The very title of Laura Spinney’s piece is a sad reflection of how pandemic control preferences quickly aligned along traditional political lines, to everybody’s detriment (Five years on from the pandemic, the right’s fake Covid narrative has been turbocharged into the mainstream, 9 March). If the right has been guilty of undermining science and scientists, I also observed through the pandemic how the left displayed a disturbing enthusiasm to restrict liberty, using fear and guilt to encourage compliance with control measures, and many arguing to prolong the restrictions beyond the point where they were doing any good.
I have experience of how the Covid control measures in the NHS, while well-intentioned, were only dismantled at a snail’s pace after the greatest danger had passed, prolonging the disruptive effect of the pandemic on the nation’s health.
School closures and enforced isolation have contributed hugely to the mental health problems and social isolation faced by all, but especially the young. While the vaccines were an impressive achievement and saved many lives, in the NHS we witnessed a foolish and time-consuming attempt to coerce all staff into being vaccinated. This was abandoned at the 11th hour, but some staff had already left rather than have a vaccine they distrusted.
The general overreach of the state in the pandemic has sadly led many to be less trustful of official health guidance, especially regarding vaccines. Rather than put the blame on political opponents, with accusations of fake narratives, all of society needs to undergo some honest self-reflection and try to understand the views of those who disagree with us.
Dr Aodhan Breathnach
Consultant medical microbiologist (and former infection control doctor), St George’s Hospital, London
• I agree with Laura Spinney that we need to do something about the negative narrative that has developed on the pandemic. Any rational person who reads the empirical evidence would surely agree that containment in the first instance, and the magic bullet of vaccination, saved us from many more deaths in the UK, even if as Spinney says, mistakes were made.
I’m not sure how we go about silencing conspiracy theories on the pandemic and on vaccines in particular. Who reads the empirical evidence apart from scientists, epidemiologists and Guardian readers like myself and interprets it favourably? I wonder how we can overcome irrationality and conspiracy in society – the Great Barrington declaration that was signed by academics being a case in point – when it has scaled even the walls of the ivory tower.
Desmond Hewitt
Marlborough, Wiltshire
• The populist vaccine deniers – who post on Facebook, for example – have had to go much further recently. They claim microbes don’t exist and there are no such things as viruses and bacteria. The entire medical world is therefore a scam, a vast global conspiracy for profit. Vaccines are the lethal tool created to cull populations as part of the secret new world order’s objective to subjugate humanity.
To swallow this nonsense in the face of the evidence is not normal. Far-right politicians codify these delusions into pseudoscience that boils down to one thing – smash the state. We had better do something about the poison pouring out from social media – and soon.
Richard Bunning
Tiverton, Devon
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