pointing to them as an example of how Trump’s ideas were working elsewhere.
True but whichever country you focus on, irrespective of the government in charge, you are always going to find challenges where individual civil liberties are most developed and protected. An authoritarian regime with a history of enforcing strict compliance is always going to be better placed to deal with this sort of challenge owing to a more subservient and compliant population.
What I think has been shown is that many behavioural scientists massively underestimated the ability of most western populations to absorb fairly severe restrictions if the communication was good enough to enable societal buy-in in the interests of the ‘greater good’.
472 fatalities recorded following AstraZeneca (19.5 million first doses given) [1 in 41,314]
302 fatalities recorded following Pfizer (10.9 million first doses given) [1 in 36,093]
I’m not including the second doses in this as there isn’t a breakdown given. There will be slightly more Pfizer than AstraZeneca in that number which totalled 3.7 million as at 28 March 2021.
Also further details as to the CVST and Thrombocytopenia concerns:
Up to and including 31 March 2021, the MHRA had received 79 UK reports of blood clotting cases alongside low levels of platelets following the use of the COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca:
44 of the 79 cases were of CVST with thrombocytopenia
35 of the 79 cases were of thrombosis in other major veins with thrombocytopenia
79 cases occurred in 51 women and 28 men, aged from 18 to 79 years. It should be noted that more women have been vaccinated with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca than men.
Sadly, 19 people have died out of the 79 cases – 13 females and 6 males. 11 out of the 19 people who died were under the age of 50, 3 of whom were under 30. 14 of these 19 cases were of CVST with thrombocytopenia and 5 were of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia.
All 79 cases occurred after a first dose of the vaccine.
I think its quite naive to come out and say what they said about AZ having links to blood clots and Yet not knowing the real cause and still expect people to continue with it.
This is a problem. The regulators have a responsibility to act responsibly. Sounds like a tautology but they have to investigate these issues, they have to provide transparency but also, in my mind, they have to present any findings or conclusions in such a way as to provide confidence. I do not mean that they have to downplay issues with medical devices but they have to avoid adding to any existing confusion. They haven’t really done that, at all.
Yes, I don’t disagree with that at all. I just think when comparing us with others we ought to be using more appropriate comparators.
I’d say that was Germany, France, Spain and Italy. Grouping those 5 countries together (including the UK) we’d definitely rank bottom on a number of metrics when it comes to responding to the pandemic. At the end of this year I’d expect that overall we’ll be about middle.
