Spain, Italy and a few others haven't added care home deaths or deaths at home whereas England has deaths in all settings.
england only records hospital deaths also
i've no problems with politicising our response to the virus.
we are seeing key liberties being eroded by the government - the right to trial by jury is being suspended for example - and i think they are ripe to be criticised for any decisions made.
there are nonsense issues like the pantomime reaction to cummings, but otherwise, scrutiny is good.
so glad that starmer is in charge of labour. he really holds johnson to account and has a good eye for detail - just what we need in an opposition leader.
lockdown is just a running joke now though isnt it. the people have spoken.
the BLM protests, the statue protests, liverpool winning the league and a hot day with a few million people on paid leave and it's done. think we set a poor precedent when we had health officials and politicians peddling the line that protests were ok as long as the cause was just enough.
i was always of the opinion that periodic lockdowns would probably happen. i'm resigned to that being likely this year. good luck enforcing it, however.
i don't think there will be the political will for it on a similar scale. i agree that an earlier lockdown would have been largely pointless, its clear that once people have had enough compliance will be impossible to impose. whilst the levels where low it was right to keep the country open. i do believe they got the timing somewhat right and for the correct reason.
we're still right in the middle of this though. who knows what we're going to think when we look back. and the problem - as always - is going to be that we just don't know what the counterfactual would have been
if we locked in early would there have been an increase in non-covid excess deaths caused by the NHS not treating non covid patients, would poverty have increased, would tolerance for lockdown ended earlier whilst we were in peak? impossible to know. so many variables.