Rachel Clarke is spot-on in debunking the myth propagated by Boris Johnson that the NHS was not overwhelmed by Covid (The claim that the NHS ‘coped’ with Covid is not true – it’s drowning and damaged, 23 March). A complete collapse of the NHS was only prevented by policies that included discharging older people untested back to care homes and refusing to admit some of them with severe Covid symptoms. Present deaths from Covid are well below the peaks of earlier waves, but how many people have died and are still dying prematurely through delayed diagnosis and treatment?
Freedom day last July has led to health services, including hospitals, being clogged up with Covid patients, hampering the efforts to deal with the massive backlog. But our prime minister has already moved on and consigned to history the many thousands of needless deaths that his policies contributed to.
Ron Walton
Penarth, Glamorgan
• Simon Jenkins is right to highlight that excess deaths is the one robust indicator that we have to compare different countries’ experience of the pandemic (Two years ago I said I was taking Covid ‘with a pinch of salt’ – perhaps I was wrong, 25 March). During 2020 and 2021, the UK’s excess death rate was about 20% higher than in Belgium and the Netherlands, nearly 90% higher than France and Germany and 120% higher than Sweden.
The challenge that the public inquiry faces is to determine the relative contributions to the greater loss of life in the UK that was due to our pre-existing health, the public health policies pursued by the government and the quality of our health services.
Nick Black
Professor of health services research, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
• Simon Jenkins omits to mention serious concerns that the NHS would be overwhelmed by Covid in March 2020 if action had not been taken. Lack of capacity, especially in intensive care, meant a lockdown could not be avoided, given the slow response by the government in January and February. Earlier action to slow the spread of the virus might have reduced deaths and avoided the need for harsher restrictions as announced by the prime minister on 23 March. The forthcoming public inquiry will need to examine the reasons for delay, the UK’s inadequate preparedness for a Sars pandemic, and what now needs to be done to build resilience in the NHS and other public services for the future.
Chris Ham
Solihull, West Midlands
• Simon Jenkins has a typical non-mathematicians’ misunderstanding of modelling. When a model produces a range of outcomes – for example, of between 20 and 5,000 events and a most likely outcome of 2,000 – it does not mean that the model is predicting 5,000, because that is the worst-case scenario, contingent on a particularly unfavourable set of circumstances. So to criticise models on this basis is wrong – a bit like chastising weather forecasters who say there is an outside chance of a hurricane when said hurricane doesn’t appear.
Dr Richard Carter
Putney, London
• Thank you for Rachel Clarke’s excellent article. Now, how can we get it into the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Sun?
Sue Smith
Cardiff
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication.
