Depository for off topic / political posts (NO brexit related posts please)

Graham wrote:

The ‘do nothing’ option is under-rated, in many situations.

+1

Just remembered: “the governments are good at two things – do nothing and overreact”. :)

In which case you would have allowed the hospitality industry to carry on as normal despite Covid. Interesting.
What do you think the consequences of that would have been?
Fatalities are a strange thing in public perception. 2 People die in a road crash and it might not make the tv news. 2 people die in a light aircraft its headline news.
A 90 year old passes away in his sleep because of old age, sad but accepted. A 90 year old dies of Covid its news.
Politicians sleep and breath public approbation. Without it they are out of a job.
I well remember pubs and restaurants complaining that they were going to go out of business in the early days of Covid. Not because the government stepped in but because they had no customers due to them being afraid of catching it if they mixed. Their choice. Not the governments. Joe Public had spoken. Hospitality staff of which there are many thousands in the UK were going to have to be laid off. Probably without pay. Pubs and restaurants probably would never reopen when the pandemic was over.
So the government felt it had to do something, otherwise they would never be forgiven. Hence the furlough scheme. And when that started to get expensive because everyone wanted some of that and claimed they were deserving. And so the government had to take action. If they kept lockdowns Joe Public shouted about lack of liberty and that this pandemic only killed the unhealthy or the elderly with pre existing diseases it was not much worse than a bad flue.
On the other hand the people who lost fathers, mothers, grans and grandads didn’t have the same perception. 1 life was far too many.
They saw hospitals filling up and not being able to cope. Supermarket shelves emptied as soon as they were filled. Nurses crying in their cars because at the end of a double shift there was no food left for them.
It is indeed true that Joe Public would look at all this and make their own decisions about whether or not their government got it right.
IMO they will still split into 2 camps depending on their personal experiences.
We know how many people above and beyond the normal death rate, died because of covid (or logged as being down to covid.)
We cannot know whether the number of dead would have been more or less and by how many if the government had taken no action.
We also cannot know the actions of Joe Public if the government did nothing and many more deaths occurred.
I can guess what might have happened in France.

Politicians sleep and breath public approbation. Without it they are out of a job.

What governments thrive on is shortages. In a world without them, where everybody can get what they need with a little effort, government has no useful role. So they tend to magnify shortages, and encourage division, to create their own role.

(I heard that first from this guy He had a lot of insightful things to say on the subject of governments and human nature)

Aside from smoothing out demand, lockdowns also bought time to prepare vaccines.

In the public services, I think many people enjoyed the freedom to make decisions and get things done, improvising in a way that isn’t usually possible. I think they will be very much more ready for a ‘round 2’, but whether the general public will be on board I don’t know.

Many statements made today are with 20/20 hindsight. Hence they are barely relevant for the decision trees which went into operation.

At the beginning of any pandemic, you don’t quite know what is going on, particularly with a new virus. It was known that SARS I was quite dangerous but did in the end not cause that much deaths. Covid however started to overload health institutions really fast and, even more concerning, health institutions had no real effective way of actually dealing with it. LOTS of people died in Italy when it first broke there, later on lots died elsewhere. And a major spreading event happened in Tyrol, where tourists from all places took the virus home with them.

I vividly recall that during that first phase, the PUBLIC here in Switzerland was SCREAMING for shutdowns, lockouts (close the border to Italy) and similar stuff and governments were far from pro-actively going that way. Only when the situation went such that they could see where it was going, about 1 month after the proverbial horse had bolted, did they finally act. The first batch of lockdowns they put in place actually did have the desired effect nonetheless: By the beginning of Summer 2020 Covid was almost extinct. The problem was: Almost does not mean totally. Yet they opened everything up and let people travel. That IMHO was the fatal mistake which caused waves 2 and all subsequent ones.

gallois wrote:

So the government felt it had to do something, otherwise they would never be forgiven.

Actually: Most governments were told well before the slaughter in Italy but at latest then that they should implement their pandemic plans NOW by their national health organisations, who are the ones making that call. Only the HO’s ran into a brick wall as politicians were too scared to implement the plans put in place. Hence they delayed until the plans became much less effective.

gallois wrote:

On the other hand the people who lost fathers, mothers, grans and grandads didn’t have the same perception. 1 life was far too many.
They saw hospitals filling up and not being able to cope. Supermarket shelves emptied as soon as they were filled. Nurses crying in their cars because at the end of a double shift there was no food left for them.
It is indeed true that Joe Public would look at all this and make their own decisions about whether or not their government got it right.

Correct. And during this time, the public was scolding governments for not implementing stricter shutdowns. The “give me freedom or death” rants started much later.

It’s very frustrating for someone who has lost a sizable number of people (I lost count somewhen during the 3rd wave but I’d say north of 100 altogether for me) hears people who were luckier still claim it was all a flu.

gallois wrote:

We cannot know whether the number of dead would have been more or less and by how many if the government had taken no action.

I saw the development in Bulgaria. They handled the 1st wave quite well, but completely lost it in the 2nd and 3rd after conspiracy nuts and anti vaxxers stopped people from being vaccinated. Official figures only took those into account who died in hospitals, but the huge majority never made it there. Personally, I knew a load of people who died, amongst them almost all our neighbours in the appartment building where my mother in law lives (she was the only person vaccinated and survived without ever getting it), a good 20 people in that single building. Estimates range to a full percent of the population having died from it, which would be 60’000 people, officially 40k deaths were recorded, 90% of which in the 2nd and 3rd wave.

The main difference was where people got vaccinated and where not. BG had a 30% vaccination rate due to massive political scaremongering by the opposition who kept their anti vaxxer course after they gained power. BG in fact did not form a proper government again between 21 and 23. Similar figures were seen in Serbia for the same reasons: Vaccines were distrusted as they came from the US.

Similar scenarios played out in Brazil where their then President laughed the whole illness off. Brazil lost 700k people to Covid according to official figures.

Clearly: With hindsight measures could have been played very differently, particularly after vaccinations became available. E.G. banning people from going outside was simply ineffective or even counterproductive. But that does not change the fact that from the perspective they had early 2020, there is little they could have done which was less interfering, but rather quicker and more drastic action in closed places and mass gatherings could have quite possibly stopped a lot of damage.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

banning people from going outside was simply ineffective or even counterproductive. But that does not change the fact that from the perspective they had early 2020, there is little they could have done which was less interfering,

Some countries certainly though there were other things that could be done!

gallois wrote:

I well remember pubs and restaurants complaining that they were going to go out of business in the early days of Covid. Not because the government stepped in but because they had no customers due to them being afraid of catching it if they mixed. Their choice. Not the governments. Joe Public had spoken. Hospitality staff of which there are many thousands in the UK were going to have to be laid off. Probably without pay. Pubs and restaurants probably would never reopen when the pandemic was over.

I don’t know where you saw that.

My recollection is very much of a ‘last hurrah’ as the enforced closures appeared inevitable. I recall the PM asking that we stay at home where possible, and in response to that the pub was rammed for a week or so. On the very last night, when we knew that evening’s announcement was bound to be a lockdown, we ate and drank everything in the place. I understand it was much the same everywhere else.

gallois wrote:

Joe Public shouted about lack of liberty and that this pandemic only killed the unhealthy or the elderly with pre existing diseases it was not much worse than a bad flue.

Well, they weren’t wrong. The vast majority of healthy people who contracted it experienced either nothing at all or very mild symptoms. Some experienced something akin to a bad bout of flu. An extremely small proportion of previously-healthy people became sufficiently unwell to require medical attention, and unfortunately some died. The overall mortality rate from known infections was about 1%, and almost all that risk lay with people who were either very old or already in poor health.

I saw pub and restaurant managers on tv news. This was in the very early days when buses were taking people to isolation centres and long before government had shut anything down or even any mention of bubbles.
My nephew is a pub/restaurant manager and also confirmed the news stories.
The consequences of one persons freedom can be for another to lose it.
As for acceptable or unacceptable death rates I well remember Lord Marshall of Goring who headed both the UKAEA and the CEGB, in a speech making.the point that fewer workers died due to nuclear power than died in coal mines. He used the phrase “acceptable kill factors”. Joe Public got really annoyed. And he was talking of a very small number. Far less than what some claim is the “acceptable death factor” due to Covid.
So this afternoon, even though I have no pre existing medical conditions, I will be going for my combined flu and covid (6th) jab.
Anti vaxxers can do what they want.

gallois wrote:

the phrase “acceptable kill factors”.

Bit off subject, but when my friends Grandfather was training in Scotland to be a commando during the last war they expected 8% deaths in training or they weren’t doing it right