We most certainly shouldn't have been, two weeks of dithering ****ed us up big style.
That said, why do some blindly believe every other country's figures but doubt our own?
I actually don't blindly follow or believe anyone's figures. In my mind there are two categories.
The first group are those who I don't trust at all so I ignore them always. Never quote them or include them in my comparisons. And where they crop up (like Russia or China) I'll gladly include them as probably one of the worst in reality.
The second are the ones most would think are countries likely to be reliable in their intent but will invariably have room for error. For those, I think the variables are not significant enough to make a difference. So for example, when France is reporting about 24k deaths, any variable won't be enough to make it much different to our range so I'd compare that to us and always have. But Canada reporting about 3400 is not going to have enough of a variable to come anywhere close to us. Expanding that with other countries e.g. Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, U.S, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand is a reasonable position to hold without having to worry about absolute accuracy of figures when making comparisons between countries or groups of countries.


