The UK response to Covid-19 [MOD WARNING 1ST POST]

Harry Palmr · 18-06-2020 04:42PM

Its just a succession of over-promising and under-delivering.

They are a genuine embarrassment at this point. This comes from either Johnson or Cummings who do the backbenchers, the dreaded 1922 committee blame. I think we know the answer.

Leroy42 · 18-06-2020 04:48PM

theological wrote: »

Now that we've lent the government that time in lockdown, we expect them to be building up means to be able to manage the virus. The fact that they are backtracking on the app after this time is disgraceful.

Backtracking is being extremely generous.

Didn't they say track and trace was central to reopening? Didn't they say the app was central to track and trace?

1st June they said it was all good to go. It was never mentioned that the app was failing at that point. It was never mentioned that they had run into serious complications that threw the whole idea into doubt.

They just continued to bluff and bluster.

It is a collassal screw up. WHo was the minister in charge? Didn't Johnson recently take personal charge of Covid? And this happens? I mean what the actual hell is going on over there?

theological · 18-06-2020 05:19PM

Leroy42 wrote: »

Backtracking is being extremely generous.

Didn't they say track and trace was central to reopening? Didn't they say the app was central to track and trace?

1st June they said it was all good to go. It was never mentioned that the app was failing at that point. It was never mentioned that they had run into serious complications that threw the whole idea into doubt.

They just continued to bluff and bluster.

It is a collassal screw up. WHo was the minister in charge? Didn't Johnson recently take personal charge of Covid? And this happens? I mean what the actual hell is going on over there?

Just hearing what Matt Hancock is saying. It seems like there is a functional limitation of the iPhone on their original solution. If what he is saying about the issues with distance calculation on the proprietary Apple and Google solution are true it is problematic also. Apparently their Android app works better.

This kind of makes me wonder, why couldn't they release the app as a beta version to the manual track and trace? Or release it Android only until the Apple issues are ironed out? Or open the trial wide enough so that testing goes beyond the Isle of Wight?

Edit: I know the distance would be better to have also, but surely if the app could be released with contacts irrespective of how close you were, then that could be a good start until the distance measurement difficulties in the proprietary solution are ironed out.

S.M.B. · 18-06-2020 05:25PM

I'd be a lot more pissed off if I genuinely believed that the app was the silver bullet the government portrayed it to be when first announced. While it's frustrating that it took them so long to realise that their initial decisions relating to app architecture was incorrect and their belief that the app was the key part of their entire track and trace strategy was misguided I at least believe that we're closer to where we need to be right now.

It's a real shame that for every week of diddering, infections are occurring, and lives are being lost and money that is badly needed is being spent. The added bluster, over confidence and gaslighting makes it very hard to swallow.

Leroy42 · 18-06-2020 05:26PM

And it was Hancock job to know this already. Not two weeks after they had said it would be implemented.

At this stage it is coming across like Trump and his "Who knew health care was so complicated" remarks

Biggest post war situation to face the country and Hancock now a litany of screws ups and failures to his name. Who is responsible?

Certainly not Johnson or Hancock it would appear. Their response seems to be that stuff just happens, nobody could ever has forseen any of it.

Joe_ Public · 18-06-2020 05:45PM

Collosal spinning going on with hancock and dido re the app here. "We backed both horses," Hancock has just claimed. So how did it end up in complete failure then? When asked for a possible launch date he refuses to give one = possibly never.

A Dub in Glasgo · 18-06-2020 05:51PM

https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1273637984819085312

beggars_bush · 18-06-2020 07:20PM

It's alright though, the football is back

robinph · 18-06-2020 09:10PM

Joe_ Public wrote: »

Collosal spinning going on with hancock and dido re the app here. "We backed both horses," Hancock has just claimed. So how did it end up in complete failure then? When asked for a possible launch date he refuses to give one = possibly never.

They backed both horses, but I don't think they put much of a stake on the second one until yesterday. Was obvious months ago that there was going to be an issue with the app working unless they used the Apple /Google API.
Every other country realised this very quickly.

The also snuck in a nice story from a contact tracer about how lovely it is to speak to a real person when being told to stay at home for two weeks and how the contact tracer told someone that she was doing really well at staying at home... Then conveniently they referred back to that story a few questions later to back up their claim about how nobody actually wants a contact tracing app anyway because speaking to people is much nicer and if everyone would just wash their hands more often and not use public transport to go to work then there wouldn't be any need for the app anyway as you'd know exactly who you'd been in contact with if you didn't mix with strangers on the bus.

They were certainly trying to blame Apple directly for not playing nicely and breaking things for them. No acknowledgement that they got it wrong.

Joe_ Public · 18-06-2020 10:05PM

Backed both horses sounded like an outright lie which i think it was. The whole thing today was pretty much 99% spin, not even subtle.

That's exactly what Hancock was doing - google was basically to blame for their app not working. Google and Apple were responsible for this bad app that he, hancock, had to protect the british people from. And now they would have to fix their mess and nobody could say how long that would take. Luckily they had the great foresight and vision to come up with a world beating manual tracing system (that still only deals with a fraction of new cases) to help save the day. No other country had ever thought of that, i guess.

Some neck to try to spin that but these guys got it like a jockeys whatsits.

robinph · 18-06-2020 10:43PM

If they had genuinely backed both horses then the second one should be coming in any second now... Or they just backed two losing horses and wasted twice as much money.

robinph · 19-06-2020 11:17AM

So the one bit where the UK government is going slower than everyone else is that they have only just remembered that the alert level was still at 4, despite it having been reduced to level 3 over a month ago...well for half an hour or so when they then realised that despite the restrictions being lifted they needed to pretend that they were still actually in place and reverted back to level 4.

Now the country is at alert level 2 and the government has just moved their Nandos chart from a 4 to a 3.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53106673

nacho libre · 19-06-2020 12:15PM

It's funny hearing Hancock talk about air bridges and the need to be vigilant regarding countries that don't have the virus under control. He is more a comedian than politician at this stage.

Joe_ Public · 19-06-2020 12:34PM

nacho libre wrote: »

It's funny hearing Hancock talk about air bridges and the need to be vigilant regarding countries that don't have the virus under control. He is more a comedian than politician at this stage.

I suspect the lure of British travellers with cash to spend might be difficult for some tourism driven economies to resist. But they still have some distance to go before Hancocks aspirations are anything more than mild delusion. "We're making progress" is grand and all very well but when it is British travellers bringing the virus back to NZ, that probably isnt great for the optics.

robinph · 19-06-2020 12:59PM

Joe_ Public wrote: »

... but when it is British travellers bringing the virus back to NZ, that probably isnt great for the optics.

I believe it was Kiwi travellers who happened to have previously been in the UK and were returning home. Doesn't make much technical difference as to where the infection came from, but I doubt they would want to be accused of being British.

lainey_d_123 · 19-06-2020 01:06PM

nacho libre wrote: »

It's funny hearing Hancock talk about air bridges and the need to be vigilant regarding countries that don't have the virus under control. He is more a comedian than politician at this stage.

It's truly astounding.

Do they not get it?

We're the ones everyone else wants to keep out.

I'd love to know what these lads are smoking.

Joe_ Public · 19-06-2020 01:24PM

robinph wrote: »

I believe it was Kiwi travellers who happened to have previously been in the UK and were returning home. Doesn't make much technical difference as to where the infection came from, but I doubt they would want to be accused of being British.

I assumed they were uk citizens but that may not be the actual case, so travellers who came from the uk to be technically correct.

robinph · 19-06-2020 01:32PM

Joe_ Public wrote: »

I assumed they were uk citizens but that may not be the actual case, so travellers who came from the uk to be technically correct.

Not sure how long they had been in the UK and if they had been working in the UK or just on an extended holiday due to Covid, but they had a sick parent, got granted compassionate leave to fly to NZ, then as the parent was dying were given another compassionate leave to get out of the quarantine early, didn't get tested, got lost driving around NZ, called some other relatives to fetch them, forgot who else they interacted with and where they stopped along the way, then I think they also forgot to return to quarantine afterwards or get tested again.

A Dub in Glasgo · 19-06-2020 02:58PM

https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1273977338762539008

robinph · 19-06-2020 07:33PM

So the UK government and the NHS have been betting on multiple horses to develop a contact tracing app and working closely with jockey of the Apple horse according to them.

Only Apple claims to not have spoken to the NHS or UK government about it and didn't even know that had a horse or jockey in any race.

BBC News - Apple 'not told' about UK's latest app plans
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53105642

banie01 · 19-06-2020 07:38PM

I honestly find it staggering that at this point of the UK's current shambolic march towards further self harm...
That BoJo is never called out on the fact that when "bad" news is delivered, it's Hancock, Williamson or some other cabinet croney that's sent to the podium?

Yet when it's good news, be it medical or an easing of lockdown BoJo is the face of that news?

The UK voted in a landslide (seats wise at least) to elect a party that only seems to manage to become more inept with every crisis?

He's a bloody poundshop Churchill, with no stomach for the job nor honestly IMO, the actual leadership nous to do it.
Leadership isn't slogans or lies.
It's candour, empathy and motivation.

threeball · 19-06-2020 07:38PM

robinph wrote: »

So the UK government and the NHS have been betting on multiple horses to develop a contact tracing app and working closely with jockey of the Apple horse according to them.

Only Apple claims to not have spoken to the NHS or UK government about it and didn't even know that had a horse or jockey in any race.

BBC News - Apple 'not told' about UK's latest app plans
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53105642

Its almost like they are actively trying to kill off their older population as they are unproductive and expensive.

Kinda like Boris reneging on his promise that no one with dementia would have to sell their home to fund their care.

robinph · 19-06-2020 07:50PM

threeball wrote: »

Its almost like they are actively trying to kill off their older population as they are unproductive and expensive.

Kinda like Boris reneging on his promise that no one with dementia would have to sell their home to fund their care.

Next March they will release stats showing how great it is that they have recovered so well from Covid19 and they got through the 2020/21 flu season with virtually no deaths and hardly anyone is now dying in care homes and a background death rate about a third lower than normal during the winter.

The average age of the population will have dropped by about 10 years though with the birth rate the highest in years for December and nobody still alive over the age of 70.

A Dub in Glasgo · 20-06-2020 03:47PM

https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1274335339625275392

A Dub in Glasgo · 21-06-2020 03:01PM

Hancock was doing the TV stuios this morning and it looks like the 2m rule will be reduced this week in England and inevitably elsewhere in the UK

https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1274628381284470785

RasTa · 21-06-2020 03:03PM

That's to get the bars back open

RobMc59 · 21-06-2020 03:41PM

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

Hancock was doing the TV stuios this morning and it looks like the 2m rule will be reduced this week in England and inevitably elsewhere in the UK

https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1274628381284470785

The UK has consistently been criticised on this thread for not following WHO advice but when it appears they are going to follow guidelines in regards to social distancing they are regarded as reckless.

S.M.B. · 21-06-2020 03:59PM

When were they called reckless? That post just states that Hancock was on TV this morning and includes a tweet that doesn't appear to have any commentary in it.

Joe_ Public · 21-06-2020 04:28PM

S.M.B. wrote: »

When were they called reckless? That post just states that Hancock was on TV this morning and includes a tweet that doesn't appear to have any commentary in it.

Maybe it's referring to the cmo and cso who are both on record as questioning the wisdom of relaxing social distance guidelines? Dunno have they revised views, they're not seen as much in public now for some really hard to fathom reason, but a senior WHO official did say this to the guardian newspaper last week:

"Contact tracing is key especially as the UK starts to relax the social and physical distancing measures. There has to be a robust track-and-trace system in place of operation,” Kluge told the Guardian.

Would anyone describe their contact tracing as "robust"? On the evidence they've presented, i certainly wouldn't anyway.

A Dub in Glasgo · 21-06-2020 04:38PM

RobMc59 wrote: »

The UK has consistently been criticised on this thread for not following WHO advice but when it appears they are going to follow guidelines in regards to social distancing they are regarded as reckless.

My post did not criticise the UK govt or called it reckless. It is abundantly clear that a service based economy cannot operate with 2m social distance which makes the debacle around contact tracing unforgiveable

However, without proper contact tracing in place, it may be regarded as reckless

The UK response to Covid-19 [MOD WARNING 1ST POST]

Comments