Don’t mistake the vaccine success (which the government basically went ‘all in’ on) for more general success.
This is still a government that ignored the virus until it was too late and mismanaged nearly every aspect of the eventual response. A government that shamefully sought to turn the pandemic into a succession of get rich opportunities for their mates.
I don’t think you’ll find many people who would say the vaccine strategy in the UK has been good. You’ll find lots of justified criticism of the overall pandemic response, but that’s a different thing.
Tbf, there are a number of posters on the forum absolutely determined not to give the government any credit at all who seek to direct credit to anyone but the government where things have gone well or find some other angle to say that despite things going well, the government are still at fault for that thing that is going well.
[Tbc, I’m not talking about posters who reserve their criticism of the government for the aspects of the pandemic they’ve genuinely screwed up.]
As an outsider, I think the UK government could have done alot more in their response to lock downs etc and I would even say they have screwed up but as far as vaccinations go, I think they must be given credit on how fast they secured the vaccines and more importantly, distribute and have it implemented. So on that end, UK is at the forefront of vaccinations and that is not to be scoffed at considering there are plenty of countries struggling with that.
There’s a chance that there may only be 1 death registered from coronavirus across the UK today (fingers crossed). None registered in Scotland, 1 in England so far, waiting on the data from Wales and Northern Ireland. It really can’t be too far off the UK having a day where once again nobody has lost their life to this.
Update: 0 deaths reported for Northern Ireland, 2 for Wales.
So 3 deaths reported for the whole of the UK, which would be only the second time the UK has reported this number of deaths since 10 March last year (the other being on 19 August 2020).
Anyway congrats to Australia and NZ for the successful launch of the travel bubble. Long may it lasts and pave the way for more normalcy! Taiwan also had a small travel bubble albeit with the island nation of Palau. Such small wins around the world give us some positivity.
