How do you feel about the way your country has handled the current pandemic?

I don't watch the news and I haven't left my house in months.

hahaha for real though, I'm so out of touch with the outside world.

The Uk was weeks behind having a plan in place. Lack of PPE for our health service and communication from government have been main issues.

Take a look at how well NZ were prepared.

Pretty poorly. I know it's an unprecedented situation but Boris Johnson did not act fast enough. We had at least 2 weeks notice on countries like China, South Korea, Spain and Italy yet lockdown was not official until March 23rd. Boris shaking the hands of covid patients and then contracting it himself, another 'hilarious' incident to add to his epilogue.

As Tommy says a lack of PPE. Reports of some 8,000 UK businesses offering to help produce but only 3,000 have been instructed by the government. NHS staff passing away on the frontline due to overused PPE. Poor rates of testing, promising 100k tests a day and barely managing 20k. Testing centres set up all around the country with no one operating them, nurses driving 60 miles for their nearest test station only to be turned away unless they are symptomatic. Then the financial support system setup for self employed people - they won't be contacted until mid-May and not paid until June. How are people supposed to survive? Especially when their business has likely shut or at least suffered reduced trade. Meanwhile huge companies like Ryanair and Virgin request hundreds of millions of pounds of state bailout

Interested to hear your thoughts on Sweden @Redtunnel? I was reading the government may now be regretting their decision to implement lax social distancing as the virus is predicted to hit the elderly hard. What is the public perception like? Some must feel anxious when seeing other countries in total lockdown. I guess Sweden favours from having a small population and large land area - natural social distancing!

Our government has hidden behind experts and we've basically had expertocracy during the pandemic. Media and the people haven't really questioned or criticized our experts. Our experts didn't believe the virus would ever spread in sweden. Our models and strategies are still a mystery to the public. Our state epidemiologist praised UK's decision to go for herd immunity, claiming you guys were world leading etc. When UK then did a 180 on the strategy and went for a lockdown (because the herd immunity models were trash and hadn't been properly peer reviewed), our epidemiologist was like "oh well, UK has a different culture anyway with people going to the pub after work". Meanwhile the nordic countries (comparable in size, population and culture) all imposed various restrictions, but not Sweden. The vast majority here in Sweden thinks our decision is superior and not many actually question the sacrifice in lives. I'm not sure they are even aware of how much worse we are doing than our neighbouring countries, because it's never mentioned by media.

We have a lot of voluntary social distancing though. I would imagine at least 30% of stockholm works from home. Our businesses suffer similarly to other countries and we have a financial crisis. We have really good financial support from the government though. But I don't have much confidence in our epidemiologists. They've been wrong too many times.

What I personally would have favoured doing:
- Stopping all flights immediately from places with community spread
- Invest in testing similar to what South Korea did
- Close all elderly homes from visitors
- Lockdown of Stockholm once we had community spread to prevent it from spreading to other cities (just lockdown of the roads out of the city, not closing down the city itself)
- Having the recommendations as actual restrictions (i.e. have restaurants to do takeaway only and close places with larger gatherings, restrict distance between customers in stores)

You can see some comparisons on this website:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

One thing to keep in mind though. Some countries don't report people who died from covid-19 in elderly homes. I believe UK, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Netherlands don't for example, while e.g. France and Sweden do. In Sweden they account for like 40% of the deaths I think (and similar in France). I would imagine the proportions are roughly the same in other countries with big spread, but that's just speculation.

I dont think any country has got it right, so many mistakes, 

Lack of PPE has been huge. 

We still have 2 weeks lockdown and then what happens?

The UK has been a shambles, we're predicted to be the worst in Europe and we had knowledge of China/Italy/Spain. Boris and his government will have a lot of blood on their hands by the end of this.

The US has been...  OK.  It's not been the best but the biggest blame in my opinion, is to be placed on the incompetent people that have no care in the world for other's well being.  The kind of people that are continuing to have BBQs on the beach, bonfires in their friend's backyard, playing basketball games at the park, and so on.  I find it so idiotic.  They're making decisions to go out at other people's expense and not their own.  The selfishness I'm seeing and hearing from people is remarkable.  A guy here at Delta is very upset that he's being told he can't spend with time his friends whom he sees "-- 4 to 5 times a week.  How could they not be considered something like immediate family?  I'm around them enough."  And the fact is that being around his own wife and kid is just as dangerous as it is being around anyone else. 

There are a lot of strong opinions about how Trump's task force is handling it and I feel they're definitely trying their best.  I mean, who isn't?  Do people think they want this to happen?  Back when he first put a travel ban on China, his  decision was called xenophobic.  Now they're saying he didn't do it soon enough because he thought it was a hoax.  So really, they're just a bunch of hypocrites using whatever leverage they can get.  Our leaders look like a bunch of power hungry children using this to blame each other and gain political points.  Some parties saying this would be over by now if they were in charge, or it would have never happened at all. 

They can say we need to work together as much as they want.  But that will never happen.  Not even a pandemic killing thousands of our people will force their cooperation. 

The UK now has the highest number of deaths from Coronavirus in Europe and the 2nd highest in the world.


Absolute disaster when you factor in our 2 week advantage 

i do not  want talk my country cause that in a whole  each state is on different agenda. I live in The great state of Texas, but sad that  people don't make wise choices. Greg Abbott reopen  some business  so more people can go back to work and feed their family . People do not social distance they do not care .  They are doing what ever they wanta do .#FireFAUCI
https://www.click2houston.com/health/2020/03/05/man-woman-confirmed-to-be-first-cases-of-coronavirus-confirmed-in-harris-county/

  https://nypost.com/2020/05/03/crowds-gather-to-buy-new-air-jordan-sneakers-in-atlanta-after-lockdown-lifted/?fbclid=IwAR2dBlrFkzYtDf5Pk-UjfoxH-sd72xrHFTb9Ux0ULmOOnBLz25z7jYDKAOs

I'm in the US and I'm pretty disappointed with the federal government's response. At first it was a hoax, something people were being overdramatic about to impact reelection chances. Even now there's barely any federal coordination with testing and PPE. For a few days states were worried feds would intercept PPE, and in one case the feds nearly did until a governor's call to their congressman got the feds to back off.

I'm in New Jersey which has been hit hard since it's across the river from New York, and counties in south NJ are on their own for tests and PPE because the state can barely get enough supplies for the hardest hit counties in the north. I read a county with 200,000 people having out outbid other counties and the state itself for tests, and as of last week they had purchased a total of 800 test kits. For 200,000 people.

Financial aid from the federal government has been solid in my impression. Plenty of problems but I understand that with so many people not working things would be hard. But to me the messaging is still terrible. 'Everything is great, we have plenty of PPE', yet businesses aren't getting their aid and doctors are wearing the same masks for days at a time. People are talking about how to get back to normal, rather than how serious the situation is and how we're going to live for the next year or more dealing with the virus.

This is heartbreaking

This is heartbreaking

Whilst I'm not defending the actions of the UK government, it is perhaps unfair to compare them to New Zealand - a country of comparable size to the UK but only 5 million people (much smaller population density) and smaller levels of trade and immigration. A better comparison would have been South Korea who have done a great job and put us to shame

I believe the Dutch government acted pretty well. They let virology experts advise them every step of the way. At some points it may have looked like they should have acted more fierce, but in the end I can look back on the measures they have taken and say: I would probably have done the same. We didn't really have a hard lockdown and it wasn't heavily enforced all the time, because of the coöperation between the people and the government that had been established. "Guys. This is bad. Please work together". When people listen to a plan, it actually works. (Ofcourse the plan has to be good to have a good outcome aswell )

Plus we have to realise that we don't have all the information the government gets on their plate. I wouldn't want to have all that information either. But I trust my government and I'm sure they have considered many options.

In Belgium we have politics that think they know better than actual experts...