PerspectiveGovernment’s Handling of COVID-19 Is a Very British Disaster
British exceptionalism has brought an exceptional outcome, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in The Telegraph. “We have both an eye-watering number of avoidable deaths and a staggering amount of avoidable economic damage. The purported trade-off between lives and jobs – always a false choice – has instead spared neither. It is the worst of both.” He is unsparing in his judgement. He notes that Greece, with far fewer resources than Britain and having to cope with both a deep austerity and waves of migrants, has had 14 deaths per million, while the U.K. has just hit 472 (as of 24 April: the number is much higher by now). Greece has had 151 deaths linked to coronavirus, while Britain’s coronavirus-related death toll is approaching 50,000. “Britain could have been in a low-death club with Greece, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, or Germany,” he writes. If Britain had a similar COVID-related mortality rate as Greece, “These deaths could have been held to at 1,000 or thereabouts, ideally by Korean methods, or failing that at least by sheer Greek determination. All the other deaths are in essence a policy failure.”
British exceptionalism has brought an exceptional outcome, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in The Telegraph. “We have both an eye-watering number of avoidable deaths and a staggering amount of avoidable economic damage. The purported trade-off between lives and jobs – always a false choice – has instead spared neither. It is the worst of both.”
He adds:
Britain could have been in a low-death club with Greece, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, or Germany – countries of greatly different wealth and different health defenses – but instead it languishes in a lockdown limbo that is nearing the threshold of structural economic damage. The longer it lasts beyond six weeks or so, the greater the threat.
Other Western countries have failed too. Belgium is in the same boat. The Dutch don’t fully count care homes and community deaths. Thousands of Italian COVID-19 deaths slipped through the cracks and have not been recorded. Turmoil in New York matches London. Every nation faces the constant risk of a second wave.
Yet the U.K. is moving uncomfortably close to special status, with excess deaths above the seasonal average topping 42,000 up to April 24. It has undoubtedly surpassed 50,000 since then. We will breach 1,000 deaths per million before long, yet without reaching the safe uplands of herd immunity.
There is not much company – if any – at this Tibetan altitude. They are not all COVID deaths but they are all part of the COVID drama, all dating from the same original sin in February when the Government was asleep and temptress voices of behavioral theory went unchallenged.
These deaths could have been held to at 1,000 or thereabouts, ideally by Korean methods, or failing that at least by sheer Greek determination. All the other deaths are in essence a policy failure.
