I was puzzling why right wing politicians often say that nobody can predict epidemics and pandemics, when epidemiologists have been doing precisely that repeatedly this century, what with avian flu, swine flu, SARS, Ebola, AIDS, CJD, etc. I suppose they mean that they don't want to prepare for them!
I was puzzling why right wing politicians often say that nobody can predict epidemics and pandemics, when epidemiologists have been doing precisely that repeatedly this century, what with avian flu, swine flu, SARS, Ebola, AIDS, CJD, etc. I suppose they mean that they don't want to prepare for them!
I was puzzling why right wing politicians often say that nobody can predict epidemics and pandemics, when epidemiologists have been doing precisely that repeatedly this century, what with avian flu, swine flu, SARS, Ebola, AIDS, CJD, etc. I suppose they mean that they don't want to prepare for them!
Simple: they do not trust the science.
Yes, it's partly anti-science, but maybe also financial, in the sense that you can cut pandemic warning programmes, and hope nobody notices.
I was puzzling why right wing politicians often say that nobody can predict epidemics and pandemics, when epidemiologists have been doing precisely that repeatedly this century, what with avian flu, swine flu, SARS, Ebola, AIDS, CJD, etc. I suppose they mean that they don't want to prepare for them!
Simple: they do not trust the science.
Politicians often do not care about the science, they are about what fits their narrative and what is an immediate concern. Allocating resources for a future which they might not see, or not be in office for, is not something they easily do. Politicians are very much grasshoppers. Though, if it were written about politicians, the fable might have been called The Ant and the Locust.
Politicians often do not care about the science, they are about what fits their narrative and what is an immediate concern. Allocating resources for a future which they might not see, or not be in office for, is not something they easily do.
I agree especially with the bit I've bolded. Public health policies, which take many years to see fruit, and often in quite indirect ways, are a particular casualty of this, especially for "once-in-a-generation" events.
I think the whole point about crises is that one never wants to start at all, let alone from "here".
With hindsight, failing to provide lots more health service funding seems criminal, but how politically acceptable would huge amounts of relatively under-used hospital beds have been?
It is possible to do a comparison of the amount of surge capacity in the NHS vs health services elsewhere. Similarly - as per a previous post - it is instructive to see the progress made in countries where neo-liberalism hasn't eroded away the ability of the state to act.
Although the best performing country in Europe seems to be Germany, which has had a centre-right government for years and a health service that is mostly privately owned.
My personal view is that within certain limits, competence matters more than ideology.
You've probably all seen the evidence from Bill Gates? He was banging on about this from about 2015 onwards, that contingency preparations for terrorism and nuclear attacks overlooked the fact that a global pandemic could be just as, or even more,dangerous. Unpreparedness has not been about unforeseeable, it's always been about not prepared to spend either the time or the money defending against the contingency. It's in pretty sharp contrast to military defence spending.
My personal view is that within certain limits, competence matters more than ideology.
Indeed. In 2005 George W. Bush read a book about the 1918 pandemic and told his aides, "It may not happen on our watch, but the nation needs the plan." And then Bush made the government come up with a plan. Trump of course does not read books, never mind make plans to benefit the country.
I think the whole point about crises is that one never wants to start at all, let alone from "here".
With hindsight, failing to provide lots more health service funding seems criminal, but how politically acceptable would huge amounts of relatively under-used hospital beds have been?
It is possible to do a comparison of the amount of surge capacity in the NHS vs health services elsewhere. Similarly - as per a previous post - it is instructive to see the progress made in countries where neo-liberalism hasn't eroded away the ability of the state to act.
Although the best performing country in Europe seems to be Germany, which has had a centre-right government for years and a health service that is mostly privately owned.
My personal view is that within certain limits, competence matters more than ideology.
The problem comes when the model for state capacity is that of contracting out but the state doesn't retain the expertise to contract properly -- the circumstances around the failure of companies like Carillon and the knock on impacts seen as a result are a testament to this.
If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCoV infection.
The WHO guidance is about wearing a facemask to protect yourself. Current US guidance seems to be to wear a cloth facemask in public - this has nothing at all to do with protecting yourself, and everything to do with improving social distancing (by cutting down / reducing the range of your exhaled droplets, so if you are infected and asymptomatic, you are less likely to infect someone). And that has epidemiological effect.
(There isn't much actual data surrounding the efficacy of masks at reducing the spread of the virus. There's a bunch of common-sense speculation (nobody thinks a cloth facemask is a magic virus barrier, everybody thinks they must have some effect, there's disagreement about whether the effect is minimal or modest.) Best guess is "it might help".
This originates with University College London; what I am not sure about, is whether a face shield would be similarly effective in reducing your droplets reaching others (vs a surgical rather than respirator mask).
Thanks for that link, Ruth. A facet of this story which was new to me. I guess I can understand why Bush hasn't commented, but it might have been a public service to do so.
I understand Fauci is now under pressure to schmooze Trump more. Hells bells. A massive major crisis and a key adviser must adopt a more flattering approach for the sake of Trump's vanity and insecurity.
Is your community doing "open streets"? This means closing lanes and streets to cars, or allowing cars if they yield to pedestrians, long boarders (etc) and cyclists. Because the ped paths, sidewalks, pavements etc are far to narrow to allow appropriate physical distancing. We're looking at routes that go somewhere, not routes that allow flocking together.
Here it is not an issue quite yet: daytime high today is going to be -7°C here. But we need to plan in advance. I'm particularly wondering about places where the weather is warm. Have you done this, and what are the effects?
This originates with University College London; what I am not sure about, is whether a face shield would be similarly effective in reducing your droplets reaching others (vs a surgical rather than respirator mask).
I'd think so, assuming it extended well past your mouth and nose. I'm imagining the simulations and videos of coughs and sneezes I've seen, and am expecting that a shield would slow and redirect the high velocity particles. An infected person would still be standing in a cloud of virus droplets, but I imagine that the extent of the cloud would be smaller than without the shield.
I'd guess it wouldn't be as good as a tightly-fitting surgical mask, but is probably similar in effectiveness to cloth masks, bandanas, and the way lots of people in Japan typically wear facemasks.
If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCoV infection.
The WHO guidance is about wearing a facemask to protect yourself. Current US guidance seems to be to wear a cloth facemask in public - this has nothing at all to do with protecting yourself, and everything to do with improving social distancing (by cutting down / reducing the range of your exhaled droplets, so if you are infected and asymptomatic, you are less likely to infect someone). And that has epidemiological effect.
(There isn't much actual data surrounding the efficacy of masks at reducing the spread of the virus. There's a bunch of common-sense speculation (nobody thinks a cloth facemask is a magic virus barrier, everybody thinks they must have some effect, there's disagreement about whether the effect is minimal or modest.) Best guess is "it might help".
Actually the second point in the WHO guidance is about protecting others. Handwashing, proper wearing and safe disposal all cut both ways.
Well, we've just been handed out another four weeks' detention lockdown, but Macron seems to have all but set May 11 in stone as a date for relaxing it. Impressive 30-minute speech to the nation.
It seems clear to me that the UK didn't impose lockdown as soon as it could have done, not due to any public unwillingness to accept the idea, but because the prevailing government wisdom was that herd immunity was a better strategy. Only when it was realised just how many more deaths this might result in due to revised modelling did it do a U-turn, and it was a U-turn.
It should be clear from this thread that I'm no fan of bashing the government merely because of its political hue, but pretending that there was no U-turn in the UK does indeed look Orwellian to me.
Which government minister stated that it was a definite policy ?
Well, essentially, they knew more about the transmission & fatality rates. The original models were based on covid being more similar to flu than it in fact is.
As data came in from other parts of the world, the information on the disease led to more accurate modelling.
All true, but the timing. The timeline mooted above shows that SOMEBODY already knew that before Boris took action on it. Several somebodies. It wasn't new news. Hence claims about the timing of his actions being based on science are untrue.
Indeed. There was nothing learned between March 12 and March 23 that was all that new. For example, here's Boris Johnson on March 12 admitting:
Some people compare it to seasonal flu. Alas, that is not right. Due to the lack of immunity this disease is more dangerous. It is going to spread further and I must level with you, I must level with the British public: many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.
Note that it took almost two weeks from this statement to the kind of lockdown now in place. This seems to be a corollary to something I mentioned on another thread, that when described in accurate and neutral language most people will not believe conservatives are proposing the things that they're actually proposing. In this case the proposal was that a deadly disease be allowed to run unchecked and kill off tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of British subjects. The corollary of this is that there are always others who will go even further and make up fraudulent post facto excuses about why "let them die and decrease the surplus population" was actually the reasonable decision at the time.
Lock down was delayed because lockdown would not have been accepted by the public because they hadn't then seen thousands of deaths.
At best a supposition by the behavioural science unit with little evidence and at worst cover for the the policy of keeping the economy above all else.
Lock down is still not properly accepted so how would it have worked when they were so few deaths ?
Lockdown has largely been accepted and the people genuinely flouting the regulations are very much in the minority.
This came up in the US, when the Trump advisor Navarro argued that nobody could predict pandemics. He specifically challenged the show 60 Minutes to show him where they had. So they played excerpts from 2005, avaian flu, and 2009, swine flu, where pandemics were predicted, incidentally by Fauci in 2005. Of course, this is the US, but "nobody had foreseen" is pushing it. If European epidemiologists ignored swine flu, and avian flu, WTF?
But the thing that worries most of us in the field of public health is a respiratory illness that can spread even before someone is so sick that you want to keep them in bed.
Which government minister stated that it was a definite policy ?
I never claimed it was. But it took the UK a week longer to impose a lockdown than France, and Johnson was airing the 'herd immunity' theory before it did.
Yes, it's partly anti-science, but maybe also financial, in the sense that you can cut pandemic warning programmes, and hope nobody notices.
Also, predictions have quite wide error bars. It is the nature of people like Trump to assume that the best outcome will happen and plan for that, and rely on bullshit and bankruptcy to bail him out if the worst happens. That's how he runs his business.
Which government minister stated that it was a definite policy ?
I never claimed it was. But it took the UK a week longer to impose a lockdown than France, and Johnson was airing the 'herd immunity' theory before it did.
This originates with University College London; what I am not sure about, is whether a face shield would be similarly effective in reducing your droplets reaching others (vs a surgical rather than respirator mask).
I'd think so, assuming it extended well past your mouth and nose. I'm imagining the simulations and videos of coughs and sneezes I've seen, and am expecting that a shield would slow and redirect the high velocity particles. An infected person would still be standing in a cloud of virus droplets, but I imagine that the extent of the cloud would be smaller than without the shield.
I'd guess it wouldn't be as good as a tightly-fitting surgical mask, but is probably similar in effectiveness to cloth masks, bandanas, and the way lots of people in Japan typically wear facemasks.
Which government minister stated that it was a definite policy ?
I never claimed it was. But it took the UK a week longer to impose a lockdown than France, and Johnson was airing the 'herd immunity' theory before it did.
Which government minister stated that it was a definite policy ?
I never claimed it was. But it took the UK a week longer to impose a lockdown than France, and Johnson was airing the 'herd immunity' theory before it did.
Which government minister stated that it was a definite policy ?
I never claimed it was. But it took the UK a week longer to impose a lockdown than France, and Johnson was airing the 'herd immunity' theory before it did.
Which government minister stated that it was a definite policy ?
I never claimed it was. But it took the UK a week longer to impose a lockdown than France, and Johnson was airing the 'herd immunity' theory before it did.
Just about an hour ago Mr (T)rump insisted it will be him and him only who will decide to open up the United States economy in spite of the fact that he continued to refuse to impose a nationwide stay at home order--he said he did not have the authority to make such an order. How does he think he has the authority to open up a country when he refused to close it down?
The governors are strongly pushing back. Several governors are coordinating with other regional governors on how they will reopen their areas.
That was bad, Gramps. What was worse was Fauci falling on his sword. Trump's asserted infallibility led to Fauci doing some damage to his own credibility and integrity.
This bloody man poisons everyone who works for him. Even the best. And I rate Fauci as one of the very best.
People say trump is the worst American president ever. What does it take to be the worst American ever?
Well, Warren Harding was either massively corrupt or was willing to tolerate massive corruption in his underlings. George W. Bush lied the country into an unnecessary bloodbath and let a major American city drown. Andrew Johnson was willing to undermine the blood-won rights of African Americans and turn them over to terrorists. James Buchanan sat idly by while seditionists looted U.S. arsenals to equip an army of treason in defense of slavery that would lead to the nation's worst slaughter in its history. So that's the rough measuring stick used in determining "worst American president ever".
List of countries with at least 5,000 known COVID-19 cases.
United States - 587,155 (526,563 / 36,948 / 23,644)
Spain - 170,099 (87,616 / 64,727 / 17,756)
Italy - 159,516 (103,616 / 35,435 / 20,465)
France - 136,779 (94,094 / 27,718 / 14,967)
Germany - 130,072 (62,578 / 64,300 / 3,194)
United Kingdom - 88,621 (76,948 / 344 / 11,329)
China - 82,249 (1,170 / 77,738 / 3,341) 4.1%
Iran - 73,303 (22,735 / 45,983 / 4,585) 9.1%
Turkey - 61,049 (55,796 / 3,957 / 1,296)
Belgium - 30,589 (19,979 / 6,707 / 3,903)
Netherlands - 26,551 (23,478 / 250 / 2,823)
Switzerland - 25,688 (10,850 / 13,700 / 1,138)
Canada - 25,680 (17,144 / 7,756 / 780)
Brazil - 23,723 (22,195 / 173 / 1,355)
Russia - 18,328 (16,710 / 1,470 / 148)
Portugal - 16,934 (16,122 / 277 / 535)
Austria - 14,041 (6,330 / 7,343 / 368)
Israel - 11,586 (9,615 / 1,855 / 116)
Sweden - 10,948 (9,648 / 381 / 919)
Ireland - 10,647 (10,257 / 25 / 365)
South Korea - 10,564 (2,808 / 7,534 / 222) 2.9%
India - 10,453 (8,914 / 1,181 / 358)
Peru - 9,784 (6,926 / 2,642 / 216)
Japan - 7,645 (6,703 / 799 / 143)
Ecuador - 7,529 (6,577 / 597 / 355)
Chile - 7,525 (5,076 / 2,367 / 82)
Poland - 6,934 (6,202 / 487 / 245)
Romania - 6,633 (5,388 / 914 / 331)
Norway - 6,605 (6,439 / 32 / 134)
Australia - 6,394 (2,839 / 3,494 / 61)
Denmark - 6,318 (3,798 / 2,235 / 285)
Czechia - 6,059 (5,397 / 519 / 143)
Pakistan - 5,707 (4,514 / 1,097 / 96)
Mexico - 5,014 (2,718 / 1,964 / 332)
The listings are in the format:
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1. At the moment only China (#7), Iran (#8), and South Korea (#21) meet this criterion. Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries nineteen of them would be on that list. New York would be ranked at #2, between "everywhere in the U.S. except New York" (#1) and Spain (#3). New Jersey would be between Iran and Turkey.
People say trump is the worst American president ever. What does it take to be the worst American ever?
Well, Warren Harding was either massively corrupt or was willing to tolerate massive corruption in his underlings. George W. Bush lied the country into an unnecessary bloodbath and let a major American city drown. Andrew Johnson was willing to undermine the blood-won rights of African Americans and turn them over to terrorists. James Buchanan sat idly by while seditionists looted U.S. arsenals to equip an army of treason in defense of slavery that would lead to the nation's worst slaughter in its history. So that's the rough measuring stick used in determining "worst American president ever".
Jackson, Trail of Tears.
Grant, rampant corruption in administration
I accept that previous comparisons with Ireland are shaky, but it's worth celebrating the achievement of Greece, which with a shaky health service, and uncertain economy, and an elderly population, has so far got to 99 covid deaths. Their lockdown was quite early, beginning 10 March, and they have digitalized some of their bureaucracy, thus prescriptions can be sent to phones. Of course, it's early days, Orthodox Easter may be a challenge.
Everyone knows the tightrope Fauci is walking; I think he'll be forgiven for humoring the mad king.
I hope that's true. His angry response to Paula Reid (CBS) as to whether his statement was voluntary was very telling. I'm sure he decided to make it but I'm equally sure that the Trump fire Fauci retweet made him realise he had to do something placatory.
Voluntary, schmoluntary ....
Unfortunately, in humouring the mad king, he did add some support for the Trump "I'm a perfect clairvoyant who has acted perfectly" lying narrative.
I accept that previous comparisons with Ireland are shaky, but it's worth celebrating the achievement of Greece, which with a shaky health service, and uncertain economy, and an elderly population, has so far got to 99 covid deaths. Their lockdown was quite early, beginning 10 March, and they have digitalized some of their bureaucracy, thus prescriptions can be sent to phones. Of course, it's early days, Orthodox Easter may be a challenge.
Greek statistics should always be taken with industrial quantities of salt.
I think I'm tired of stances that content themselves with pointing out the shortcomings in other countries' figures/policies/leadership... Rallying round the flag is probably a good thing in a crisis, but I fear the spectre of nationalism that stalks just behind.
Every country is, in a sense, in the same boat when it comes to dealing with a massive, perhaps unparalleled, global crisis.
It's no wonder that there are mistakes, and shortcomings. What matters, I suppose, is how one's OWN country deals with The Thing, because that is what is going to affect us as individuals. YMMV.
OTOH, the spectre of nationalism is indeed something to be aware of.
Claiming that a third country's statistics are less reliable than one's own with no supporting evidence whatsoever isn't analysis, though. And on social media I read a steady stream of anti-China rhetoric that stops well short of alleging they deliberately manufactured the virus, but leaves a definite taste of "that kind of thing was bound to come from those nasty slitty-eyed people".
The problem is that we’ve suddenly been hit by a once-in-half-a-dozen-lifetimes pandemic that nobody had foreseen and that very very few countries have proved able to manage at all well.
This is false. Quite a lot of people foresaw the possibility of a global pandemic. Even moreso recently, since the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak was an event where the world narrowly avoided a situation much like the current one.
I have a retired epidemiologist friend who was heading up teams dealing with UK preparations for the potential UK response to the SARS outbreak. He said something technical about DNA and then muttered darkly about being 'one gene mutation away' from a possible fatality rate of 5%. Fortunately, preparations, good science and luck ensured that the UK was virtually unscathed. Irritatingly, he concluded, people then shook their heads and said 'all that fuss over nothing!' completely failing to comprehend the years of work, skill and yes, the smidgen of luck, that stops a full-blown pandemic effect on a nation.
There are departments of scientists and clinicians whose job it is to anticipate and flag up epidemic trends, their location, travel and pathology. The work goes on all the time - if funded, naturally. And local health authorities - as do national governments - have options of rehearsing for such epidemics turning catastrophic, if funded, naturally.
The rogue element, I'm sure, can't be underestimated. But as we continue to see on our TVs, front-line workers still looking for basic PPE, to say nothing of carers and GPs etc, still having to source their own off the internet, or from local firms cobbling bits and pieces together, it certainly looks as if someone, somewhere effed up big time in the procuring stage of basic essential protective wear. The UK was not in the first wave of nations hit by the virus. We had the advantage of months (and possibly even months on top of that) to get stocks in. However, someone, somewhere was sitting on their arse enjoying the scenery of the cabinet office, when they should've been tuning into the international news and ordering PPE.
Even now the government can't admit that there is a shortage, and that people have died as a result. Hence Priti Patel's disgusting 'sorry if' statement. Sorry if you feel you're dead because we decided to ignore the signs, warnings and opportunities to procure PPE in time. Sub text: of course, how you feel is up to you and nothing to do with us. But you will look after US when WE get sick, won't you?
Comments
See headline
Simple: they do not trust the science.
Yes, it's partly anti-science, but maybe also financial, in the sense that you can cut pandemic warning programmes, and hope nobody notices.
I agree especially with the bit I've bolded. Public health policies, which take many years to see fruit, and often in quite indirect ways, are a particular casualty of this, especially for "once-in-a-generation" events.
Thinking about Central Africa these days as they have been hit with clouds of locusts and the coronavirus and the continuing devastation of AIDS.
Although the best performing country in Europe seems to be Germany, which has had a centre-right government for years and a health service that is mostly privately owned.
My personal view is that within certain limits, competence matters more than ideology.
Indeed. In 2005 George W. Bush read a book about the 1918 pandemic and told his aides, "It may not happen on our watch, but the nation needs the plan." And then Bush made the government come up with a plan. Trump of course does not read books, never mind make plans to benefit the country.
The problem comes when the model for state capacity is that of contracting out but the state doesn't retain the expertise to contract properly -- the circumstances around the failure of companies like Carillon and the knock on impacts seen as a result are a testament to this.
The WHO guidance is about wearing a facemask to protect yourself. Current US guidance seems to be to wear a cloth facemask in public - this has nothing at all to do with protecting yourself, and everything to do with improving social distancing (by cutting down / reducing the range of your exhaled droplets, so if you are infected and asymptomatic, you are less likely to infect someone). And that has epidemiological effect.
(There isn't much actual data surrounding the efficacy of masks at reducing the spread of the virus. There's a bunch of common-sense speculation (nobody thinks a cloth facemask is a magic virus barrier, everybody thinks they must have some effect, there's disagreement about whether the effect is minimal or modest.) Best guess is "it might help".
I understand Fauci is now under pressure to schmooze Trump more. Hells bells. A massive major crisis and a key adviser must adopt a more flattering approach for the sake of Trump's vanity and insecurity.
Here it is not an issue quite yet: daytime high today is going to be -7°C here. But we need to plan in advance. I'm particularly wondering about places where the weather is warm. Have you done this, and what are the effects?
I'd think so, assuming it extended well past your mouth and nose. I'm imagining the simulations and videos of coughs and sneezes I've seen, and am expecting that a shield would slow and redirect the high velocity particles. An infected person would still be standing in a cloud of virus droplets, but I imagine that the extent of the cloud would be smaller than without the shield.
I'd guess it wouldn't be as good as a tightly-fitting surgical mask, but is probably similar in effectiveness to cloth masks, bandanas, and the way lots of people in Japan typically wear facemasks.
Actually the second point in the WHO guidance is about protecting others. Handwashing, proper wearing and safe disposal all cut both ways.
Which government minister stated that it was a definite policy ?
Yes. That is the current situation.
Or as recently as 2019, "Dr. Fauci Has Been Dreading A Pandemic Like COVID-19 For Years":
Also, predictions have quite wide error bars. It is the nature of people like Trump to assume that the best outcome will happen and plan for that, and rely on bullshit and bankruptcy to bail him out if the worst happens. That's how he runs his business.
I only ever heard about it as a theory.
So you keep claiming.
How did that escape the memory hole?
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
That is correct.
Am I supposed to watch every broadcast including all by those who are not government ministers ?
The governors are strongly pushing back. Several governors are coordinating with other regional governors on how they will reopen their areas.
This bloody man poisons everyone who works for him. Even the best. And I rate Fauci as one of the very best.
China currently looks completely reasonable in comparison.
Well, Warren Harding was either massively corrupt or was willing to tolerate massive corruption in his underlings. George W. Bush lied the country into an unnecessary bloodbath and let a major American city drown. Andrew Johnson was willing to undermine the blood-won rights of African Americans and turn them over to terrorists. James Buchanan sat idly by while seditionists looted U.S. arsenals to equip an army of treason in defense of slavery that would lead to the nation's worst slaughter in its history. So that's the rough measuring stick used in determining "worst American president ever".
The listings are in the format:
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1. At the moment only China (#7), Iran (#8), and South Korea (#21) meet this criterion. Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries nineteen of them would be on that list. New York would be ranked at #2, between "everywhere in the U.S. except New York" (#1) and Spain (#3). New Jersey would be between Iran and Turkey.
Mexico has been added to the list since the last compilation.
Jackson, Trail of Tears.
Grant, rampant corruption in administration
Don't forget them.
Voluntary, schmoluntary ....
Unfortunately, in humouring the mad king, he did add some support for the Trump "I'm a perfect clairvoyant who has acted perfectly" lying narrative.
Greek statistics should always be taken with industrial quantities of salt.
Every country is, in a sense, in the same boat when it comes to dealing with a massive, perhaps unparalleled, global crisis.
It's no wonder that there are mistakes, and shortcomings. What matters, I suppose, is how one's OWN country deals with The Thing, because that is what is going to affect us as individuals. YMMV.
OTOH, the spectre of nationalism is indeed something to be aware of.
I have a retired epidemiologist friend who was heading up teams dealing with UK preparations for the potential UK response to the SARS outbreak. He said something technical about DNA and then muttered darkly about being 'one gene mutation away' from a possible fatality rate of 5%. Fortunately, preparations, good science and luck ensured that the UK was virtually unscathed. Irritatingly, he concluded, people then shook their heads and said 'all that fuss over nothing!' completely failing to comprehend the years of work, skill and yes, the smidgen of luck, that stops a full-blown pandemic effect on a nation.
There are departments of scientists and clinicians whose job it is to anticipate and flag up epidemic trends, their location, travel and pathology. The work goes on all the time - if funded, naturally. And local health authorities - as do national governments - have options of rehearsing for such epidemics turning catastrophic, if funded, naturally.
The rogue element, I'm sure, can't be underestimated. But as we continue to see on our TVs, front-line workers still looking for basic PPE, to say nothing of carers and GPs etc, still having to source their own off the internet, or from local firms cobbling bits and pieces together, it certainly looks as if someone, somewhere effed up big time in the procuring stage of basic essential protective wear. The UK was not in the first wave of nations hit by the virus. We had the advantage of months (and possibly even months on top of that) to get stocks in. However, someone, somewhere was sitting on their arse enjoying the scenery of the cabinet office, when they should've been tuning into the international news and ordering PPE.
Even now the government can't admit that there is a shortage, and that people have died as a result. Hence Priti Patel's disgusting 'sorry if' statement. Sorry if you feel you're dead because we decided to ignore the signs, warnings and opportunities to procure PPE in time. Sub text: of course, how you feel is up to you and nothing to do with us. But you will look after US when WE get sick, won't you?