That is certainly one suggestion, the other being that the figures are actually high when comparing to other countries because it has not been handled at all well.
I would agree that I think that the recording of cases in 3rd world countries is likely to be inaccurate but there are so many 1st World countries with much better rates than UK.
Perhaps just considering countries of Europe, the UK has currently the 4th worse death rate /capita and the highest number of deaths.
I think it unlikely that these particular results are due to UK being particularly efficient at recording the deaths when compared with the other governments of Europe.
I just wish UK had a competent government as these particularly trying times. Perhaps a less flamboyant (more boring!) PM such as John Major or Gordon Brown is what was needed.
(I am particularly annoyed by the handing of very lucrative PPE contracts to friends of the government rather than traditional and significantly PPE suppliers - nothing short of corruption)
So why has France suffered nearly as badly when the healthcare budget is far higher? The NHS coped with the ‘first wave’ whereas France sent Covid patients to Germany for treatment.
One would wonder why the UK would be efficient at counting deaths when they messed up so badly on PPE, Track and Trace, their (multiple) smart phone apps, etc. etc.
My wife was just talking to an old pal of her’s who’s a St. John’s ambulance volunteer working away on the logistics for mass vaccination. Seems that’s going as well as Hancocks other efforts.
I think many countries ignored the effect on care homes to start with, baffles me why France still allows visits. One of the most recent outbreaks near to me involved a care home where 50 residents and carers tested positive and seven residents died, a carer I spoke to blamed visitors who ignored the protocols and took their masks off to kiss their relatives.
Yes, the sooner vaccination is rolled out to care homes residents and workers the better. While people were semi careful in my neck of the woods a lot of handshaking and kissing still carried on. If someone makes to kiss you it’s embarrassing to retreat. On occasion I’ve succumbed and then had a surreptitious gel rub on my cheeks.
Nail on the head squarely! 2nd only the USA I believe. Metabolic health is appalling. I would like to see the stats for those affected and look for a correlation.
In short I can sum up the issues of Covid, as an Eton Mess!
I wouldn’t wish this on you, but how do you think you would cope with Mme Présidente Le Pen? Regrettably, we are stuck with Johnson. Somehow, I don’t really know how, he has managed to convince a large number of people that he would be a good Prime Minister. Having the name Boris, as is often remarked, has helped him enormously. It makes him seem like a good egg. Although not a Tory, I would have much preferred someone like Major to be in charge now.
I think Major had scruples and a sense of duty, traits that are alien to Johnson. One can only hope that the growth of populist politics in Europe has abated sufficiently to prevent Le Pen winning.
Truth is we have no idea how it would be with Mme le Pen as Présidente. I don’t think life would change that much for the average French citizen. I suppose she would go for a Frexit though I can’t imagine the people voting for it.
I actually think this is a real danger. The French electorate - like those in almost all developed countries over the last decade - has moved to the extremes. The high votes for both LePen and Melanchon last time , along with the collapse of both old centre parties, demonstrated this. People are hungry for fundamental change. Macron won by appearing to be something new and different - and when the electorate discovered he really wasn’t, he lost most of his support - a lot of which in the second round was of course provisional anyway (being ‘stop LePen’ votes rather than real Macron votes).
Next time, Melanchon will run again, which probably precludes a really credible left candidate making the final cut, so Macron is probably calculating on a re-run of last time, with the same result. Personally, I think this is foolish - and that Macron could in fact be opening the door for LePen.
Having said that, I actually think in many ways the UK Tory party is more right wing than LePen anyway. I think Margaret Thatcher was close to fascist - she actually said Hayek’s ideas were her guide - indeed all the policy the Tory party needed - and her friendship and defense of Pinochet was notorious. I also think the current Tory government is similarly close to fascist. What was the Windrush scandal, if not a government with a clear disregard of either legal of moral constraint subjecting its own perfectly innocent and law-abiding citizens to arbitrary arrest, imprisonment and deportation?
The fact is that people, and moreover the media in the UK, think fascism is something that only happens abroad, and always looks the way it did in the 1930s. But it doesn’t.
So although I see a real danger of a turn to the extreme right in France - I see that as a much more present danger in the UK.
But she has backed off from this - the Front National’s own research revealed it as a big barrier to winning, and this was one of the reasons for its split and rebranding - it’s another example of how LePen - terrible though she is - might not prove as bad as the Tories.
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