ONCE again Boris Johnson lost his nerve and caved in to the alarmists. The fact is there are only two certainties in the great Covid-19 panic: first, lockdowns are not a long-term solution and secondly, they cause more damage than the virus itself.
A more rational and scientific approach would be to sort out our mass testing programme; clean up the rogue epidemiologists’ dodgy statistics; isolate and protect the vulnerable; be open and honest about the quantifiable costs of lockdown.
There were 24,000 excess deaths in English homes since the start of April. However only 10 per cent of these were directly related to Covid-19. The rest, largely ignored by officials, resulted from wanton constraints on personal freedom and health care.
The elephant in the surgery is cancer. Two million are queuing for screening, tests and treatment while some 15,000 await surgery. If those with heart problems, lung disease, diabetes and more are added, Covid won’t turn out to be the main killer.
John Cameron, St Andrews.
THESE are unprecedented times and what makes them worse is the Westminster Government’s failure to be proactive instead of reactive, which always leaves it behind the curve, struggling to catch up with the ravages of Covid.
Three weeks ago Sir Keir Starmer was ridiculed by the Prime Minister for putting forward the suggestion, in keeping with scientific advice, that there should be a circuit breaker to slow down the advance of the virus to allow the NHS to cope.
Now in one of his multiple number of unprecedented u-turns, of which this must be the most egregious, he is condemning England to a minimum of a four-week lockdown, just another name for a longer circuit beaker, though more expressive of being kept prisoner within one’s own home where circuit breaker is in itself a rather more optimistic way of saying the same thing.
Christmas is on the horizon and it looks rather likely to be but a pale imitation of what that season should be thanks to the belated action being taken by the current administration after its protestations that its tiers would not end in tears…
