Coronavirus: The inside story of how UK's [England's] 'chaotic' testing regime 'broke all the rules'

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Another casual use of the descriptor "UK". The testing and tracing system in Scotland was, and is, far more efficient than in England. That is why the infection rate in Scotland now is almost zero. No new cases for three days. And all done "in house". Not a single private company was asked to provide testing and tracing. All done calmly and steadily, no promises of world beating Apps.

This is why Boris has stopped the daily briefings showing the different rates in the "regions". It would be a public shaming.
 
Amity Island said:
To me, it's like the government were instructed (like every other country in the world) to lockdown, and then find the evidence to suit their strategy.
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I think lockdowns (or similar less formal changes in social behaviour) were forced things to avoid chaos. A few countries (like South Korea) escaped them with very aggressive action based on their experience of SARS and MERS, but surely once the UK thought it was 4 or 5 weeks behind the disaster happening in north Italy some kind of lockdown was inevitable?

I really don't think this is a story about why a lockdown was needed. It really looks like a story about how the UK government was desperate to make itself look competent in its actions in England.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
I think lockdowns (or similar less formal changes in social behaviour) were forced things to avoid chaos. A few countries (like South Korea) escaped them with very aggressive action based on their experience of SARS and MERS, but surely once the UK thought it was 4 or 5 weeks behind the disaster happening in north Italy some kind of lockdown was inevitable?

I really don't think this is a story about why a lockdown was needed. It really looks like a story about how the UK government was desperate to make itself look competent in its actions in England.
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Bruce,

What is also interesting is some countries have hardly been affected by the virus. Taiwan for example has had "only" 7 deaths due to covid 19.
 
Amity Island said:
Taiwan for example has had "only" 7 deaths due to covid 19.
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Because they acted quickly and effectively. I can see why that would be risky for the UK to have done; there was a chance that the virus would have been contained in China or fizzled out pretty much before it got to us. Countries who had recent experience of SARS and MERS had a big advantage since their populations would presumably be happier with apparent overreaction.

We've known for decades that a pandemic is a likely threat, and while we fund lots of things to try to prevent terrorism (for example) we've been less generous in preparing for a pandemic. The last Prime Minister suspended the cabinet level committee for pandemics and the current one abolished it.

But it's tough spending lots of money year on year for something that happens only rarely. The latest episode of this podcast talks about just this: https://timharford.com/articles/cautionarytales/

(That's not to say our current government took "exactly the right actions at exactly the right time" as they like to say. Just that we weren't likely to do as well as Taiwan or South Korea (or New Zealand); we could easily have done much better.)
 
Amity Island said:
Bruce,

What is also interesting is some countries have hardly been affected by the virus. Taiwan for example has had "only" 7 deaths due to covid 19.
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Taiwan is an island, easy to isolate and ban incoming flights, a population used to pandemics, and no tourist industry to speak of.

It would have been just as simple for our government, if they had a few brain cells to rub together.
 
mikeyB said:
Taiwan is an island, easy to isolate and ban incoming flights, a population used to pandemics, and no tourist industry to speak of.

It would have been just as simple for our government, if they had a few brain cells to rub together.
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Good point Mike, as an Island we were potentially in a very advantageous position to prevent further cases of the virus coming in. But from what I understand there have been millions of passengers (thousands of flights) landing in UK during lockdown.

www.channel4.com

Revealed: Over 12,500 flights landed in UK during lockdown

More than 12,500 international flights landed in the UK during lockdown - including passenger and cargo planes.
www.channel4.com www.channel4.com
 
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