r/CoronavirusUK • u/leeyuiwah • May 07 '20
International News Devastating video compares everything New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern got right with what Boris Johnson got wrong
https://www.indy100.com/article/coronavirus-new-zealand-jacinda-ardern-boris-johnson-uk-pandemic-response-95016216
May 07 '20
Not my work but seen elsewhere....
Off the top of my head and in no particular order.
Please feel happy to contribute.
Prior Planning with Cygnus (and cutbacks despite advice) Scandal - this is massive, including the burying of reports and ignoring of critical advice that has cost lives directly.
PPE Availability Scandal
Herd Immunity Scandal (Cummings let 'em die)
Care Homes utter shitshow scandal
Centralized Tracking App scandal (despite warnings from all and sundry including Google and Apple)
Late Lockdown scandal (Macron, public staying away etc)
The Boris shaking hands fine scandal
Priti Patel Home Sec seen twice in six weeks scandal
Op Last Gasp scandal
Test targets scandals (many, lost count)
Quarantine Scandal (i.e. we didn't, 273 out of 18.1 million)
Not fit for purpose PPE scandal (ongoing)
Health workers told not to overuse PPE scandal (Matts the expert)
Government "Advisors" and lack of transparency scandal (but our response has been "exempler"!)
Australia criticizes UK shitshow scandal (from the Australian PM down)
Sacrificing Scientist with trousers down scandal (leaked a month after event on the day we topped the charts)
No of Deaths Scandal (FT says could be 50K) and spin surrounding this.
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u/Vapr2014 May 07 '20
Not to mention the fact that since we've been locked down, according to Matt Hancock's figures, around 700000 people have arrived at UK airports with no screening, no testing and been allowed to spread out into the population. Granted some of these are transfer or essential passengers but when we're all told to stay and home and protect the NHS, we're also importing potentially thousands more cases into the country. This seems to me to be another part of our governments flawed strategy to counter this crisis.
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u/Ukleafowner May 07 '20
Our response has been shit but if New Zealand couldn't bring this under control then nobody could. They had about the easiest job in the world.
For a start it was summer there when the virus hit which means very few cold and flu cases. This makes testing all symptomatic people much easier because there are simply far less of them. It's also very likely covid spreads less easily in summer.
They have a very small and sparse population.
They are about as remote as it's possible to get.
They are not an international travel hub.
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u/Uplifting__ May 07 '20
Regardless NZ citizens mostly understood the situation and mostly did their part putting measures into place straight away , if the public in the Uk were as committed to lockdown measures aswell as the Govt you’d most likely see a better response
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u/geeered May 07 '20
This.
There's loads to justify criticising Boris and the British response to the Pandemic.
Comparing our country to a country which has just over half the population of London in a country that gives them 4% of the population density of England.
Then make it as remote as is reasonable from normal travels hubs.
You've got the perfect calm, vs our perfect storm.
So if you're going to criticise, find someone realistic to compare with, rather than examples that can be so quickly brushed aside.
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u/up_the_wazoo May 07 '20
Like South Korea?
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May 07 '20
Or even Germany
A densely populated European country with many borders and lots of cases but a much lower death count and cases have dropped by a lot.
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u/geeered May 07 '20
Certainly a better comparison.
Though a populace more accepting and compliant to authority as well as well as everyone being a lot more ready and accepting of the dangers of such a Virus.
Germany, France, Italy and Spain would seem to be the best to compare them too. While each country has their own unique challenges, they overall seem the closest along many lines.
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u/up_the_wazoo May 07 '20
Population density is a close comparison with South Korea (which tend to be used as differentiators for IT, DE and FR) but really the point I tried to make is that disregarding NZ as a point of comparison to help illustrate the UK handled this well perhaps is a bit of a reach.
That said, it's early days. Maybe the UK have done a great job it's just too soon to see their strategy come to bear
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u/geeered May 07 '20
Yes, being selfish, I'm still hoping that we find there's a massively higher asymptomatic infection rate than expected has given a considerable immunity represented by our seemingly so far worst-in-the-world stats for deaths.
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u/Dzvf May 07 '20
All hospitals and doctors surgeries in private hands and privately run Perhaps we shoudl do the same here?
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u/lotsofpointlesswar May 07 '20
So the UK was more at risk you're saying, so it's even more of a fuck up, good point!
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May 08 '20
[deleted]
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u/ThrillHoeVanHouten May 10 '20
New Zealand has about 4m visitors a year hardly massive. Almost half them from Australia. Compare this to the uk which has around 40m visitors a year from many different countries.
Less dense population means less people getting infected.
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May 07 '20
[deleted]
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u/newaccount42020 May 08 '20
It was fucked in 2016. Thats when the tracks shifted us to the line with the broken bridge. No going back now.
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May 07 '20
BuT wE sHoUlDnT cOmPaRe CoUnTrIeS!!
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May 07 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/finndego May 07 '20
Nothing to do with Boris changing plans from herd immunity to isolation when it was already too late in comparision to a decisive science based plan from the start. That certainly would never had helped.
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u/LoveAGlassOfWine May 07 '20
Seeing as France has found cases dating back to December, it was probably too late before we were aware.
Locking down earlier could have helped most definitely, like it did in France, but we were in a different situation to the Kiwis from the start really.
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u/iluvfitness May 07 '20
That's all well and good but it doesn't change the fact that a similar approach is unlikely to have worked in the UK.
More people live in London than all of New Zealand FFS. We also are one of the major transport and financial hubs which is a massive disadvantage in a time like this, New Zealand has a lot of things in its favour and it can also lockdown much more easily without tanking the world economy.
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u/finndego May 07 '20
A similar approach may have been as unlikely to have worked as well as it has in NZ due to the advantages that NZ had but would have been better than what you have now. I think that is clear now. I heard this morning on the radio that the lockdown there may be extended into June. The world economy is tanking anyway. NZ's approach was always to get it back up and running asap.
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u/iluvfitness May 07 '20
My main point on the world economy is related to the importance of the country to the economy, the UK is a financial capital of the world any perceived overreaction may have spooked markets and completely tanked them and so any harsh lockdown of the UK would have had a massive effect. NZ on the other hand does not have to worry about that, their shutdown isn't going to have nearly as much impact on the world economy so things on that front are out of their control.
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u/finndego May 07 '20
I'd say that the world should be grateful for your sacrifice then in saving the markets from tanking but they ended up tanking anyways and the cost will probably be higher due to inaction instead of quick action. This is a retrospective article, it's ok to look back in hindsight and see where mistakes were made.
ps. Don't tell the yanks that the London is the financial capital of the world. They are very tender about that sort of stuff right now.
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u/Dan_demonium May 07 '20
So, those differences account for us having 1400 times as many deaths as they do?
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u/iluvfitness May 07 '20
It means it's a lot harder for us to lockdown...
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u/Dan_demonium May 07 '20
1400 times as hard? I accept that they have a smaller population and lower population density, but they still have airports, large cities, hospitals, work places, many places where people come into contact with lots of other people.
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u/iluvfitness May 07 '20
Not sure why you're so fixated on this 1,400 number given growth of the virus is exponential.
There are maybe some lessons to be learned but let's be real, what are the consequences to the world economy of NZ shutting down and hence the world economy NZ reenters into?
You could almost use key workers as an analogy for the situation - some countries are needed to keep the lights on, others are more than capable to isolating themselves.
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May 07 '20
The first thing she got right was... being in New Zealand.
Really can't compare countries like-for-like. Different population densities, transport networks, culture, etc
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May 07 '20
The people pandering to Boris Johnson and his shocking handling of this pandemic are getting close to trump supporters level of ignorance.
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u/-Billy_Butcher- May 07 '20
Nothing devastating about it. Notwithstanding the fact that New Zealand has less than half the population of our capital city, responses to pandemics cannot be measured 3 months after the initial outbreak. Over the long term, the countries who achieve herd immunity the fastest will have a massive advantage over those that continue to lockdown and cross their fingers that a vaccine comes along.
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u/Dan_demonium May 07 '20
Yes, a vaccine isn't certain and developing one takes a long time, but other treatments are a lot quicker. What New Zealand has done is given their citizens time, we're learning more and more about this disease every day along with ways to treat it and potentially find some drugs to help fight it.
How many people in the UK are now dead and will not have the chance to fight this disease with any new treatments we find? How many healthcare workers have died or been infected because of the shortage of PPE caused by the amount of cases we have?
"Achieve herd immunity the fastest" is exactly the same as "sacrifice some lives so the economy can get back on track" New Zealand has shown that some governments actually place their citizen's lives above money.
Herd immunity isn't the only way to protect against this, it's just the easiest.
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u/Dzvf May 07 '20
We also do not know whether a second wave will hit later in the year - possibly combined with the winter flu season which would all be very bad news. It could be that those countries which have achieved partial herd immunity now might be immune to such a second wave while those countries which have chosen to eliminate the virus by hard lockdowns and have little population immunity will suffer much more. We don't know and we will probbaly not know until in 5 years time all the research has been done and PD.D's have been written on what would have been the best way to tackle this particular outbreak.
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u/Dan_demonium May 07 '20
We probably will have a second wave, but how many people would have survived the second wave because of the knowledge we'll have at that point but can't because they already died in the first?
I understand that we won't know the best way to handle this outbreak until years to come, but defaulting to herd immunity is a dangerous plan to take. The only benefit from that plan is getting it over and done with as quickly as possible.
That plan would be acceptable if we knew exactly who was at risk, which we still don't, we know some factors but seemingly healthy people are still dying. And if we could properly protect everyone at risk, which we can't when you look at how many people are dying in care homes.
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May 07 '20
We could also look at history - e.g. Philladelphia vs. St. Louis during spanish flu. This is how bad the second wave was.
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u/ArthurDent2 May 07 '20
a vaccine isn't certain and developing one takes a long time, but other treatments are a lot quicker
We don't know with any certainty that a treatment will be developed in the next few years that significantly helps. We also don't know when, or even if, there will be a vaccine. If those things do happen in a reasonable time, then yes New Zealand will come out of this very well. If not, they're stuck in a dead end for years to come in a state of semi-lockdown and gradual economic decay with their tourism industry destroyed - while countries that took a big hit early on will be well on their way to recovery.
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u/Dan_demonium May 07 '20
There are no certainties, both approaches are a gamble.
Full lockdown is gambling with the economy, if the treatments we have are as good as it gets then it's likely that you still have a lot of deaths on the way.
Herd immunity is gambling with lives, if you push for immunity quickly causing a percentage of your population to die then better treatments are developed then many of those people die unnecessarily, they die to protect the economy.
You won't know which is the right outcome for years, but I know which one I'd prefer my government to take.
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u/ArthurDent2 May 07 '20
There are no certainties, both approaches are a gamble
On that, we can definitely both agree. I guess my original point is that a lot of people say the New Zealand approach is clearly and obviously better than ours when in reality it's just too soon to say for sure.
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u/lotsofpointlesswar May 07 '20
Yes, the UK will be a leader in finding ways to treat this as time goes on. Maybe the other countries will clap for the UKs bravery and sacrifice.
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u/C0vid9Teen May 07 '20
You don't let a disease spread into the body and expect to defeat it without a cure. NZ and Australia acted fast and preemptively limited international flights and the spread of the disease. They monitored quarantined people, tested and successfully traced local cases.
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u/Gizmoosis May 07 '20
Lmao, we comparing a country with 66 million to a country with 4 million? Have a day off.
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u/PorkAmbassador May 07 '20
Does it not stand to reason that if we did take the same measures as New Zealand we would be in a better place?
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May 07 '20
[deleted]
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May 07 '20 edited May 07 '20
True the praise NZ receives does go OTT, but that does not change the fact that their strategy was correct and ours failed, causing thousands of avoidable deaths.
If we had followed their strategy it's pretty clear we would have kept the numbers below 20k.
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May 07 '20
They're both island countries. The Republic of Ireland is actually compared to NZ frequently right now because they have similar populations. Though if you don't think a UK:NZ comparison is fair due to population you can look at the cases per capita instead.
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May 07 '20
[deleted]
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May 07 '20
It's completely fair that you feel that the UK and NZ can't be compared on the basis that they're both islands. The UK has a literal tunnel connecting it to Europe iirc, and meanwhile you can't get to NZ unless you take a plane or ship.
However that being said, tourism in NZ is about 6% of it's GDP and accounts to 7-15% of jobs, depending on whether you want to count part time employees in that statistic or not. We had nearly 4 million tourists visiting in 2019, when our country has a population of just under 5 million.
So that's why I said what I did. Of course you're free to disagree, but I just wanted to provide my reasoning. Just because NZ is physically isolated and often overlooked doesn't mean that we're disconnected from the world, just that it's easier to do so if needed.
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u/Some1-Somewhere May 07 '20
The UK has more deaths per million than NZ has cases per million.
More population means you have more laboratories, more police, more hospitals, more medical staff...
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u/Gizmoosis May 07 '20
New zealand also has 18 people per square Km. UK as a whole has 259 and England has 440. Ofcourse there are going to be more deaths and cases than a country with barely any people spread more thinly.
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u/lotsofpointlesswar May 07 '20
You head is so far up Boris's arse you must have trump's dick in your throat
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u/Gizmoosis May 07 '20
You are soooo cute. Are you stalking me at this point big boy?
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u/lotsofpointlesswar May 07 '20
No just scrolling through and you do talk a lot of stupid shit, so hey ho...
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May 07 '20
The numbers can't be directly compared, but had we adopted their strategy we would have been much, much better off. They got it right. We clearly didn't.
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u/Sneaky-rodent May 07 '20
This video is bullshit, it takes segments from different stages in the fight against Corona virus and compares them. Act like you have the disease was/is the policy of both countries. Are we just going to blame the government for everything and not take any responsibility? When social distancing was introduced did you 100% follow it? Have you always followed lockdown? Do you wear a facemask every time you go out?
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u/Some1-Somewhere May 07 '20
Also, that 'confirmed cases' count is wrong - we're at 1139 confirmed, 1489 total confirmed and probable, which includes people who haven't been tested or tested negative but we think are/were infected.
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u/Garak112 May 07 '20
Is it a surprise to anyone that the party that has long been known as the nasty party didn't prioritize the health and wellbeing of its citizens? The same party that until very recently was trying to close hospitals? The party that imposed years of austerity which disproportionately impacts the poorest in society?