On the contrary, it proves that US handled the crisis badly, worse than many other countries less developed and less rich.
Of course Belgium, with 11 million citizens (less than NY) and a population density of 385/km2 (USA is at 36) and headquarter of European political institutions had it worse
NY city death rate is in fact 1,960 deaths/million (2 times Belgium)
NY state is at 1,710/million
New Jersey 1,820/million
It's easy to win the stats game when you do not watch them closely
Of course you can scoff the numbers when you don't know that Belgium is counting any death happening in nursing homes (there are over 15 hundreds of them) as covid related, even the untested ones.
If you wanna talk about complexity, you should at least show that you can handle it.
Isn Boris Johnson who said “I must level with you, I must level with the British public, Many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.” just to keep the business going?
I'm sorry but UK had it very bad under Johnson, it's an undeniable fact.
Huh? No you've got it backwards - the argument at the moment is the Johnson is being too careful to protect people at the expense of the economy - the opposite of what you've claimed.
https://www.ft.com/content/7bb3e4b5-7dc7-464d-904d-aee5f7eb4...
> Isn Boris Johnson who said “I must level with you, I must level with the British public, Many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.” ...
Yes. Isn't that just a fact? More people did lose their loved ones. That happened all over the world.
> ... just to keep the business going?
No, again you're confused here - that quote was about enforcing new restrictions to protect people - closing more businesses - the opposite of what you've claimed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/12/uk-moves-to-de...
Both of the arguments you made there were fundamentally mistaken and are actually evidence for the opposite of what you're claiming.
A variation on that argument, is that careful protection is only an option if the economy is simultaneously protected, by paying people and businesses cash, otherwise people desperate for income will not comply with lockdown directives.
We're seeing that being argued from Manchester right now: They want a national "circuit breaker" rather than local lockdown, because a national one is more likely to be accompanied by financial support, as well as a shorter "tier 3" lockdown in Manchester.
Not mentioned much, but hovering in the background, is a minority but significant number of people who aren't entitled to government financial support of any kind. Some as individuals (no recourse to public funds) and some as businesses (started business at a time that haven't shown figures yet by April, or were in an invest-and-spend phase so low/negative profit). In the absence of any government support, during lockdown they depend on volunteers for food and temporary non-eviction law to keep their homes, so they have a strong incentive to resist lockdown measures.
He failed very hard at both then.
That's the trade off every country is making: dangers of the virus Vs long term effects of response to the virus. It's a balancing act. What would you prefer, wanton destruction of everyone's livelihoods in overreaction? Not everyone is lucky enough to have a job that can be done from home, such as us on this site (typically). Every country is trying to avoid shuttering everything.
The quote from Johnson isn't talking about what you're inferring. It was a broad statement of what was going to happen (and it has, across the world): people will still die, in spite of the lockdown. It was a public address, not a policy statement.
It isn't purely the economics: I've had friends and relatives that have had significant effects to their health (including a death) because of being locked in their houses for months.
He literally said it himself when he recovered from COVID-19
> A few hours later, he received a positive test result, and the next day he made a video statement in which he said he was self-isolating, but would continue to work and lead Britain’s coronavirus response.
> But during the next nine days, as he worked in isolation in an apartment above his official Downing Street residence and office, his condition deteriorated, with persistent symptoms including a high temperature.
> Later, he said he had been in denial and continued to work despite feeling groggy and “pretty rough”, until doctors told him firmly to go to hospital.
Boris Johnson was forced to change attitude, but he didn't believe covid-19 was a life threatening disease.
> The quote from Johnson isn't talking about what you're inferring. It was a broad statement of what was going to happen
If he hadn't been in denial he could have acted sooner and save a lot of those people that instead died.
It's the PM responsibility and anybody else.
If we were talking about Italy, for example, I would tell you that 60% of the covid related deaths are a responsibility of Attilio Fontana, the president of Regional Council of Lombardy who left elderly to die in nursing homes while he was subcontracting the supply of medical equipment to his brother in law and when journalists found out he tried to repay the debt using his own money from a Swiss account (yes, he has secret money in Switzerland)
But in UK B.J. is the major responsible for the debacle.
This was all against the background of the government shutting down the country's economy in response to the virus. A torturous definition of "denial" if I've heard one.
I don't know what more I can say...
If you think it's not bad for you, you also think it's not bad for others
But maybe Johnson says things Johnson doesn't agree with.
I'm in my twenties and fit, and going by the vast majority of cases that means I'll have very mild symptoms. That doesn't prevent me being considerate how badly it affects others.
You're also completely ignoring the context that at that point the country had been locked down: you couldn't leave your house except to get supplies and 1 hour of exercise. Does that sound like the decision of a man that denied the gravity of Covid?
We've all seen the consequences of their choices
At one point they also talked about "letting the virus spread through the entire population and take it on the chin"
Either Johnson believed it or not, he said it and people reacted to it.
Was it a communication problem?
Maybe
Was it a grave mistake
Yes, it was
I'm not ignoring anything BTW, I stayed home 94 consecutive days in Italy, so please don't try to teach me what it looks like to take responsibility for the sake of your community.
Get over it, the empire has fallen, UK is the ghost of what it once was and it's run by incompetents.
I don't have to dislike Johnson to know he is wrong,the numbers alone are enough to judge his actions.
Johnson said himself that "covid has been a disaster for UK" and it has left "the worst confirmed death toll in Europe" anyway.
He failed at protecting people and at the same time at protecting the economy.
If that's the best UK can do, it's really not that good...
I don't think the US, Brazil, UK or Turkey explicitly realized this or anything (Sweden did; they're doing fine, and are basically over with it). But ultimately getting it over with is probably going to look better in the long term.
That are lives saved. The more knowledge we have about the disease the easier is to treat it. Also, that measure has extended the lives of all the people that would have died months ago.
Gaining time has a lot of value.
> Sweden did; they're doing fine, and are basically over with it
No. A second wave is starting in Sweden. And, the father of a colleague died of Covid19, that is not "doing fine".
Sweden has had mixed results because has applied non-strong measures. Most companies are working remotely and there are strong safety nets for people to stay home if they feel sick. Even with that, it has been far from perfect, and it is far from over.
This. For all the debate about the Swedish approach, Sweden isn't really any better -- or worse -- off than comparable countries.
The one thing that could improve the situation is social distancing for an extended period of time, in combination with contact tracing and compulsory quarantining of contagious individuals. In that regard, Sweden dropped the ball completely along with the rest of the EU, when the EU decided tourism was more important than containing the pandemic.
How is that relevant? Say "5500 people died" if you want to make a real point.
The only "evidence" that countries that did worse in the first wave do better now seems to come from counties that decided that reducing testing is the easiest way to make the numbers look good.
Unless there is a miraculous breakthrough in vaccines, which seems unlikely in current year, this disease will be with us for the rest of your life. Just like the flu. If it works like other corona viruses, it will burn through the population kill off the people who are susceptible to it, and remain with us forever, just like HCoV-OC43 probably did in 1889 with the "Russian flu" of that day[0]. Nobody worries about that now.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-15/corona...
Maybe we will live with strains of the virus forever, but that's not the problem. We have many diseases among us that are harmless in childhood and much worse later in live, but they are much more harmless both because people are exposed to them starting in early childhood, allowing them to build some immunity; and because vaccination is an option. That's a much more harmless situation than the initial outbreak ripping through a population that has never seen the virus.
The most notable exceptions are the US, Brazil, UK and Turkey - these four countries have one thing in common: far-right populist "strongmen" in power who are unable to find a line between the demands of medical/epidemiological expertise and their self interests.