COVID-19 'Pandemic'
- Thread starter Ocean Breeze
- Start date
Re: COVIDD-19 'Pandemic'
Feds reject eight million N95 masks from a single distributor
Anyone surprised with the contract signed with a Quebec company, while a BC company is already churning out masks.
Feds reject eight million N95 masks from a single distributor
Anyone surprised with the contract signed with a Quebec company, while a BC company is already churning out masks.
Re: COVIDD-19 'Pandemic'
Since the first U.S. Covid-19 death, the U.S. has averaged 1122 deaths per day from Covid-19.
But ladders!
Since the first U.S. Covid-19 death, the U.S. has averaged 1122 deaths per day from Covid-19.
But ladders!
Re: COVIDD-19 'Pandemic'
Obama calls Trump's response to he covid19 pandemic “an absolute chaotic disaster”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...-response-chaotic-disaster-private-biden-call
]
]Yes but, covfefe?
Obama calls Trump's response to he covid19 pandemic “an absolute chaotic disaster”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...-response-chaotic-disaster-private-biden-call
]
]Yes but, covfefe?
Re: COVIDD-19 'Pandemic'
Well, today we passed 80,000 deaths.
Which means the crazy fat kid was ABSOLUTELY, EXACTLY RIGHT when he predicted 60,000.
Well, today we passed 80,000 deaths.
Which means the crazy fat kid was ABSOLUTELY, EXACTLY RIGHT when he predicted 60,000.
Re: COVIDD-19 'Pandemic'
Pretty sure that could be up for debate. At least he wouldn't have wasted weeks denying Covid was an issue and would be dangerous.
Pretty sure that could be up for debate. At least he wouldn't have wasted weeks denying Covid was an issue and would be dangerous.
Re: COVIDD-19 'Pandemic'
US isn't in lockdown.
Individual states have had social distancing but no lockdown.
US isn't in lockdown.
Individual states have had social distancing but no lockdown.
Re: COVIDD-19 'Pandemic'
TONY PARSONS Government certainly made mistakes with the coronavirus crisis… but Brits can be proud of how they behaved
COMMENT
Tony Parsons
9 May 2020
The Sun
“HOW on earth did it come to this?” Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer quietly asked Boris Johnson when they faced each other for the first time at Prime Minister’s Questions.
And it is the question that will torment our country for many years to come.
Brits can be proud of how they have behaved during this global crisis Credit: Alamy Live News
Unlike Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s new leader asked his question with courtesy, restraint and calm. There was no implication that the wicked Tories were plotting to murder us all in our beds. There was no attempt to score cheap party-political points against a PM who is freshly back from death’s door.
Yet Starmer’s concern was real. And it is a concern we all share.
Why DO we have the worst death toll in Europe?
There will be time enough for a full-scale inquiry after we have won this war. But we would not be human if we did not ask the question now *— is the UK really the sick man of Europe? Are we truly doing so much worse than every other country?
Much is made of our death toll exceeding that of Italy.
MISLEADING STATISTICS
It sometimes feels as if we are locked in some grotesque Champions League of human misery.
Yet the statistics can be misleading. Spain, for example, does not count deaths in care homes — we do. Germany only counts care home fatalities when Covid-19 has been diagnosed before death. And China — officially with fewer than 5,000 deaths — lies through its teeth, and has lied from the very start.
There are factors that no British Government could do anything about. According to Wednesday’s data from the Office for National Statistics, 66,796,807 of us are jammed into this overpopulated island — six million more than Italy.
The UK is a crowded country and our capital is a global city — the perfect petri dish for a global pandemic.
Thirteen million Brits are clinically obese and this virus is particularly murderous among the overweight. There are 3.2million Brits over the age of 80 and the virus is pitiless among the elderly.
Yet it is painfully obvious that massive cock-ups have been made.
Because our politicians are always terrified of looking racist, British airports were left open for far too long. Around 18million people were let into the UK between January 1 and March 23, even as the virus rampaged across the world.
Yet just 273 travellers arriving from Wuhan were made to self-isolate.
Labour leader Keir Starmer's question to the PM echoed the views of the nation Credit: AFP
Boris Johnson has certainly made mistakes since the outbreak of coronavirus but we must not just blame the Tories Credit: HOC/JESSICA TAYLOR
We have relied on the likes of China and Turkey to make kit for our health carers, when so much of what they produce is shoddy trash that can’t even be used, including the 400,000 gowns from Turkey currently impounded at a Heathrow warehouse after inspectors found the gear was “useless”.
London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan cut Tube trains, ensuring NHS staff travelled to work on dangerously packed carriages.
So don’t just blame the Tories.
Testing has been — still is — pathetically slow, choked by paperwork.
But perhaps the biggest mistake of all is that this Government has been far too eager to defer to the “experts” — even when those very same “experts” have got it spectacularly wrong in the past.
Professor Neil Ferguson, the key scientific adviser who was the brains behind this national lockdown, was caught this week taking his daily exercise by mounting his married mistress, thereby breaking the strict rules he designed for the rest of us. The bonking boffin’s rank hypocrisy is bad enough.
But what should worry us more is Ferguson’s defective crystal ball. Was it made in China? Neil Ferguson’s team produced the we-are-all-doomed research that predicted more than 500,000 would die without nationwide house arrest.
Yet Professor McPantsdown’s previous predictions are so inaccurate they make Paul The Octopus look like Nostradamus.
The preachy prof told us in 2001 that 150,000 of us could die from mad cow disease. There were just 177 deaths.
In 2005 Mystic Neil warned that 200million could die worldwide from bird flu. The final number was 455.
More recently, the randy epidemiologist predicted that Sweden’s relaxed attitude to the virus would lead to 40,000 dead Swedes by May 1. The number was 2,941.
If the sex-mad scientist has been so wrong in the past, then why did the Government gullibly assume that Ferguson was so right about Covid-19?
DEATH COUNT
Common sense should have told us Ferguson is just a fallible scientist who has previously peddled flawed extrapolations — not some bespectacled Yoda. And from the reluctance to close our airports to mistaking Ferguson for God, we have sometimes been short of good old British common sense in recent weeks.
Tonight Boris addresses the nation on plans to start very gently easing the lockdown. Many people are understandably worried about going out into the world again.
So many have died. So many families have been shattered. So many of the bravest and the best have paid the ultimate price for caring for strangers.
But are we really the sick man of Europe?
Despite our horrific death count, this country can feel proud of the way it has conducted itself during this national emergency. Mistakes have certainly been made — just as they were made in the war that we have remembered over the past few days.
But the British people have reacted to this historic challenge with patience, resilience and quiet courage. There is a feeling of national unity now that I have never known in my lifetime.
From the courage of NHS workers to the kindness of neighbours, we have witnessed the best of our people during this crisis.
The sick man of Europe? Not us. Over the past six weeks, I have never felt prouder to be British.
Catwalk to care heroine
Fashion model Harriet Rose ditched the catwalk to work in a care home in Herne Bay, Kent, where she has been in lockdown for the past month.
“To say it’s been tough would be an understatement,” says Harriet, who had been modelling in Paris for three years.
Model Harriet Rose traded in the glamour of the catwalk for a care home in Herne Bay, Kent to help fight Covid-19 Credit: Instagram/@HarrietRose
“We have been so lucky to have not lost any resident or member of staff. The quite literal blood, sweat and tears, hundreds of hours on minimal sleep and not giving up were all worth it!”
To elect to work in a care home when you could be a model in Paris takes some guts.
The Queen said: “Those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any.”
Looking at Harriet Rose, you can only conclude the Queen is right.
Late Millie gave gift of reggae
Two singers introduced the world to the glory of Jamaican music.
More than ten years before Bob Marley made reggae a critical and commercial success, My Boy Lollipop by Millie – three minutes of euphoric ska – in 1964 became the first million-selling single to come out of Jamaica.
Now Millie Small has died in London at the age of 73 and the reason she feels like so much more than a one-hit wonder is because she gave millions of us our first taste of Jamaica.
Marley did it biggest. But Millie did it first.
Finding Freedom
THE “definitive story” of Harry and Meghan’s struggles is to be called, Finding Freedom.That’s a great title for a book.As long as you are Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Not spoilt Tinseltown royalty.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11585250/mistakes-government-brits-proud/
TONY PARSONS Government certainly made mistakes with the coronavirus crisis… but Brits can be proud of how they behaved
COMMENT
Tony Parsons
9 May 2020
The Sun
“HOW on earth did it come to this?” Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer quietly asked Boris Johnson when they faced each other for the first time at Prime Minister’s Questions.
And it is the question that will torment our country for many years to come.
Brits can be proud of how they have behaved during this global crisis Credit: Alamy Live News
Unlike Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s new leader asked his question with courtesy, restraint and calm. There was no implication that the wicked Tories were plotting to murder us all in our beds. There was no attempt to score cheap party-political points against a PM who is freshly back from death’s door.
Yet Starmer’s concern was real. And it is a concern we all share.
Why DO we have the worst death toll in Europe?
There will be time enough for a full-scale inquiry after we have won this war. But we would not be human if we did not ask the question now *— is the UK really the sick man of Europe? Are we truly doing so much worse than every other country?
Much is made of our death toll exceeding that of Italy.
MISLEADING STATISTICS
It sometimes feels as if we are locked in some grotesque Champions League of human misery.
Yet the statistics can be misleading. Spain, for example, does not count deaths in care homes — we do. Germany only counts care home fatalities when Covid-19 has been diagnosed before death. And China — officially with fewer than 5,000 deaths — lies through its teeth, and has lied from the very start.
There are factors that no British Government could do anything about. According to Wednesday’s data from the Office for National Statistics, 66,796,807 of us are jammed into this overpopulated island — six million more than Italy.
The UK is a crowded country and our capital is a global city — the perfect petri dish for a global pandemic.
Thirteen million Brits are clinically obese and this virus is particularly murderous among the overweight. There are 3.2million Brits over the age of 80 and the virus is pitiless among the elderly.
Yet it is painfully obvious that massive cock-ups have been made.
Because our politicians are always terrified of looking racist, British airports were left open for far too long. Around 18million people were let into the UK between January 1 and March 23, even as the virus rampaged across the world.
Yet just 273 travellers arriving from Wuhan were made to self-isolate.
Labour leader Keir Starmer's question to the PM echoed the views of the nation Credit: AFP
Boris Johnson has certainly made mistakes since the outbreak of coronavirus but we must not just blame the Tories Credit: HOC/JESSICA TAYLOR
We have relied on the likes of China and Turkey to make kit for our health carers, when so much of what they produce is shoddy trash that can’t even be used, including the 400,000 gowns from Turkey currently impounded at a Heathrow warehouse after inspectors found the gear was “useless”.
London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan cut Tube trains, ensuring NHS staff travelled to work on dangerously packed carriages.
So don’t just blame the Tories.
Testing has been — still is — pathetically slow, choked by paperwork.
But perhaps the biggest mistake of all is that this Government has been far too eager to defer to the “experts” — even when those very same “experts” have got it spectacularly wrong in the past.
Professor Neil Ferguson, the key scientific adviser who was the brains behind this national lockdown, was caught this week taking his daily exercise by mounting his married mistress, thereby breaking the strict rules he designed for the rest of us. The bonking boffin’s rank hypocrisy is bad enough.
But what should worry us more is Ferguson’s defective crystal ball. Was it made in China? Neil Ferguson’s team produced the we-are-all-doomed research that predicted more than 500,000 would die without nationwide house arrest.
Yet Professor McPantsdown’s previous predictions are so inaccurate they make Paul The Octopus look like Nostradamus.
The preachy prof told us in 2001 that 150,000 of us could die from mad cow disease. There were just 177 deaths.
In 2005 Mystic Neil warned that 200million could die worldwide from bird flu. The final number was 455.
More recently, the randy epidemiologist predicted that Sweden’s relaxed attitude to the virus would lead to 40,000 dead Swedes by May 1. The number was 2,941.
If the sex-mad scientist has been so wrong in the past, then why did the Government gullibly assume that Ferguson was so right about Covid-19?
DEATH COUNT
Common sense should have told us Ferguson is just a fallible scientist who has previously peddled flawed extrapolations — not some bespectacled Yoda. And from the reluctance to close our airports to mistaking Ferguson for God, we have sometimes been short of good old British common sense in recent weeks.
Tonight Boris addresses the nation on plans to start very gently easing the lockdown. Many people are understandably worried about going out into the world again.
So many have died. So many families have been shattered. So many of the bravest and the best have paid the ultimate price for caring for strangers.
But are we really the sick man of Europe?
Despite our horrific death count, this country can feel proud of the way it has conducted itself during this national emergency. Mistakes have certainly been made — just as they were made in the war that we have remembered over the past few days.
But the British people have reacted to this historic challenge with patience, resilience and quiet courage. There is a feeling of national unity now that I have never known in my lifetime.
From the courage of NHS workers to the kindness of neighbours, we have witnessed the best of our people during this crisis.
The sick man of Europe? Not us. Over the past six weeks, I have never felt prouder to be British.
Catwalk to care heroine
Fashion model Harriet Rose ditched the catwalk to work in a care home in Herne Bay, Kent, where she has been in lockdown for the past month.
“To say it’s been tough would be an understatement,” says Harriet, who had been modelling in Paris for three years.
Model Harriet Rose traded in the glamour of the catwalk for a care home in Herne Bay, Kent to help fight Covid-19 Credit: Instagram/@HarrietRose
“We have been so lucky to have not lost any resident or member of staff. The quite literal blood, sweat and tears, hundreds of hours on minimal sleep and not giving up were all worth it!”
To elect to work in a care home when you could be a model in Paris takes some guts.
The Queen said: “Those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any.”
Looking at Harriet Rose, you can only conclude the Queen is right.
Late Millie gave gift of reggae
Two singers introduced the world to the glory of Jamaican music.
More than ten years before Bob Marley made reggae a critical and commercial success, My Boy Lollipop by Millie – three minutes of euphoric ska – in 1964 became the first million-selling single to come out of Jamaica.
Now Millie Small has died in London at the age of 73 and the reason she feels like so much more than a one-hit wonder is because she gave millions of us our first taste of Jamaica.
Marley did it biggest. But Millie did it first.
Finding Freedom
THE “definitive story” of Harry and Meghan’s struggles is to be called, Finding Freedom.That’s a great title for a book.As long as you are Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Not spoilt Tinseltown royalty.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11585250/mistakes-government-brits-proud/
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Re: COVIDD-19 'Pandemic'
That's funny. It wasn't that long ago that some posters on here were attacking Trump for wanting to reopen the states again.
That's funny. It wasn't that long ago that some posters on here were attacking Trump for wanting to reopen the states again.
Re: COVIDD-19 'Pandemic'
That's damned inconvenient
hate tsunamis are far more destructive and violent than earth quakes and giant volcanic eruptions, so I'm glad that the UN is passing legislation on this ever-so destructive force
That's damned inconvenient
Re: COVIDD-19 'Pandemic'
DAN HODGES: We DON'T have the worst Covid-19 death rate in Europe and it's wicked of the Left to pretend we do
By Dan Hodges For The Mail On Sunday
10 May 2020
Dr Chiara Lepora, of the disaster relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres, sounded exhausted.
‘Everybody here is working beyond their limits,’ she admitted.
Lepora wasn’t speaking from the scene of a catastrophic famine, or an overwhelmed refugee centre. But from Lombardy, Italy.
‘We have a team of about 25 people working here in the Lombardy region,’ she explained. ‘The health system here is very advanced but the virus has outpaced all attempts to deal with the increasing number of cases.
The region of Lombardy, which contains major Italian cities such as Milan (above) and Bergamo, has been one of the worst affected areas by the global pandemic
‘The hospitals are at their limit… the only way to refer a new patient in is if another patient recovers or dies as all hospitals have reached their capacity.
'There is no choice but to treat some patients with less severe symptoms at home.’
There is no questioning the dedication and courage of Lepora and her colleagues. But according to reports over the past week, they had made a terrible blunder.
MSF should not have been focusing its precious resources on Italy, but deploying them here in the UK. Because it’s the UK that is supposedly the real ground zero of the Covid-19 pandemic.
‘UK coronavirus death toll is now the worst in Europe,’ screamed The Guardian on Wednesday. ‘How on earth did it come to this?’ demanded Sir Keir Starmer, as the Prime Minister returned for his first PMQs since so nearly becoming a fatality statistic himself.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer (pictured) was quick to criticise the Government for the nation's mortality rate
Clearly unprepared for the more aggressive approach, Boris bumbled his way through a response. But he shouldn’t have. Instead he should have set out the truth. It has not come to this.
Britain does not have the worst Covid-19 death toll in Europe. And the Government’s critics know it.
The grim threshold was supposedly crossed when the UK’s mortality rate reached 29,427 deaths, seemingly surpassing Italy’s figure of 29,029. But those bald figures are like any other statistic, utterly devoid of meaning when stripped of context.
The most obvious is the differing size of the respective national populations. Britain’s population is ten per cent larger than Italy’s, and 40 per cent larger than Spain’s.
So to be relevant, any mortality figures have to be adjusted to reflect that. If they’re not, then WHO statistics reveal the European administrations most ruthless in tackling Covid-19 have been the Holy See and Monaco.
Another major difference is that, unlike the UK, other nations’ coronavirus statistics don’t include deaths outside of hospital. But in Italy, the effective collapse of the country’s health provision meant that significant numbers of patients were sentenced to death at home.
Coronavirus figures in Europe do not include deaths outside of hospital. The UK, whose NHS staff applauded Welsh resident Danny Egan (above) out of hospital, do include this figure
As the Associated Press reported at the end of April: ‘Because Lombardy’s intensive care units were already filling up within days of Italy’s first cases, many primary care physicians tried to treat and monitor patients at home.
'Some put them on supplemental oxygen, commonly used for home cases in Italy. That strategy proved deadly, and many died at home.’
Then there is the situation in the care homes. There has been huge focus on deaths in those facilities here in the UK. But these figures are now included in our fatality statistics.
Yet for some reason those who were desperately lobbying for their inclusion have suddenly chosen to turn their back on the carnage occurring in Spain and Italy.
Last month, a leaked Spanish government report estimated that 57 per cent of the country’s Covid-19 death toll was care-home-related. In Italy, the public prosecutor in Milan is now formally investigating what the WHO has described as a care-homes ‘massacre’.
Data revealed that the majority of Spain's death tolls came in their care-homes (above) and Italy are launching an investigation into their 'care-homes' massacre
More than 1,800 care-home patients have been identified as dying of coronavirus in Lombardy alone, but it’s believed the figure is much higher because many victims were not even swabbed.
Yet to those intent on driving Britain to the top of the Covid-19 death league table, the Italian and Spanish death figures are sacrosanct, and the UK’s are not. Which is odd, given that last week Italy’s own statistics agency acknowledged their official mortality totals represented a staggering underestimate of the true death toll.
In March, there was a recorded increase in excess of deaths of 50 per cent across the country. In northern Italy, the number of excess deaths virtually doubled. In Milan, the increase was a horrific 180 per cent.
But none of this matters. Remember the footage of the Italian field hospitals that resembled a scene from M*A*S*H? ‘This is Britain in 14 days,’ we were told. It wasn’t.
Last week, the Nightingale Hospital was mothballed. It never expanded beyond the first ward. A couple of days after the closure was announced, social media reacted in horror as images circulated of Covid-19 patients being forced to lie in corridors in another London hospital. Until it emerged that the hospital in question was actually in Spain.
Coronavirus patients in Spain were caught lying on hospital floors due to a lack of space in their wards
But the Government’s critics don’t care. Cast your mind back to the referendum campaign, and the attacks on Leave’s ‘£350 million for the NHS’ pledge. The claim was devious and bogus, we were told. The bald figure may be accurate, but it didn’t stand up to the most simplistic statistical analysis.
The assertion that Britain has the worst Covid-19 death rate is the coronavirus equivalent. Those peddling this fake news have stopped short of painting the Grim Reaper on the side of a bus and touring it round the nation. But the effect is the same. They are working the political angles on the most deadly global pandemic for a century.
To what end? Obviously part of it is base hostility to Boris and his administration. As I’ve written before, there are those on the liberal Left who will never forgive him for winning that Brexit referendum, then cementing his victory in last year’s General Election.
There are also some who are astute – and cynical – enough to see political danger in the NHS’s remarkable resilience in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. For decades, the Left has hammered the mantra Britain’s health service was 24 hours from destruction.
The Left have often repeated the mantra that the NHS is 24 hours from total destruction
As the scale of the crisis unfolding in Italy became apparent, I lost count of the number of times I was told: ‘Just you wait. Italy has double the critical care capacity we have.’ But it was Italy’s health service that buckled, and ours that withstood the coronavirus impact.
But to point that out is to commit a sacrilege. When I did so last week, one social-media commentator accused me of ‘pushing pro-virus propaganda’. A slightly less hysterical charge was that I was guilty of ‘British exceptionalism’.
Yet the problem is not British exceptionalism, but British nihilism. A need among sections of marginalised liberalism to debunk the simplistic notion British is Best by replacing it with the even more simplistic notion British is Worst.
Whatever the facts or the reality, they must somehow be twisted to show ourselves in the poorest possible light. Because if we don’t, what might happen then? If people realise the NHS isn’t actually on the point of implosion. Or Europe’s response to the Covid-19 crisis has not actually been superior to our own. Or that self-obsessed charlatan Boris Johnson has in fact been listening to the experts and following the science and doing everything he can to keep the British people safe.
Perhaps Boris Johnson has been listening to scientific experts and been doing all he can to keep the country safe against this terrible virus?
There are no championship medals in the battle against coronavirus. Every single death is a tragedy. The construction of a global league table of death is as tasteless as it is meaningless.
But last week, the Government’s critics decided to spotlight this morbid benchmark.
Which makes it appropriate to grab that spotlight, and pivot it. Britain does not have the worst Covid-19 death toll in Europe. So why are the proponents of British nihilism so desperate to pretend that we do?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...d-19-death-rate-Europe-wicked-pretend-do.html
DAN HODGES: We DON'T have the worst Covid-19 death rate in Europe and it's wicked of the Left to pretend we do
By Dan Hodges For The Mail On Sunday
10 May 2020
Dr Chiara Lepora, of the disaster relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres, sounded exhausted.
‘Everybody here is working beyond their limits,’ she admitted.
Lepora wasn’t speaking from the scene of a catastrophic famine, or an overwhelmed refugee centre. But from Lombardy, Italy.
‘We have a team of about 25 people working here in the Lombardy region,’ she explained. ‘The health system here is very advanced but the virus has outpaced all attempts to deal with the increasing number of cases.
The region of Lombardy, which contains major Italian cities such as Milan (above) and Bergamo, has been one of the worst affected areas by the global pandemic
‘The hospitals are at their limit… the only way to refer a new patient in is if another patient recovers or dies as all hospitals have reached their capacity.
'There is no choice but to treat some patients with less severe symptoms at home.’
There is no questioning the dedication and courage of Lepora and her colleagues. But according to reports over the past week, they had made a terrible blunder.
MSF should not have been focusing its precious resources on Italy, but deploying them here in the UK. Because it’s the UK that is supposedly the real ground zero of the Covid-19 pandemic.
‘UK coronavirus death toll is now the worst in Europe,’ screamed The Guardian on Wednesday. ‘How on earth did it come to this?’ demanded Sir Keir Starmer, as the Prime Minister returned for his first PMQs since so nearly becoming a fatality statistic himself.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer (pictured) was quick to criticise the Government for the nation's mortality rate
Clearly unprepared for the more aggressive approach, Boris bumbled his way through a response. But he shouldn’t have. Instead he should have set out the truth. It has not come to this.
Britain does not have the worst Covid-19 death toll in Europe. And the Government’s critics know it.
The grim threshold was supposedly crossed when the UK’s mortality rate reached 29,427 deaths, seemingly surpassing Italy’s figure of 29,029. But those bald figures are like any other statistic, utterly devoid of meaning when stripped of context.
The most obvious is the differing size of the respective national populations. Britain’s population is ten per cent larger than Italy’s, and 40 per cent larger than Spain’s.
So to be relevant, any mortality figures have to be adjusted to reflect that. If they’re not, then WHO statistics reveal the European administrations most ruthless in tackling Covid-19 have been the Holy See and Monaco.
Another major difference is that, unlike the UK, other nations’ coronavirus statistics don’t include deaths outside of hospital. But in Italy, the effective collapse of the country’s health provision meant that significant numbers of patients were sentenced to death at home.
Coronavirus figures in Europe do not include deaths outside of hospital. The UK, whose NHS staff applauded Welsh resident Danny Egan (above) out of hospital, do include this figure
As the Associated Press reported at the end of April: ‘Because Lombardy’s intensive care units were already filling up within days of Italy’s first cases, many primary care physicians tried to treat and monitor patients at home.
'Some put them on supplemental oxygen, commonly used for home cases in Italy. That strategy proved deadly, and many died at home.’
Then there is the situation in the care homes. There has been huge focus on deaths in those facilities here in the UK. But these figures are now included in our fatality statistics.
Yet for some reason those who were desperately lobbying for their inclusion have suddenly chosen to turn their back on the carnage occurring in Spain and Italy.
Last month, a leaked Spanish government report estimated that 57 per cent of the country’s Covid-19 death toll was care-home-related. In Italy, the public prosecutor in Milan is now formally investigating what the WHO has described as a care-homes ‘massacre’.
Data revealed that the majority of Spain's death tolls came in their care-homes (above) and Italy are launching an investigation into their 'care-homes' massacre
More than 1,800 care-home patients have been identified as dying of coronavirus in Lombardy alone, but it’s believed the figure is much higher because many victims were not even swabbed.
Yet to those intent on driving Britain to the top of the Covid-19 death league table, the Italian and Spanish death figures are sacrosanct, and the UK’s are not. Which is odd, given that last week Italy’s own statistics agency acknowledged their official mortality totals represented a staggering underestimate of the true death toll.
In March, there was a recorded increase in excess of deaths of 50 per cent across the country. In northern Italy, the number of excess deaths virtually doubled. In Milan, the increase was a horrific 180 per cent.
But none of this matters. Remember the footage of the Italian field hospitals that resembled a scene from M*A*S*H? ‘This is Britain in 14 days,’ we were told. It wasn’t.
Last week, the Nightingale Hospital was mothballed. It never expanded beyond the first ward. A couple of days after the closure was announced, social media reacted in horror as images circulated of Covid-19 patients being forced to lie in corridors in another London hospital. Until it emerged that the hospital in question was actually in Spain.
Coronavirus patients in Spain were caught lying on hospital floors due to a lack of space in their wards
But the Government’s critics don’t care. Cast your mind back to the referendum campaign, and the attacks on Leave’s ‘£350 million for the NHS’ pledge. The claim was devious and bogus, we were told. The bald figure may be accurate, but it didn’t stand up to the most simplistic statistical analysis.
The assertion that Britain has the worst Covid-19 death rate is the coronavirus equivalent. Those peddling this fake news have stopped short of painting the Grim Reaper on the side of a bus and touring it round the nation. But the effect is the same. They are working the political angles on the most deadly global pandemic for a century.
To what end? Obviously part of it is base hostility to Boris and his administration. As I’ve written before, there are those on the liberal Left who will never forgive him for winning that Brexit referendum, then cementing his victory in last year’s General Election.
There are also some who are astute – and cynical – enough to see political danger in the NHS’s remarkable resilience in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. For decades, the Left has hammered the mantra Britain’s health service was 24 hours from destruction.
The Left have often repeated the mantra that the NHS is 24 hours from total destruction
As the scale of the crisis unfolding in Italy became apparent, I lost count of the number of times I was told: ‘Just you wait. Italy has double the critical care capacity we have.’ But it was Italy’s health service that buckled, and ours that withstood the coronavirus impact.
But to point that out is to commit a sacrilege. When I did so last week, one social-media commentator accused me of ‘pushing pro-virus propaganda’. A slightly less hysterical charge was that I was guilty of ‘British exceptionalism’.
Yet the problem is not British exceptionalism, but British nihilism. A need among sections of marginalised liberalism to debunk the simplistic notion British is Best by replacing it with the even more simplistic notion British is Worst.
Whatever the facts or the reality, they must somehow be twisted to show ourselves in the poorest possible light. Because if we don’t, what might happen then? If people realise the NHS isn’t actually on the point of implosion. Or Europe’s response to the Covid-19 crisis has not actually been superior to our own. Or that self-obsessed charlatan Boris Johnson has in fact been listening to the experts and following the science and doing everything he can to keep the British people safe.
Perhaps Boris Johnson has been listening to scientific experts and been doing all he can to keep the country safe against this terrible virus?
There are no championship medals in the battle against coronavirus. Every single death is a tragedy. The construction of a global league table of death is as tasteless as it is meaningless.
But last week, the Government’s critics decided to spotlight this morbid benchmark.
Which makes it appropriate to grab that spotlight, and pivot it. Britain does not have the worst Covid-19 death toll in Europe. So why are the proponents of British nihilism so desperate to pretend that we do?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...d-19-death-rate-Europe-wicked-pretend-do.html
Re: COVIDD-19 'Pandemic'
BC schools looking at reopening in June for the younger grades. The older kids are supposd to be going in on an as required basis for labs etc, while doing the majority of work from home.
This crisis is illustrating just how important it is to have professional teachers in our schools. They are the only reason we can carry on right now.
Everyone seems to be focused on not ending up with that large double cohort which may be nothing to worry about at all.
The colleges and universities are not going to have those foreign students they normally count on and there may be loads of open room.
BC schools looking at reopening in June for the younger grades. The older kids are supposd to be going in on an as required basis for labs etc, while doing the majority of work from home.
This crisis is illustrating just how important it is to have professional teachers in our schools. They are the only reason we can carry on right now.
Everyone seems to be focused on not ending up with that large double cohort which may be nothing to worry about at all.
The colleges and universities are not going to have those foreign students they normally count on and there may be loads of open room.
Re: COVIDD-19 'Pandemic'
Considering your idea of lockdown and that of others more intelligent are vastly different, there's no use explaining it to you really.
Considering your idea of lockdown and that of others more intelligent are vastly different, there's no use explaining it to you really.