UK Politics Thread (Part 2)

[Bekloppt]

There are disparities between countries in terms of the effects of covid and the governmental response.

Here are the deaths per million statistics for
US - 3,099
UK - 2,688
Spain - 2,301
France - 2,115
Germany - 1,707

It’s not delusional to think that government policy had a role to play.

COVID-19 deaths per capita by country | Statista

[Mascot]

@odin_telamon

Would be interesting to know if those having a go at the government for their eat out to help out actually ate out to help out at any time .

I can only speak for myself, but no. It felt insane at the time.

[redalways]

@Lynch04

I accept that the Government didn’t get every decision right, but for anyone to suggest that any other party would of handled the Coronavirus situation is delusional.

For someone who’s supposedly not a Tory, you sure can regurgitate their talking points really well…

@Lynch04

Its ironic because Mascot and yourself both bring up the Eat out to Help out campaign as being wrong, yet you had the whole sector crying out for support and almost the whole country wanting to go out.

If the latter is true, then you don’t need the campaign?

[JU97ICE]

It’s funny how the Conservative supporters on here pick and choose countries to compare to: ‘oh this one was worse against issue X’. ’ This one was worse than us against issue Y’. But I haven’t seen a comparison against a single country that has consistently failed like the UK has.

There is strong evidence that this is because the UK government hasn’t spent much time actually governing. It has had to spend all is time putting out the spotfires of sleaze, or trying to control the narrative of Brexit.

[Mascot]

@JU97ICE

But I haven’t seen a comparison against a single country that has consistently failed like the UK has.

The US had a fucking nightmare.

[redalways]

You can’t judge it by those numbers, we have a bigger population than most countries in Europe…

Number of UK Covid deaths passes 200,000, ONS data shows

The UK has the highest death toll in Europe in absolute terms, according to Our World in Data, and a death rate of 2,689 per million people. This rate is lower thaat in Hungary, Italy or Poland but higher than the rates of Spain (2,295 per million), France (2,230) and Germany (1,704), according to figures from Our World In Data up to 12 July.

Oh.

[JU97ICE]

You could say their economy hasn’t tanked? Though to be fair it would be hard for the US economy to tank.

Also I’m not sure Conservatives want to draw comparisons to a Trump-led US

[redalways]

I was tempted to, but when I saw the crowds at the one place I wanted to go to, I quickly opted out.

[redalways]

As an aside, I couldn’t find this information on the BBC News site at all. Either I’m just being daft and blind, or this is a failure on their journalists.

[Mascot]

@redalways

As an aside, I couldn’t find this information on the BBC News site at all. Either I’m just being daft and blind, or this is a failure on their journalists.

This was always my fear. That the reckoning that was due over Covid would never happen because the accountability of government just isn’t there generally, and people would just be too tired and fed up to force it.

It’s hard not to be gaslit three years after Covid, but I think we all have a duty to remember how fucking useless the Government was for 18 months, until the vaccine programme saved their necks. Everything they touched turned to shit.

[Klopptimist]

A very good elderly friend of ours died during the outbreak. She had terminal cancer and was dying in a hospice. When she died, she had covid but it wasn’t the cause of death. Take a wild guess what her death certificate said. I’ve not looked at the figures, might get time later today, to look at total deaths year on year vs total deaths during covid.

[Klopptimist]

No, running my own business I couldn’t take extra risks of getting covid.

[Mascot]

@Klopptimist

A very good elderly friend of ours died during the outbreak. She had terminal cancer and was dying in a hospice. When she died, she had covid but it wasn’t the cause of death. Take a wild guess what her death certificate said. I’ve not looked at the figures, might get time later today, to look at total deaths year on year vs total deaths during covid.

Are you doing the ‘I know a single person, and that’s the same as evidence’ thing again?

[Klopptimist]

No, I’m giving you a single accurate example. However, let’s have some hard data. Seems I might be on to something here, don’t have time to look in depth but it would seem that covid had fuck all effect on the usual number of deaths. Could it be that it hastened a few? Possibly but then the figures would be skewed when it first hit and it “seems” like they’re not.

[Mascot]

@Klopptimist

No, I’m giving you a single accurate example. However, let’s have some hard data. Seems I might be on to something here:

You’ll have to explain what that is and what you think it represents.

[Mascot]

Here is data from World Bank, showing UK deaths per 1000 between 2000-2020 (2020 is the latest year available)

That’s quite the spike in 2020. Wonder what could have caused it?

[redfanman]

@Lynch04

Would Labour of acted any differently?
I accept that the Government didn’t get every decision right, but for anyone to suggest that any other party would of handled the Coronavirus situation is delusional.

Labour may have not been any better in the end, but it is far from delusional to think that they might have done so, particularly when in terms of competence this government sets a very low bar.

In addition to some of the points made by Mascot (I don’t know if I agree with all of them), I think there are several other key reasons to think that Labour could have done better.

1. Labour would have come to power without a large majority, providing a check on its behaviour.
2. It’s manifesto commitment on Brexit was to organise a second referendum - so its unlikely so much of that first year would have been taken up with stoking tensions with the EU and owning the remainers - leaving additional resource to go where it was most needed.
3. Labour were pushing for the support the government introduced way before Sunak brought it in, and for it to go further. Sunak was looking for almost any excuse to end it because it doesn’t fit his ‘vision’.
4. It is difficult to imagine a left leaning Labour government in the middle of a major public health crisis not pumping much needed money into the health and social care system, Local Authorities or schools.
5. It is very unlikely they would have sidestepped existing health care systems set up to deal with community transmissions and opt to set up a more expensive private contract that in many cases was still expecting public sector to do the work anyway.
6. It’s unlikely that a Labour government would have used the pandemic and the resulting shortfall experienced by TFL to drive through unpopular changes in London, blame the Mayor for them and seek to have him pushed out at the next election.
7. Instead of paying large sums of money to private hosptials yet allowing them to take almost no patients, Labour would have had the option to nationalise them. Would they have set Nightingale hospitals up without staffing them adequately?

[mackie]

But then, this is valid for other countries as well, so I guess it’s a non-argument when doing a comparison to other countries.

[redfanman]

@Klopptimist

No, I’m giving you a single accurate example. However, let’s have some hard data. Seems I might be on to something here, don’t have time to look in depth but it would seem that covid had fuck all effect on the usual number of deaths.

Not really. Questions about the data were discussed throughly in the Covid thread and there is plenty of evidence knocking about that clearly indicates Covid had a significant impact on death rates - not least because a lot of the things that often lead to people dying (i.e road accidents) dropped off over the same period. The idea that Covid was being written as cause of death just because someone had it at time of death has also been widely debunked.

[Noo_Noo]

@redfanman

@Noo_Noo

For example. Covid a success? 180000 dead.

Isn’t it now 200,000?

Looking at .gov website
Deaths within 28 days of a positive test 177,977
Deaths with Covid on death cert. 198,048