UK Covid-19 lockdown day 17: The British Media portray European deaths as apocalyptic and British deaths as expected consequences Tim Petherick Follow Apr 9 · 4 min read

The reality of this pandemic is that it’s morbid.

But its morbidity is not universal — countries that acted appropriately and quickly have fared much better. By actually listening to the best advice and data available from WHO (World heath Organisation) at the time, South Korea implemented a policy of extensive tracing (*1) and in about six weeks, more than 300,000 people were tested. Early action by the government and mass testing led to early detection and self-isolation to prevent infection.

They’ve had just two hundred and four deaths.

Boris Johnson and his government’s response to this message to test, test, test was to announce to the country that testing was in fact “no long necessary”

This seems strange, considering that every sixteen year old redditor, gobby lefty on Facebook (me) and Karen down the road could all see, even without the overwhelming professional and medical consensus, that this seemed illogical. How can you control something, how can you prevent something, if you have absofrickinglutely no idea where it is.

Now we’re on track to be the worst hit country in Europe and one of the worst hit in the world. Who could have seen that one coming? Oh yes. That’s right. Loads of people.

The UK’s daily death rate yesterday surpassed Italy’s on its worst day.

Which got me thinking back to some of the headlines we were bombarded with when other countries were suffering these sorts of numbers. They were terrifying and apocalyptic and were a sort of “news porn”. Just look at how badly those other people have got it, isn’t it just terrifying.

But now that we are being hit with these numbers ourselves sections of our media are presenting it with a sort of British exceptionalism; either it’s ignored or given a positive spin. Here’s the BBC News UK’s website this morning:

Nearly a thousand people died yesterday? Never mind about that. Look at the WORLD! Oh and here are our favourite nice royals, don’t you love them?

Have a look at some other major UK news websites from today:

The independent

Evening Standard

The Metro

Now, there seems to be a trend here. How’s Boris? Don’t you worry about the numbers. Don’t criticise the government’s response.

Here’s another one from the beeb today:

I’m not sure it’s entirely appropriate to use that headline and tagline together.

Ultimately what we can see here is that even when the UK is suffering record numbers of deaths from a pandemic, the scale of which when put alongside other comparable countries clearly points towards a government failing to act and having failed in its duty to protect its citizens, the UK media cannot be trusted to hold said government to account. In fact, it’s more likely to blame you for your failure to adhere to the really clear advice that has really clearly been communicated to you from the start of this crisis. Clearly.