Oct 2021
12:01am, 26 Oct 2021
25,685 posts
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Johnny Blaze
I'm gonna propose that having a mentally ill narcissist with his orange finger on the nuclear button is still not a desirable outcome.
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Oct 2021
12:27am, 26 Oct 2021
2,679 posts
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JRitchie
I’m now coming off this thread for good. Posting references insinuating a comparison of the outcome of a UK government policy to the outcome of the nazi regime I find really distasteful.
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Oct 2021
9:32am, 26 Oct 2021
525 posts
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fuzzyduck79
UK civilian death toll WWII - 70,000 Absolutely no question whatsoever that the decisions made by this government killed more than 70,000 above what any half competent leader might have achieved. And for no economic benefit either, indeed the evidence is strong that we'd have fared better on that front by acting harder, earlier at all times. That's not hindsight either, they ignored advice at the time and made appallingly stupid decisions. We've lost extremely badly in every way through Johnson's leadership. But sure, observing that 70,000 civilians died in the last world war, is just so distasteful. |
Oct 2021
9:46am, 26 Oct 2021
15,876 posts
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larkim
It's not a million miles off. If we take Germany as a good benchmark, they've had 95k deaths compared to a population of about 84m. 94/84*68(UK pop) = 77k deaths comparable. We're at 140k, so 63k excess. People will argue how much of that is due to the gross incompetence of the govt and how much the rest of the UK's infrastructure / cultures are to blame, but I'd much rather be German than British in that equation. [The problem with the WW2 comparison is that it's a poor comparison. Civilians became soldiers, wars were fought more territorially, and the holocaust was the true evil of the Nazis rather than simply the way war was waged. And the Allies killed between 350,000 and 500,000 German civilians in the war so does that make us worse than Hitler? en.wikipedia.org ] |
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Oct 2021
10:36am, 26 Oct 2021
526 posts
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fuzzyduck79
There's a problem with only picking up the figures for deaths within 28 days (a further 20% are dying in the next 32 days on current figures, that's crept up from ~10% before vaccinations rolled out) but this isn't really the place to split hairs over the many ways to count Covid deaths. I do wonder if Merkel feels she got things right generally, or whether she'd behave differently if she had another chance. Denmark look like they made excellent calls without doing much economic damage or locking down that hard (from discussions with an academic contact there). They seem to have balanced everything better than most in Europe. |
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Oct 2021
10:49am, 26 Oct 2021
15,878 posts
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larkim
In 2120 there'll be history pieces written about various countries and their economies post the 2020 pandemic. Some will have "but was the price of saving XX,000 lives worth the economic disaster that plagued the country for the next generation" and some will have "at the time, many questioned the level of death that could have been prevented, but ultimately the country bounced back quickly without long term economic damage" and every possible scenario in between, including "Many historians regard [nation] as having achieved the best balance of protecting their citizens from the risk of the pandemic whilst avoiding destabilising their finances in the longer term". I wonder how different things will look with the benefit of long term hindsight compared to the perception of the crass and incompetence that we see today? |
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Oct 2021
11:11am, 26 Oct 2021
527 posts
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fuzzyduck79
It's completely the opposite though. Higher excess deaths are correlated with higher economic hit. The dichotomy of saving lives or saving the economy was always false, this was noted very early on as well and results have borne that out. So the countries that bounce back fastest or take the least hit economically were the ones who managed their pandemic best and had fewest lives lost. It's not rocket science to think that overloading your health service and having millions sick and unable to work or go to school isn't helpful to your economy. And it's not correct to say "Well the UK economy has recovered, therefore it must have been worth it/correct to follow that path." The evidence is that we'd been in a far better place economically by now with better pandemic management, Brexit notwithstanding. |
Oct 2021
11:18am, 26 Oct 2021
160 posts
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Fields
I think WW2 is a perfect example. lengthy period of huge global upheaval, major societal change, it impacts on every part of life for everyone.
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Oct 2021
11:43am, 26 Oct 2021
25,686 posts
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Johnny Blaze
If you are only comparing bald statistics it looks bad, but you can't leap from that to "more civilian deaths than in WW2 makes the Tories just as bad as the Nazis". (I don't think anyone is saying NOW that the "mismanagement" of the 1917 pandemic (c50m dead) by global govts made them "worse" than the Kaiser...) I agree they are a bunch of reckless incompetents but the mens rea (if I can get all Latin and poncey) is quite different. And of course a pandemic is largely "an act of God" whereas war, destruction and conquest are very much down to us... |
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Oct 2021
11:44am, 26 Oct 2021
25,687 posts
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Johnny Blaze
Just my opinion, like...
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