John Harris is right (We desperately need a government who will say it: Britain is still reeling from Covid, 29 May). It’s as though the pandemic never happened. The long-term effects that it has had on our and our children’s mental and physical health, our NHS, our public services, as well as the global economy, have been swept under the carpet. “Don’t mention the virus” has become the guiding mantra of our media and our politicians.
The past is being erased. The present is being ignored. Even though the pandemic is still with us, all protections, surveillance and data collections have been dismantled. Those millions still at the highest risk are reporting being told to take their masks off in hospitals. The roughly quarter of a million people who died from Covid are no longer even a number.
Let us hope that the independent inquiry doesn’t just become about Partygate, or even Cronygate. We owe it to the dead and those who are still dying (nearly 300 a week, according to statistics from the end of April) to learn the lessons of such a traumatic and long-lasting period in all our lives, recognise that Covid is still with us, and ensure that we are prepared for any future pandemics.
Joan Twelves
Covid Action campaign, London
• John Harris makes some important points about Covid. However, the silence around preventable deaths needs further scrutiny. Between March 2020 and January 2021, there were 233 UK government press briefings, prime ministerial addresses, NHS data briefings and Covid-19 taskforce briefings. As 2021 progressed, even as known cases were in the hundreds of thousands and deaths continued to proliferate, these briefings noticeably dwindled. The final press briefing was held on 21 February 2022. In effect, the state fell silent over Covid.
The public were pushed towards a sanitised space where there was little or no discussion about the dead, who they were, how they lived, how they died and, crucially, how many of their deaths were preventable. If the choices that the government makes result in a catastrophic number of preventable deaths, then the logical path to follow is to quieten, subdue and silence discussion about the dead, and deflect attention about who is accountable. Shamefully, that is what has happened, and is happening, in England and Wales right now.
Emeritus professor Joe Sim
Liverpool John Moores University
Emeritus professor Steve Tombs
Open University
• My husband, old but up to then very fit and feisty, caught Covid somehow in mid-December last year in spite of five vaccinations, after delayed but successful treatment for a fall in our kitchen. In the crisis, unbelievably to us both, we could simply get no help until 28 December, by which time he was at death’s door. He was then treated and recovered to some extent, but died of the aftereffects on 7 March in an overstretched, understaffed, claustrophobic ward.
His last words, I’m sorry to say, were not something to treasure, but a furious “Get me out of here.” I registered his death at the town hall, and found that Covid was not mentioned on the certificate – I was too exhausted to argue.
But my husband read history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and would regard this as a small example of corruption of historical sources. Because I saw every step, I know that Covid, and the resulting NHS crisis, were among the causes of his death. I must be one of many who believe that their relative’s individual piece of historical evidence has been falsified to make the figures look less dire.
Name and address supplied
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