No one thinks of winter when the grass is green.

Never a truer word...Grandmaclampet

154,000 people died in this country during the winter of 2018, Beast from the East. This was between January and March of that year. 2,000 died every 10 minutes.

The maths on that don't add up EllanVannin.If 2,000 people died every 10 minutes, that's 288,000 per day

154,000 may have died, but how many of those were excess deaths caused by the Beast from the East?

Total deaths in England and Wales between January and March 2017 were 153,000, in 2018 were 164,000 and in 2019 were 143,000.

That makes the excess deaths 13,000 compared with the previous year and 21,000 compared with the following year.

My source is Office of National Statistics figures www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/monthlyfiguresondeathsregisteredbyareaofusualresidence

I read the OPs thread differently.
My take was that when things are good/going well, we don't think about or make provision for the 'bad' times.

If we're talking about the virus, how on earth could an individual anticipate and "make provision" for this sort of crisis - one which the vast majority of people would never have experienced or expected?

You cannot, but, in fact, the government has had an epidemic planning group for at least 10 years. When SARS, MERS and Swine flu came through, the government realised that one day a pandemic would hit us. The problem is they cannot possible know, what, from where, symptoms, severity etc etc, because when doing the planning, the relevant virus has yet to mutate itself into existence.

Be glad that the pandemic virus was not Ebola.

I have to agree with Monica we have been planing but it is very difficult to believe the really worst could happen. You are right about Ebola but even then it is better or worse depending on whether people do as they are asked to or not. One of the biggest problems with Ebola, if I remember rightly, was overcoming cultural mores. Ours may be overcoming the "I know better than experts" culture.

I think I posted this elsewhere but my son said goodnight to me the other day (messenger from Australia) adding "Watched an episode of Chernobyl for some perspective. Inconvenience is one thing...."

Perspective is what we need at the moment but we may need one another to help us keep it.

Just to add that my support for those dealing with this at the moment doesn't mean that, down the line, we shouldn't look at how we are in the position we are in re the NHS. I just don't think that now is that time.

Isn’t there a saying about repairing the roof while the sun is shining? We are where we are now of course but perhaps this crisis will be a wake up call going forward which can only be a good thing.

Our country was far too slow in responding to this. MOnica’s mention of Ebola reminds me that when my midwife daughter flew back from Liberia at that time there were no checks whatever when they arrived back here.
Infected travellers have been arriving in Britain unchecked ever since coronavirus appeared in China. Other countries have refused entry so much quicker.

They stopped checking at airports because it proved to be ineffective, most of those with temperatures didn't have coronavirus and corona sufferers showed no signs of having it.

Just because another country does something different, indeed if every country does something different, it doesn't mean they are right.

I think all these comparisons with other countries are invidious. This table shows that all things considered we are doing better than many other comparable coutries in Europe with similar populations www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Ebola had a 90% death rate. Count our blessings with Coronavirus.