ReachExtra
There has been a lot of debate as to whether the British government’s reactions to the coronavirus pandemic were quick enough, or indeed good enough.
Bloomberg Opinion Editor and self-proclaimed ‘anglophile Italian’ Ferdinando Giugliano said in an opinion piece that “it was like watching a train crash in slow motion”.
Certainly, when Boris Johnson addressed the nation flanked by his two principal medical advisors, he surprised many in other countries in Europe when he called for what appeared to be a ‘wait and see’ approach to allow for “herd immunity” to work.
Herd immunity is “when so many people in a community become immune to an infectious disease that it stops the disease from spreading”, as defined by Healthline. In fact, the concept of herd immunity as a way to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus was being promoted last month by Sir Patrick Vallance who said: “Around 60 per cent of the UK population will need to become infected to prevent another more aggressive outbreak of Covid-19.”
The critical reaction to this strategy was not limited to Britain’s European neighbours, but President Trump himself said during a press conference on the 1st of April 2020 that the UK’s initial strategy would have been “very catastrophic”.
“But in the UK, they were looking at that and they have a name for it.” Many believe that President Trump was referring to the ‘herd immunity’ strategy. “But we won’t even go by the name. But it would have been, it would have been very catastrophic…”
Even so, it came as a massive shock that a person in the Prime Minister’s position, with his direct access to the best medical attention available in one of the wealthiest countries in the world could not only have succumbed to coronavirus, but have fallen so ill.
On the 5th of April, the Prime Minister was admitted to St. Thomas’ Hospital one of the principal NHS facilities in London, situated within walking distance from the Houses of Parliament, on the advice of his doctor – 10 days after he tested positive for coronavirus.
The following evening, he was admitted to an intensive care unit where he spent three days. It is cause for great relief that Mr. Johnson should now be out of danger and had been moved to another ward.
Predictably, the news reports indicate that the gregarious Boris is playing computer games and making the best of his traumatic experience.
He has had nothing but words of praise for the staff at the hospital treating him – NHS employees who are the heroes of the United Kingdom these days as are the health workers in all the other countries.
Medical wisdom has it that a single day in intensive care means a whole week of recovery, so it is possible that the Prime Minister will be out of action for at least the next three weeks.
Regardless of the question of who is in charge in London today, the pandemic seems to be hitting the United Kingdom harshly, and there is a sense of growing annoyance in certain sectors that the UK has appeared to fritter away the several weeks of advantage that it had over other countries, notably Italy.
Italy has a particularly advanced and well-resourced medical service, as indeed has Spain, but both countries have been laid low by this virus. It is worth noting that studies have found a possible connection between air pollution and coronavirus mortality rate. Lombardy, an area of Italy where the coronavirus mortality rate was particularly high, has been ranked as one of the most polluted areas of Europe.
Now is the moment to look to see how the UK is going to deal with the ‘tsunami’ which some experts say is about to hit it and, on a personal level, to celebrate Mr. Johnson’s apparent recovery.
The Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) predicts 66,314 UK deaths from COVID19 by the 4th of August 2020, with a peak of nearly 3,000 per day.
This has been disputed by the Imperial College of London which is estimating between 7,000 and 20,000 deaths in the UK.
In contrast with these grim figures, Gibraltar as of today (11th of April 2020) has 129 confirmed cases of COVID19, with 45 active and 84 recovered cases. As of today, there is only one person at the COVID ICU. The Government of Gibraltar is putting this down to strict social distancing measures that were adhered to just before and during the official ‘total social lockdown’ began on the 24th of March.
It can be very well argued that the key difference is that general lockdown measures were introduced in Gibraltar beforehand and that the Gibraltarian community were taking precautions even before the official ‘total social lockdown’ began.
Indeed, the Government of Gibraltar has stated that these hopeful figures are no reason for complacency and that the social lockdown measures must continue to be adhered to in order to avoid a crisis.
However, there are sadly many people who have already died, or will die before their time in the UK, and at some point, searching questions will have to be asked about whether the Johnson administration was too slow to react, or if indeed they had been misled, as so many other countries claim to have been, by the World Health Organization’s apparent underestimation and subsequent conflicting advice in relation to the virus.
As an example, the World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is currently facing calls to resign, said in early February there was no need for measures that “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade”.
According to Reuters, China’s delegate Si Long denounced the measures taken by “some countries” in February that denied entry to people holding passports issued at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak in China, Hubei at the WHO Executive Board, stating that: “All these measures are seriously against recommendation by the WHO”.
As late as the 29th of February, the Official WHO guidelines still did not recommend travel restrictions unless said traveller was experiencing any flu-like symptoms.
