O/T:- Impressed with the leadership [The UK Party Politics Thread]

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Originally Posted by TheBlackHorse

... spot the difference ...
Area: England 130,000 sq km; Canada 9.9m sq km; Australia 7.7m sq km
Population: London 9m; Canada 40m; Australia 26m
Accepting some failures in the UK, it's much easier to control travel in Canada and Oz. Overcrowded living conditions in the UK must be a factor. ...

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Quite right BH, population density should be factored in. In the countries named, Canada and Australia, there are huge areas with no population at all. If it were possible to calculate a country's area where people actually live and their numbers of Covid deaths, then compare the UK figures with those such as Australia and Canada and other "civilised" countries the results may be somewhat similar to the UK's. If we could scatter our population over a greater area there would certainly be less person to person contact and so less contagion.

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Originally Posted by LaxtonLad

Quite right BH, population density should be factored in. In the countries named, Canada and Australia, there are huge areas with no population at all. If it were possible to calculate a country's area where people actually live and their numbers of Covid deaths, then compare the UK figures with those such as Australia and Canada and other "civilised" countries the results may be somewhat similar to the UK's. If we could scatter our population over a greater area there would certainly be less person to person contact and so less contagion.

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Japan has had 5,503 deaths. They are far more densely populated than us, much nearer to Wuhan so had less time to prepare and like us are an island.

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Originally Posted by Mapperleypie

Japan has had 5,503 deaths. They are far more densely populated than us, much nearer to Wuhan so had less time to prepare and like us are an island.

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As I’ve heard elsewhere, we need the vaccine to protect us from Boris Johnson.

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Originally Posted by Mapperleypie

Japan has had 5,503 deaths. They are far more densely populated than us, much nearer to Wuhan so had less time to prepare and like us are an island.

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... and the Japanese are both generally a well mannered society as well as having a history of doing what their government tells them, whether right or wrong. Carry on then ...

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Originally Posted by Mapperleypie

Japan has had 5,503 deaths. They are far more densely populated than us, much nearer to Wuhan so had less time to prepare and like us are an island.

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True, but they have much less international travel (inbound / outbound) which will also be a factor. The UK is a much more significant international travel hub, with approximately 3x the volume of international travellers than Japan. It does beg the question though why it took the UK a year to close its borders.

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Originally Posted by Evesham Pie

It does beg the question though why it took the UK a year to close its borders.

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It certainly does, it's a wrong-headed policy decision. You only have to look at the crowds at sporting events in Aus and NZ to see that by effectively closing their borders and using quarantine effectively these countries (whilst severely limited in regards to international travel) are pretty much back to normal day-to-day and they don't have 100,000 dead.

Given this is a government that has a mandate to be tough on immigration and would have had strong support across the political spectrum for operating a tough border policy in regards to COVID you do have to wonder what the issue is.

As with PPE and Track and Trace I'm sure it will become clear that the border policy was based around the wealth of a Tory donor or a friend of the Tories, there is no other rational explanation.

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Originally Posted by TheBlackHorse

... and the Japanese are both generally a well mannered society as well as having a history of doing what their government tells them, whether right or wrong. Carry on then ...

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Plus wearing a mask is part of their everyday outdoor clothing, it's almost part of their national costume.

... we're in danger of having a discussion here ! ...
the consensus medical view last March was that the virus could take up to 10/12 days to emerge if you were positive; and that testing was wildly inaccurate, so checking flight arrivals would be useless. So do you believe our scientists were wrong/useless/confused? Do you believe overseas scientists were smarter or the masks and their testing was for placebo effect? In any event will we ever know the extent to which flight arrivals brought in the virus- guess many did. Easy with hindsight to say we should have stopped all arrivals; but at that time there were so many displaced persons you can imagine the clamour from mardy Brit's! ...

Seems we now have a single dose vaccine.


https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coron...?ocid=msedgdhp

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Originally Posted by TheBlackHorse

... we're in danger of having a discussion here ! ...
the consensus medical view last March was that the virus could take up to 10/12 days to emerge if you were positive; and that testing was wildly inaccurate, so checking flight arrivals would be useless. So do you believe our scientists were wrong/useless/confused? Do you believe overseas scientists were smarter or the masks and their testing was for placebo effect? In any event will we ever know the extent to which flight arrivals brought in the virus- guess many did. Easy with hindsight to say we should have stopped all arrivals; but at that time there were so many displaced persons you can imagine the clamour from mardy Brit's! ...

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Where was the scientific consensus that said checking flight arrivals would be useless?

Australian borders were closed to all non-residents on 20 March, and returning residents were required to spend two weeks in supervised quarantine hotels from 27 March last year, a pretty strange policy to adopt if the scientific consensus was that this would be useless. These same principles were discussed by Sage in their 27 April 2020 meeting and apparently implemented by the government on 10th May - but as with all things COVID this was completely half-arsed, there was no supervised quarantine. Sage at that time always had a redacted name on the minutes, I can only assume this was honest Dom 'herd-immunity, eye-test drive' Cummings. The fullness of time is not going to be kind to him or the pathetic yes men that make up the cabinet. Many more lives could and would have been saved had we actually followed the science. The stupidest part of it all is this half-arsed approach is that it has not even saved the economy, we are having the deepest recession of any major western economy.