Covid reflection from the UK

The intention of lockdown, which was to save as many lives as possible, was a noble one, but even in terms of mortality, the policies adopted appear to have done a great deal more harm than good.

How quickly we forget. Some countries - Sweden springs to mind - tried to go without lockdowns, and eventually reversed their policy. COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden - Wikipedia The blame game is easy after the event, especially where genuine hardship has been created by the measures taken to prevent a worse catastrophe.

Lest we forget which paper is writing this, the final paragraph is interesting:
“Surveys repeatedly show that a high proportion of citizens quite liked lockdown, a fondness that undoubtedly has much to do with the comparative generosity Britain’s “pay-not-to-work” furlough scheme. It all goes to show; there is nothing quite as destructive as well-intentioned, panic inflicted, government intervention. Just ask Britain’s staff-deprived restaurateurs.”

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What would be interesting would be to find a comparison for excess mortality post covid in France.

My impressions (based solely on my & friends’ experiences here, and family/friends in the UK) is that France’s general medical services kept going. There was a short period where elective ops like knee replacements were postponed, but generally things carried on. I certainly had no break in health care. So maybe the fact that the UK had such a fragile health service at the start of the pandemic made this much worse for UK?

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It has always surprised me why more people appear to have died in the UK during the pandemic than in France, which has a similar population, age distribution pyramid, and underlying health conditions, had a similar number of infections and waves, and yet seemingly managed to keep more infected people alive even with its own health service creaking at the seams, than the UK equivalent.

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Ah yes, it was all Covid’s fault. Tiny mention of Brexit and no mention at all of what Hunt did to the NHS. Nor 12 years of Tory mismanagement. He deftly rode two horses on Kwarteng’s disaster too. This mini-Budget was a risky breath of fresh air

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I have been led to believe that France has more doctors / nurses / specialists per head of population than the UK.

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Apparently, we have more excess deaths than before???

@billybutcher Sorry wrong tread can you pls move this to Covid reflection from the UK
Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience

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C’est fait :slight_smile:

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Having a lot more space in which to live in, in France also helped especially with isolating and lockdown.

Except in places like Paris, one of the densest cities full of teeny, tiny flats, where they closed all the parks!!

A lot them got out of the cities though. Some families got denounced where I lived for coming to their holiday homes and got sent back to Paris. The people who owned the house I cleaned also got out for three months and worked remotely.

They presumably travelled after the window given to allow people to go to the country if they could. I had a houseful who came down from Paris entirely legitimately and I loved it. I felt very sorry for my daughter stuck in Germany. Thank goodness for videocalls :slightly_smiling_face:

Maybe families in the 6th with second homes, but not poorer families stuck in huge immeubles.

I remember those times well. We were in the middle of selling our property in the UK to relocate to France just as Covid struck. Our buyers were desperate to move as their elderly mother was moving in with them. We ended up putting our belongings in storage whilst we moved into a tiny Airbnb temporarily until the border with France reopened. It was all very stressful.

France has about 3,25 doctors per thousand people, the UK about 2.75 - a big difference - but the biggest difference is probably that France has about double the number of hospital beds.

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Whilst I take and understand your sentiments its good to reflect or we wont learn or understand how to plan next time and there will be a next time wont there.
Data from Italy September 19 showed many cases of symptomatic covid infections now they have examined blood samples from their records. It is pretty obvious that other countries must have had similar (looking at how quickly it spread it must have been present already) Sweden had it right to begin with but complacency gave way to older population deaths and no one disagrees that sheilding the old and vulnerable should have been a priority. All the panic over closing borders and covid passports was born out of fear that its always the foreigners bringing their diseases in when all the evidence showed it was already in these countries. Also as it emerges none of the jabs stopped transmission so making the above even more ridiculous, you can only travel if you have had a jab! People lost their jobs/careers over a complete falsehood. If you caught covid you caught it, a jab did not protect anyone else, now established as fact.

Where is the incentive from a pharma perspective to produce an actual vaccine in the truest sense of the word when the jab is on its 3rd 4th and 5th circuit of entire populations earning for Pfizer to name just one company 38 billion dollars in profits?

Then we are getting the data that the rNA spike protein is not benign and is causing over stimulation of immune systems and some pretty serious complaints. (My peripheral neuropathy returning after 11 years put me off having any further jabs) until it becomes absolutely a neccessity.

So visiting strageties and making better decisions should definitely be looked at even if it looks like we are being ungrateful.

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Did UK Gov/Medics actually claim that the covid jab would stop transmission???

I think it was very heavily implied. Certainly Pfizer under cross examination had to admit it did not stop transmission. Bearing in mind it was introduced under emergency legistlation they didnt disclose very much at all, its now we can examine the data. In fareness we were all grateful to have something to save us to begin with when the most severe symptoms were very nasty indeed for some.

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Ah… implied by which expert??

France always pushed masks/hygiene/distance etc against transmission.
The jab was to reduce severity (hopefully) and thus relieve strain on health providers/hospitals et al…

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from all the stuff I’ve been reading over the past 3 years… I’ve not found anything where Pfizer claimed it would stop transmission

I’m thinking that mental-leaps have been made in the excitement of the early days… and once someone has claimed/suggested something “might”… too often it’s taken as gospel…

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