Counting the cost of the UK’s Covid failures | Letters

Jeremy Cushing on the tragic consequences of the pandemic response, Prof W Richard Bowen on the need for more scientifically educated politicians, Joseph Palley on England's excess deaths, and Betty Cairns on how the dead are being remembered in Italy

I was left confused by Devi Sridhar's article (The northern lockdown represents government failure. There is a better way, 31 July). She urged the adoption of an objective with a timeline, forming a gameplan, appointing a high-level official to oversee things", but none of these have any specific content. The content, far from reflecting the title, actually suggests a localised approach. Insofar as I detected any recommendations, they were to use a robust testing and tracing system" and local expertise. These are ideas being widely shared, and show that our government has adopted almost the opposite approach, starving local authorities of information and resources in favour of corporations. The government has refrained from testing at the UK border, which other countries have made standard.

It brings us back to the basic nature of this government - distrust of the public sector, tight centralisation, poverty-stricken government agencies and overall incompetence, with leadership confined to those unquestioningly loyal to the prime minister. The similarities between our government and Donald Trump's are many and the result the same - large numbers of people dying.
Jeremy Cushing
Exeter