Give credit where it’s due in the coronavirus fight
WE have made real progress in tackling the deadly Covid19 virus, the terrible daily toll continues to fall, we are beginning to reconnect with friends and family, pupils are returning to schools and businesses are slowly re-opening.
We have emerged from the first phase of the battle having succeeded in the overall aim – to prevent our hospitals from being overwhelmed and avoid the heart-breaking scenes we witnessed in Italian hospitals.
But to listen to some broadcasters or see some newspapers, you could be forgiven for thinking all other nations have risen to this unprecedented challenge while we alone have lurched from failure to failure.
Our media seems more determined to point the finger of blame than establish facts that offer the country real insight and perspective in these times of great uncertainty.
And when comparative data is used it is all too often selected to show Britain in the worst light rather than a fair light.
This is a novel virus, a threat of a scale and pace the world has not seen for generations.All countries have sometimes struggled to stay ahead of this terrible disease.
EVEN a cursory comparison with our European neighbours reveals a pattern of similar challenges to those seen in Britain. In France more than 1.6 billion face masks were incinerated before the virus hit to create more storage space, while in Spain faulty masks issued to frontline health workers forced more than 1,000 into isolation and thousands more required testing.
In Germany, the poster nation for Covid-19 response, a group of doctors posed naked to protest a lack of protective equipment as the country fell short of more than 270 million masks, gloves and aprons.
In the Netherlands 600,000 masks ordered from China had to be ditched and when the Belgium prime minister Sophie
Wilmès visited Saint Pierre Hospital, its staff turned their backs on her in protest.
In Italy the public prosecutor is investigating what one WHO official called a “massacre” in care homes and some regional leaders have had to hire bodyguards to protect themselves in the face of public fury.
In Spain, a leaked government report revealed 57 per cent of the nation’s death toll was care-home related, while both Germany and France failed to hit testing targets.
Germany came under fire for delays in delivering test results, Spain brought faulty testing kits from China and was criticised, along with France, for a lack of antibody testing.
In Germany more than 300 tech experts wrote an open letter criticising its proposed track-and-trace app, forcing a U-turn. All nations have, on occasion, struggled. But while our media is quick to highlight the successes of other countries, it is less willing to give credit for achievements here.
When Italy’s hospitals, which went into this crisis with double the critical care capacity of Britain, were overwhelmed, we were routinely warned our NHS would collapse. It didn’t. In fact the Nightingale Hospitals we built with such astonishing speed were barely needed.
And while “scandal” has become the default word to describe the Covid-19 impact in Britain’s care homes, figures from the European Centre for Disease Control show UK deaths as comparatively low.
Deaths in UK care homes is 21 per cent, compared with 50 in France, 61 in Norway, 66 in Spain and 37 in Germany.
There was wall-to-wall coverage of Britain’s battle to hit the 100,000 tests a day target, mostly laced with scorn and scepticism. Where is the coverage that by the end of May,
Britain had carried out more tests than Germany? Britain’s test rate per 1,000 people now outstrips Germany, the United States and Spain.
The media, aided by the liberal elite, have even been willing to misrepresent data. “How on earth did it come to this?” asked Keir Starmer as the media claimed Britain had the worst death toll in Europe.
OUR death toll is tragic but not comparable with other European countries unless other factors are taken into account.
We have one of the world’s most comprehensive mortality reporting systems and the UK’s population is bigger than all other European nations except Russia, Germany and Turkey.
A biased narrative has taken hold and prejudice has won.
When we should have been pulling together our media has helped to tear us apart.
It should hold its Government to account but not at the expense of its other critical role – providing accurate information in a fair and balanced way.
The media has been quick to accuse the Government of undermining its own public health messages while failing to see its constant carping coverage has done just that.
‘All countries have struggled to stay ahead of this terrible disease’