"Covid UK: Facts about the risks, the death rate, and NHS capacity"
Utterly deplorable article from the Daily Mail, which ignores the fact that the casualty projections assumed no action taken, but of course action WAS taken (because of the projections). dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8…
It's like someone saying: "If you don't brake at the end of the street before taking the corner, you'll wrap your car around a tree. I have seen many do it."
You brake, and avoid the tree.
You then mock the original advice for having "scaremongered" a collision with the tree.
In fact, epidemic projections are cited as an example of self-defeating prophecies on Wikipedia.
It's impossible that the original journalist doesn't understand this. This is propaganda, either at the government's behest or to promote the covidiot agenda. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-defe…
But when you take a step back, and a second look, you realise that articles like this are even more corrosive!
They "keep score" by measuring the UK's progress against a hypothetical apocalypse, whereas they should do so against a zero deaths baseline. 50,000+ dead is 😱 not 👏.
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This is the masthead and main article on the front page of the Daily Mail website. The whole thing is despicable, but the worst of the worst are the bits I've highlighted in red. It's practically an invitation to lockdown disobedience, even to civil unrest.
First, the lockdown counter. It's no doubt meant to resonate with the DM's target audience like a prisoner's scratches on the walls of their cell to mark their time inside.
Second, the "underlying causes" nonsense. People can have health issues and easily live 20, 30, 50+ years!
Focusing on "underlying causes" in this way is the literal language of extermination: it's fine that they're dead, because they were ill anyway. Unbelievably dangerous and irresponsible!
Fewer people are occupying hospital beds because routine surgeries are still way, way down.
How has the UK fared during the pandemic vs other advanced *island* countries?
Not well. Very, very badly, in fact.
Our death toll is nearly twice that suffered in total by 9 countries with a combined population of 583,620,484 people.
World-beating, for all the wrong reasons!
All 4 nations fared badly, but England is by far the worst.
If we look at the entire world, then England's death toll per capita is higher than that of 212 other countries.
Only Belgium, San Marino, Peru, Andorra & Spain have suffered higher per-capita death tolls than England!
And before anyone comes out with some excuse about how it must be because the UK is so densely populated, take a closer look at the table in the first tweet in this thread...
Boris Johnson's not getting off the hook nearly that easily!
Imagine an alternate history in which Remain had won...
- No ferryless ferries
- No 27 lorry parks
- No 250 million extra customs declarations
- No £15 billion/year in extra red tape
- No £1 billion cost of re-registering chemicals
- No threat to farming or car manufacturing
- No issue of the Northern Irish border
- Less of an impetus for Scottish independence
- No problems with haulage, or cabotage
- No limits on days spent in the EU
- No special regulations for work trips
- No additional costs for touring bands
- No complex VAT filings
- No loss of financial services to EU capitals
- Blue passports, if desired (those were not dependent on Brexit)
- Additional restrictions on non-EU immigration, if desired (those were not dependent on Brexit)
- No threat of fishermen being unable to land their catch in the EU
If your immediate response is "but the UK didn't know the vaccine would be effective" that's to miss the whole point of the EU's scheme in the first place: by pooling resources, the EU has been able to place many more "bets" than the UK ever can manage when working alone.
"Moderna Covid vaccine candidate almost 95% effective, trials show"
Good news. Also, it doesn't need complex refrigeration as it can be stored near room temperature. But the UK isn't at the front of the queue to get this one, unfortunately. theguardian.com/world/2020/nov…
This highlights the potentially checkered future that awaits us in 2021: different countries may have very different experiences of the pandemic going forward, based on which vaccines they bet on, and how soon those bets pan out.
Note that Moderna is already on the EU's radar as a vaccine partner, but not yet on the UK's. So EU countries are likely to get its vaccine much sooner than us. ec.europa.eu/commission/pre…
It is untrue that there are *no* benefits to Brexit.
But it is categorically the case that the benefits of Brexit are far, far outweighed by the benefits of EU membership.
(We're winning a penny at the cost of a pound. Hurrah!)
For example:
- save the membership fee
- can strike our own trade deals
- greater control over VAT, including 0% rate
- boost to UK manufacturers that sell only to the domestic market
- return of duty-free shopping
etc.
NONE OF THIS OUTWEIGHS THE PAIN. But it's all "real".
So any debate that claims Brexit has no merit is unfairly slanted. Much better to be analytical about the situation. Yes, Brexit could give us A, B or C. But the X, Y and Z we lose as a consequence are much more significant that those gains.