Politicians May Be Guilty of 'Social Murder' in COVID Response

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I do think the UK has handled the pandemic badly in many respects. Late to act initially, muddled and disorganised, and then ’eat out to infect out’ as a sticking plaster to those wailing about the economy.

Our disproportionate death toll is a tragedy, and each of those is a real person with real family and relationships.

Countries that locked down harder and with more intention (Aus, NZ) seem to have done so much better.

I’m not sure that accountability is likely I’m afraid. And I suspect the findings of any lengthy and expensive enquiry will be largely ignored :(
 
Well sorry EDUAD - Boris HAS learned and the fact that he and the Cabinet will NOT be pressed on dates for lockdown easing despite the 64 (who don't seem to be all 100% engaged in volunteering to assist NHS efforts locally to them, if they were they'd surely ensure we all know what they've been doing to help!) pressing them to do so, is surely some proof of this?
 
I saw Boris on tv today, he looked ill.

Sadly I don’t think they have learned , I too think they are relying an the vaccines. I know no one country has go it right, but some have handled it so much better than our lot have, IMO our lot should have watched other countries closely and adopted what worked best.

I am not coming out of isolation for around 3 weeks after my second jab ( dads not had his first one yet, though I’ve told his G.P. practice many many times that he he housebound and I am his carer , no one has taken any notice, yet) even then we will be very careful.
 
Amity Island said:
No worse than in 2000 or any year before that though?
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OK, yes, there is that one measure: "Fewer people dying per 1,000 than in 2003, and pretty much any year before."

But that's crude mortality (we don't expect just fewer deaths per 1,000 than happened in 1900). That's "been falling for most of the 20th and 21st century as medical science has advanced and people have lived longer". Excess deaths seems to me a better metric, and that looks pretty bad for 2020. (Not the worst ever, but pretty bad.)
 
Amity Island said:
And also, as the population is ever increasing, naturally more deaths and excess deaths are expected.
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Which is why they count it relative to the population size. Excess deaths (again, adjusted for population size) seems more useful to me because it takes account of improvements over time. (Probably also not ideal because our population is skewing older which'll presumably cause excess deaths to increase.)

Regardless, if the ONS likes excess deaths in this context I'm inclined to go with that. They'll have thought much more about this than most have, and vastly more than I have.
 
From what I have heard, excess deaths is a better and more informative statistic.

How many people have died in excess of what would be expected in a ‘regular’ recent year.
 
Amity Island said:
The Sky video shows that the number of death in 2020 was similar to that in 1918 WW1 with 600,000 deaths. But the population has gone up by 50% since then. From 40,000,000 to over 60,000,000.
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It then goes on to show that adjusted for population, which as you say doesn't look so bad, but explains that expected lifetimes had improved over the past couple of centuries, and so really what you want is to look how deaths change compared to recent years. (Excess deaths, in other words.) And shows a graph showing that (adjusted for age distribution, I think) suggesting that (up to that time) 2020's been about as bad as 1918.

(It seems entirely possible that it would be silly to adjust excess deaths for population size. As I said, ONS have vastly more expertise in thinking about this than I have.)
 
everydayupsanddowns said:
I do think the UK has handled the pandemic badly in many respects. Late to act initially, muddled and disorganised, and then ’eat out to infect out’ as a sticking plaster to those wailing about the economy.

Our disproportionate death toll is a tragedy, and each of those is a real person with real family and relationships.

Countries that locked down harder and with more intention (Aus, NZ) seem to have done so much better.

I’m not sure that accountability is likely I’m afraid. And I suspect the findings of any lengthy and expensive enquiry will be largely ignored :(
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Maybe because I'm an outsider, my take is a little different than most of the ones I see around the place. I really think UK medical/science authorities have to wear a large part of the blame. Recall how at the start of the epidemic IC and other modellers presented their future vision of cycles of lockdowns and easings. Prophecy fulfilled! At no time up until the present have most of them presented anything other than miserable drab alternatives which never, ever contemplated anything like local elimination.

And it was just an article of IC-inspired faith that border closure doesn't work - actually a huge article of faith; it's excrutiating to watch various experts gritting their teeth and walking that back in baby steps now.

We almost got caught up in this wrongness & it's been fascinating to watch how we escaped (so far). The most fundamental thing has been overwhelming public pressure. Once we had closed the borders and it became evident that local elimnination is in fact possible (pace all the UK experts) there was no way the public was going to settle for anything less, and in some cases political and medical authorities have had to scramble to catch up witjh the public.

Zero COVID is a simple message, in fact achievable, hugely motivating and politically a sure-fire winner. Mediocre state governments have ridiculouly high approval ratings here; even the Trumnp-humping god-bothering contemptible hack PM gets a boost, despite having played no positive role in anything.
 
Northerner said:
Abbasi writes that the phrase "social murder" was coined by philosopher Friedrich Engels to describe the conditions created by privileged classes in 19th century England that "inevitably led to premature and ‘unnatural' death among the poorest classes."
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Has there ever been even one politician found guilty of social murder, look at cruel welfare cuts that IDS made under Cameron's govn, how many took their own life as consequence.

After covid public enquiry will take place but no individual will be made accountable, that's for sure.
 
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Well Winston Churchill was long considered to be a warmonger by all sorts of individuals around at that time, eg Pete's mom and my dad. (who never knew each other whatever, utterly different experiences of the war too) And the population soon replaced his Govt with a Labour one after the War. But we were discussing this only the other night, and Aneurin Bevan and the formation of the NHS, a move not at all popular with GPs generally at the time. Nye was asked about this in Parliament cos they stopped objecting quite so much and apparently said he'd sorted them out 'by stuffing their mouths with money' to shut them up.

Anyway Pete pointed out that the encumbent Govt must have done a lot of work prior to the NHS being formed, before losing the election. No idea of course who did what when cos we haven't delved that deeply into the history.

And isn't it easy to have 20/20 vision in hindsight ........
 
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