As the New York Times gleefully dubbed it — the nickname appears to be valid. The UK is suffering right now. The UK not only has partial shortages but also a homegrown variant that has led to UK travelers being blocked by much of the modern world.
Borders are closed; shelves are partially empty, and Northern Ireland has been hit pretty hard by the disastrous Brexit deal that Boris Johnson amusingly signed into law not that long ago.
Largely the UK has failed at its own once lauded efforts to get COVID-19 under control. Similar to how New York City ‘s Andrew Cuomo once famously bragged and then wrote about it in a book — the United Kingdom may have been failing all along.