UK Reports Highest Coronavirus Death Toll In Europe

DEAD7

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UK Reports Highest Coronavirus Death Toll In Europe

The U.K. surpassed Italy on Tuesday to report the most coronavirus deaths in Europe, according to Johns Hopkins data and its own tracker.
Axios reports:

The country, which prolonged its lockdown last month until at least the second week of May, has reported more than 196,000 cases compared to Italy's roughly 213,000. Imperial College London is undertaking the randomized testing of 100,000 people in England this week to gain data on when the lockdown might be able to lift, per The Guardian.
 

jj23

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Yeah. We now have the dubious honor.

The odd things is you would know it. There isn't that desolation like there seemed to be in Italy.

Either way. We need some answers on why we didn't react to this sooner. We had the models and chose the unproven 'herd immunity model, only to change our minds. Now Germany, who were super aggressive with dealing with the issue is getting ready to reopen and we are still struggling through.

Maybe the nation on a whole is too :flabbynsick:
 

bigmac

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Yeah. We now have the dubious honor.

The odd things is you would know it. There isn't that desolation like there seemed to be in Italy.

Either way. We need some answers on why we didn't react to this sooner. We had the models and chose the unproven 'herd immunity model, only to change our minds. Now Germany, who were super aggressive with dealing with the issue is getting ready to reopen and we are still struggling through.

Maybe the nation on a whole is too :flabbynsick:
For the most part I think the steps we took were right. Just too late.

You’re right though it never felt desperate here. Elsewhere it felt like Spain and Italy were in bits and here it was just minor, whilst the numbers say we’re the worst of the lot. Boris getting the bug and coming back won him some empathy points but as a whole, it just feels like a two month period where we had to fall back. Strange.
 

bnew

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Former British PM Boris Johnson was 'bamboozled' by COVID stats, inquiry hears​

Posted 1h ago1 hours ago

Conservative party leadership candidate Boris Johnson covers his mouth in front of blue background.

Boris Johnson stood down as the UK's prime minister in 2022.(PA via AP: Ben Birchall)

Former British prime minister Boris Johnson struggled to come to grips with much of the science during the coronavirus pandemic, his chief scientific adviser has told an inquiry.


Key points:​


  • Sir Patrick Vallance told the inquiry Mr Johnson was "bamboozled" by graphs and stats
  • He claimed the same was true of several world leaders
  • Mr Johnson's actions and decisions are being put under the microscope at the hearings


In a keenly awaited testimony to the country's public inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic on Monday, Sir Patrick Vallance said he and others faced repeated problems getting Mr Johnson to understand the science and that he changed his mind on numerous occasions.

"I think I'm right in saying that the prime minister gave up science at 15," he said.

"I think he'd be the first to admit it wasn't his forte and that he struggled with the concepts and we did need to repeat them, often."

Extracts from Sir Patrick's mostly contemporaneous diary of the time were relayed to the inquiry.

In them, he wrote that Mr Johnson was often "bamboozled" by the graphs and data and that watching him "get his head round stats is awful".

A man in a suit speaking and gesturing with his hands behind a lecturn

Patrick Vallance makes a point at a press conference in London last year.(Supplied: Jack Hill/Pool via Reuters)

During the pandemic, Sir Patrick was a highly visible presence in the UK.

He and the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, regularly flanked Mr Johnson at the daily COVID-19 press briefings given from the prime minister's offices on Downing Street.

Sir Patrick, who stepped down from his role as the British government's chief scientific adviser earlier this year, said Mr Johnson's struggles were not unique and that many leaders had problems in understanding the scientific evidence and advice, especially in the first stages of the pandemic in early 2020.

"I would also say that the meeting that sticks in my mind was with fellow advisers from across Europe, when one of them — and I won't say which country — declared that the leader of that country had enormous problems with exponential curves, and the telephone call burst into laughter, because it was true in every country," he said.

"So I do not think that there was necessarily a unique inability to grasp some of these concepts with the prime minister at the time, but it was hard work sometimes to try and make sure that he had understood what a particular graph or piece of data was saying," Sir Patrick added.


Johnson 'unable to concentrate' after diagnosis​

Mr Johnson was hospitalized with the virus in April 2020 less than two weeks after he put the country into lockdown for the first time.

Sir Patrick conceded the prime minister was "unable to concentrate" on things when he was really unwell but that after his recuperation "there was no obvious change between him and what he was like beforehand".

The UK has one of the highest COVID-19 death tolls in Europe, with the virus recorded as a cause of death for more than 232,000 people.

Mr Johnson, who was forced to step down as prime minister in September 2022 following revelations of lockdown rule-breaking parties at his Downing Street residence during the pandemic, is due to address the inquiry before Christmas.

The probe, led by retired judge Heather Hallett, is expected to take three years to complete.

Mr Johnson agreed in late 2021 to hold a public inquiry after heavy pressure from bereaved families, who have hit out at the evidence emerging about his actions.

The inquiry is set to hear from current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was Mr Johnson's Treasury chief at the time, and as such had a particular focus on the economic impacts of Britain's lockdowns.

When he does appear at the inquiry, Mr Sunak is likely to face questioning about his "Eat Out to Help Out" initiative, which sought to encourage nervous customers back to restaurants in August 2020 as the first set of lockdown restrictions were being eased and before subsequent lockdowns were enacted.

Sir Patrick said scientists weren't aware of the restaurant program until it was announced and that the messaging around it ran "opposite" to the need to limit mixing between households.

"I think it would have been very obvious to anyone that this inevitably would cause an increase in transmission risk," Sir Patrick said.

Soon after, positive cases started rising and the government came under huge pressure to institute a second national lockdown, something Johnson eventually announced at the end of October 2020.

The inquiry was shown a diary entry Sir Patrick wrote before that lockdown and which referred to Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson's chief political adviser at the time, saying that Mr Sunak "thinks just let people die and that's OK".
 

SCORCH

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Former British PM Boris Johnson was 'bamboozled' by COVID stats, inquiry hears
Posted 1h ago1 hours ago

Boris Johnson stood down as the UK's prime minister in 2022.(PA via AP: Ben Birchall)

Former British prime minister Boris Johnson struggled to come to grips with much of the science during the coronavirus pandemic, his chief scientific adviser has told an inquiry.

Key points:​

  • Sir Patrick Vallance told the inquiry Mr Johnson was "bamboozled" by graphs and stats
  • He claimed the same was true of several world leaders
  • Mr Johnson's actions and decisions are being put under the microscope at the hearings

These are the kind of idiots that run British politics simply because they went to private schools.

It doesn't matter that they aren't fit to govern; as long as they attended Eton they're good to go.
 

the cac mamba

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nobody had the balls to point out that it was mostly fat/old people who really had to worry about covid, because it wasn't politically correct. i don't ever want to hear about "the science" during covid ever again :scust:

stopping healthy 30 year olds from going to gyms and kids from playing outside :mjlol:

AP_20117038909274-e1588345415376.jpg
 
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