Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

The worst thing is it is mostly the weakest, oldest and most vulnerable who it has taken.

Erm.
It's not a very simple answer.

I don't see what being an island has to do with it, flow of people around the world these days is not constrained by water if you have the right passport.

I'm sure unpicking this will take months, if not years, but one thing that strikes me (And the BBC if you look hard enough), is that population density will have a factor to play.

It now seems that talking heads on politics shows can claim with impunity from anchors that our response has been the worst in the world, and the base of the people saying this is lapping it up in the same sycophantic uncritical way that Fox follow Trump.

Just to throw some numbers out there, comparing England with Spain (Yes, this is cherry picked, I've chosen England because it is fully managed by this government, and is the area of the nation with the highest population density, Spain is much lower). I'm doing this to show there are ways of looking at this which go against the current accepted narrative.

England
Population = 56M
Population Density = 432/km2
Deaths = 27K

Spain
Population = 47M
Population Density = 92/km2
Deaths = 27K

This isn't scientific, it obviously hasn't looked at expected deaths for a start, I repeat, I DON'T know how we really compare against a whole range of other countries, what I despair about is the number of people flooding social media who are 100% sure how we did, based on the same information.