Crosswords1 min ago
Here's A Thought....i'd Like Those Who Are Very Happy Knocking Boris's Leadership
To give us an alternative and why would they do better than he and his cabinet are doing,remember it's the party and not the man who got in with a good majority
Over to the Boris knockers
( not sure what section, sorry Ed)
Over to the Boris knockers
( not sure what section, sorry Ed)
Answers
i think everyone is out of their depth on covid 19.
10:16 Mon 30th Nov 2020
Bobbi // we are facing unprecedented times but the continuing Boris the man knocking goes on and on//
perhaps because he is an incapable fool? In a parallel Universe I doubt Rees-Mogg would have conducted himself like Boris has. He would have been a strong leader who would not pass the Buck onto his 'Advisors'. We need someone like wee Nichola Sturgeon - I don't even like her as a person- but she's done a sterling job regarding the Covid crisis in Scotland.
perhaps because he is an incapable fool? In a parallel Universe I doubt Rees-Mogg would have conducted himself like Boris has. He would have been a strong leader who would not pass the Buck onto his 'Advisors'. We need someone like wee Nichola Sturgeon - I don't even like her as a person- but she's done a sterling job regarding the Covid crisis in Scotland.
// Or, more generally, what would any leader need to do, or not do, in order to have "failed" as regards Covid? //
that depends on what the goal of the policy was. New Zealand has had far less cases of COVID than practically anywhere else with a western type lifestyle. but that was because their objective wasn't to avoid swamping the healthcare system (the UK objective) but to reduce occurrence to zero. this has involved non-medical interventions far stricter and far more oppressive than any comparable regime; but in a population less than one tenth of the UK's and in a more isolated location, this was easier to manage.
In the UK, both lockdowns gave the population too much leakage to ever hope to do anything more than meet their stated aim of "saving the NHS". "essential" shops stayed open, transport ran, people were allowed to "exercise". thus people could mingle in a situation where even the experts didn't fully understand the mechanics of spread (what is a safe "social distance", does anyone know? why was 2m selected when aerosol particles are known to travel 10m or more?). but the NHS didn't suffer a complete meltdown, and is still here - it was "saved". Success. Covid is still here. failure? well no, elimination wasn't the goal, at least not in the UK.
that depends on what the goal of the policy was. New Zealand has had far less cases of COVID than practically anywhere else with a western type lifestyle. but that was because their objective wasn't to avoid swamping the healthcare system (the UK objective) but to reduce occurrence to zero. this has involved non-medical interventions far stricter and far more oppressive than any comparable regime; but in a population less than one tenth of the UK's and in a more isolated location, this was easier to manage.
In the UK, both lockdowns gave the population too much leakage to ever hope to do anything more than meet their stated aim of "saving the NHS". "essential" shops stayed open, transport ran, people were allowed to "exercise". thus people could mingle in a situation where even the experts didn't fully understand the mechanics of spread (what is a safe "social distance", does anyone know? why was 2m selected when aerosol particles are known to travel 10m or more?). but the NHS didn't suffer a complete meltdown, and is still here - it was "saved". Success. Covid is still here. failure? well no, elimination wasn't the goal, at least not in the UK.
Of course, if you want to strip Johnson as a person out of it, that's fair enough. I don't want to pretend that my comments aren't shaped, at least to some extent, by my opinion of him and all he stands for. But presumably there must be some objective criteria to evaluate any PM's performance. What are those?
Take the pandemic response in South Korea, for example. There is a country with a population that is similar to the UK's, and a population density that is even greater. Both of those mean that the pandemic ought, superficially, to have been a far greater threat there than here. This hasn't happened. Moreover, this hasn't happened without even significantly impacting their economy. Official projections suggest that South Korea is looking at a 2% GDP contraction this year, as compared to a 10% contraction in the UK; just to put this into context, the same projections imply that Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the US, India, Canada, Russia, Brazil, Mexico... are expecting contractions of between 4% and 12%, so South Korea is a clear outlier here.*
So the UK's approach has failed economically, and the UK's approach has failed in terms of death toll: we have recorded around 100 times more deaths from Covid than South Korea, and about 70 times more per capita. Remember, too, that the Covid outbreak reached South Korea, and flared up there, weeks before it did in the UK. And then it was crushed; despite two flare-up waves since, on both occasions the disease has been quickly brought under control.
There are at least some historical reasons why South Korea's response was more effective. Very recently, an outbreak of MERS, a more deadly but less infectious disease, struck there in 2015, but that "only" killed 36 people from a total of 200 known to have been infected. Apparently this was enough to spur the Korean Government to develop a programme for rapid expansion of testing facilities if ever there was a need for it. But there's no reason for this lesson to have only been learned there.
In short, then, I'd suggest that the objectively best response in the world to Covid-19 occurred in South Korea.
*Source: https:/
Take the pandemic response in South Korea, for example. There is a country with a population that is similar to the UK's, and a population density that is even greater. Both of those mean that the pandemic ought, superficially, to have been a far greater threat there than here. This hasn't happened. Moreover, this hasn't happened without even significantly impacting their economy. Official projections suggest that South Korea is looking at a 2% GDP contraction this year, as compared to a 10% contraction in the UK; just to put this into context, the same projections imply that Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the US, India, Canada, Russia, Brazil, Mexico... are expecting contractions of between 4% and 12%, so South Korea is a clear outlier here.*
So the UK's approach has failed economically, and the UK's approach has failed in terms of death toll: we have recorded around 100 times more deaths from Covid than South Korea, and about 70 times more per capita. Remember, too, that the Covid outbreak reached South Korea, and flared up there, weeks before it did in the UK. And then it was crushed; despite two flare-up waves since, on both occasions the disease has been quickly brought under control.
There are at least some historical reasons why South Korea's response was more effective. Very recently, an outbreak of MERS, a more deadly but less infectious disease, struck there in 2015, but that "only" killed 36 people from a total of 200 known to have been infected. Apparently this was enough to spur the Korean Government to develop a programme for rapid expansion of testing facilities if ever there was a need for it. But there's no reason for this lesson to have only been learned there.
In short, then, I'd suggest that the objectively best response in the world to Covid-19 occurred in South Korea.
*Source: https:/
Rees-Mogg's response would certainly have been different; I'm not sure what about it would have been "better". As Leader of the House he's been responsible for resisting any attempts to implement safe working practices such as remote voting, so, if anything, he would have been even less inclined to take expert advice seriously.
Lets put it like this, you said on a post the other day that you were not sure if Boris was right in relaxing the lock down for Xmas.
Any one with any brain ( that Boris hasn't got) shouldn't even have to think about the answer to that, a big fat NO! What the hell was the point of closing all the shops and pubs for the last month to get infection down, only to let it run wild again for 5/6 days.
So it seems that you're not to sure whether they got it right from the word go. Take another look at Italy today.
Any one with any brain ( that Boris hasn't got) shouldn't even have to think about the answer to that, a big fat NO! What the hell was the point of closing all the shops and pubs for the last month to get infection down, only to let it run wild again for 5/6 days.
So it seems that you're not to sure whether they got it right from the word go. Take another look at Italy today.
saying "everyone is out of their depth" is an impressive condemnation of every politician in the country; I'd be accused of being anti-British if I said any such thing.
However, other countries have done vastly better. Taiwan, for instance, has the extreme disadvantage of being about 80 miles from China. And yet they didn't have lockdown at all, and they've had a grand total of seven deaths.
Or what about Japan, a modern, industrialised island country about half as big again as Britain but with twice as many people. Its GDP shrank 8% in the June quarter, against 20% in Britain. Total deaths about 2000, against Britain's over 60,000.
Did anyone in Britain think of asking them how they did it? Or did they just throw up their hands and think "Oh, but you can't possibly compare Britain to them, they're Asians"?
However, other countries have done vastly better. Taiwan, for instance, has the extreme disadvantage of being about 80 miles from China. And yet they didn't have lockdown at all, and they've had a grand total of seven deaths.
Or what about Japan, a modern, industrialised island country about half as big again as Britain but with twice as many people. Its GDP shrank 8% in the June quarter, against 20% in Britain. Total deaths about 2000, against Britain's over 60,000.
Did anyone in Britain think of asking them how they did it? Or did they just throw up their hands and think "Oh, but you can't possibly compare Britain to them, they're Asians"?
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