Lack Of Quarantine Let In 1300 Infected People From Aboard

[Gromit]

At the beginning of the pandemic at least 1,356 different corona origin infections came into the UK, mainly from Spain and France.

On each of those occasions somebody brought the infection into the UK from abroad and the virus began to spread as a result.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52993734

The failure to ground flights or quarantine people on those flights that were allowed, meant that the virus spread rapidly.
Only now, 10 weeks and 41,000 UK deaths later, are we making an half-hearted attempt at quarantining.

So much for taking back control of our borders. There should be an i quiring about how this error occurred.

[fiction-factory]

Yes, maybe should have been done then with hindsight, but I don't see why that means we shouldn't do it now.

[jno]

yes, that really was daft, and with very predictable results. Britain is an island, or a few of them, and could have chosen to close its borders, but didn't. Quarantines will no doubt damage business, as the likes of Ryanair are forever pointing out, but they save lives.

[Peter Pedant]

// At the beginning of the pandemic ..../
yeah go out and shoot them or something

this bit of the site is meant to be about News
and not - over used xenophobic rant?

[dannyk13]

Can hardly believe it but I agree with PP.

[fiction-factory]

We'd have needed to lock these arrivals- mainly Brits returning home- in hotels or airport portakabins though for 7-14 days- unless they had a car parked at the airport to drive home in as tube/coach/train/taxi travel would have helped spread it too.

[jim360]

// Yes, maybe should have been done then with hindsight, but I don't see why that means we shouldn't do it now.//

Except we aren't doing it now, at least not in any meaningful sense. The quarantine measures being adopted are an empty gesture as long as they aren't universal and strictly enforced. There's also the problem that community spread, once established, is going to dominate over "re-introduction" from international travel. I am not sure what the latest estimates on new cases per day are, but it's probably in the region of 5,000 or so, in which case newly-arriving foreign cases are going to be lost in the noise.

[fiction-factory]

I can't recall any posts in February saying we should quarantine all returning Brits for 2 weeks, but maybe you could show me your posts from then Gromit. I seem to remember you posted in March saying the whole thing was overhyped

[fiction-factory]

>The quarantine measures being adopted are an empty gesture as long as they aren't universal and strictly enforced.

Wouldn't that have been the case in Feb/March too though, jim- unless we put them all under house arrest in airport hotels and emergency portakabins?
I agree though that it's just a gesture- but it would have been in April/May too

[fiction-factory]

https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/News/Question1694666.html
Okay 12th Feb you posted this. Certainly no demands for quarantine from you there Gromit.

[jim360]

Yes, only a blanket quarantine/travel ban would have killed the spread. But it would also have been possible, in principle at least, to find policies that "bought time" in order for the system to be ready. The challenge would then have been to use that time wisely. At the end of Feburary/beginning of March, much was made about how the UK was "two or three weeks" behind Italy (and Spain), and it seems hard in retrospect to argue that we used that extra time well -- especially now that we have apparently passed both of them.

[jno]

ff, they managed to turn the Excel centre into a Nightingale hospital quickly enough. I don't see why it couldn't equally have been made a quarantine centre.

[dannyk13]

How wise is that which we call hindsight.

[jno]

dannyk, Australia and New Zealand brought in quarantining and banned flights at about the same time as Britain imposed lockdown, about the 20th of March. Both countries - both island nations, like Britain - have done very well, their death tolls a tiny fraction of Britain's even when allowing for differences in population.

I don't know that anyone was calling for quarantine back in February (I wasn't, for one), but other countries had certainly read the runes a month later and took action; and after that, hindsight doesn't apply. We're nearly three months behind them. That's cost many many lives.

[fiction-factory]

Yes Gromit's post summed up how many of those who now support lockdown were thinking at the time. And we know a fair number on here (not me) have thought all along the lockdown was unneccessary/overkill. So without the benefit of hindsight would there really have been public support for strictly quarantining children returning from school skiing trips and families returning from holiday. Who here was calling for it in February?

[dannyk13]

jno, Both Australia and New Zealand are less densely populated than the UK so the spreading of the virus was not as quick as here.

[fiction-factory]

NZ did things well but I don't think it's a good comparator. Uk is an international hub very close to Europe. NZ isn't as is many hours away from anywhere

[Gromit]

FF,
Thanks for reminding me of that link. It was a bizarre post, I don’t know what it meant (still don’t), I think I must have been drunk (10pm midweek). But early doors of the corona virus I was comparing it to the 17,000 annual flu deaths and was thinking corona would come no where near that.

This is a good thread, the day before lockdown was announced.
https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Society-and-Culture/Question1699462.html

[ichkeria]

Quarantine might have made sense then. When it could have been properly. As in actually quarantining people from selected countries, with testing and temperature taking.
It makes no sense now.

[david small]

It just shows all the waffle and sometimes intelligent suggestions on this site are no more than Vain expression. No one listens, no action taken. Just venting.

[jno]

Uk is an international hub very close to Europe.

ff, it is, but it's also surrounded by water, like NZ, so it doesn't have unlimited borders as other countries in Europe have. Broadly speaking, trains, planes and some boats are the only ways in. Those could all have been blocked.

As I said, it does cause economic problems (antipodean tourist industries have taken big hits) but leaders took the view that lives needed saving ahead of businesses.

dannyk, Australia has about a third of the UK population but a fortieth of the number of deaths. The population density is less of a factor than it seems, since somewhere round 70-80% of it is so sparsely inhabited it's unlikely to show up on virus maps at all. The nearest UK equivalent would be the Scottish Highlands. The rest of the country, round parts of the coast, is among the most urbanised areas on Earth.