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I haven't looked up the stats for a few weeks, but the last I saw was that the UK had about twice as many deaths relative to population as Germany (which would have had far fewer if they hadn't made the very bad decision to 'open up' in summer 2020, which prepared a terrible winter wave), and that the UK's vaccination rates are no longer particularly special in Europe at about 2/3rds of adults.
Come on, Oliver. You know that I didn't say that the UK had fewer deaths than Germany, nor that the UK vaccination rate was particularly special.
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Oops, not sure where the rest of my post went. Probably fat fingers. I'll try to write it again in a moment.
Edit: This is roughly how it went, but I can't remember all of it:
I haven't looked up the stats for a few weeks, but the last I saw was that the UK had about twice as many deaths relative to population as Germany (which would have had far fewer if they hadn't made the very bad decision to 'open up' in summer 2020, which prepared a terrible winter wave), and that the UK's vaccination rates are no longer particularly special in Europe at about 2/3rds of adults.
I seem to remember reading that the relatively low number of excess deaths in Britain can largely be attributed to worse pre-existing health inequalities, i.e. relatively fewer deaths were attributed to COVID-19 as opposed to other conditions, even though there was greater vulnerability, worse policy, and consequently more deaths than in Europe.
If anything, therefore, COVID-19 has reduced vulnerability in the UK population more than in other European countries. I still don't buy the argument that this plus vaccination has made opening everything up in summer 2021 a good idea. This has massively increased the infection base and while the resultant greater spread will hit predominantly unvaccinated people, it will also hit those not sufficiently protected by vaccination.
As ever, this may all be bollocks.
Obviously, elimination's not an option (and hasn't been since about January 2020), and would have caused only a delay, although that would still have been useful in the vaccine race.
Oliver Schick
I haven't looked up the stats for a few weeks, but the last I saw was that the UK had about twice as many deaths relative to population as Germany (which would have had far fewer if they hadn't made the very bad decision to 'open up' in summer 2020, which prepared a terrible winter wave), and that the UK's vaccination rates are no longer particularly special in Europe at about 2/3rds of adults.
Obviously, elimination's not an option (and hasn't been since about January 2020), and would have caused only a delay, although that would still have been useful in the vaccine race.